Wayfaring MD: Missionary Physician

22. Do medical schools care about Community College?

The simple answer is yes. Yes, people do make it into medical school after going to community colleges or to smaller, less-prestigious universities. I don’t think it’s the norm, but it definitely happens more than people seem to believe.

Read on for my thoughts on community college.

Advice to Pre-Meds, 11th Ed.

19. How do I pay for Med school?

Heck if I know, heh.

There are lots of ways to pay for med school. I’ll start with common ways and end with how I’m probably going to do it.

1. Be independently wealthy. Or have wealthy parents who will pay yo billz. Pay the tuition as it comes and don’t take out any loans.

2. Be one of the VERY few who gets a scholarship. They pretty much don’t exist for med school. Good luck with that.

3. For the rest of us, we take out loans. The gov’ment lets us get lots of them. Me, I got over $250K worth of loans. But again, how do we pay those off?

4. Military. All of the branches of the military have different loan repayment programs. They’re pretty sweet deals, actually. You give them 4-8 years and they pay your tuition, give you a stipend to live off of during med school, and they give you money for books and supplies. They have their own residency programs, but you’re not obligated to go to one. I didn’t do it, but I considered it. Boot camp was enough to keep me out of the military.

5. Country Doctor Programs / National Health Service Corps / Indian Health Service. The national gov’ment and many state gov’ments have loan repayment programs to encourage young doctor folk to help the medically underserved. Programs vary state to state. These programs are much like the military repayment program. For every year of service you give them, they pay a certain amount on your loans. The catch is that in many cases you don’t get to choose where they send you.

6. Government 10-year income-based loan repayment plan. It’s complicated, but basically your loan payment is calculated according to your yearly income. So for folks like me going into primary care, we won’t be paying as much monthly because we won’t be making as much. After 10 years of paying, the remainder of your loans are forgiven. It’s a great choice if you’re going into public service, non-profit work, or primary care (as I am).

7. Sign on with a small town hospital that wants you. As my neighbor, who is the physician recruiter for our hospital, says: “Everything is negotiable.” If a hospital wants or needs your skills badly enough, they will pay for you. Generally it’s another loan payment for years of service trade-off.

8. MedSend. For the very few of us who are going into missions, MedSend is an option. MedSend pays loans for folks who are specifically working as medical missionaries. There is a long application and approval process, but it’s great because if you’re going to be a missionary, you’re going to be making less than a resident (most likely), which means you will never ever make enough to pay off your loans. Plus, many missionary-sending agencies will not take people who have more than a certain (very tiny) amount of debt, so this takes care of that. Again, the longer you serve, the more they pay.

Next up:

How much do you study?

Advice to Pre-Meds, 10th Ed.

18. What if I don’t get in med school?

You are not alone. For the 2010-2011 year, there were 42,742 applicants to medical school in the US (I think that’s only MD schools). They applied to an average of 14 schools each, and for 10,908 of them, it was not the first time they applied*.

That means 10,908 people (at least) got rejected the year before.

It happens, folks. Unlike law school, where there seems to be a school for every LSAT score on the spectrum, the government restricts the number of medical schools in the country and limits the number of students they can accept. It helps maintain quality—but it also makes it difficult for people to find a doctor, but that’s a post for another time.

So before you apply, make sure you have a back-up plan. If you don’t get in on the first try, do you plan to re-apply the next year, or is it one shot or nothing for you? My ultimate goal is to be a missionary, which fortunately I can do with or without M.D. behind my name, so my back up plan was do to 2 years of mission work before re-applying. Don’t assume that you’re going to get in. The shock of rejection is going to be much worse if you have nothing to fall back on.

If your plan is to re-apply, think about how you’re going to improve your application. Retake the MCAT? Retake a class or two? Shadow more? Get a job in the medical field? Volunteer more? There’s lots of things you can do to make yourself a better applicant. Oh, and re-write your personal statement or essay. Let several people who are good writers and who know you well critique it. And then take their advice. If it sounds like crap, change it.

Next think about where you’re going to apply next time. I only applied to 1 school (fortunately I got in) because I didn’t know of any others that particularly appealed to me. But I had a few listed out to apply to later if need be. So maybe broaden your search for schools and apply to more places. Or maybe try doing Early Decision at the school you think you have the best chance of getting in to (which is hopefully also the school you like the best). Be careful with Early Decision, though. It’s binding.

