Introduction/Post Bacc Questions

Nontraditional Premed Discussion
1

Hello Oldpremeds,


First off, let me say that it was very comforting for me to find this site. After reading many of the posts, I have come to the realization that I am not completely crazy for wanting to pursue a career in medicine. I am a 28 year old with an undergraduate and graduate degrees in accounting. I have been lurking around this site for a few weeks now. Some of my life experiences have caused me to develop a passion for medicine. As for my background, I am CPA who has spent the last 4 years at a Big 4 firm performing financial audits. At first, the idea of leaving my promising career to pursue a career in medicine was difficult considering the time and effort one must expend. However, as I get older I am beginning to realize that I have no real interest or passion for accounting or the business world for that matter and, as such, would never really be great at it. I am sure that my concerns are common among the members of this site. I have the following questions for the forum members. I apologize in advance if these have already been discussed in other posts:

  • I currently live in Kansas City and there are a couple post bac programs in the city. However, completing one of these post bac programs would be much more costly than just attending my local state school to obtain the necessary pre reqs for medical school. Are there any real advantages to attending a post bac program?

  • At this point, I am unwilling to just quit my job and pursue this full time. Additionally, my work schedule is such that I can not attend night classes as I frequently have to travel internationally. However, Mizzou offers some of the pre req courses online. Are there any disadvantages to taking online courses for medical school? My plan is to take a few of the pre req courses online to get my feet wet and then leave my job in the fall to complete the remaining courses at my local state university.

  • I completed my undergrad cum laude with a 3.6cgpa and my masters with a 3.8cgpa. My understanding is that this is relatively low for medical school. As such, I am considering going the DO route. After reading the Osteopathic information book, it appears that a very low percentage of matriculates are non-science majors. It this due to the fact that there are fewer non-science applicants or do they look unfavorably on non-science applicants?


    Sorry for the length of my post, but I have alot of questions/uncertainties at this point.


    Thanks,


    Kelly



2

Welcome aboard.


My understanding is that medical schools do not favor applicant with science major. In fact, most welcome students with non science major, and encourage applicant to do non science related courses such as humanities. Never-the-less, every applicants is expected to complete the core science prerequisite courses before matriculation. Secondly, i believe a 3.6 undergrad GPA is competitive for most medical school; but your GPA in the science pre-requisite courses is extremely important.

3

Hi,


Please consult the archives and search for similar answers from people who are more knowledgeable than I am but . . . Since you have not taken sciencey courses before, I think it would be imperative to take them in a regognized university, in class, in person.


Online courses for sciences cannot provide the all important required laboratory practices you need,nor will it give you the crucial professor recommendations you need.


Third, online courses are not yet anywhere near to being accepted in general and certainly not for medical schools. Please somebody tell me if I am wrong!


It is important to explore why you are going toward medicine, not merely that you want to get away from something else such as being a CPA.


Instead, I would focus on what thinking mechanisms you have learned in accounting practice, and try to apply those acquired life skills to your medical pursuits. You may have more traits that you realize. But only do medicine if you really love it, not because you do not like being a CPA. Make sense?


Best, and come on out to Vegas for June 9-11,

  • Dr Quinn in LA
4

HI in answer to your question about the benefits of a post bacc program: Again, please consult an online resource of all US post bacc programs . There is web site I found before.


Post Bacc programs vary from just giving you a list of courses, to full-on tutors and extra lectures, enrichment clinical experiences, all the way up to the pinnacle of guaranteed admission if you maintain a certain very high GPA in their post bacc courses at a university that has its own medical school.


It is definitely worth doing a formal post bacc if at all possible. If savings permit it, you will find the mutual support, when you get discouraged, will help.


In the area I live the only post bacc is either for people of color who have already been rejected and it lasts several months of review to re-take the MCAT and try to improve their other admissions materials. The second program is only for “disadvantaged” people totally, and takes a full year, and has associated favored status tho no guarantee of admission at the end.


