Hi everyone,
I’ve posted here before that I am a previous matriculant. I left med school years ago for health reasons and I’ve had returning to medicine on my mind for a long time. 2015 has been a crazy year: I got married, made a significant career shift, and after doing so I met the doctor that has treated the health issue that forced me to leave medical school in the first place. I’m looking to apply this spring (AMCAS 2017), prereqs complete, MCAT complete (522 cumulative), excellent med school grades and Step I score on record. My question to the forum has to do with reducing the number of red flags that my application will already have and to not sabotage my chances of acceptance any further based on my current situation.
The career shift I mentioned above is this: I have been a high school teacher for many years while working on wind energy development projects on the side with an engineer. My employer paid for me to take undergrad engineering courses while teaching full time because they related to my teaching subject, and they certainly served to make me a better teacher. They also gave me tools to help on the energy projects. Needing a break from teaching and a new challenge, I enrolled in a two-year master’s program in mechanical engineering to see if it drew me in. All along I viewed it as an experiment that could open a new career or, if I didn’t like it, I could return to education or move on. The first semester went well, but it’s becoming clear that a career in this field isn’t for me. My desire to work directly with people is too strong to ignore despite my aptitude for the material, and the treatment I’ve been getting opens me up to medicine again. Exposure to biomedical engineering classes and seminars only reinforced this; with every class or lecture, I imagined being the collaborating physician finding clinical problems, applying new treatments and devices, and collaborating with engineers to get the best outcomes as opposed to the engineer tasked with design and production. I’m pondering going on leave of absence while applying to medical school since I don’t want to spend tuition dollars on this right now when my goal is really medicine and I’m pretty unhappy. I am allowed up to a year of absence without having to reapply.
Which choice enhances my med school application this cycle or at least minimizes the negative impact? The previous matriculant part is hard enough…don’t want to make it worse. Here are the possibilities:
Go on leave before 1/27. Pros: Leaves my semester transcript as essentially blank. Saves money. I would probably increase my tutoring hours and look for work in clinical research while applying to medical school Cons: Makes me look like a confused serial quitter. Giving the program only one semester might appear like I didn’t give it a real chance. Biomedical classes might have relevance for future aspirations of collaborating with biomedical engineers from the clinical side.
Give the classes this semester (all biomedical) more of a chance, withdraw later if miserable. Pros: Not sure…. Cons: W’s appear on transcript. Appearance of quitting, confusion. Prorated tuition would be paid.
Gut it out and finish the semester. Pros: Finishing a full year probably looks better than finishing only one semester even if I decide to discontinue the program at that point. Will have completed semester on my AMCAS transcript report. Cons: Money. Pretty sure I’ll be kind of miserable during these months, and barring an amazing experience I won’t finish the program anyway.
It would have been a lot easier to be doing the application this year from the position of my old job in teaching; none of these questions would have come up. Then again, it is what it is and I need to make do with my current state. My pre-med advisor is of the opinion that other than GPA impact, completing or not completing this program is of no consequence to my med school chances. It can be explained as an exploration of a field I was interested in that I ultimately chose against. Any other opinions out there? Other options I haven’t considered?
I don’t know the answer to your question, but I vaguely remember reading on some school sites when applying a couple years ago that current grad students were expected to complete their programs prior to matriculation. I don’t know how they would view a withdrawal from a longer program. I would assume that caveat was more for people in the 1-yr med school cram degree.
Best decision I think you could make would be to do what’s best for you and not let applying to med school shape your life. But I get the worry and wish I could give you a better answer.
Thanks, Kennymac. Yes, there is worry. Coming back as a previous matriculant is hard enough, and I feel like I can’t make a misstep of any kind if I want to get another chance. I’m going to ask the school i’m most interested in if they require completion of the degree, and I’ll ask, too, how they might view taking a leave. But I doubt they will answer the second part because it will be the unique opinion of each evaluator.
It would not seem as though the grades themselves would be the biggest impact, but the fact that you were in medical school and then left. My first question for you would be, was the reason you left medical school one that would impact you again and have you leave medical school again? It is a question of commitment. Are you committed to completing the medical degree.
My advise would be to not make any plans until you sit down with your previous school and get their take on it. since you were once matriculated there and, from your story, were a good student I would see what their policy of reinstatement would be. You never mentioned how long ago it was since you left. Of course, the chances that you can pick up where you left off and probably nill and you will have to start from year 1. But then the question is, how old is the step score? Do you have to re-take it? these questions should really be answered by those in the know and not speculated on the forums.
As you’ve already indicated, you have an uphill battle since you withdrew from medical school. That’s not the kind of thing medical schools respond well to unless there were extremely extenuating circumstances. So the med schools are going to be wary that you can’t stick with something if you leave the graduate program–it would reinforce the impression that you either can’t endure a difficult academic load or that you easily change your mind about the path you’ve chosen. Of course I don’t know all the details of your situation so perhaps there is more to it–but on the face of it this is how the med schools will likely react.
Good luck as you try to make your transition back to medicine.
Liza
I agree with Liza and others, not finishing grad school with give the impression that you don’t finish what you start even though you had an good reason for not finishing med school.
IMHO, you have to finish grad school and I wouldn’t apply to med school until I did.