Ok, say you’re applying to medical school for the third or fourth year. Maybe it’s time to consider other options. Is it the MD you want, or do you just want to be in medicine somehow? My first option would be to check out DO schools, especially if you’re interested in primary care, orthopedics, or sports medicine. Just from personal experience, it seems that DO schools send a higher percentage of their graduates into those fields. With a DO you have the option to do a DO or MD residency program. I know several DOs (all in MD programs), but I don’t know much about how their schooling is different except for the spinal manipulation they do.

Next, are you dead-set on going to a US school? I was pretty adamant about not going to the Caribbean, but if you’re super gung-ho about getting an MD, give them a shot. A word of warning, though: grads from Caribbean schools tend to have a harder time matching into residency spots. They apply to 2-3x as many residency programs as US grads do. They also tend to have lower board scores. Not saying you can’t do well and be a great doctor coming from one of those schools, just saying know that there is a difference.

Finally, do you have to be a doctor? Do you have a little pride thing in you that prevents you from having any letters other than MD behind your name? NPs and PAs work reasonable hours, don’t have anywhere near the malpractice costs MDs do, they make good money and have less job stress. Now if you want to be a surgeon, NP/PA may not be a great choice, but for primary care, why not? I definitely considered it.

*Stats: https://www.aamc.org/download/153708/data/charts1982to2011.pdf

Next up:

How do I pay for medical school?

Advice to Pre-Meds, 9th Ed.

Research vs. Service

16. Am I going to pre-med hell if I don’t have any research experience? Can I still get into med school without research?

During my med school interview, the interviewer said, “I don’t see any research experience in your application.” I was scared that this was going to keep me from med school, but being ever so honest, I bit my lip and answered, “that’s because I don’t have any. I don’t like research. I’d rather use my time doing service stuff.”

To which my interviewer replied, “yeah, I don’t like research either.”

Now I went out on a limb with my response, but it’s true. You don’t have to have research or publications in your name.

Let me qualify that statement by saying that if you’re applying to a big research institution, you better have some research. I’m sure you can still get in, but it will be more difficult I’m sure.

But if you’re like me and hate research, look for schools that are more service oriented than research. Check out the school’s website. If all their articles are about this and that grant they’ve gotten for their studies on the effects of lipid lowering drugs on rats or some nonsense, that might not be the school for you. If most of their articles are about class mission trips or their humanitarian AIDS work in Africa or something like that, then they probably don’t make too much of a fuss over research.

Now my school doesn’t get billions in grant money, but we do have some legit research going on. There are definitely still research opportunities available, and probably a third of my class did summer research after first year. (I went to India to test water and volunteer in a TB clinic, which was WAY more fun.)

17. I haven’t done any volunteering. Am I going to pre-med hell because of this?

Probably. Heh. Volunteering is different from research. Most schools expect to see some service on your application. Whereas research positions can be hard to come by, there are volunteering opportunities everywhere.

As I’ve said in previous posts, much of my volunteering was not-medically related. And that’s totally fine. Just stick with whatever you do.

Medicine is all about helping people, so are you doing that now?

Next Up: What if I don’t get in med school?

Advice to Pre-Meds, 8th Ed.

13. What is this Problem-Based Learning stuff?

So my school does nothing but PBL, and I think it works really well.

Some schools are using 50/50 programs that are half PBL, or they’ll do some small bit of PBL to help students incorporate everything they’ve read.

The way it works at my school is that we meet 3 days a week (MWF) from 9-12 in groups of 8-10 students plus one tutor who is an MD or PhD (their job is not to teach. It’s to keep you on the right track during discussion). We read a medical case and then set issues to discuss about it. We teach each other the material. By the time we’re done, we are able to explain the basic science behind every tiny aspect of the case. On Tuesdays and Thursdays we have some optional lectures plus clinical skills training.

We learn in 6 week phases where we study all subjects at once as they pertain to a certain body system. There are 6 phases in a year. Our 12 phases are: Biochem & Cell Bio, Genetics, Host Defense, Heme, Neuro, Musculoskeletal, Cardio, Brain & Behavior, Pulm, GI, Renal, and Endocrine. We also have community medicine dispersed in there too. So if you’re in GI phase, you’re learning the biochem, physiology, anatomy, pathology, etc etc that relates to GI. And you learn it as it relates to your patient case, so you can put all your knowledge in context.

14. What are the advantages to PBL over lectures?

You learn how to study and learn on your own, which is very important when you get to your clinical years and residency. Plus, you learn more comprehensively. You make connections between all the subjects that are more difficult to make if you studied each subject separately.

At my school, it definitely keeps people from being so competitive. We all depend on each other to help us learn the material, so we share notes (we have an online database where we upload our notes) and study together.

