Well I posted almost a year ago regarding closing down a business and pursuing my dream. Since time, I have closed the doors and am now looking into going back to school. A brief history, I have been in and out of school (more out) over several years. I have repeatedly been lured by the promise of "the big bucks"in construction, thinking that I could pay my tuition easily through that course. It turns out that the jobs continually took priority over my time. I’ve been a contractor, city inspector and have owned a cabinet business, all the time wondering how I let myself avoid my dream of medschool. Now at age 45 with some college completed. I am realizing that you just have to get into school and work out the details. I have a good reputation for the work I do and could probably stay busy with work yet independant enough with my time for school. I am curious if the admissions board would look crossways at my background and if I should start to stack the deck in my favor with volunteer work and other medical related activities or just focus on school. I will start classes with a local community college for convenience. I have already completed math up through Trig, and have done the first half of chemistry. I’ve taken Anatomy and have knocked out some other basic ed req’s. I am not sure of my GPA but most classes I’ve gotten A’s so I think it is descent. I am open to comments , advise, direction, whatever!
- dreamchaser Said:
I am curious if the admissions board would look crossways at my background and if I should start to stack the deck in my favor with volunteer work and other medical related activities or just focus on school.
If you don't have any volunteering or medically related activities, yes, it would be wise to start to do some of those things. You're going to have to convince admissions committees that you have thoroughly explored not only what BECOMING a physician takes, but what it is like to BE a physician.
It's been awhile since you've posted, so I don't remember if you told us about your motivations for going into medicine or not. In any case - as an older student, I think we face a little tougher job in convincing adcoms that our desires our sincere and well thought out, since many of us have already had a couple of career changes. We have to convince them that this is what we want to do for the rest of our lives. The earlier you start to get some shadowing/medically related experiences in, the better.
Good luck!