You could do a bit of research that will pay off. My philosopy is always: Try for the best available program, courses, the biggest challenge, and always do my best, even if it involves making huge sacrifices, downsizing, cuttingyour rent to minimal, stop spending and live on a tight frugal student’s budget. It can be fun! We do it!

5
  • In reply to:
- I currently live in Kansas City and there are a couple post bac programs in the city. However, completing one of these post bac programs would be much more costly than just attending my local state school to obtain the necessary pre reqs for medical school. Are there any real advantages to attending a post bac program?



A general adage is that you should attend the best 4 year university that is available to you that you can afford. There are certainly advantages to a formal post-bacc program (as mentioned above), but I disagree that doing one "is worth it if at all possible". There are many of us on here who have successfully managed to get into medical school by going the "do-it-yourself" route. You may very well be able to get advising and typical pre-med support even as a non-degree student taking the pre-reqs at your local college (I was able to do so). Typically, there is also more flexibility and less cost.

  • In reply to:
- At this point, I am unwilling to just quit my job and pursue this full time. Additionally, my work schedule is such that I can not attend night classes as I frequently have to travel internationally. However, Mizzou offers some of the pre req courses online. Are there any disadvantages to taking online courses for medical school? My plan is to take a few of the pre req courses online to get my feet wet and then leave my job in the fall to complete the remaining courses at my local state university.



Med schools typically discourage online coursework, especially for the pre-reqs. Most of the pre-reqs require labs which are very difficult to do without a formal classroom environment. You could contact Mizzou and see 1. Are these courses delineated as "online" on the transcript? (i.e. are they considered equivalent?) 2. Does their medical school accept these courses? If Mizzou discourages their pre-med students from taking these courses, that's probably a red flag for you.

  • In reply to:
- I completed my undergrad cum laude with a 3.6cgpa and my masters with a 3.8cgpa. My understanding is that this is relatively low for medical school. As such, I am considering going the DO route. After reading the Osteopathic information book, it appears that a very low percentage of matriculates are non-science majors. It this due to the fact that there are fewer non-science applicants or do they look unfavorably on non-science applicants?



As mentioned above, there is nothing wrong with that GPA. Even if it was low, there is nothing you can do to change it now. There is absolutely no reason to not pursue MD schools if that is what you want. When you see GPAs touted for med school matriculants, remember that these are AVERAGES - people get in with higher and LOWER GPAs on here. There are several of us on here who got into very good medical schools (allopathic and osteopathic) with ugrad GPAs <3.0.

You are not at a disadvantage by having a non-science degree. If anything, it's an advantage because you can have an outstanding GPA in the sciences and pre-reqs. My undergrad GPA was 2.78. Since I had taken only as much math and science as I had to, I was able to end up my post-bacc studies with a cumulative science GPA of 3.8ish and a post-bacc science GPA of 3.98. If you look at acceptance rates for different majors, the highest acceptance rates are actually for philosophy majors while biology majors have the lowest overall acceptance rate (or close to it).

Welcome and good luck. Take time to browse through the archives. Lots of good advice out there.
6

I think the reason you see a lot of med school matriculants with science degrees is that many pre-meds are drawn to those programs - not a favorability by admissions committees. Ad coms often do praise non-science majors with strong pre-med backgrounds.


They also like to ask why a CPA (or a musician, historian, MBA, etc.) would want to go to medical school. So, Quinn’s right that you need to carefully examine your motivation. You have plenty of time for that, though. I agree with Emergency that an informal post-bacc is no less valuable than an expensive formal program. There are benefits to the organized programs, but they are by no means critical. And, admissions committees don’t care how you did it. They just want to see that you did well.


Most people who still haven’t accepted the quality of online coursework are those with prejudice against it who haven’t really taken any or haven’t taken any good ones. That said, the pre-med sciences do not translate well in the online environment. I taught both classroom and online, and I did much of my upperclassman BS work that way. You absolutely can get top-quality instruction in the online milieu, but I don’t recommend it for chemistry, biology, micro and physics.