Hi people, if you give some info I really will be very much relieved, i feel confused. Its actually very much a basic q: to have premed education do you have to have a 4-year bachelors degree in any US university? Isnt it enough just to have the prerequisite courses? I mean, do I have to have the prerequisite courses (Bio,Chem,Physics etc.) in any major field that takes years to graduate? After high school I graduated from a 2 year program of a university in Turkey, in IT. Later I worked as a software pro for years, now I may have an opportunity to have my dream education in medicine… MCAT is not the problem, I am preparing, but this premed BS degree and the time it consumes (if it takes 4 years in a university) is impossible. Would you please clarify this timing point? I cant be sure… Thanks for all… Â Â Â Â Â Â Â
If you check the requirements of various medical schools, you will find that many of them will state that you must have completed 90 semester hours of undergraduate courses (which is more or less three years). However, very few people are admitted to medical school without a 4 year degree.
If doing an American BS degree is not an option for you, you may want to look into foreign medical school entrance requirements.
- bidiboom Said:
For all intents and purposes, yes, you need to have a bachelor's degree in some field in order to be considered for acceptance to a U.S. medical school. Those folks who get in with 90 credits and no degree are few and far between, and the vast majority of them are in special dual-degree programs.
I don't know if any of your two years of credits from school in Turkey would be considered for transfer credit in a U.S. school - but I would suggest that you start there, by talking to universities and colleges and finding out if any of them would count at least some of those credits. That way you'd have a head start.
But you will have to earn a bachelor's degree (note: it can be a BA as well as a BS) in something. It can be in one of the sciences but it does not have to be. I had classmates whose undergrad degrees were in arts, languages, and social sciences.
Med school itself is like technical school or trade school - it's pretty narrow and it certainly won't expand your knowledge or experience of other fields of study. So even though it IS going to make your plans take much longer to accomplish, consider that you can take courses in things you've always been interested in, but don't "need" for your career goals. Along with your organic chemistry, you can take a course in history, or religion, or anthropology. If you want, you can jump into serious study of one of the sciences that you'll then apply in medical school. Maybe you'd like to seriously study philosophy - I had a few philosophy major colleagues in med school.(and interestingly, last time I checked the statistics, philosophy majors had the *best* record for med school acceptance, over 50%)
Once you get to medical school, you'll have precious little time to indulge your curiosity for other things. It's one of the things I found kind of sad about med school, actually.... here you are learning all this fascinating stuff and you find you are thirsty to know more and more and more.... but there is no TIME. Undergrad is where you do have the time, so think of it as an opportunity if you can.
I realize this is excessively optimistic when what you want is to get in and get started. And at least part of it is from recognizing that I completely wasted my undergrad opportunities to learn other stuff, and feel woefully undereducated despite my M.D.
Mary
definitely not a Renaissance woman
Thank you very much people, and I am sorry for taking your time for something that actually I myself first should better have spent some more time over, but I a little bit panicked, so jumped to the forum… While you were replying my q, I was checking as well, as Emergency suggested, the med schools sites… Out of the ones that are looking for 90 semester hours of study, there are some others as well that are looking for 1 year of premed prerequisites, which I can consider… (I dont have proper resource for 3 or 4 years of a bachelors degree program).
May I ask another q : I am 41 year old and take care of my daddy, actually for the last 8 years uninterruptedly at home, for he is an unconcious CVA patient… in plain English he is kind a baby with a big body (and you eat him up! such a sweet sweet thing 
as long as he lives, I will go on with him, God willing… so I cant see what future will bring and cant make a real planning… but still I try to prepare for a medicine education… by the way from my teens on I have always wanted to be an MD, but cest la vie! I had to earn for living and yadayadayada… you know… in my teens for some family problems I had to leave high school at the middle of first grade and later had to take the 2. and 3. grade finals, with a self-study at home, just like I do now as well… I am preparing for MCAT by evaluating the free time slices in a day… anyway… how does it sound to you? is it a too late attempt AFTER 41 (I dont know when)… I have to have at least 1 year of premed and over this, med education and later practicing… by the way Breyer University is offering online premed courses… what do you think about it? the schools I asked whether they recognize or not didnt turn me back with a positive response yet… if happens I pass here… again by the way (I am jumping here and there! sorry) I am a highly motivated person… I mean I am not like the regular 41s around me, contrarily I am a very energetic person… and I have a passion about medicine… to look at a bag of urine and think about how its processed in the body is much more satisfactory for me than say a chitchat or many other things… ok, thats all for now… I would like to know your opinions about this 41 question… especially is it heavy to PRACTICE as an MD for a 40some year old newbie… how about those 36 hour shifts for instance?.. when you turn and look back, is it affordable from your point of view, now as an MD or MD candidate?
I started med school at 44, graduated at age 48, and just completed my family medicine residency at 51. The 30-hour call shifts (no one in the U.S. should be doing 36 hours! it’s illegal!) were grueling but I honestly didn’t feel that they were harder on me than on my younger colleagues. However, I will say that after a year of being on call every fourth night, I was soooooo tired and so glad that my schedule got better for my second and third years of residency.
I was fortunate to have the financial support of my husband throughout medical school, but I still had to borrow the $150,000 in tuition and I am paying it back now, about $630 per month. This is quite do-able on my salary as a family doctor. It would be more problematic if we didn’t also have his salary, of course. My loan has a term of thirty years so either I will be paying it back until after I retire, or I will hurry up to complete loan repayment early. However, the interest rate for this loan is so cheap that I am not in a hurry to pay it back (about 3.25%).
If you have understood a U.S. medical school to only require a year of pre-med prerequisites, rather than 90 credits or a bachelor’s degree, I’m afraid you may be missing some other piece of information. There is NO U.S. medical school with such a drastically different preparation requirement. I don’t know enough about schools outside the U.S. to say whether the one year would be enough for some of them…
Finally, I just want to say that your dedication to your father is truly inspiring and your love for him shines through in your words. This is an important thing you are doing, and a gift that is beyond all measure. Best wishes to you both!
Mary
My fast reply is this:
Do the prereqs:
1yr Bio/Chem/Orgo Chem/ Physics and Calc
4 yr degree any degree/ any school
GPA above 3.4
MCAT above 28
Volunteering
Patience experience
Shadowing a Doc
It takes as long as it takes!
(God willing I will be 45 when I graduate)