Also, the scores we produce are just as good or better than traditional schools.

15. What are the difficulties of PBL?

You have to learn on your own. You don’t get spoon-fed the material through lectures. But we do have some extra optional lectures for extra help. And all of our professors are super helpful and are available to discuss the material any time.

Next Up:

Research vs. Service: Is one better than the other?

Advice to Pre-Meds, 7th Ed.

12. Who should I shadow?

First of all, I know it’s really hard to find people to shadow. And it’s getting harder all the time. Protecting patient confidentiality is a huge issue, and many doctors don’t take pre-meds for this very reason. If you get shot down when you ask to shadow, please know that in the vast majority of cases, it’s not you.

So where do I start? I would start with my own family doctor, former pediatrician, or OB/GYN. They already know you and they probably are aware of your aspirations. Then I would contact doctors I know through church or other social events. Then contact friends of friends. If you have a friend whose parent is a physician, seek them out. People are much more likely to let you shadow if they have even a vague idea of who you are. Finally, you can try calling random doctors’ offices. I’d go with calling before e-mailing. It just looks a little more formal. Letters might be nice, but then it requires effort on the doctor’s part to respond. Make it easy for them; they don’t have much free time.

The doctors I shadowed were: a classmate’s dad, a family friend, my mom’s personal doctor, and a random surgeon who I literally met on the street. [Funny story: I was at a Christmas festival in my hometown and the man in line in front of me saw my college sweatshirt and started chatting with me about school—it’s the South, we’re friendly like that. When I said I was pre-med, he said, “well I’m a vascular surgeon. Here’s my card. Give me a call if you’d like to shadow me.” So Monday morning I called and set up some time with him. I wasn’t super interested in his specialty, but it was a learning experience all the same.]

Next, be flexible with your schedule. I did most of my shadowing during summers and holidays. It meant sacrificing fun time, but I ended up getting to see some cool stuff because, hey, lots of people go to ERs and doctors during Spring Break week and Thanksgiving and Christmas. You have to be okay with getting up early, too. The doctor may want you to round with him/her, and that usually happens in the wee hours of the morning. And if you don’t have class until 10am or noon, that’s plenty of time to fit in a half day of shadowing or a couple of surgeries.

Shadow a variety of doctors. I understand that if you want to be a surgeon, you’ll want to shadow only surgeons. But who knows? Maybe you’ll really like OB/GYN too (they do surgery, too, you know). Or maybe you’ll shadow a family doctor and totally turn your back on surgery (hey, we can all hope, right?). But how can you be sure of your decision if you haven’t explored other options? I personally shadowed a family doctor, an ER doc, a pathologist, and 2 surgeons. From those experiences I learned very quickly that I was not cut out for surgery, but I loved primary care. And my interviewer was happy to see that I had tried multiple things, because it showed him that I had made an informed decision.

But don’t hop around too much. Ok, you shadowed a pediatrician for half a day. Woo. You know nothing about peds. I’d rather see an applicant who has shadowed 3 doctors for 50-100 hours each than one who has spent 5-10 hours with 10 different docs. You really need a couple of weeks worth of shadowing to really begin to understand what that doctor does. I did 5 or 6 12-hour shifts in the ER, a week with an internist doing mobile clinics in Nicaragua, several weeks with the family doc, etc. I didn’t spend a huge amount of time in surgery, but that was because I hated it so much from the get-go.

A FEW MORE TIPS:

Dress appropriately. Guys, wear a tie and for goodness sake, iron your shirt. Girls, don’t lie, you know you’re not comfortable in those heels. Go with the ballet flats. And pants. Skirts can be problematic when examining patients.

Be respectful of patients who do not want you to observe them. As a 4th year in med school, I still get patients from time to time who don’t want to see a student. And girls, don’t get offended when old men ask you to leave the room. They’re asking for Viagra, of course, and they think if you leave the room you won’t know that that’s what they’re asking for.

HIPAA is for reals. Don’t be talking about who you saw in the doctor’s office when you get home. You can tell interesting stories, but you can’t give identifiers. You’ll probably have to sign some sort of confidentiality statement.

Ask questions, but don’t be annoying. If the doc is running behind, try not to slow him down more. Wait till lunch or the end of the day to ask stuff if time is scarce.

Write thank-you notes. If you want to continue working with a doctor, a thank-you note after the first shadowing day goes a long way.

Next Up:

Next up: Problem Based Learning vs. Traditional Lecture-Style Teaching

Advice to Pre-Meds, 6th Ed.

