Hi everyone,
I just found this site, and this seems to be perfect for questions I’ve been having and hopefully one or more of you could offer me some advice.
Background: I am a 25 year old PhD student in Electrical Engineering at a top 10 Engineering school and will be graduating this December (2010). My focus is in image processing and while I am familiar with medical imaging, most of my work is not geared toward it (but it could be). By the time I graduate, I should have 4-6 Journal Publications (3 first author, 3 co-author) and 6 Conference Publications (5 first, 1 co-author). Most of them are in high impact journal/conferences with low acceptance rates.
My Undergraduate GPA/Degree was a 3.69 in Electrical Engineering and Graduate/PhD gpa is a 3.5 (more focused on research).The only problem is that I have not taken most of the pre-med classes aside from physics and a semester of general chem. Another semester of inorganic chem, 2 semester of biology, 2 semester of organic chem remain. However, it seems I could take 2-3 semesters and finish this. Also, it seems that I need to volunteer/shadow a doctor.
Questions:
1)Would be reasonable to say that I could matriculate in medical school Fall 2012. That gives me the next few semesters to take the premed classes, shadow, volunteer. Then study MCAT in summer, and take MCAT/apply for medical school Fall 2011.
2) Are my chances good given my age, and a phd not directly tied to experience in a “wet” lab such as molecular biology etc. I’m more tied to applied math with an emphasis on imaging.
3) How should I approach shadowing and volunteering. I was planning to perhaps do a 1 year post-doc in between my time waiting. Should I focus more on volunteering and shadowing instead?
4) Is my GPA ok considering my degree.
Overall question is what do you think, given my circumstances, that a medical school would look more closely out. Does my phd give me a leverage even though my gpa is not as high as some other students. Also would my PhD help me out if perhaps I did not do as well on the mcat (I intend to study, but a “what if” possibility).
Also, any advice would be great!