Can I "explore" pre-med if med school is merely... intriguing? Or is it too late?

Pre-Med & Medical School Pre-Med Topics
1

<p>I'm going to a highly ranked college this fall but I just don't have a single freaking clue what to study. The idea of being a doctor is neat... but not only did I not pursue any AP sciences, I don't have any family or even family friends in medicine (seems like most pre-med gunners I know have a parent (sometimes both) or a close family friend or relative who's an MD). How does one go about "exploring" medicine or a pre-med track in school?</p>

<p>I aced anatomy, calc, and bio, but only calc was AP. I took chemistry in 10th grade and aced it, but didn't take honors or AP chemistry. Perhaps it's too late for me to consider medicine and I need to cross it off my list of potential concentrations.</p>

2

<p>Hey, don’t fret about not having any family members who are physicians. We don’t either, but I have 2 daughters attending med school. Both took very different journeys to med school. Different kids; different interests; different decisions.</p>

<p>There are a few things you can do to help decide if a career in medicine is for you. </p>

<p>1) Volunteer at a medical facility. (Hospital, stand alone clinics --like Planned Parenthood or Healthcare for the Homeless or something similar, rehabilitation hospital, nursing or group home.) </p>

<p>This will allow to get familiar with healthcare settings and see whether dealing with sick, injured and debilitated patients & their families is something you can handle.</p>

<p>2) Consider taking an intro level science courses at college next year. (Bio or gen chem are both a good starting points–and are both required for med school) Since you don’t have a strong science background, just take one science and see how it goes. Some people like science; some don’t. </p>

<p>Pre-med is an intention and not a major. (Except at Penn State :stuck_out_tongue: ). There is a list of required classes you’ll need to take (bio, gen chem, ochem, biochem, physics, stats, calc 1, sociology, psych, writing/English), but pre meds can and do major in just about anything.</p>

<p>And lastly, don’t feel pressured to make a decision about “being a pre med” right now–or even during your undergrad. Take as much time as you need to make your decision. It’s a big decision. Remember, you can always change your mind and pursue medicine after graduation. (One of my Ds did this.) </p>

3

<p>Is it realistic to try a bunch of science classes as merely a pre med explorer? Or does it only take one, maybe two labs to figure out if you have the bug or not? Don’t you run the risk of seriously jeopardizing your GPA? If you’re going to dabble in science stuff as a potential non science major, you would just do the science labs, etc. as elective credits?</p>

4

<p>Realistic? Are you going to be comfortable swimming with the sharks?</p>

<p>Highly ranked colleges typically have a large cohort of pre meds who have taken a full spread of AP sciences in high school. These students are who you’ll be competing against in your intro level science classes. These classes will be curved and are designed to have a very high weed-out rate. Unless you are very confident of your ability to compete with this type of student–tread cautiously. This will be particularly important if you decide to be a non science major pre med. You will have fewer science courses making up your sGPA than a science major will and thus those science grades will have a larger impact.</p>

<p>I would suggest that having the “science bug” is not at all the same thing as having the “doctor bug”. Doctors are of necessity good at science, but most scientists have no interest in being physicians.</p>

<p>How long it will take you to figure out if your want to be a physician? This will be highly individual. Some people know they wanted to be doctors since childhood; other don’t know until they are successfully settled in other careers but still feel the call to medicine. (And medicine is a calling, not just a career.)</p>

<p>How long will it take before you know if you have the science chops to be successful as pre med? When you ace Ochem. </p>

<p>If you are going to be a non science major pre med, you will take your pre-reqs as electives. This will require careful course scheduling since some of the classes you’ll need are sequential and have prerequisites. Consider setting up a spread sheet to sketch out your 8 semesters/12 quarters of future classes.</p>

5

<p>I’d recommend you do some volunteering in a clinical setting to see if you want to be a doctor or not. Talk to some physicians, do some shadowing, volunteer at a local hospital or clinic. Liking science doesn’t mean you want to be a doctor, and wanting to be a doctor doesn’t necessarily mean you have to like science (or at least, your science classes). You may even be able to find something you can do in between now and when you start college in the fall.</p>

