<p>and am entering my senior year and will graduate summer of 2009 at the very latest. </p>
<p>GPA: 3.9 (B+ in the second English course)
Science GPA: 4.0 with one W in stats (which I'm going to retake). Already finished general chem and ochem, and 5 semesters of Biology, as well as the two calculus. The negative, I'm a central valley (california) kid, and went to community college for my first 2 years and am now at my hometown school UC Merced :(</p>
<p>Unfortunately, this was how I planned my course into med school, was to concentrate solely on GPA for 4 years, then do research or work as an EMT for the next 2 years, and then apply. </p>
<p>Whether my path was right or wrong (most probably wrong from seeing a bunch of stud-status extra curricular people here!), should I go into research next and get my masters in molecular bio? Or just go straight into work? </p>
<p>Your advice is much appreciated :)</p>
<p>You'll need to spend the next couple of years doing some combination of working (and saving... it's expensive to apply), clinical experiences, and other volunteer work. And research, if you have your sights set on research-focused schools. No matter what you do, you'll certainly get questions about the lack of activities in college. Starting at a CC and then going to Merced isn't at all a red flag on its own, especially since you got a 4.0. However, admissions committees will most likely think, if you had to do absolutely nothing else to pull off that GPA in college, how will you handle the work of med school?</p>
<p>For the love of all that is holy, start doing SOMETHING NOW.</p>
<p>I'd start with physician shadowing. I'm very concerned about the fact you have no exposure to the profession, NONE. It is entirely within the realm of possibility that you'll shadow a doc or volunteer at a hospital and realize that medicine is not for you. And I have feeling that if this were the case, you're going to have a number of issues of regret, of disappointment in how you spent your undergrad time and so on...enough that you may decide to just apply anyways (which would be a bad thing). </p>
<p>Beyond that...I'm flabbergasted, this is one of the most detrimental things you could have done. Any concerns about academic rigor pale in comparison. That's the absolute least of your worries. Unless you're leaving things you have done out, you've basically done nothing to show that you are fit to be a physician other than that you understand the science. You have no job to point to showing you can be part of a team or work with other people, you have no volunteering to demonstrate any sort of compassion for others, you have no leadership experience to draw on when faced with a crisis, you completely lacked any sort of competing interest from your grades so you have no way to reliably show you learned any time management skills...I could go on, but to sum it up, you've basically taken the absolute most selfish path possible in trying to get into medical school. </p>
<p>Honestly, I think you really need to evaluate if you want to be a doctor. Medicine is a social occupation. You cannot operate in a vacuum, even if you want to be a pathologist or radiologist, you are still very much apart of a team. I'd consider a pure research based career for sure at this point. I'm not near as familiar with their admissions process, but I bet you haven't impacted your chances for acceptance to near the degree that you have for med school...though they'll certainly question your lack of research experience.</p>
<p>I apologize if the tone of this post exceeds your expectations. I'm not saying that you can't or won't be a phenomenal physician, just that you've made some extremely poor choices, and up to this point, have not demonstrated you have the skill set and experiences necessary for admission. Your plan is such an outlier compared to the average applicant, that you are going to have to spin your record like crazy in your personal statement and interviews to prove that you're worthy of admission.</p>
<p>The good news...you've still got another year before you graduate and you weren't planning on applying to med school for fall of '09 to begin with. But you cannot spend another year in college doing nothing but going to class. Three years of that is enough.</p>
<p>Thx for the advice.</p>
<p>For what little I have done, I did play in the community orchestra for 2 years at community college, and have worked part time as a personal trainer. I also worked for a pharmacy for 3 months right out of college. </p>
<p>Do you think that counts for anything? I'm also going to join a medical fraternity that is in its infancy. </p>
<p>I'm definitely not going to apply after graduating...but even if I work a year or two as an EMT after college, that won't help me one bit?</p>
<p>
[quote]
Beyond that...I'm flabbergasted, this is one of the most detrimental things you could have done. Any concerns about academic rigor pale in comparison. That's the absolute least of your worries. Unless you're leaving things you have done out, you've basically done nothing to show that you are fit to be a physician other than that you understand the science. You have no job to point to showing you can be part of a team or work with other people, you have no volunteering to demonstrate any sort of compassion for others, you have no leadership experience to draw on when faced with a crisis, you completely lacked any sort of competing interest from your grades so you have no way to reliably show you learned any time management skills...I could go on, but to sum it up, you've basically taken the absolute most selfish path possible in trying to get into medical school.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>It doesn't really matter. I know plenty of programmers and engineers that returned to med school to become physicians. Its very unlikely that they were doing any significant ECs besides internships while obtaining their BS. Plus, if anything, I say his plan was smart. I mean, think about it. By having a 3.9, he's in a better position that all of those aforementioned programmers. He doesn't have to frantically stress about pulling his GPA up. Moreover, to get rid of any doubt that he couldn't handle competing interests, he could just do a masters while doing ECs on the side. </p>
