Taking Pre-Med Classes After Graduation

Pre-Med & Medical School Pre-Med Topics
1

So let’s say that you take your premed classes after you graduate with your bachelor’s. Perhaps at a community college.

At my current university, I’ve completely exhausted all of my transfer credits, so I wouldn’t be able to take these credits at a community college before graduation. As well, I’m not a Biology major. Rather, I’m a Math major. What’s wrong with taking premed courses at my current university? Time, since I’m close to graduating already, and a community college class would be more “personal”, in my opinion (and cheaper). They just wouldn’t be part of my bachelor’s degree and would just be an extension to it.

Doing so would mean that my bachelor’s GPA wouldn’t be trashed (completely) if premed doesn’t work out. But I’m not sure. Is it too non-traditional of a path to take?

2

What you’re proposing is not terribly non-traditional. There are many student who feel the call to medicine only later. (Including D1 who graduated from med school earlier this month.)

The issue is taking your pre-reqs at a CC. While only a handful of medical schools says specifically they won’t accept CC credits for pre-reqs, there is a lingering perception among some adcomms have that CC credits are “inferior” to those taken at a 4 year college.

So what can you do?

If you’re taking your pre-reqs at a CC, you’ll need to:

  1. get all As (since the perception is the classes are easier, you need to do extremely well)

  2. blow the doors off the MCAT

  3. apply more broadly that you might think you should given your stats–perhaps to 25 or more schools at a minimum.


One more thing:  med school admission is more than just grades and stats, you'll need also to work hard on fulfilling the expected ECs--clinical experience, community service, leadership positions, bench or clinical research experience. Without those your application won't even get looked at.
3

P.S. I’ve looked at your previous posts.

Before you start down the pre-med path, you need to get your health issues under control. Adcomms will want reassurances/proof that you are physically and mentally healthy. (i.e. several years in a row where your health issues are completely controlled and not causing you problems.)

Med school is meat grinder that destroys even healthy students.

4

Other than lower cost, I can’t understand your rational.

Ok you want to protect your gpa in math, can you tell us what is the current overall gpa? And what is your career goal? If you have a high gpa, you should do fine with your math degree, if you are not doing fine, then med school is a long shot for you regardless your post bac efforts. As far as getting a job, a small difference in gpa such as 3.7 vs 3.4 is not going to close the door for a job, but it will have high impact on entering med school.

You know from this and other discussions that a CC science post bac is not going to sit well with the med school adcoms, then why are you still heading that way? Can’t you do the post bac at your current college?

5

the other option is a formal post-bacc which will alleviate the concern of inferior classes. E.g. http://gs.columbia.edu/postbac/

Oops, just noticed: “(and cheaper).” This definitely does not apply to formal post-baccs.

6

Here is the price per credit comparison based on my local CC and a non-directional State School vs Columbia as stated above:

CC: $250
State School: $500
Columbia: $1500

If you are that concerned with the cost, you should try to find a job at a State School after graduation and take courses there free, when you completed your post bacc, you can start applying. In the mean time you can save some money for your med school.