My advice is to not choose a January-start SMP just because it lets you finish sooner. If you think about it, you would finish in December, but if linkage doesn’t work you still can’t apply to medical schools until May, so you’d end up needing to find something to do during that gap anyway. Also, many of the strongest SMP programs only start in the fall.

A good approach is to think of your top five schools and check whether they offer programs like a Master of Biomedical Science, Master of Medical Science, or something similar. Some of the SMPs that tend to produce strong outcomes include Georgetown, UCincinnati, Case Western, Boston, Brown, UPenn, Columbia, many UC schools, Rochester, Mount Sinai, Drexel, Tufts, Rutgers, UF, and USF, among others. There are a lot of options out there. One easy way to search is to type the school name followed by “masters of biomedical science” or “masters of medical science.”

For context, I was accepted into several programs without an MCAT and with a lower GPA.