Medical School Advice.

Pre-Med & Medical School Pre-Med Topics
1

I’m just going to give some background information.

I’m a 21 year old who currently works full time.
I have a 5 month old child at home.
When I graduated high school (18 years old) I attended the University of Delaware as Undeclared.
Stopped attending UD because I did not know what I wanted to do.
Had a child unexpectedly at the age of 20.
Have a very good support system at home (my mother, fiancé, etc, etc)

I want to attend Med School to become a Psychiatrist. The only set back is that the whole med school mind set of getting excellent grades in science courses scares me away and makes me extremely nervous, but I know that this is what I want to have a career in. In the fall I plan on going to my local community college to major in Biology. When I’m there I’m going to take basic science classes to get me to the level of proficiency in chemistry and math because when I was in high school I didn’t do so well in my Chemistry class. Can anyone give me any advice along the lines of if this is a good idea?

2

Can you afford med school?

With a child, this would be extremely hard.

@WayOutWestMom and @mom2collegekids have a lot of experience with med school. They can help answer your questions.

3

Financial Aid - wouldn’t be a problem. I’m lucky enough to have support in that aspect as well (meaning my parents would help through those means)

4

Have you explored the other mental health career pathways (PhD, PsyD, SW, NP) and determined that psychiatrist is truly the one for you? Is psycopharmacology/neuropsychiatry what drives your interest?

5

Basically I have a huge interest in the vast classifications of mental diseases that are out there. I also want to help people that suffer from those types of diseases. As well as how prescription drugs interact with the chemicals in the brain. Just a mixture of these reasons make me want to become a psychiatrist.

6

Yeah I’d skip the psyd programs. low level training compared with phd. unless you’re okay with low level training. . . . those are fast-track money-making degrees for schools, and they have limited career options IMHO. Social work doesn’t pay anything so hard to pay back loans.

You can figure out if you want to do that work by actually doing that work, instead of a program that requires loans. see if you can find a position helping in a psych research lab for example or work with organizations that help people with social and psych issues, like organizations for the blind, or homeless, or mentally challenged, that sort of thing.

7

I think you need to keep an open mind about your career goals. It appears some of the pre-conceptions you hold really aren’t entirely true.

Clinical psychologists (PsyD and PhD) can prescribe psychoactive drugs in 7 states. (Including the one I live in.) There is an active movement underway to extend this privilege to other states

Psychiatric nurse practitioners can prescribe drugs and independently manage their own caseloads of mental health patients with only nominal oversight by a physician.

How prescription drugs interact w/the brain is neuro-psycho-pharmacology and is just a small part of what a psychiatry does. Brain-drug interactions are something that is more typically studied by neuroscientists and pharmacologists.


Now onto your plan--

You're in for a long haul. It sounds like you will need remedial math & science classes just to get to the point where you will be able to take college level science classes. This means your path to med school and a career in psychiatry will be even longer than most people's. 

1 year remediation (minimum)
4 years undergrad (this assumes you will attend college full time, attending part-time will increase the time it takes to earn your BA/BS)
4 years medical school
4 years psychiatry residency
1-2 years psychiatry fellowship (optional)

So, the question becomes are you willing to give up the next 13-15 years of life to pursue this?

Think long & hard about this because pre-med, med school, residency & fellowship will require many long hours of work that will take you away from your child and fiancé. 

You will be required to relocate several times during your training and you will have very little say over where you end up. (The great computer program in the sky/in Philadelphia decides where you go for residency and again a computer program will assign you to a fellowship site. And there is never any guarantee that a local medical school will accept you. You have to go where you get in--which may be on the other side of the country.)  You may need to spend weeks, months, or even years living apart from your family & your support system--unless they are willing to move with you. 

Medical school requires long hours of studying. (70-90 hours/week is not unreasonable) Besides studying you will be expected to be engaged in volunteering and research activities related to your future specialty.  The clinical training portion of medical school may send you out to work in hospitals & clinics that are distant (possibly even several states away) from the med school campus for 6 weeks at a time. You will also be working the same or nearly the same hours as the medical residents--which means nights, holidays and weekends. 

During residency, you will be working an average of 90 hours per week. You will be working randomly assigned nights, weekends and holidays. You will never be able to promise to attend your child's/spouse's/family's special events--because you may be working or on-call. 

