Ok I need a little bit of help.
Right now I am a CODs (communication disorder)
Planning to attend medical school.
I’m a sophomore.
I have 4 options:
1-Double major in CoDs and Bio with a minor in music which it will take a lot and graduate at 25 or something then try to go to medical school
2- stay with CoDs and double minor in music and bio and try to get into medical school. Maybe at 23 ?
3- stay with CoDs double major in something and graduate 22
4- stay with my current major do nothing else and just focus on the pre-requirements and graduate on time .
I’m not sure what to do, I heard medical school doesn’t even care and my head is exploding so many option but no direction or maybe I don’t even have an option. I just don’t do what to do if I don’t get into medical school. I’m trying to make a plan but the thing is I have an accent is not really strong but how am I supposed to correct someone with an accent lfmao ok .
Also what do I get for a minor, is it like a certification but not a bachelor? I can’t work with it ? If I do a minor in biology as a minor where can I work at ? In case that I don’t get into medical school.
This is true. Medical school adcomms don’t care what your undergrad major is. What matters is that you have completed all the pre-reqs classes.
Double majors, double minors, having a major and minor–none of this matters for med school. Admission officers don’t care and won’t be impressed.
Unless your minor is ALSO a certificate program, you don’t get anything for having a minor.
Having minor all by itself won’t make you employable. You need to work on developing a skill set that an employer is looking for. That’s what makes you employable. Things like lab skills, data analysis skills, technical writing skills, computer skills.
Tagging @thumper1-- who is a SLP-- to answer your question.
The decision on what to major in is a very personal decision. No one here can tell you what’s the best path for you. You need to decided for yourself based on your situation.
The only suggestion I have for you is that if you’re planning on applying to medical school, you should try to minimize the amount of student debt you take on for undergrad. Med school is expensive. Applying to med school is expensive all by itself. (Think $ 5-10K just to apply)
I’m a speech pathologist as noted above. Speech paths do a lot of things that have nothing to do with accent correction. In fact, in my over 40 years in this field, I have never done accent correction.
If English isn’t your primary language, what is? Is it a language that would be helpful for future careers (bilingual doctors and speech paths are not plentiful and depending on your language, this could help you at some point).
Communication Disorders is a fine major. I hope you are getting terrific grades because if you decide to pursue that field instead of medical school, you will need a masters degree and those programs are competitive. If you like communication disorders, this could be a good plan B for you…if medical school doesn’t happen. Speech pathologists work in many settings…and hospitals are a setting. You could work with medically based communication disorders.
As you know, there isn’t a huge amount of course overlap between communication disorders…and the required courses you will need to apply to medical school. So, you need to take those required courses for medical school also. Do you have sufficient time in your schedule to do so?
I would strongly suggest you drop all double majors and minors. You need the time in your schedule to get excellent communication disorder grades (in case you decide to pursue that), time for practicum courses in that field as well, AND time to take the courses required for medical school applicants.
Adding an extra year on to undergrad studies to pick up double majors and double minors or whatever…totally not necessary for medical school applicants, and costly. Save your money.
Too late to edit…
You are a sophomore in college now. I would strongly suggest you speak to an advisor in the communication disorders program. You are concerned about your accent and whether this will impact your ability to work in the field of communication disorders. Discuss this with an advisor in the department.
All communication disorders programs have college clinics. If your accent is an issue, you might benefit from some techniques around accent reduction. Your advisor will be able to tell you if this is an issue for you…or not…and suggest what you should do.
@WayOutWestMom
Thank you for your answer. As of right now, I barely have school debts other than my loans which is about $1000+ per semester because I received mostly from financial aid.
@thumper1
My primary language is spanish. As of right now, the semester just started but my freshmen year I had all A’s.
Thank you .
Spanish is a good other language to fluently speak. Many speech and language tests have a Spanish version…and that is so helpful with our diverse population. If you are very fluent in English, and Spanish…that is good.
I’m still concerned about time constraints in your communication disorders undergrad program. You need to look at the course and practicum requirements, and see IF you will have the time to squeeze in those Med school pre-requisite courses. In my program, back in the Stone Age, it would have been impossible to take those additional courses. Our junior and senior year communication disorders schedules were very full…including regional clinics on Saturdays.
