Hello everyone,
I am new to these forums and I am actually very glad that I found this site. I have a dilemma and I am seeking advice. I currently work full-time and I have decided that I want to pursue a medical career. My job requires me to travel frequently so I don’t think I can take any evening classes that would tie me to a physical location (maybe weekend classes, but this will take too long). I am trying to figure out how I can start pre-med while working full-time in my current position. I currently have no college credits; can anyone recommend a method for me to get started? (I.e. accredited online universities, etc)
Thank you for your time.
Hi there,
You are going to have a huge problem with online classes because you need to have one year of general biology with lab, one year of general chemistry with lab, one year of general physics with lab and one year of organic chemistry with lab. While you may be able to take the class-parts of these courses on-line, you will not be able to do the labs on-line. Currently, no US medical school will accept these classes without the labs so you have a minimum of two years for these pre-medical classes.
Your options: Find evening classes, summer classes or make arrangements with your job so that you can get the labs done. Also, be aware that some medical schools have a calculus requirement too.
Some people have saved money and took everything except the labs which they did full-time while working part time. Unfortunatly, if you have financial obligations, this might not be viable for you.
Good luck!
Natalie 
Since you’re just starting out and will need a bachelor’s you could easily take some of the general education credits online. Nat is, as always, totally correct about the premed requirements, but there’s no reason you can’t take things like english comp, english lit, poli sci, his, psych, etc online. Your best bet will be to go through a normal college though. Many CC’s offer a wide variety of online courses as do many 4-year schools. Just start doing some research into schools and pick one you like. Possibilities might even include Harvard Extension or UC-Berkeley Extension, but I’d try your local schools first. If you can start out at whatever university you want to finish it things will be so much easier in the end. Some college search engines will allow you to directly search for online courses at universities/colleges.
Good luck!
Hi there,
You should be able to find a lot of courses online. For example. North Caroina State university has both the gen chem and the o-chem online. THe issue will be with the lab work, however at NCSU the first semster of gen chem lab meets only every other week throughout the semester (the second semester of gen chem lab meets every week). So you may want to verify how often the lab meets. Also, look and see if you are required to schedule the lab at the same time as the class. At NCSU, most of the chems were scheduled as a 3 hour lecture and a one hour lab that did not need to be taken at the same time, which meant I could take the lecture and then the next semester double up on the lab work. These are just a few tricks i picked up while taking classes and working full time. Hope they help!
Marcia
For whatever this might be worth, some schools have lab sections on the weekends. Georgetown requires post-baccs take certain labs on Saturdays, and some undergrads do it, too. If you find a school like that, and I agree that the rest of your credits can be online, though I am not an expert, but maybe a local school offers that.
I have to warn you though, I had a job that required a lot of travel and it was really hard to study on the road. Now, that’s just my experience and you might be more disciplined than me (not a hard thing to be).
First of all I would like to thank everyone for the replies. I think the basic game plan for me is to go ahead and at least get started and as many of you suggested, I will go ahead and knock out most of my pre-reqs online. This phase should take a couple of years, and after I complete this I will most likely change jobs so that I can find something with less travel and start taking labs. I have alot of research to do but I am starting to become more and more confident in my decision to pursue medicine. A profession that can help anyone at anytime. I will hopefully keep posting on here from time to time. Thanks again and I wish all of you good luck as well.
It would probably be worth it for you to check with admissions representatives at a few med schools you think you’d be interested in attending. Ask them what they think of online classes and such. Do this before you start any classes, since it’s quite possible some med schools have policies against accepting online prereqs, and you’d want to know this as early as possible. Also, they are probably going to want to see SOME evidence of in-class, on-campus coursework along the way–that’s just the way most med schools are (in my experience anyway).
Quote:
It would probably be worth it for you to check with admissions representatives at a few med schools you think you’d be interested in attending. Ask them what they think of online classes and such. Do this before you start any classes, since it’s quite possible some med schools have policies against accepting online prereqs, and you’d want to know this as early as possible. Also, they are probably going to want to see SOME evidence of in-class, on-campus coursework along the way–that’s just the way most med schools are (in my experience anyway).
Let me emphasize this what has been said here. Before you take ANY on-line classes that are requirements for med school, make SURE that every school you might want to apply to will accept this work. Talk to someone in the admissions office who is knowledgeable about this issue, and take caeful notes as to what you are told. (A word to the wise…)
Cheers,
Judy
Thanks everyone, I will start making a list of schools to contact soon. Judy, as an FYI, I actually found oldpremeds.org by looking at the resources section of your website… thanks.
I started taking classes while I was still traveling a lot for work. I took General Chemistry I & II and ended up missing a whole lot of lectures in the process; fortunately we had an excellent textbook and reading the chapters very carefully and doing a bunch of problems got me through.
Of course, I sat down with the professor even before I enrolled and explained my situation to him and asked him if it would be alright for me to miss this much class (he said it was fine, just so I could perform at test time and make up the labs).
A couple of caveats: some premed classes lend themselves better to this than others. I think trying to do this with Physics or Organic Chemistry would be a very bad idea. Also, I wouldn’t try taking more than one class at a time if you are planning on trying this.
Good luck