<p>So you can get a look at the questions I've asked in the past and look at how to destroy your life. But anyhow this is how things stand. After all the nervous breakdowns and rants I posted, my first year of college ends with a 2.9 gpa with no extra curriculars, no partying, no real friends. This at one of the largest publics and me entering with a ***** ton of AP credit and a 33 on the ACT. The thing is I still want to be a doctor because otherwise I literally don't know what to do. I mean I'd prolly get a job at McD and stagnate. So my english skill have dropped, I've become antisocial and I study but it doesn't work.
Anyway since Medical school in the US is next to impossible, do you guys think that it would be wise to try abroad? The medical component doesn't scare me, its the math and the chemistry that a ripping my gpa apart. I was considering either Poland or the Caribbean and forgetting my disastrous first year. What is everyone's advice? Give up? Go to Poland? Stay here? Or commit suicide? (the last seems like a really good option right now considering how ****ty the global stage is) Lol give me your best. Thanks.</p>
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<p>There’s a big gap between what’s expected of you as a high schooler and what’s expected of you as a college student. You fell into this trap, but it’s not the end of the world. You can still turn things around.</p>
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<p>Two suggestions:</p>
<p>1) Shadow a doctor/volunteer in a hospital. You’ll figure out pretty quickly whether you might actually like being a physician.</p>
<p>2) Learn some more about the eleventy bajillion other jobs out there. Does your school have a career center? If they do, get some career counseling. Ask yourself, “Really, what is it that I like to do? What am I good at?” Where the answers to those two questions intersect is a good place to start looking at careers. There are many more careers than just fireman, doctor, teacher, and burger-flipper.</p>
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<p>Whatever you’re been doing this last year clearly hasn’t worked. You need to figure out how to study effectively so that you do better in your classes and have time to do things outside of school. Go talk to your school’s academic counseling - they can help you figure out something that actually works.</p>
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<p>Not true, even in your situation. You’ve just used a significant amount of your margin for error, but you can still pull this off, if you’re so inclined.</p>
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<p>If you couldn’t hack it here, what makes you think you’ll be able to hack it abroad and then pass the boards back here?</p>
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<p>This only seems like a good idea if you think your options are: 1) be a doctor, or 2) die. I assure you that in reality, you’ve got a lot more options than that.</p>
<p>I’m working with a whole department researching drugs and interacting with the patients myself plus following and observing the doctors for the summer, this is btw a govt hospital and I just love the experience. I’m pretty sure if I can’t make it as a doctor, I can’t make it as anything else. I’m really brilliant (not an understatement I promise) at history but in today’s world a history degree doesn’t get you a job you can live with. Anyway I’m more willing to go abroad now because despite being treated as an FMG and having less choicer pickings for residencies, I won’t have to bother too much with the extracuriculars, I can shadow and research and do other stuff and start learning my med school stuff right away and just apply for a residency here after taking the USMLE steps. No MCAT or other sorts of tension plus I love to travel like crazy so that would be nice too. I’ve kinda given up on my alma mater here, I don’t know if I can tolerate being back there. All of you are so experienced please help me decide something fast because I can’t on my own :(</p>
<p>Shades is right. If you must be a doctor or nothing else will suffice, then the answer is that there’s something wrong with YOU, not with other occupations. And in that case, even being a doctor won’t suffice.</p>
<p>Shades is also right that going overseas for medical school is not a good idea. We’ve seen that about half of them will fail the boards and about two-thirds of the remaining pool will not place into a US residency – in other words, they never get to be a doctor. That leaves you with one-sixth odds. Those are BAD odds.</p>
<p>A history degree can’t be lived with? Try telling any of the hundreds of thousands of history majors out there who are making it just fine, thank you very much.</p>
<p>“The world needs ditch diggers too.”</p>
<p>I’m sorry, that was mean. But it made my day to quote Caddyshack.</p>
<p>I agree with what’s been said. Not being able to figure some other career out at the moment is not an excuse. I know the feeling though, and it’s not a good one. I didn’t figure out a personally suitable alternative to med school until 1st semester of my senior year. If you were to look at what college freshmen major in, you’d assume that everyone was either a lawyer, doctor, teacher, nurse, engineer or businessperson (whatever that means), with the occasional investment banker, architect and accountant thrown for s’s and g’s. Hell most people in law school don’t even know what a lawyer does when they start law school. Obviously the world wouldn’t function if everyone was in just one of these handful of professions.</p>