<p>The only thing I'm concerned about is the fact that UCM is NOT accredited.</p>
<p>14, why wouldn't internships for those people not be significant? Just because they're not medically related doesn't decrease their significance. They're at least something.</p>
<p>Additionally, there's absolutely a difference between starting out pre-med, and returning to med school after a couple years in another career field. Yes, non-trads (and I'm not talking about age here) have a different scale - call an "intent to work" analysis (to play off "intent to treat"). Medical school adcoms certainly are capable of realizing that not every applicant knows what they want to do the minute they step foot on a college campus, and that many don't find medicine until later. And time in the workforce can count for quite a bit. </p>
<p>cjf - those things do count, and they do make your situation a little bit more palatable, tolerable even (but that's stretching it). Hopefully the personal training is a fairly regular job. That's your strongest activity at the moment, assuming it's between 10-20 hours/week. The community orchestra is also good, because at least you were doing something.</p>
<p>Everything will "count". Yes, you'd eventually hit the points you needed to, but the manner in which you did so is bizarre, with gaping holes. Whatever negative implications your plan up to this point had from it's own accord, are compounded by the fact that it's so different from the norm. You have to remember that you're being compared to everyone else, and physicians by their nature tend to be very conservative (I don't mean that in a political sense). Perhaps it's because we've played so well within the system for so long, but deviations from the norm cause some discomfort. There are some people who are against the very idea of admitting non-traditional students. The decision to admit you is not simply based on whether you're capable or not, but on the fact that you're more capable than all the other applicants, and because your path as someone who was a pre-med from the start (or near the start) is so different, it's hard to say you score well in that comparison. Take a look at the files on mdapplicants.com and see how you think you compare.</p>
<p>Again, the big thing is that you need to shadow and volunteer ASAP. It's still in the back of my mind that you may spend some time with a doc and find out you hate this. These are also two things that should be fairly easy to set up during the summer.</p>
<p>Didn't you talk to a pre-med advisor at any point in this process?</p>
<p>student 14x- supposedly we have gotten a couple people into other graduate programs due to UCM's lack of accreditation. But that's something that concerns me as well.</p>
<p>Bigredmedicine- would you think I'm better off becoming a fifth year senior, and spending more time doing ec's and working at a hospital, than getting my B.S. and then working in a hospital for a few years?</p>
<p>Possibly. Doing so at least gives the possibility of mitigating some of the negatives of having no EC's for the first three years (whereas graduating does not). Your chances at getting things like research positions will improve if you can commit for two years. You might even be able to explain away the lack of EC's during the first three years with a discussion of being at a CC and the issues of transferring and subsequently trying to get involved on a new campus, etc. I'm not advising you to lie during interviews by any means, though.</p>
<p>Again, start shadowing and volunteering now.</p>
<p>How can you not have something? Volunteer work, walking in benefit walks, something? Think through it...</p>
<p>LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL You went to UC Merced? ME TOO! transfered to UCLA. Ummm yeah, I have so much advice for you its kinda crazy...read my posts in UC Merced thread :)</p>
<p>"It doesn't really matter. I know plenty of programmers and engineers that returned to med school to become physicians. Its very unlikely that they were doing any significant ECs besides internships while obtaining their BS. Plus, if anything, I say his plan was smart."</p>
<p>Bad idea, I could not disagree more.</p>
<p>As an engineer, my friends that were sucessful in getting into med school proved their interest in medicine, and pursued diverse interests through ECs. The ones that devoted 100% of their time to classes had trouble.</p>
<p>ECs aren't any less important to engineers/technical major...in fact, I think ECs are more important. There is a stereotypical model of an engineer as a nerdy, book smart, and socially awkard. ECs are especially necessary to prove you interact with people well, and actually have an interest in medicine. </p>
<p>I also disagree with your assumption that Engineers typically don't get involved in ECs, most I know have at least one nonacademic activity they devote a lot of time to. Personally, I sing a cappella, travel on health education missions (India last winter), shadow doctors, do research, teach tennis, and travel with ski club...and I really don't think I'm an unusual case.</p>
<p>Find something you enjoy, and have fun! You're missing out on a huge aspect of college life.</p>
<p>BTW, to the op, I think you should still be ok...but get involved in something this year!</p>
<p>If someone asks you, "Well, why didn't you do anything in college," it's really a weak excuse to say "I was focusing only on academics."</p>
<p>But it is perfectly understandable that you transfered into a new college, took a year to get adjusted, and got involved in a couple things your senior year.</p>
<p>In my personal opinion, continuing education is better...just because if I left school, I'd be worried that I'd get so involved in a job that I wouldn't continue my education.</p>
<p>But if you find a good gap year job, particularly one that highlights your interest in medicine, then that would be great too.</p>