I’ll take it a step further…you need to talk to someone at SLO about this. There seem to be enough conflicts that getting into the classes could actually be the issue.
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Random thoughts:
A student can be interested in medicine and major in pretty much anything. Kid doesn’t have to major in bio. Kid has to fit in premed reqs into their schedule, whatever their major.
Another consideration is that applying to med school is a year long process meaning if kid is looking to graduate in 4 years, then start med school, kid would need to submit a competitive app at end of year 3. As the competition to get into ANY US med school is beyond crazy, kid might consider waiting to end of year 4 (or maybe longer), (aka gap years) thus allowing them to explore other academic areas and bolster other very important aspects of their application (eg volunteering, shadowing). Research experience is not a must have experience on a med school application.
Good luck to kid and you.
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Every pre-med needs to have a Plan B back up career.
Why?
Because data shows that only 16% of freshmen pre-meds actually persist all the way through their pre-reqs coursework. Most drop off the pre-med path not because they can’t hack academically, but because the road to a medical career is very long and most change their minds/priorities along the way.
(At a minimum, from starting college until starting their first job as an attending physician, medicine requires 11 years of education & training. The realities of the path puts it probably closer to 15 than 11. That’s a long time to postpone doing the kinds of things their peers are doing–like getting married, starting a family, buying a house, buying a new car, saving for retirement, etc. Plus young physicians will likely have a quarter to half million dollars in education debt when they finish. Ouch.)
Of those 16% who do persist and who do apply for med school, only 35-40% of them receive a med school acceptance. And California is a particularly bad state for pre-meds; too many applicants; too few seats. Only 17% of CA med school applicants attend an in-state med school. (28% go OOS–which is $$$. And the rest? No acceptances at all. See: https://www.aamc.org/media/6016/download?attachment)
The odds are stacked against everyone thinking of pursuing medicine and this is why every pre-med needs to have a Plan B career option in their hip pocket.
RE:CP-SLO: if dietetics or some sort of food/nutrition career is your kid’s Plan B, then nutrition science might be a smart choice, but only if they can fit in all their pre-med course requirements into their schedule. Otherwise a plain, vanilla bio major has the greatest overlap with pre-med requirements.
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Thanks and I’ll add every freshmen pre-med things they are in that 16%!
As do their parents.
I hire a lot of college students who started as pre-med but, at some point, decided against it. Many, many times, they say that their parents still want them to go to med school. I think students are often afraid to tell their parents that they are having second thoughts about med school.
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Well I’m not one of those parents. I’ve been gently truing to persuade her to do something more realistic. Just the whole idea of a pre-med degree is weird to those of us who went to school overseas. In most countries if you want to do medicine you enroll in a 5 or 6 undergrad and get a Bachelor of Medicine (or Surgery).
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here’s a good site to help your daughter explore other healthcare careers that don’t involve being a doctor.
The site includes a searchable database of careers. it can be searched by salary range and years of education required. It probably includes careers she has never even heard of.
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