<p>Live your life ,not your parent’s vision of what they think is the best for you .</p>
<p>OP, don’t you think there’s an ethical issue with taking up one of the very limited slots in medical school when you have no intention of practicing medicine?</p>
<p>Frankly, if you don’t want to go to med school, then you can pretty much assure that you won’t get accepted. don’t do well on the MCAT and if you do snag an interview, be fidgety, poorly groomed, etc. The interview is the “check for nutty” test…so be nutty. </p>
<p>If you don’t get any acceptances, your family can’t “make you” become a doctor. When the rejections come in, look very shocked and surprised. the key is to put on a good show to the parents that you’re trying to become a doctor, and when you don’t get accepted, seem devastated.</p>
<p>Get your biomedE degree. And, while applying for med schools, also apply to eng’g PhD programs. When you don’t get accepted to med schools, you’ll go to grad school…fully funded by the university. At that point, you won’t need your parents at all.</p>
<p>Second I opened this topic I was like, the OP must be some type of an Asian and Pakistanis do count as South Asians. I have learned myself that the South Asian category has a very strong push to send their kids into medicine. A buddy of mines is Indian and he went to a very bad high school, his parents were really cheap (this is what he told me) and did not bother to buy a house in a nicer neighborhood or invest any time and money into his education. So long story short he just finished his first year of college with a 2.5 GPA as a chemistry major (he didn’t pick this major is what he claims, his parents made him pick it). My friend, though an amiable guy, is one of the most miserable people I have ever met. Guy has told me he thinks about suicide and he is only 18 too!</p>
<p>OP, I am going to guess you have done at least 2 semesters of college now. If the GPA is not sitting in well, you have to try BS’ing your parents. It is unreasonable but seriously, when I have seen the few Indian students in my area I can tell you that their parents cannot be reasoned with:</p>
<ol>
<li>You tell your parents you want to switch majors, they will stop it immediately.</li>
<li>Your dad could not become an MD I assume so he wants to live that dream through you.</li>
<li>No matter what you tell your parents, they are so set tight in their own ways that they will not be moved or even convinced and I mean this is no matter what you do.</li>
</ol>
<p>I don’t know what it is, but a lot of Asians (especially South Asians) are tightly set on this whole you have to be a doctor to be successful in life notion and believe me you are not changing your parents.</p>
<p>What can you do?</p>
<p>Keep your major but take the courses you like. Maybe take art and lit courses, core classes, and not even take a science class that semester. Tell your dad that your adviser or whatever told you that in order to get into med school here in America you must complete certain courses before you can others. BS with your parents, I mean BS like you have never BS’d before, it is immoral but it basically becomes mandatory. Tell your parents that if you take art classes and make A’s or classes you like and make A’s, med schools will look at you highly and want to admit you over others.</p>
<p>To all who are saying “reason” with them or whatever. Unless you have dealt with people from that part of the world like me and others like I know have, reasoning is just not a valid option.</p>
<p>Good luck OP, because believe me, you are gonna need it!</p>
<p>When parents are this over-controlling, kids have to resort to (sadly) passive-aggressive measures to get thru. As long as the kid “plays the game” and appears to want to become a doctor, but doesn’t put in a great med school app/interview, he won’t be going to med school. As long as he acts the part, the parents won’t know that he intentionally sabotaged his application.</p>
<p>
While it’d be easy to play along with this control game and do poorly on the MCAT (it’s very easy to poorly on a test if someone wants to) to not be accepted to medical school, it’s important that a person go ahead and confront this issue honestly and maturely and skip the placating and game playing. </p>
<p>The parents will need to adjust and it’s better that they adjust to a mature, honest, and adult approach by the student rather than adjust to the apparent utter failure (in their minds) of the student’s failure to be accepted to medical school due to doing poorly on the MCAT and interviews and when it comes out someday, the dishonest approach to avoid medical school.</p>
<p>they say I have to go into medicine and become an MD surgeon
…
I want nothing to do with medicine
…
My major is currently Biomedical engineering… </p>
<p>Tell your parents that since only 50% of med school applicants are actually accepted, you need to have a backup plan in engineering, then take the classes required for an Engineering degree. There is no Pre-Med degree, and no guarantee of acceptance to med school, so they cant question your choices . BS them all you can while you are in college and then proceed to live your own life.</p>
<p>This young man can stand up to his parents AFTER he no longer needs their financial support (made possible by the demand of colleges that your parents fill out a fasfa) </p>
<p>Do not underestimate the lengths some traditional asian parents will go to to get compliance from their children. This includes emotional,financial,and physical blackmail.</p>
<p>Until he can be financially independent the name of the game is self preservation.</p>
<p>ucsb… our son will probably go on to grad school because he wants the knowledge and mind challenge. Pure math is his love, the computer science is only for practicality- he added it for getting a job. He told us he was tired of going to school, this break in education is good for him instead of just doing what is expected of a gifted student. </p>
<p>Children of immigrants, whether from east or south Asia or anywhere else have to face different cultural norms than those of us with American roots. You can’t just tell a student to do things the American way, they haven’t been brought up with the same home situation even if they experienced an American schooling. These students have the tough job of dealing with two cultures, both having value while conflicting with one another. The key is to ease the parents into the American way of doing things. The parents have already gone through major culture shocks and this is one more. They came for the “American Dream” as they envisioned it and are dealing with the realities.</p>
<p>btw- my H was atypical- he married an American, after all. Our son is as strong willed as his parents- there is no way we could have dictated anything to him, even as a child. Not the typical compliant Indian! This student is faced with being the good child and doing what he wants, he is asking how to achieve this.</p>