10. Extracurriculars: How many is enough / too many?

Clubs are great, but like all good things, it is possible to have too much. Don’t join every club around just to have a long list on your CV.

Here’s my advice on clubs: Do a few, but do them well. Pick 2, maybe 3, and be really involved in those things. I was in Baptist Collegiate Ministry at my school, and I loved it, so I ended up serving on 3 different committees (community outreach, girls’ ministry, international student ministry) within the organization, went on 2 mission trips through them, and went to the weekly meetings, well, religiously. I was also very involved at my church, led a weekly Bible study, mentored a younger student, tutored at a high school and was a member of our school’s pre-med club, American Chemical Society, and Phi Eta Sigma freshman honors society. So yeah, I didn’t do a lot of science-specific stuff (though I had the option to), but I was dedicated to a few specific things. And most of my extracurriculars were faith oriented, which made me a little more well rounded as an applicant (though that wasn’t why I did them) and showed my commitment to service.

Whatever organization you choose, try to be an officer. It shows dedication and leadership skills, which med schools want. And try to pick organizations that give you volunteering options, too, because volunteering never looks bad.

11. What types of activities look good?

Pretty much anything looks good, as long as you’re committed. But if you can find organizations that are related to the type of medicine you’re interested in, be involved in those.

Examples:
- Peds / Family Medicine: volunteer at elementary schools, camps for kids with chronic illnesses, childrens’ hospitals, or work with organizations like St. Jude’s or March of Dimes.
- Pathology / Surgery: get a job as a diener at a local morgue / crime lab (I know a guy who did this and loved it, and it was a huge talking point in his interview).
- Family Medicine / Internal Medicine / Geriatrics - volunteer at nursing homes, assisted living places, etc. Call bingo once a week for a year or two. It doesn’t feel like much, but it is. Help organize fundraisers / events for different illnesses like cancers or diabetes.
- OB/GYN: volunteer at crisis pregnancy centers

Next up:
Who should I shadow?

Advice to Pre-Meds, 5th Ed.

Well, I knew this question was coming, so I was planning to answer it in my Advice to Pre-Meds series, but I’ll answer it here instead.

9. What if I made a bad grade? Will it keep me from Med school? Should I repeat the class?

First of all, don’t freak out over a C. I made a C in Organic I, C+ in Organic II, and a C+ in Physics I. And I made it to med school.

Second, your counselor is a jerk. One bad grade is not enough to keep you from medical school, so don’t listen to that nonsense, and don’t drop your major over one class! (However, I learned after Organic that maybe being a chemistry major wasn’t the best life choice for me. I hated math and never was interested in anything I learned in Chemistry. I first began to seriously consider a change to Biology when my chemistry advisor said, “you’re going to make a great Biology major one day.”

Your grade is likely to affect you in a few ways:

1. You will probably have to explain it somewhere in your application. There was actually a section for that on my app. I explained very truthfully that I did not devote enough time to studying those subjects (partially because I did a lot of extracurricular activities those years), but that in subsequent upper-level classes I figured out which study methods were effective for me and worked harder for my grades. See, that shows that you have grown from the experience of making that bad grade.

If I were you, Anon, I would probably explain some of the family and medical issues that were going on that kept you from doing well in the class. Don’t dwell on it or go too detailed, but give a brief explanation for them. I mean, it’s one thing if you are just lazy and skip class a lot (as I did in Physics), but it’s another if you have legitimate things keeping you from class.

My med school is very forgiving when it comes to family problems. If a spouse is having a baby, or a family member/close friend dies, or someone close to you is very ill, our school understands and will work with you to help you make up things you miss. I’m sure not all schools are like this, but some are.

2. If you still don’t fully understand the concepts of that class, it’s going to make taking the MCAT difficult. So for that reason, it may be wise to retake the class.
I didn’t re-take any of the classes I did poorly in, but when it came time for MCAT studying, I put extra extra time into those subjects. As for re-taking the class, though, I will tell you that when we look at applications, we check to see if you re-took classes. It’s good for you personally to really learn the concepts of the class, but we also don’t look quite as highly on an A after a retake as we would a B on a first try. But I don’t think it’s going to count against you too much, especially if you have all the extracurriculars and other junk to balance it out. I will say to be careful about how many classes you re-take. One class is perfectly acceptable. Two is ok. But when you get to 3 or 4, we worry that the applicant is not going to be able to handle the work load in med school.

Anyway, Anon, I hope this helps you. And don’t let this one C get to you. There are bigger things in life.