(Here are 2 hard truths--my daughter had to reschedule her wedding 4 months before the date because she couldn't get the time off. Her new husband has a profession that is not portable--he can't relocate when she does. They are married but will not be able to live together for another 3 years because they have jobs in different cities far apart.)

Medicine as a career is a tough gig for everyone. It's even harder for women (or anyone who is the primary caregiver for a child) because you won't always be able to be there for them. You don't get to stay home because your child is sick. If you have patient in crisis, you will not be able to leave at the end of your shift to go get your child from school/daycare; you have to stay there until the crisis is resolved. 

If you answered yes, kudos to you. I wish you success!

Things you need to know:

  1. any college grades you have from UD will be used by AMCAS and AACOMAS when computing your GPA for med school applications. (Old grades are like herpes–they never go away.) So will your grades in your remedial science/math classes you’ll be taking at the CC

  2. some medical schools will not accept community college credits for science pre-reqs. As much as possible you should try to take your science pre-reqs at a 4 year college. If you do take bio, chem, physics, etc at the CC you must take additional upper level coursework in bio, chem, physics, etc at your 4 year college to reinforce your (hopefully) good CC science grades.

  3. med school admission is more than just grades. There is a strong expectation that all applicants will have the typical pre-med ECs. Less will not be expected of you simply because you have a young child at home. Expected ECs include: community service (long term involvement); physician shadowing; clinical/medical volunteering that involves direct patient contact; leadership positions; teaching/tutoring/coaching/TAing. Additionally some medical schools expect students to have hands-on lab research experience.

8

Excellent advice @WayOutWestMom!

9

Given that the APA recognizes the PsyD as an alternative to the PhD for those who don’t want to follow the therapist-researcher model I don’t think the PsyD is a low level money making degree for schools. It’s superior psychology training to SW or NP it just doesn’t have the same research strength that a clinical psych PhD does. If all you want to do is clinical practice the PsyD is an excellent degree. You don’t need to do a doctoral research project to provide good therapy.

I’m not that familiar with LCSW/MSW salaries but given OP’s situation, the ability to shave 6 years off the training path and not work as many hours as an intern/resident might be quite appealing. I imagine a social worker with an outpatient therapy practice would have very good hourly wages.

There’s also creative arts therapy which I got to see on my psych rotation. They did some pretty interesting stuff.

I brought all those up because frankly if talk therapy (CBT, DBT, psychodynamic, or analysis) is what interests someone the most, I would say there’s a real chance psychiatry is not the field for them.

10

Those are all worst case scenarios though. I would be going back full time for schooling and the only classes that I need remedial teaching on is basic chemistry and one math class that would put me back on track. My plan was to apply to Drexel Medical School up in Philadelphia ( a 25 minute commute for me) What you say with all these worst cases and the “hard truths” doesn’t change my mind about the career choice of becoming a Psychiatrist. That’s how much I want to become one - call it ignorance if you will. It all comes down to how bad I want it - and if you cant tell by now it’s something that sets my soul on fire. @WayOutWestMom

11

Did you take any science courses at U of D and what were your grades? What was your overall GPA? Drexel will not take your premed CC science courses so you need to get back to a 4 year school and get a minimum 3.5 overall GPA and do a s*** ton of hospital volunteer work and doctor shadowing. Start with that.

12

Your goal is admirable, however, the reality is Dexel takes in less than 5% of applicants. No matter how hard you work at it to get in, what happens if you fall into the 95% of the statistics? In med school application, you only get one chance at any school, your chances of making it the second run is next to nothing.

13

I will take a different view than others here. My husband went to medical school at age 28. I had just finished law school so was able to support him. We also had a baby while he was in med school. He ended up changing residency programs twice due to a job move by me.

He had some bad grades on his transcript from early in his college career but good ones at the end in engineering. He took a couple prereqs at a local CC that he had not had in undergrad. He did not have any volunteer work but had 6 years of working a real engineering job in the military. He ended up at a DO school in part bc they look more closely at unusual students. So to the OP, I would say if you really want it, it is possible.

