Advice for HS Student going for PreMed (OBGYN)?

Pre-Med & Medical School Pre-Med Topics
1

Hi there! I am a current sophomore in high school in the suburbs of Philly and I have determined that I want to pursue pre-med in the future, specifically OBGYN (More OB then GYN). Right now, I feel that I haven’t been preparing myself to get into a) a good college for medicine and b) medicine in the first place. I keep going back and forth with pre med, mainly because of the time it takes to become a doctor (12yrs), but I am 90% sure I want to go into Medicine.
Here’s a little bit about myself:
Right now, I take Honors (H) Bio, H Chem, H Pre-Calc, APUSH, H Spanish 3, and H English. My PSAT Score is about 1200. I am a part of my school’s Key club, Treasurer for my Muslim Student Association, a part of Girl Up Club, and I do Karate and Bowling for my school. I volunteer for the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University, local hospital, soup kitchen, and mosque. I am also ranked 27 in my class of about 1100. Over the summer, I am attending the HOBY Leadership Seminar as well. I have also applied to be a part of my Class Cabinet and to take a leadership position at Cradles to Crayons.
Next year (11th Gr), I plan on taking AP Bio, AP Chem, AP Eng, H World History, AP Calc AB, and H Spanish 4. I have plans to apply for some programs then as well (ex PARS, Allied Health Program).

My questions about pre-med are the following:
1- With what I am taking in school and my current ECs, would it be enough to get into a good college for pre-med, ex UPitt? (Upenn is my dream school)
+Follow up: If this is not enough to get into a school such as UPenn, what should I do in order to get in here?

2- Is it important to do medicine programs over the summer? How much do colleges actually value these programs when they see it on your transcript (I enjoy participating in them, but they are very expensive, and I am limited to that)?

3- As a high school student, is it good to have shadowed a doctor by now?

4- For a high school student going into pre med, what extracurriculars should I do to make me stand out from other applicants?

5- Who is BSMD meant for? Can anyone apply, or is it meant for people who are very bright?
+How can I prepare for BS/MD as a high school student?

6- Are ACT or SAT Scores more important when going into Pre-Med?

Answering any of these questions would be a big help :slight_smile:
Thank you so much!!

2

First, it’s way too soon to be picking out specialties. You’re at least 9-10 years away from that.

You should know that OB/GYN has become increasingly competitive lately and there is no guarantee that you’ll be able to match into the specialty. (OB/GYN currently is a more difficult match than surgery.) Don’t fixate on OB/GYN and consider if you’d be happy pursuing some other specialty besides OB/GYN. (If the answer is no, then med school might not be the best path for you.)

Also understand that although you are primarily interested in the OB part of OB/GYN, your residency training will cover all facets of women’s reproductive health, including abortions, reproductive cancers, birth control/family planning, reproductive endocrinology/infertility, uro-gynecology/pelvic floor dysfunction and well woman care as well as obstetrics

If you want to do OB exclusively, you may want to consider nurse midwifery. A nurse midwife is an master’s degree level nursing specialty that deals exclusively with pregnant women. A nurse midwife will handle uncomplicated pregnancies and routine vaginal deliveries on her own without physician oversight.

More information about Nurse-Midwifery here: [Explore Healthcare Careers: Nurse Midwife](Nurse Midwife)
and here: [American College of Nurse Midwives](http://www.midwife.org)


1) Too soon to say without test scores and junior year GPA.

2) Summer medical programs for high schoolers are not terribly useful. Many are run as money-makers for colleges. You could gain similar medical exposure by volunteering at your local hospital or a local public clinic. Some hospitals offer special summer volunteer programs for high school students interested in healthcare professions. 

3) Shadowing during high school is only useful if you plan to apply to BA/MD programs. If you apply to medical school through the usual process, during or after college, high school activities aren't considered. Also your impressions and observations about the medical profession will change as you mature and gain a broader worldview so if you do shadow now, you will need to do more shadowing later. 

4) Nothing is going to make you stand out from other pre-med unless you have done something extremely significant or unusual during college--published a first author journal article in Nature, competed as an Olympic or professional athlete, sung at the Met, founded an international healthcare NGO, won a Pulitzer Prize.....and believe it or not there are some med school applicants every year who have done these things. 

Besides having the necessary grades and MCAT score, Med school adcomms are looking for  well-rounded individuals who have strong communications skills and work well with others. These qualities and other key qualities (compassion, leadership, service to others, perseverance in the face of adversity, etc)  should be demonstrated through your ECs. Find activities that are close to your heart, do them, and do them well and with sincerity & humility. I have 2 daughters who went to med school--each had the expected pre-med ECs (community service, shadowing, research, leadership, teaching, clinical experiences), but the types of activities were specific to each girl's interests. One had a suite of emergency medicine-type activities; one had a suite of neuro-psychiatry-mental health type activities. (Side note: pre-med ECs were not especially predictive of their eventual medical specialties.)

