need immediate advise on med school

Pre-Med & Medical School Pre-Med Topics
1

<p>I go to a top 10 enginnering school, and am currently pursuing a Mechanical Enginnering Degree, I am going to be a junior . I was uncertain of what i wanted to do with my life, when I entered college.
During my first year i was undecided, but I picked enginnering due to my schools good reputation. My first year i was a general studies major- and my first two semesters in college were basically horrible.
I got a 2.7 first semester and a 2.9 second semester. At the time i was taking the most boring and least challenging courses, mostly just doing electives and general requirements. After my first year i switched
majors to general Enginnering, and loved the challenging coursework. I took 18 credits both semesters to try to catch up, and began to do well in classes, like i did in high school. I had a 3.75 and 3.53 in some of the most
challenging courses my school has, a lot of these courses are weed out courses. I recived an A in MultiVariable Calc, Enginnering Calc and Differential Equations, after getting a C in general math freshmen year.I raised my cumulative gpa to a 3.33.
As of now i have completed both semesters of Enginnering Physics with lab(A and A-), and one semester of Chem with lab(B). These are the only Pre-med required courses i have taken so far.</p>

<p>Fast forward to the summer, i got an Enginnering internship for a company, but after seeing the conditions and talking to Mech. Enginneers and other enginners at my work, I am sure I dont want to do Enginnering. I then started to have a growing interest in medicine,
which was sparked by my cousin who just recently graduated from Med School. I know i want to be in the medicine field now, i want to be my own boss, help people, and do a job which i feel is worth every second of my time and effort. I can see no better purpose in my life, than doing something of upmost importance by healing people. Something i did not feel in the enginnering work field.</p>

<p>Now, im debating dropping Enginnering all together switching my major to Economics or something easier and taking the remaining pre-med req, and attaining straight A's. (i know i can get very close)
Another reason i want to drop enginnering, is because if i go to Med School, it is a lot of time in school, and i dont want to wear myself out doing enginnering. To get the gpa i did my 2nd year i had to work extremlly hard.
If i continue to do engineering it gives me a backup plan, which i dont want to have. I dont want to be tempted to get a job right out of college making real good money and forgetting about my true calling, medicine because i am scared to go to school for 8 years.
Plus i know if i do Economics or a Business major, i can get a much higher GPA, to be more competitive applicant, and have more free time to dedicate to preparing for Mcats, and making sure to do good in pre-med courses.</p>

<p>Also, freshmen year when i was doing bad in school, i was also doing lots of partying, as the party scene was new to me, and attained an underage drinking citation. I did the volunteer work to get it dismissed, but how serious are one of these when applying to med school.</p>

<p>Thanks for reading my life story, Please advise!</p>

2

<p>My biggest concern (from a lowly premed) would not be the GPA (I’m assuming you can get it up), but that since you’re starting with premed a bit later than most, the lack of clinical experience (stuff like shadowing, volunteering at a hospital, and other such things to gain exposure to health care/medicine). What you may want to do is apply the cycle after your senior year, because not only will your GPA be higher (assuming you make a 4.0 or close to a 4.0 your senior year), but because adcoms will be able to see more of your extracurriculars and dedication to medicine. Also, if you think you want to be more of a primary care physician, your gpa is already competitive at DO schools. It still needs some work though, to be competitive at MD schools.</p>

3

<p>my biggest issue as of right now is should i drop engineering, eventhough i have made it through the first 2 years in a top engineering school, and take the easier route out to try to get a high gpa?
Lets assume i can graduate with 3.3 in mechanical<br>
or a 3.6-3.7 in Econ, and probably get higher grades in the pre med reqs because i will be taking easier classes. Engineering classes will take over my life, and i will not get to dedicate as much time to pre med courses.</p>

<p>I am also hearing that Engineering students have an advantage on Mcat because of
their strong problem solving skills</p>

<p>Also what about the alcohol charge?</p>

4

<p>Here’s the Background Check Service on the AAMC’s website. After reading the two reasons for performing the checks, I don’t think an underage drinking citation would destroy your chances of acceptance into med school. Not every school even uses it (as far as I know).</p>

<p><a href=“http://www.aamc.org/students/amcas/faq/background.htm[/url]”>http://www.aamc.org/students/amcas/faq/background.htm&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

5

<p>don’t worry about the EtOH charge - but don’t ‘hide’ it.</p>

<p>i would continue engineering as it sounds like you enjoy it.</p>

<p>if you become a doc, you won’t have 8 more years of school, you will have 50. Every night you will come home and study.</p>

6

<p>But the problem is that im hearing med schools don’t care about your major. There is no consideration for tougher majors. Why should i not play cheap, and take a easy major with the pre-med reqs. I feel that if i do all this hard work for enginnering and go straight to med school i would have just worn myself out by taking a harder route. </p>

<p>But it is kind of crazy to just drop engineering from a good school 50% through especially since im not dropping it due to academic problems</p>

<p>Would the Med schools see me better fit as candidate with a significantly higher Gpa in economics, or a engineering degree</p>

7

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</p>

<p>You need to get some shadowing experience with a physician prthen started to have a growing interest in medicine,
which was sparked by my cousin who just recently graduated from Med School. I know i want to be in the medicine field now, i want to be my own boss, help people, and do a job which i feel is worth every second of my time and effort. I can see no better purpose in my life, than doing something of upmost importance by healing people.onto if you believe this is an accurate view of physicians in the 21st century.</p>

