Around 4 years ago I was in an accident. I had several severe legal charges against me but due to my lawyer’s diligence they were expunged after successfully completing 2 years of probation as well as a rehab program. To the best of my knowledge, the only charge remaining on my record is underage drinking, but I have been hearing conflicting stories. My lawyer’s office tells me that nearly all records of the more severe charges were completely eradicated but in other research i have heard stories of medical boards still being able to see these charges.
I’m wondering if i could still get accepted into medical school. My current goal is to become a psychiatrist (I enjoy the analytical aspects as well as helping others, a close friend of mine suffers from PTSD, my father suffered from Bipolar disorder). I test extremely well and i am fairly confident i can score high on the MCAT. My GPA at the time of the accident was a 2.0 but i have managed to raise it to a 3.8 and i have an associates degree. My current plan is to earn a Bachelor’s degree in Biomedical Engineering so i can have a back-up plan. This would put the total time between my application to Medical School at roughly 6 years. Do i have any chance at being accepted to a good Medical School? Should i just aim for lesser medical schools? I am rather lost, if you read all this and could give me some advice it would be thoroughly appreciated.
Thank you!
What is a better med school for you? Harvard? Yale? JHU?
First of all what is your cum Gpa? Drunk driving? Med school? Harvard?
I am lost! Too many dreamers? Or I am too old?
No, I know those are out of my reach. As long as it has a good program and it would not hurt my chances of residency and job applications i consider it a good school. My cumulative GPA is 3.8 (This includes all the grades that made my GPA 2.0)
All US med schools are good schools and can serve as a pathway to whatever field of medicine you are interested in. .
- When you go to apply to medical school, AMCAS asks about all felony and misdemeanors you have been convicted of.
Read pp. 32-33 very carefully
I suggest you pay the fee and have a background check run on yourself to make sure that your record was truly expunged. Sometimes a conviction will be expunged but not removed from all records.
- A number of secondaries from medical schools asks about convictions–even if they are expunged–and arrests. You must answer truthfully about those and you are given a space to explain. This is because many medical schools send their student for clinical rotation through federal hospitals (VA, IHS) which require a deep FBI background check. Expunged convictions and all arrests will show up on a FBI background check and may prevent you getting a clearance to work at those hospitals.
State medical licensing boards use deep FBI background checks when making licensing decisions. Your expunged convictions will be visible to them.
If your convictions include drug distribution (and sometimes drug possession for large amounts), those, even if expunged, will prevent you from ever qualifying for a federal DEA license. In most cases this will preclude you from getting state medical license to practice.
If your convictions include physical violence or doing great bodily harm–e.g. drunk driving resulting in death or serious permanent injury to others or a road rage incident where you were the aggressor and someone was hurt or killed-- you will face additional close scrutiny and it may prevent from gaining an admission to med school. You need to own your actions and demonstrate what you have done to make recompense for your actions (not necessarily to the specific individual involved, but to the world in general).
I have UWorld open so can’t copy and paste but OP, you might want to reconsider if medical school is truly the best road for you. This has nothing to do with your situation and more because of what you said about psychiatry and your interest in the analytical side of things (maybe you’re using that word in the more lay sense, not the true psych sense). Psychiatry is a heavily medication based practice of mental health. The main “analysis” you’re doing is trying to figure out which DSM5 diagnosis the patient fits into. PTSD is one of the diseases that is most helped by non-pharm interventions.
If mental health is your interest, I’d strongly consider clinical psych and social work before committing to medical school.