My goal is to become attend med school and become a doctor. Both choices seem enticing, Im unsure about what to do.
Have you been accepted by both?
Are both equally affordable?
What GPA do you need to maintain in order to complete the 7 year BS/MD program?
Nah, he’s just dreaming at this point.
Have you been accepted at both?
What would they cost?
Wait to see what programs you’re accepted to, then weigh your options. Good luck.
Your undergrad GPA matters most and medical school is extremely expensive. Look at schools that have guaranteed medical school admission (e.g Brown or Rice/Baylor) , or if budget is limited go to an inexpensive undergrad program.
At this point it’s probably just hypothetical, but I’ll bite. I tend to be against combined BS/MD programs, especially the shortened ones.
That’s because I knew so many pre-med students who changed their minds at some point during their four years of college. Medicine is one of the few high-status careers a lot of students are exposed to before college, so every kid dreams about being a doctor at least once in their childhood. It’s the perfect combination for dreaming: it pays well, it’s highly respected and prestigious, and one gets the sense of helping people or giving back to society. Seems win win win. But I also think that at age 18 a lot of students haven’t really spent that much time with doctors or even know about the frustrations: the long training period, the long hours (especially in residency, but after too), the stress, the difficulty of striking out on your own in practice, the pressure to overtest to get reimbursed by insurance companies, etc. Every job has its pros and cons, but I think in a national survey of physicians only 50% of them would do it over again or advise young people to do it. (I found this in a Medscape survey, which usually surveys tens of thousands of doctors.)
That’s not to discourage anyone from BEING a doctor - we need doctors; we’re going to have a shortage on our hands in 5-10 years. But I think 7-year combined BS/MD programs 1) encourage students to make concrete career decisions before having all the information, or at least the additional information they glean from going to college and being exposed to things and 2) increases pressures on students by cramming the already rigorous pre-med curriculum into less time so you can zoom through your med school stuff. What if you wanted to take time off in between? I know quite a few former students currently in medical school who decided to take some time off between college and med school to take a breather.
That said, I think it would also depend pretty heavily on the BS/MD program in and of itself.