<p>Maybe it’d be a good idea for you to take a break. Chill on the math and science for a year and just take some exploratory courses in other fields. Take some time to answer the question “is there really nothing else out there?” and then in a year’s time if you’ve still got nothing, consider your medically related options.</p>
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I think saying something like this will make the OP even more determined to become a doctor and not any other “ditch digger” careers.</p>
<p>Hey guys please don’t be offended by what I said. I don’t mean to rip on history majors. Its just the fact that I cannot bring myself to accept any of the currently common careers for history majors. By saying that I can’t do anything other than medicine, I mean it. I wanted to be a nurse and initially didn’t want to be a doctor for a variety of reasons but after observing both my mom and the nurses at the hospital I work at it was clear to me that medicine is where I will excel the most. Its not that I won’t be able to succeed in other career fields, its just that I won’t be as happy as I would be being a neurosurgeon. Now the odds presented by bluedevilmike are certainly daunting but the place I work has plenty of FMG’s and IMG’s who are 5 years past graduation and arrived in the US late due to visa problems but were able to get residencies on the basis of their USMLE scores (most of them scored in the 99 range). Anyway the main allure of doing medical school abroad is the fact that it cuts the number of years needed (since I already wasted a year here) and the fact that it does away with the whole extracuricular equation, I won’t have to join a freaking frat or participate in clubs that I don’t want to because when FMG’s apply for residencies, the main things that matter are their scores and the grades they get. Please feel free to correct me if I said something wrong since I am not well versed with the topic as many of you. But please your advice is extremely helpful and as summer draws to a close soon enough I need your help to decide whether to stick with UIUC or apply abroad. Thanks for the replies till now and in response to the caddyshack quote, my family lives by the motto that even if you’re a shoeshiner be the best in town. So even if I end up doing something I don’t love, I sure as hell will try my best to excel at it anyway.</p>
<p>Is there anyone from FMG who passes USMLE and gets a residency in US? Sure. But like BDM said, the odds is only one-sixth; and like you yourself said, most of them scored in the 99 range. What is the odds of getting such a high USMLE score for a student who could not even succeed in premed courses in US colleges?</p>
<p>I did hear an anecdotal example from a colleague that a child of his friend went back to Poland and eventually became a doctor in Canada, because he was not good enough to get into any medical school in Canada. But like most people agree here, the odds is generally against you.</p>
<p>Regarding “I won’t be as happy as I would be being a neurosurgeon”, do you know that one doctor here once posted that a neurosurgeon will likely not pay off his/her student loan until s/he is in the 40s? Are you willing to have such a long time commitment and carry such a high debt? And also, I would imagine that it may be quite competitive to get into that specialty. If you need to avoid the uphill battle and take an “easy” road even now, what is the odds for you to beat other medical students and get into that specialty later on?</p>
<p>Back to what you wrote: “the place I work has plenty of FMG’s and IMG’s who are 5 years past graduation.” There are more than one roads to Rome; so it is not completely impossible to go the FMG route. As I see it, no matter what route you choose to go, you need to be the top X percents among all the students who are on that path. The million dollar question is that, supposedly the top X percents of FMG’s are successful, and the top Y percents of premed’s in US are successful. Given your own capability, will you likely be in the top X percents of the former group of students, or in the top Y percents of the latter group of students? It is not reasonable to assume that a student who is not in the top Y percents of the 2nd group of students will be in the top X percents of the 1st group of students. (I think most people here believe that it is easier for most students to be in the Y percents than to be in the X percents. But you MAY be an exception, of course.)</p>
<p>Is it really very difficult to be successful premeds in UIUC compared to other colleges of similar caliber? Is 2.9 GPA after freshmen year really that hopeless? I think many premeds may still pull their GPA up in their later years. If you can not succeed with the current workload, is it advisable to slow down a little bit (esp. for your pre-req courses)? When I read “I already wasted a year here”, I suspect (but not sure) that you may have been too aggressive in taking/completing your pre-reqs. Some students are capable of completing these requirements in two years or so, but some are not. Each individual needs to judge his/her own capability.</p>
<p>I think you’re overreacting a little bit. Yeah, I would be devastated if I had a 2.9 freshman year too, but you need to look at the big picture. You still have two more years of college. If you learn from your mistakes now and can efficiently study from now on, you can bring that GPA up a few tenths of a point. Even if it still is not a 3.5-3.6 by the time of application, you can do a special masters program, get work experience and gain maturity, etc. There are clearly plenty of options before going abroad. I think you just want to take the easy way out by skipping the MCAT and ECs, and I’ve got news for you. There is no easy way to become a doctor.</p>
<p>And you said you wouldn’t be happy other than as a neurosurgeon? Assuming you had the scores/grades to get into such a competitive specialty, I can’t even imagine how stressful their lives must be. Are you SURE you would be happy as only that? And what about other jobs in medicine? Have you looked into a physician assistant program? Maybe you can become a nurse and then go to grad school (nurse practitioner)? There ARE other options.</p>
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Nobody doubts your sincerity. You’re still wrong, though.</p>
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Don’t you realize how bad a sign this is? That is, if you can’t score a 99, you can’t get a residency in the US?</p>
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If you don’t want to do the EC’s related to medicine, why on earth would you want to be a doctor?</p>
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How on earth could you possibly know this? Have you seen all the other fields out there?</p>
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You don’t have to do these anyway. And you know this. You know that the majority of medical students did not join fraternities. This is not just a stupid claim, this is a willfully stupid claim.</p>
<p>I’m done here.</p>
<p>why is bluedevilmike ripping on me so much? i just want help in deciding what to do.</p>
<p>^ study more effectively. be less dramatic. seek counseling.</p>
<p>I think BDM has been trying to give you his honest opinion. He and a few others also think that the way you do premed may not be the right way. For example, it is important for a doctor to have people skills, as s/he needs to interact with the patients on a daily basis (and sometimes on very private/difficult issues). But it seems that you doubt the value of ECs. (Some types of ECs can help build up these skills.)</p>
<p>Also, you seem to indicate that there is only one type of career that you are willing to pursue. This is not only a wrong attitude but also a very unhealthy one, especially when you are still in the early stage of premed, and have not proven to yourself (and others) that there is already some reasonable evidence that you may make it.</p>
<p>I could be wrong, but I think BDM may just feel somewhat frustrated because even though he has conveyed his suggestions clearly, it appears that either you still did not get it, or you are not willing to accept his suggestions.</p>
<p>There are several things about wrong about the way you did your freshman year.</p>
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<li><p>Antisocial
I know that I struggled in my spring of freshman year because of my sciences courses and history course (this course was harder than Organic + Bio + Honors Comp). What I did was I asked for help. I basically walked to anyone who was Biology Major and complained my life away and asked on how I can study. With history course, I basically went to see him more than anyone else did. I ended up with two A’s and two A-'s that semester.
I knew that I was not doing well, so I asked HELP. What you did was that assume that you knew how to work things out (i.e. you compared yourself in high school and college; this is a BAD comparison), and in the end, when you ran out of the methods, you did bad. This should be a lesson for that socializing does not restrict to drinking and partying. You can get to know people, study in a group (if needed), and get help. There will be people who got A’s in the courses that you failed. They should be able to help if your professor can’t/doesn’t/is not willing to.</p></li>
<li><p>I can’t be happy except neurosurgeon
So, you said that you’re good at history, right? Then, let me ask you a question. What is the proof of your statement? You said that based on what you see from your mom and other people at work, you think that doctor is a best job, and here, you already have a specialty. First of all, you do not have enough information and experience to choose a specialty (that can be during your…third year of medical school? Please correct me BDM or shades if I’m wrong on the number 
). Second, let me be frank and say that you’re basically a student out of high school with one year of undergraduate on your back. Don’t expect to think that you know what you will do in your life. </p></li>
<li><p>Listen
You said that BDM ripped you. Did you really take his advices to the heart? I do not really think you did at all. A path to medical school is tough. And this is not tough just because of MCAT and prerequisites. It’s hard because you have to make many sacrifices, and struggles to overcome obstacles that are extreme. People like BDM and shades know about these obstacles, and as much as they are trying to help you, they are also giving you the reality. You need to toughen up if you are really into the medicine.
You, on the other hand, is still firm on what you believe and want to hear this magical way that can tell you that, “Yes! You can be a doctor regardless!” It does NOT work out this way. People who succeed in medicine are not just smart. They are pretty tough as well, and you obviously have not learned that. Learn it.</p></li>
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You should actually be thankful to BDM for being really honest with you. You must realize that what he said can only help you.</p>