Hello!
I wanted to introduce myself. I am 27 years old with a masters degree about to start my pre-reqs for medical school. I have a successful career/business in the psych field. I own a company that specializes in assessment and treatment for children with neurodevelopmental disorders. However, I want to fulfill a dream of going to medical school. I want to become a developmental pediatrician so I can better serve the children that we work with. I have a strong passion in the field that I am in as well as a strong desire for medicine.
I will be starting my pre-reqs online at UNECOM. I’ve read a lot about the issues with online classes, but I’ve already called the places where I want to apply to ensure that they accept the classes from UNECOM. I am even open to the idea of going to the caribbean.
I am a bit concerned about a few things. I hope I’m not too old going into the field of medicine. The other issue is that I have a wife who is 5 months pregnant. I am hoping that I could manage everything with our baby on the way. Financially we will be OK since I have a lot of flexibility with business and have people who can run it in my absence.
Hopefully I can connect with others on this board who are going through or went through what I am going to go through.
Welcome!
Obviously I personally would not think you are too old for medical school. Truthfully, 27 (or 29 -30 when you apply) will likely only impact you favorably when you are applying to med school as it sounds like you will have more experience(s) to talk about in your applications and interviews.
Regarding the baby, I’d think that having a child during doing the prerequisites would be much easier than during school itself, but one of the ladies in my class had her 4th child (7th if you count stepchildren) during her 2nd year of med school. She seems to be managing it.
You say you have people who can run the business. My question is,“for how long?”. Your best chance when applying to med school is to apply broadly, which means to be flexible about possibly relocating for med school. Some folks DO apply only locally, but that means you may have to invest a bit more time in volunteering, research, shadowing, MCAT prep, etc as well as acing prerequisites in order to maximize your chances. When applying for residency, there is a match process which can result in you having to relocate for residency. I’ve managed to stay withing about 3 hours driving distance of my relatives but HAVE had to move for school.
Also, one cannot figure on working at all elsewhere during med school or residency, so your business would have to be independent of you. Oh, you could probably have 4 hours/week about during med school to spend on it if you are pretty organized, but not a LOT of time. So those are the things I would suggest considering.
It’s doable, if you want it. Best of luck!
Kate
I think you’re doing okay and are on the right track.
IMPORTANT: if you do the online science courses, you need to check with the schools you intend on applying to and be sure the inline sciences will be accepted as fullfilling the prereqs. I know some schools do virtual labs, I know of some schools that won’t accept it and I know of a few that do accept it.
Thank you for the positive feedback. I’ve been reading some of these posts and it’s great to hear everyone’s stories.
I took orgo I/II and biochem thru UNECOM. Nothing says “online” on the transcript but I can only assume med schools know about it. Classes were tough yet fair I thought. I definitely liked the self-paced classes while working a full time job with lots of travel.
I applied very broadly to schools that were open to online prereqs. The online MSAR is a GREAT tool when deciding where to apply to based on your stats and/or what classes to take to fulfill requirements. Some schools require an “additional” class or two above the standard prereqs. Don’t overlook that and waste some money like I did.