<p>Hi! I'm new here on CC. I hope you're having a great night. I've been in school for three years for magazine journalism. I've loved it all the way through, but I've always had a passion for science and medicine. Now that I'm about to be a senior in college, I'm thinking that I owe it to myself to at least try something in the medical field in Grad school. I always wanted to do something different in Grad school as a back up anyway. What I want to know is if I'll be able to do it? What do I have to do to be able to do it? I've always had a passion for helping people and I feel the medical career would be best for me. Is this passion enough?</p>
<p>You will likely have significant troubles getting into med school unless you have an unorthodox background for journalism. You will need to take a test called the MCAT which requires you to know chemistry, biology and physics (this should take at least two years if you have no previous classes). If you don’t mean medical school, what do you mean by medical field? In any case, you will likely need a strong emphasis in chemistry and biology no matter what you do. If you plan on going anywhere big, you would also have to perform some kind of research in undergrad.</p>
<p>Long story short, you can still make the move but it will take some extra time and preparation.</p>
<p>Agree.
I’m in a sort of similar situation, switching from Industral Eng to Chem Eng. Even this I’m unsure, but yours is a whole different story though. If you are going to Med School, have to follow Pro-Med requirements during you undergrad. If not, you probably still need to take some chem and bio classes, check with the grad admission office for that.</p>
<p>The medical fields – med school and the biomedical sciences – require a lot of prerequisites that make it difficult for most people to make the transition late in their education. For med school, you’ll have to take a minimum of two semesters of each of the following: biology, chemistry, physics, organic chemistry, English, and math. Because organic chemistry requires general chemistry first, that ensures that even with a packed schedule, you can’t do it in a single year. For the biomedical/research sciences, you’ll have to complete similar requirement, but with more advanced work in the area you’re interested in. For instance, if you were interested in cancer research in molecular biology, you’d have to take undergraduate courses that prepared you for advanced work in that area – perhaps molecular biology, biochemistry, genetics, computer science, etc. </p>
<p>But if you really want to do it, you can. I had a roommate in college who decided her senior year that she wanted to go to med school after spending three years as an English major. She crammed required sciences and math into her senior year, then stayed for one more year to get the rest in. She got accepted to a great med school and is now Chief of XXXX at a major hospital. So it can be done.</p>
<p>If you are interested specifically in med school, you should visit the med school forum to see how med school works. If I understand correctly, the application process generally takes two years, starting at the end of the junior year, with the MCATs and the initial application submitted. And overall GPA counts more than it does in any other field, so if you can’t get As in science, then you’re unlikely to get far. </p>
<p>The other thing you can do is look into health related fields and see if you would qualify for anything that isn’t as academically rigorous as med school. You might be able to take a few science classes your senior year to qualify for another field. </p>
<p>You should indeed follow your passions if you can. It may take another year of undergraduate education to do it, however.</p>
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<p>Actually, you can. While some classes may be prereqs to others, as a practical matter, if you want to take classes out of order, nobody is going to stop you. Furthermore, you don’t really need to know that much about general chemistry for OChem, and what you do need to know can probably be obtained by simply brushing up with your high school chemistry textbook. I know plenty of people who took OChem without taking general chemistry. (To be fair, their chemistry knowledge from high school was strong).</p>
<p>I suppose that depends on whether the prof will waive the prerequisites.</p>
<p>Actually, it depends more on whether he even knows or cares. OChem classes tend to be among the biggest classes at most schools, due to the popularity of the premed sequence. Few OChem profs are going to care to check the transcripts of every single enrolled student to see whether they actually passed general chem. The prereqs are generally only ‘guidelines’ for the students, and if you choose to ignore them, nobody is going to stop you.</p>
<p>Well at my school you cannot register for a class if you don’t have the prereqs. The system will not let you without special permission. So it depends on the school’s policy, really.</p>
<p>Interesting. Well, frankly, I find that practice repugnant and that’s caused me to lose respect for UT. Sorry, but it’s true. If a student wants to take a course without the proper prereqs, why is the school trying to interfere? The decision to adhere to prereqs or not should be up to the students.</p>
<p>That’s nice.</p>
<p>There are like 30,000 students here. A free for all way of choosing classes would create major problems.</p>
<p>FWIW, many schools don’t allow students to register without the proper pre-reqs. Now that everything is computerized and included AP credits, the computerized system decides whether a student is eligible. Classes that require faculty permission are locked except for those students sent in by the prof.</p>
<p>I went from a BA in Classical Archeology to an MS in Soil Fertility, so I know that this kind of transition can be done. In my case, I picked up the coursework in bio, chem, and agriculture, along with a bunch of glowing letters of recommendation, with a year and a half of coursework at my cheap home-state public U.</p>
<p>If you are set on Med School, chances are you can pick up most (if not all) of the missing pre-med coursework at your local community college. If you’d like a bit more hand-holding, google “post-baccalaureate pre-med program” and see what is available in your part of the country.</p>
<p>Wishing you all the best.</p>
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<p>Why? Obviously not everybody is going to ‘violate’ the prereqs: only a small minority would. But that small minority should be allowed to do so.</p>
<p>As a case in point, Berkeley allows you to do whatever you want, as long as space permits, and Berkeley is also a large school. Granted, if a class is filled, then priority is usually apportioned to those who have declared the major for that class. But if space is available, nobody is going to stop you from enrolling. </p>
<p>To be sure, whether you can actually pass those classes at Berkeley without the proper prereqs is a completely different question. But nobody is going to stop you from taking the class. </p>
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<p>Which, again, is ridiculous, and is a reason not to go to those schools. Like I said, it’s your education, you should be free to take whatever courses you want, as long as space is available. Prereqs should serve as guidelines.</p>
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<p>It’s a huge, huge turnoff for many students. I guess, though, I don’t know how many people would be affected by this enough that they’d choose not to attend based on this factor. Though I would literally not consider a school with this kind of regulation myself. </p>
<p>I’d have learned nowhere close to what I learned if I couldn’t take whatever classes I want. Frequently prerequisites are ridiculous, and the listed ones don’t actually correspond to what one needs to know. One can, for instance, easily take a multivariable calculus course having done only one semester of calculus, but the prerequisite is typically two semesters. For a capable self-studier, there’s little in the way one can’t do until very advanced material is reached, where it might be advisable to go slow just to let it sink.</p>
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<p>Most students are not looking to be suicidal. This is almost like saying putting a knife out in the kitchen is an invitation for someone to stab himself. </p>
<p>Typically students can be cocky about their ability to handle classes, but even some of the students who were valedictorians of their classes, got into some of HYP and turned them down to come to my school (i.e. are now incoming freshmen now) have, upon discussion with me, been worried when I brush aside prerequisites, and aren’t willing to take many plunges. And these are people who’ve shown themselves to be very confident that the rumors about Berkeley being a hard school don’t apply to them quite as much.</p>
<p>Usually people who are flexible with prerequisites would know what they’re doing, and if they don’t, well no reason to give less freedom others for what I’d call nothing short of a highly foolish mistake, i.e. the case of a student taking a class while woefully unprepared.</p>
<p>Are you talking about an MD or a PhD in a biomedically-related field. The two are very very different, and the probability that you’d be able to get in/successfully navigate the program differs.</p>