<p>Very few physicians are their own bosses, and it’s becoming rarer and rarer with each passing year. Further, even if merely just a partner in a group private clinic with 5-15 other partners, there are a great many business decisions that must be made which will require many hours spent NOT doing patient care activities. </p>

<p>Further, there are LOTS of ways to help people, ways that don’t involve the years of schooling and debt that is required to become a physician. There are plenty of jobs in which people are far more gracious for your assistance than they are to physicians who take care of them. Besides, if helping people is your number one priority, be a nurse. They’re the ones with real patient care responsibilities. Doctors rarely spend much more than 15 minutes with each patient per day, whether they’re in the hospital or the clinic (the exception of course being when in the surgery, but trust me, when you’re there in the OR, everybody looks the same on the inside and it’s easy to disconnect the person under the sterile sheets from their organs). </p>

<p>Lastly, no job is worth every second of every day…that’s why it’s a job. If it was worth that much, you’d pay to do it. You have to remember that you’re dealing with patients every day, who for them, it’s one of the worst days of their life. I mean if you had to rank every day of your life in order from best to worst, how many of those in the top half would be days in which you were sick? More over, doctors are privy to information that is immensely private and witness to incidents that will make anyone squirm. I’ve been in residency for a grand total of 10 days, and I’ve already had to admit 3 kids to the hospital because of suspected child abuse. Yes, it’s important that I help these children, and I’m happy to do it, but there’s no way I can imagine saying it’s worth my emotional anguish to deal with that. There’s no way in which my life is better for having had to spend the time I did going through the history and physical exams for those children.</p>

<p>When choosing a career, you have to pick for selfish reasons, and it needs to be because of the actions involved, the broad categories of things you enjoy doing. Be a physician because you enjoy solving puzzles, or because being around people is important to you. Be a physician because you like using your hands (ie surgeons) or because you love that your day could be full of surprises. These sorts of things don’t rely on other people to reward you for your work. These are personal motivators which will be far more rewarding (and consistently rewarding too).</p>

8

<p>Should i Drop Engineering?</p>

9

<p>" Should i Drop Engineering? "</p>

<p>If you want to. Your degree doesn’t really matter to med schools. How you play the game is truly up to you. Engineering would help you on the MCAT (esp. the physical section), but a lower GPA won’t help you.</p>

10

<p>Anybody else think i should switch majors or not???</p>

11

<p>It really is up to you. If you can keep raising your GPA, which it sounds like you are, and you enjoy the engineering classes, I would keep going. If you are interested in economics (or any other major you might consider) you can switch, but I wouldn’t for the sole purpose of it being easier than engineering.</p>

12

<p>Nate the thing is with engineering my schedule becomes packed, unlike any normal major with free electives where i can take the pre med courses. If i take engineering and the other pre- med reqs it would be on the 5 year plan instead of the 4 with economics. I have taken micro and macro economics, real interesting courses got an A in both, but definitely not as interesting or challenging as Mechanical Engineering.</p>

13

<p>Is it too bold to assume if i bring up my gpa, i will be set? My main concern is switchin majors and then not getting into med school.</p>

14

<p>“i will be set?”</p>

<p>You’re always too bold to think that ANYTHING in med school admissions is “set”.</p>

<p>All you can do is your best work to put yourself in the best position possible and then keep your fingers crossed.</p>

15

<p>I am fairly sure i am leaning towards dropping enginnering and trying my luck at the med school game</p>

16

<p>bump bump bump</p>

17

<p>Your questions have been answered, do you have more? Switching from eng to something else is your choice, I personally support it but that’s my opinion.</p>

18

<p>Lets assume i can graduate with 3.3 in mechanical
or a 3.6-3.7 in Econ, and probably get higher grades in the pre med reqs because i will be taking easier classes. which looks better with everything else being identical(same mcat scores, same volunteer work)</p>

19

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<p>As I see it, many engineering courses are highly correlated with applied math and applied physics, but many other disciplines are not. (I also heard that some mid-level economics course (econometrics?) is loaded with applied math, so you may have some advantage here.)</p>

<p>I used to major in engineering but I know I would not do well on many subjects that are not related to applied math/physics. From your post, it seems to me that you are good at this kind of stuff. So, why do you want to fix something that is not broken? Of course, you may not be like me; you may also have talent in some other non-engineering subjects. If this is the case, go ahead and make the switch as you wish.</p>

<p>I mention this because there is a chance that you may not like the courses in your new major. (Can you try to audit some classes at least?) If you are bored with some subject (like in your freshmen year), you will more likely not do well on it.</p>

<p>One concern for being an engineering major is that, in the final one year or two, there may be many “design-project” classes, which may be time-consuming. This may take away some of your time which may be applied to some medicine-related EC.</p>

<p>Another data point, my child once said that if he were put into most classes for a business major, he would be bored to death and do very poorly on them.</p>

<p>In the end, you know yourself the best and therefore only you can make the best decision for yourself.</p>

<p>Just my $0.02.</p>

20

<p>I have heard that no major, school, etc can make up for more than a 0.2 to 0.3 difference in GPA entirely (meaning without considering MCAT scores). So, I think if you could theoretically do that much better in econ that would be better. Engineering has a lot of courses, meaning you have less wiggle room for ECs. This could also be an advantage of switching. If you love engineering but don’t love econ, you should not swithch.</p>