14

@RobinYoSuccess
You do not want to be running in circles. Plan out your academic sequence going forward with which classes you will take at CC then where you will transfer to in order to finish your undergrad degree.
Before starting you should try to make an appointment with an advisor at both the CC and your next college to find out which classes will be accepted and what path is most efficient. You can also reach out to the Med School, do some research and find out what GPA will make you competitive for acceptance. If your GPA from Delaware is not very high the chance of reaching your goal will be diminished. Get all the info then you can figure out if your goal is possible and if not look to do something else in the medical field.
Good luck but I would advise not just jumping in without getting all the info so you can make a well informed decision

15

@RobinYoSuccess

I’m not saying you can’t do this. I just want to make sure you understand what you’re getting into.

My older D, the one who had to change the date of wedding, was a career-changer who started med school at an older than typical age. Age is not the issue. Almost 1/3 of both Ds’ med school classes are non-traditional students. One gentleman in the class ahead of D1 was 48 when he started med school!

The issue is that medicine as career is a long, tough road, especially for women. You will be asked to sacrifice a good deal of the control you have over your life. And you will be asked to put your family second to your patients because in medicine–the patient always comes first—even at the expense of your own health, the health of your family members and the health of your relationships.

Yes, some of those things I mentioned are worst case scenarios.

But a lot of those things are the simple truth.

–med school strongly prefer that applicants take their sciences at a 4 year college. If you read the admission pages of various med schools, you’ll see they all recommend taking upper level sciences at a your 4 your college to supplement any sciences taken at a CC. So if you take gen chem at a CC, you need supplement it with at 2 additional semesters of upper level chem at a 4 years. Same for bio and physics.

–You are not guaranteed to get accepted to Drexel (or Jefferson or Temple or Penn or PCOM-- all the Philly med schools) All of those schools accept fewer than 8% of applicants. Drexel, Temple and Jeff each get over 12,000 applications every single year. (And each of those school only has 200-250 seats. You do the math…) You’re at an additional disadvantage because Delaware doesn’t have an in-state med school–which is the best chance for an acceptance every med school applicant has. When you get to the point of applying, you will need to apply broadly, probably to 15-20 (or more) schools, most of which will be outside the Philadelphia area.

–Medical school does require many, many hours of study. Med students doing clinical training typically work 40-60 hours/week–and then they go home to study for MBE exams. (Which if you don’t pass–you don’t graduate.)

–Medical schools do send students out to off campus sites to do clinical rotations because they cannot accommodate all of their students at a single hospital. (I guarantee that Drexel does. Drexel sends it students to 5 different hospitals in 2 states. So does Jefferson. PCOM sends them to sites in 8 different states.)

–You are expected to do research and volunteering in your future specialty field during med school.

–The NRMP computer program does residency Matching and it’s a take-it-or-leave-it proposition. (And since 2012, NRMP is an “all-in” shop. Residencies are no longer offered outside of Match–which used to be quite common.) If you refuse your match–you’ll never practice medicine since you cannot get a license without at least 1 year of post-grad training. And refusing to accept a Match makes you ineligible for another Match. So you go where the computer tells you to go.

–The NRMP computer program also does fellowship matching. Same deal as residency matching.

–Residents currently work an average of 80 hours/week per ACGME regulations.; however those work hour caps are being repealed and replaced with an unlimited ceiling on work hours. Resident work hours will likely go back to what they were before the hour cap–which is 90-100 hours/week.

–All residents in all specialties work rotating shifts that include nights, weekends and holidays. You don’t get to pick your shift–they’re assigned months in advance by the chief resident.

–If you don’t finish up all your work (particularly the paperwork!) during your assigned shift, you don’t get to go home. You stay untill it’s done. It’s extremely common for residents to work “off the books” overtime.

Medical school is a long haul path. You have at least 12 years ahead of you before you will be able to call your life your own.

RE: Biotechgirl’s comments

  1. military veterans get special consideration for med school admission due to their service; everyone else is expected to have variety of ECs demonstrating they know what they’re getting into–medical volunteering, shadowing–and demonstrating altruism–Community service to the less fortunate.

  2. DO med schools just last week changed their policy on grade replacement. It’s no longer allowed.

  3. Med school /residency with a child is possible. (I know several women who have done it.) But it requires a very supportive spouse or other family member who will assume primary caretaking responsibility because frankly your chief won’t care if you have a sick child at home or that you need to leave on time to pick you kid up at daycare.