Intro / inquiry

Nontraditional Premed Discussion
1

Greetings,



I am currently a finance manager for a mid sized company and am seriously considering beginning the steps to gain acceptance into medical school. I am 37 father of two kids and husband to one wife. I am the sole earner in our household. I have an BBA in finance (cum Laude) and an MBA (3.73). While earning my undergrad I worked st a PCT (patient care technician) in an ER. Though dated I have a lot of patient care experience. Ideally I would like to attend TCOM the osteopathic school in Fort Worth, TX, given its proximity to my current location. If I decided to take this step and go back to school I am confident I could furlough myself from work one day / week and go to school. Additionally, I have the opportunity to shadow my current PCP and volunteer at a clinic for the poor. Additionally, I already hold some different leadership positions throughout the community and have a solid volunteer resume.





My questions are as follows:

  1. I would have to take at least some of my pre reqs at a community college. Would this work against me? If so how much?
  2. is it possible to gain admittance into medical school with just the prerequisite courses or would I need to take large amount of science electives?
  3. am I too old? Be honest, I can take it.
  4. I have some weak grades from the 90’s, if I killed my prerequisites this time around my (using a AMCAS gpa calculation spreadsheet I found) my sGPA would be 3.25 and my cGPA would be 3.06.
  5. if that wouldn’t get me an interview I could elect to enroll in academic fresh start which would essentially prohibit any grades from 10 years ago from being included in the GPA calculated for admission.

    5b) how common is it for someone to matriculate with only having the required 90 hours required to apply?
2
  1. Depends on the school. It’s been awhile since I’ve looked, but some schools don’t take them, some schools take them but don’t look at them as “strongly,” some schools say a class is a class. I never researched any of the TX schools, because I grew up in oklahoma and that would be sacrilegious… My current school only states that it feels CC credits don’t prepare you as well for the MCAT.


  2. Prereqs + “90 hours” is enough technically. And really, a whole lot of schools don’t make any prereqs mandatory, just highly recommended.


  3. No. Oldest guy in my class started at 41. We recently had a grad at 54y/o.


  4. Recency is good, shows you matured over time. The whole GPA will be assessed but probably the later courses will be leaned on. Really depends on the school though.


  5. I would at least give one round a shot before you try to reset your GPA, don’t you have to redo like 4 semesters worth of stuff with that?



    5b) Never heard of anyone without a degree getting in, but i suppose it’s possible. The way the requirement is written, you have to have at least 90 credits in order to apply, not necessarily matriculate. I think the general idea is people apply before their senior year, and you typically have about 90 credits (3/4 of the way to your roughly 120 to graduate).
3

Just a little confused. You have a BBA and an MBA. I’m assuming that the BBA is a terminal degree. If not, how did you ever get into an MBA program?



How close are you to the University of North Texas? It may be to your benefit to take your final prerequisites there. It may prove that a prof who teaches undergrad microbio or biochem, for example, also teaches in the med school and that could be to your advantage.



You’re young. So don’t worry about your age. Go for it!