So You Want to be a Doctor?
For Pre-Meds
For Pre-Meds
"Why do you want to be a doctor?"
This is a question that you will answer repeatedly throughout your pursuit of medical school. Know the answer, believe in your answer, and always give the answer with passion.
Overall, getting into medical school is pretty easy, there's no surprises:
Do well in school, GPA at least >3.5, preferably >3.8
Do well on the MCAT (I don't know what the new scoring system is, but I'll give you my multiple scores below), which brings me to my next point...
Take the MCAT ONCE!!! If you need, take it another time, but limit your retests to 2 if possible
Questions banks and mock tests are VERY accurate (especially, the official ones, do ALL of the AAMC MCAT practice tests)
If you aren't getting the score you want on the practice, what makes you think you'll do better on the real thing? Be smart, delay the test until you are scoring where you want to score.
Get a question bank (or two). Personally, I took the MCAT way back when there weren't online Q banks, so I did a bunch of questions out of a gigantic Princeton Review book called "Hyperlearning MCAT Science Workbook"
For the rest of my MCAT advice see below
Do some sort of leadership and/or volunteering, IF you aren't working full time. If you are a student that has to work full time during college to make ends meet that alone will be enough experience for your application. If you can volunteer on top of that and make stellar grades that will set you apart from the rest.
Shadow, be an equal opportunity shadower and shadow MDs and DOs, you never know where life will take you and most Osteopathic schools want you to have shadowed a DO, having a letter from one would be even better
I started my journey out of high school at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. I played tennis on the college team and worked full-time, which brings me to my first point. Time management is of the utmost importance if you want to go to medical school. I know for a fact that you can do what I did and still get into medical school if you focus your remaining time and study, but unfortunately I opted to spend the rest of my time going out and having fun. I also initially had no interest in pursuing medicine because my father is a doctor and I wanted to "carve out my own path," which brings me to another point. Even if a little tiny part of you thinks you might want to be a doctor focus on your academics and your grades because that's all you are at the end of the day, a GPA and an MCAT score. I'll tell you now, you will at some point in your academic career have to miss out on some good times, but if you efficiently use your time you'll still have time for plenty of fun. So, at UMass Boston, I ended up with a 2.3 GPA through my first year and a half. That was my cue to try and turn everything back around. Of course that's also when I figured out that of all the different types of classes I took that I enjoyed science the most. I went and talked with the pre-med advisor who pretty much flat out told me that I would never be a doctor. That spring, summer, and fall I worked harder than I ever have and finished with a 4.0, which brought my GPA up to around a 2.5, which was somehow just enough for me to transfer to the University of Georgia (UGA). To this day, I think they must have made some sort of mistake, but I will forever be grateful for the opportunity they gave me.
At UGA, I only worked part-time and started doing a lot of volunteering and taking on leadership roles. I studied hard and efficiently used my time. I still had a lot of good times. I would study every weekday after classes for 3-5 hours a day and take most Friday afternoons off. I would often take Saturdays off as a "recovery day," and get back to studying Sunday. I finished at UGA with around a 3.7 GPA, which brought my overall GPAs on my AMCAS to about 2.91 (science) and 3.29 (overall). Even with my hard work to bring up my GPA, I was unable to get into medical school.
After graduating, I lost my way for a bit and thought about quitting my medical school pursuit. I tried out kinesiology with thoughts of maybe trying to become an athletic trainer or a physical therapist. After about a year of non-graduate work in kinesiology, I took a full-time job as a phlebotomist at a cancer center. During that time, I was able to interact with a lot of patients, physicians, and other medical staff that reignited my desire to