<p>It’s not too late for you to consider medicine. There are people who decided they want to be doctors after graduating from college, who still made it to med school. All of the students I knew who went to medical school were going to be the first doctors in their family. You don’t need to have a physician in the family to be one yourself.</p>

<p>It’s like any other job. See if it’s what you really want to do before fretting about how to take pre-med classes as a non-science major. If you’re really worried about what courses to take, you could start with the intro bio sequence as a freshman.</p>

6

<p>Most medical schools require an year of Math, English and Physics, two years of Chemistry, one year of Biology (texas expects 2), some biochemistry and by the time you are ready, will require psychology and socialogy (at least one class). The weed out classes are usually chemistry (organic) and biology.</p>

<p>In my view, all that preparation in high school does is allow students to start taking MCAT and be ready to apply by spring of junior year. If you are not comfortable with sciences, you may just be applying at the end of senior year if you need to stretch it out.</p>

<p>All your classes will be hard in terms of grading in highly ranked schools. If you don’t want to be a science major, you can probably fulfill the requirements by taking a longer sequence of slightly easier set of classes which may still fulfill the requirements if you figure out that you still want to do medicine. (look for classes deemed non-accelerated).</p>

7

<p>Agree with the suggestions above in <a href=“Can I "explore" pre-med if med school is merely... intriguing? Or is it too late? - #2 by WayOutWestMom - Pre-Med Topics - College Confidential Forums”>Can I "explore" pre-med if med school is merely... intriguing? Or is it too late? - #2 by WayOutWestMom - Pre-Med Topics - College Confidential Forums; .</p>

<p>You can take the pre-med courses alongside any major.</p>

8

<p>1.) Have there ever been studies that prove or disprove the correlation between AP science success and MD track success? Or what about correlation between ACT/SAT score and MD track? (I did very well on the ACT.) I ask because a few university faculty claim many students come in with tons of AP credit, which allows them to skip intro labs, and then they tend to struggle with the 200-level (or whatever the next sequence is) science lab. It certainly seems logical, but I’m not sure if they were just trying to keep me optimistic with a little BS…</p>

<p>2.) Are shadows or light volunteering easy to come by? Seems like some places would be annoyed with a 17 y.o. asking to follow them around. Furthermore, is it possible to get meaningful insight or is the work they ask you do gross? I assure you I’m not a brat or above anything, but since I’m not seized with medicine, I’d like to see a pretty positive side of medicine, at first. I feel like being thrown into a terrible setting (mindful that medicine is not all sunshine and lollipops) would turn me off. I hope that makes sense without sounding entitled.</p>

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<p>“The idea of being a doctor is neat… but not only did I not pursue any AP sciences, I don’t have any family or even family friends in medicine (seems like most pre-med gunners I know have a parent (sometimes both) or a close family friend or relative who’s an MD). How does one go about “exploring” medicine or a pre-med track in school?”

  • I would say that “neat” description is completely off. I would say that describing it as “extrmely hard working path” would be more proper. The attitude, attitude, attitude…these 3 are everything. Got to work very hard and be prepared to manage time very effectively. APs are not required, family memebers in medicine are not needed. Any loving parent can provide a great deal of support, and support you want from everybody around you, people talking negatively should be gone from your life if you are pusuing medical career, no time, no emotional or brain resources to deal with them. Not sure about your desire to “explore”. You either take all required classes and getting mostly As in them, or you are wasting your time. Many who start as pre-meds derail after first year or if program is designed correctly - after first sememster. Maybe that is what you call “exploring”. Well, I hear it differently. About 85% of pre-meds derail because they just could not sustain demands…and I am not talking about some average HS kids who end up going to elite colleges. I am talking primarily about group that I am familiar, the gorup where my D. was in UG. She was in Honors college at state public UG and she witnessed many of the pre-meds (many HS valedictorians) changing their original goal after first semester of the very first Bio class. They failed in one important aspect - they failed to adjust from HS academic requirements to college academic requirements. So, no matter what you do, keep in mind that adjustment is required no matter what your standing was at HS, no matter which HS you graduated from and what college you are attending. On the other hand no genius is required either. Just plain hard work.<br>
    "is it possible to get meaningful insight " - not possible while in college. Medical students in their clinical years (starting with 3rd year in Med. School) will come somewhat closer to experience it. Yes, you are practically going “blind” so to speak in respect of what MDs job entails. By far, not everything is positive, as rosy as it sounds, helping people require much more than knowledge and skills, it require a certain character and various specialties require a different personality. It somewhat is sorted out in clinical years of Med. School. But some still might get it wrong, and will switch during residency and will loose a year or so.<br>
    Best wishes with your plan!</p>
10