5) BS/MD programs are extremely selective and for those individuals who are 99.99% certain they want to become physicians. If you have Ivy-level stats together with medical ECs (shadowing, clinical volunteering and community service are expected, but some also have lab research on their CVs), then you might make a good candidate for a BS/MD program. 

There is separate forum for those interested in and applying to BS/MD  programs.
[Multiple</a> Degree Programs](<a href="http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/multiple-degree-programs/%5DMultiple">http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/multiple-degree-programs/)

6) Most colleges will accept either SAT or ACT scores. If you take both tests, apply with whichever score is better.
3

Lol, saw that line and was about to post about midwifery. It’s making a comeback, or as the famous Mr. James Todd Smith would say, “Don’t call it a comeback! I’ve been here for years.”

4

Back in the day (when the dinosaurs roamed the Earth and Richard Nixon was President), a college classmate of mine went to Penn’s midwifery school. She had a very successful career and her own private practice. Just last year one of D2’s BFFs chose midwifery school over med school. She’ll be finished with her training and into practice years ahead of her classmates who went to med school and then into OB/GYN. (3 years post-grad for nurse midwife vs 8 years post grad for OB/GYN)

Nurse midwives have been around for a very long time and and the demand for nurse midwives has only been getting stronger.

5

<<<
My questions about pre-med are the following:

1- With what I am taking in school and my current ECs, would it be enough to get into a good college for pre-med, ex UPitt?


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Virtually any good school is fine for a premed student. The science classes that are the premed prereqs and just basic science classes that other STEM students are taking. They’re nothing special…and their staples at all good colleges.


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(Upenn is my dream school)

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+Follow up: If this is not enough to get into a school such as UPenn, what should I do in order to get in here?
<<<

I wouldn’t do anything to get into UPenn as a premed.

Your goal should be to go to a “good school” where you will be a star and get top grades. Somehow getting into a dream Ivy will just mean that all your premed classmates will be superstars. What’s the likelihood that you’ll end up with a top GPA if all of your premed classmates are superstars? Not likely.

6

@WayOutWestMom i really to want to pursue pre med, but I worry that I might not be able to choose a career when I do follow through with this in the future. Is it ok to say yes, i want to do pre med, without knowing what field you plan on pursuing?
Thank you for the other advice!!

7

Are you referring to your specialty post medical school? Odds are you’re going to come out of your 3rd year of medical school and not want to be an ob/gyn anyway. It’s great to start gaining relevant experiences for whatever specialty you think you want to pursue but it doesn’t really matter what you’re doing in college. We all go through the same training in medical school whether we want to be a urologist, an ob/gyn, or a radiologist. The residencies don’t really care about what you did in college anyway.

Or do you mean maybe you won’t do med school at all? It’s much easier to jump off the pre-med train than it is to jump on so if you’re considering medical school it’s best to start out with that in mind.

8

@R-Squared16

It’s fine. Pre-med is an intention and you can always change your mind. You can certainly pursue pre-med-- even if you’re not certain you want to become a physician. Or you can do something else for career/job for a while and come back to medicine later. There is no one path to med school. Each path is as unique and individual as the person who follows it. Some paths are direct; others are more circuitous.

There is no required major for pre-meds. While many pre-med major in biology, chemistry or biochem, it’s not necessary to do so. Neither of daughters majored in bio or chem and they have med school classmates with a variety of diverse majors including forestry, music performance, electrical engineering, Italian, theology and English lit. Choose a major that you’ll enjoy, that you will be academically successful in (GPA is very important for pre-meds) and that will offer you a solid Plan B career of you don’t gain an acceptance to medical school.

Every pre-med needs a Plan B because every year 60% of those who apply to medical school don’t get accepted.

It’s also fine and quite normal to not know which specialty you want to pursue. A longitudinal survey of medical students found that on the average, students changed their minds about their specialty 3 times during med school.

Your med school grades and standardized test scores will partially determine your future specialty choice as will your personal interests and abilities. During the 3rd year of medical school, all students rotate through 6-7 basic specialties (usually internal medicine, pediatrics, OB/GYN, family medicine, surgery, neurology and psychiatry, but the exact number and fields vary by school). During the 4th year of medical school, you will do electives which can be a rotation through field not included as part of 3rd year (ENT, orthopedics, ophthalmology, emergency medicine, PM&R, anesthesia, neurosurgery, dermatology) or in a sub-specialty of another broader field–like cardiology (IM), maternal-fetal medicine (OB/GYN) or trauma surgery(surgery). During 4th year, students also do more intense and in-depth clinical rotations, called sub-Intern rotations (sub-Is for short), to “try out” a potential specialty to see if they like it. (D2 starts her first sub-I tomorrow morning bright & early at 6 am for pre-rounds.)

9

Thank you so much everyone!! All the information and the career options provided were a major help, and most of my doubts were cleared. :slight_smile: