How do I begin to purse a career in medicine?

Pre-Med & Medical School Pre-Med Topics
1

Hello everyone,

I will start this discussion with a brief description about myself. First I must say undergrad has been a struggle for me. Since I arrived here I’ve felt as though I did not fit in on a large campus (U of I in Champaign). I believe my immaturity in dealing with this and related issues has hindered my overall academic experience in undergrad (skipping tons of class, mediocre studying habits, etc.). For the past year (starting when I realized I had nothing good on my resume) I have been trying to get my life together by working a job on campus, attending class, being more active, those kinds of things. I am one semester away from graduating with a bachelor’s degree in psychology. I will most likely graduate with a 3.2 GPA ( I know this is not competitive) and I also have a year of experience working in a psych research lab, plus a lot of volunteer work.

When I made my switch to psychology, I initially set my sights on becoming a clinical psychologist. However, I have recently begun to seek other options, such as medicine and particularly psychiatry (although I know med school provides opportunities to explore different paths and I don’t want to limit myself). I will be 23 once I graduate, and I do not have the pre requisites needed for med school or the GPA or necessary experience (shadowing, LOR, etc.) to even think about applying, but I want to believe this is still a viable route for me. I have found a pre-health profession post bacc in my area and am thinking about applying to that upon graduation. I have a passion for helping people, which is why I began to pursue psychology. But the knowledge, prestige, and challenge of practicing medicine is something I desire.

I know I need to take care of my prerequisites/grades/mcat, but other than that, upon graduating, what else should I expect to do with my time? Does post bacc sound like the route to go? Where should I work or volunteer or intern to gain relevant experience? What are the steps I should take to make this a reality? Any advice is appreciated, thanks in advance!

2

The path to med school is different for every applicant.

You have a number of issues to deal with–

–the first of which is the fact that you’re romanticizing a medical career. You covet the “knowledge, prestige, and challenge” of a medical career but the reality is that the day-to-day practice of medicine has none of those things. Most clinical practice is routine and repetitive. It’s not glamorous or prestigious. It’s often frustrating and exhausting. You will be working awful hours. You can’t even be sure that you’re actually “helping people” because you will have many, many non-compliant patients (especially in psych) and people have the human tendency to ignore any advice that they don’t want to hear–even if comes from their physician. And the current state of medicine is such that physicians are now largely salaried employees who have reams & reams of paperwork to deal with.

RE: ECs

You need physician shadowing in variety of specialties, but especially in primary care fields, to see what the day-to-day life of a practicing physician is like.

You also need to do clinical volunteering or work in clinical contact job so you find out for sure that this is your calling. You may want to consider working as a CNA or a MA (medical assistant). Other possible jobs would be EMT or a medical scribe. You could put your psych degree to use as a psychiatric aide.

It doesn’t matter whether your clinical experience is volunteer or paid. If you need the income, then find a clinical contact job to pay for your living & education expenses.

Both shadowing and volunteering are expected ECs for med school admission.

Other expected ECs are community service (preferably long term with more than one organization); activities that demonstrate leadership; teaching/tutoring/coaching because a great deal of medicine involved educating your patients.

RE: pre-reqs

You can certainly enroll in a formal post bacc program, but please know going in those can be quite expensive (often $40K or more) and even with the best post-bacc there are no guarantees that in the end you will earn a med school seat. Are you able to finance the cost of a post-bacc? There will be no financial aid except unsub and private loans. If you don’t get into med school, will you be able to repay your post-bacc loans?

Your other option would be to do ‘do-it-yourself’ post-bacc at a local college and take your pre-reqs there as a non-degree seeking student. You can even take your pre-reqs part-time while working to pay for your tuition. An informal post-bacc will be less expensive than formal post-bacc program, but requires more effort and diligence on your part to make sure everything comes together so you can apply to med schools.

I would recommend that you take your pre-reqs at 4 year college and not a CC if you go the ‘do-it-yourself’ route. Your GPA is low and you need to demonstrate to adcomms that you have the academic chops to be successful in med school. Your post-bacc grades are going to need to be very strong (3.7+) to compensate for your low undergrad GPA.

RE: GPA

Your GPA is very low for med school and I doubt even a post-bacc is going to raise your GPA enough to make you truly competitive for med school admission.

One thing you may want to consider is doing some GPA remediation by retaking classes you’ve earned C/D/F grades in and then applying to osteopathic medical schools. DO programs allow grade replacement and retakes + grade replacement is fast & effective way of raising one’s GPA. Psychiatry is not a competitive specialty and there is no barrier to DOs entering the field.