I’m tagging @“aunt bea” for her perspective as well.
Again…please talk to an advisor in the communication disorders department this week…about what will be required if you in subsequent years, and to determine if you need accent work yourself (if you are easy to understand when you speak, that should be fine).
ETA…congratulations on the all As your freshman year. The upper class communication disorders courses are still to come…and they are not easy peasy.
@Thumper is correct in being concerned about time management for the Comm Dis major.
The problem with time is that this communication major has to cover EVERYTHING that you will be expected to work with in your clinical/ school/ private practice settings.
FOR INSTANCE:
You will be expected to know how language evolves and know which parts of the brain— do what (especially for those stroke patients). LANGUAGE development is a tough study.
You will be expected to understand the way articulation is impacted by the manner in which it is produced, the place that it is formed and whether or not the use of voicing is involved. (Cleft palate speech, velopharyngeal insufficiency, hearing etc.)
You will be expected to know how physiological changes, throughout the body and in the vocal tract, affect voice and speech production.
You will be expected to know how dysfluent speech (false starts, hesitations, repetitions, secondary physical characteristics) affects the patient.
You will be expected to know how social comportment and behaviors affect your clients and the people around them.
You will be expected to know how to deal with multiple medical diagnoses affecting a patient’s use of communication-via the vocal tract or by mechanical means.
After you learn these methods you will be expected to TEACH the correct therapies for each individual client.
Plus, you will be expected to learn about how to deal with expected litigation.
You won’t have TIME to do Comm Dis courses/labs and get a strong GPA to also complete the “pre-med” courses.
In my Comm Dis program, we were informed about accent reduction, but we were not allowed to work on it in our clinics. There was a concern that with so many children and adults needing intervention just to get a sentence out in the primary language, the disordered issues should take precedence. As for your accent, you will be interviewing with hospitals, schools, clinics-the profession is desperate, but they can choose whomever they want. So be forewarned that the accent may bother some people.
(I was told that I needed accent reduction!! I have a “California” accent! My father’s family is/was native American-Texan! I speak Spanish, and am bilingual-and have never lacked for work. Forty years ago, I didn’t “look” the part of a typical SLP-a little too “tanned” for their liking-or so I thought, because I was the only one sent. So off I went to speech therapy where the SLP just laughed when she heard me and said-“you don’t have an accent”-we played cards, chatted about our boyfriends, for 6 months, and was returned to the program with an amazing recovery!)
Oh, and medical school is VERY expensive. You have to use the Bank of Mom and Dad. Everyone who gets into medical school has perfect grades and EC’s-so NO scholarships/grants. You have to take out massive loans or have your parents pay over a quarter of a million dollars in tuition and fees. My daughter is going through her professional program right now. Fortunately, we saved a long time for each of our kids’ education.
What @“aunt bea” writes about medical school being horrendously expensive is true. Even applying to medical school is expensive. Plan on needing at least $5-10K for a single round of applications. (However, there is a AMCAS program to help low-income applicants reduce some of those costs.) The median debt of new med school grads is now over $200K. And that median is skewed low because a full 18% of med grads have NO DEBT thanks to the Bank of Mom and Dad.
But there are ways to minimize the costs.
The easiest is to live in state where tuition at the in-state public medical schools is quite reasonable. In both Texas and New Mexico, all instate public med schools have tuition under $17K/year. North Carolina, Alabama, Nevada and Oklahoma all have in-state med school tuition under $26k/year. Central FL is another reasonably priced pubic med school. Tuition $26K/year. (And the good part is that at UCF, many high stats OOS students get scholarships that give them in-state tuition rates.)
And if you’re willing to become a primary care physician and work in a medically underserved area, there is a scholarship program that will pay 100% of med school tuition plus a living expense stipend in return for the young physician working for at least 4 years in a federally designated medically underserved location.
Information about the Health Service Scholarship Corps–https://nhsc.hrsa.gov/scholarships/index.html