<ol>
<li><ul>
<li>there are many private school students who have never taken an AP exam who are in med school. The rigor of your education is what usually trains you, not whether you took APs or not. The rest of your point has to do with what professors want to claim with zero correlation. MCAT requires its own prep even if you go to Harvard which normally disadvantages students who went there on full rides. There have been articles published in student newspapers about this issue.</li>
</ul></li>
<li><p>It does not look like you might be suitable for medicine if you are worried about “gross” activities. Medicine is full of them.</p></li>
</ol>

11

<p>OP, my daughter thought she might be interested in medical school (she will be a college freshman and she still isn’t sure) and I asked my doctors and my elderly dad’s doctors if she could shadow. They were all extremely accommodating and had obviously been through this before. I was concerned that my daughter would be squeamish but she did very well shadowing an oral surgeon. The techs told her that many high school students (especially boys they said!) walked out when they saw blood flowing but my kid did fine.</p>

<p>Also, your college will almost certainly have a pre-med advisor. Look him/her up on the school website and contact that person. We went to a session with the pre-med advisor at the accepted-students open house and it was very informative. At the session were students pursuing various majors in different divisions of the college. My daughter asked her afterward if she could start school uncertain of whether she wanted to go to medical school or do bio research and the advisor was very encouraging. </p>

<p>A huge number of college students change their majors, not only because they don’t make the cut for their original discipline (pre-med and engineering in particular) but also because they are exposed to so many different study topics in school in a setting where they learn about career possibilities they never knew existed.</p>

<p>At my daughter’s college, AP credit is generally not given to science majors for bio or chemistry because they want the students to take it there and get the full foundation before they go on to more advanced study in the sciences.</p>

12

<p>“It’s definitely easier for students who have taken high level (AP or otherwise) chemistry, bio and physics "
-D. did not have AP Chem. and Physics. She ended up being hired by Chem. prof. to be Supplemental Instructor (without even applying) after he witness that others are lining up to ask her questions after the lectures. She enede up “instructing” many who have had AP Chem. before. She did not have a single grade in Chem class that was below 100+% with extra credit. Yes, it was NOT chem. for engineers, at her UG they had many Chems to choose from. However, it was Chem class that was enough for her to take an MCAT without reviewing Chem. material, the only section that she did not need to review.<br>
AP really does not mean too much. I believe that D’s last time that she “seen chemistry was in the 10th grade”. Again, means nothing. Just be prepared to work hard. Some college classes will be more difficult than others, depending on combo of your personal ability/your personal interest/your specific HS/college Chem class that you are taking/prof. Chem. was never D’s focus, she had very challenging first Bio class, Chem. just happened to be on a background. It may be playing differently for you.
“Gross” things are NOTHING. Yes, D. was blessed, she did not have to deal with it, which was evident since she was very young, nothing has 'grossed” her out. However, others just adjust, it is a very very minor obstacle in comparison to everything else. I woudl not worry too much about this aspect at all.<br>
Again and again, it is your willingness to work extremely hard and absolutely NOTHING else will detemine your success if you choose medicine. </p>