Advice to Pre-Meds, 4th Ed.

7. Early Application or Regular Pool?

I did Early App. If you know you definitely want to go to a certain school, why not do early? If you don’t get in the early cycle, you roll over to the regular admission cycle. If no school really jumps out at you, don’t worry about early application. I would say, though, that the folks that do early application are at an advantage. My school takes almost half of its students from the early pool, which means your chances of getting in during the early cycle are like 1:3 vs 1:8-10 on the regular cycle.

8. What are some typical interview questions? Did you get asked anything weird in your interview?

Some typical questions I ask people when I interview:

- Why do you want to be a doctor?
- Why do you want to go here?
- What was the hardest class you ever took/hardest thing you ever did, and how did you manage it?
- What types of physicians have you shadowed? What did you like / not like?
- What type of medicine are you interested in?
- Discuss your major /minor (especially if it’s non-science)
- What types of volunteering / community service have you done?
- What’s the last non-school related book you read? (we do an awful lot of reading. I need to know that you are interested in learning on your own and that you don’t totally hate to read)
- Is anyone in your family in medicine? (These folks tend to have a better idea of what they’re getting themselves in to, but I came from a non-medical family and I did fine ;))
- What do you do for fun?
- What do you do for stress management?
- What types of study methods work for you?
- What did you do during summers in undergrad?
- Did you work during high school or undergrad?

Applicant Specific questions:

- Ask the applicant to discuss something you found interesting on their application, like their black belt / SCUBA certification / fluency in Pig Latin / major in archaeology / previous life as a lawyer, pharmacist, businessperson, etc

School-specific questions: (read up on the school you’re interviewing at. If they’re a big research institution, be prepared to talk about your research experience. If they’re service-oriented like my school, talk about that.)

- Do you have experience living/working in a rural/medically underserved area?
- Does your family live in-state (we only take residents of this state, and we want them to stay and practice here, which they’re more likely to do if they have strong family ties in the state)? Are you close?
- Do you have experience working in a problem-based or group learning environment? (My school is the only one in the nation that is 100% problem based learning… that’s another post)

I didn’t get asked anything super weird in my interview. I know some interviewers do ask weird stuff, and I guess there’s some psychology to it, but I don’t really see the point. Just be honest. My interviewer and I talked about my missions experience, mostly, because I wrote a lot about it and he had also been on several trips. He also asked to see some of my photography since I was a photography minor.

Next up:

Extracurriculars: How many is enough / too many?
What types of activities look good?
Who should I shadow?

Advice to Pre-Meds, 3rd Ed.

6. Is Med school right for me?

Ok, no one’s really asking this out loud, but you’re all thinking it. If you’re not thinking it, you should be.

At some point in your med school career, you will contemplate quitting. It happens to all of us. At my school, that point was usually around a week before the first test, then it came again just before taking Step 1, and then again towards the middle of 3rd year (probably during surgery for most of us). I don’t know of anyone who has made it to their 4th year without seriously thinking of quitting.

This is not just from stress. This is seriously thinking, “I can’t handle this. I am not smart enough. I’m tired and beat and I want to have a real life and I don’t think I can have one and be a doctor at the same time. I want to have a husband and children before I’m 40. I want to take vacations. I want to enjoy holidays.” This is the point when your brain forgets you’re already $200,000 in debt and tells you, “just go be a missionary. Go be a movie theater attendant. Go teach high school. (all very real thoughts of mine) You’d have a life. It would be so excellent.”

MEDICAL SCHOOL IS HARD.

Caps and bold can’t fully express it. Take your hardest class you ever took and multiply it by 10, and you’re just starting to understand how hard med school is. It is physically hard as well as intellectually. You will be sleep-deprived, tired of standing for 30 hours (and holding a retractor for 8), your immune system will be shot, you won’t get to see family and friends like you want to, etc etc etc. There have been times where I had to forego going home to a funeral because I couldn’t miss 2 days of studying. My mom was in the hospital twice and I couldn’t visit because of school. I missed 2 years worth of dentist and doctors’ appointments. Med school is hard.

So what I’m saying is, don’t think that just because you did well in undergrad and didn’t have to study much that you’re doing to be fine in med school, cuz this is a whole different level.

If you have doubts about whether or not to go to med school, please do yourself a favor and take a year off to get a better idea. It’s not the end of the world. Most folks I know didn’t get in on their first try anyway. Work on your application, do some shadowing and volunteering, try something new. Because by the end of my first semester of med school, I was already too much in debt to quit. It was either go forward or be totally stuck for a very long time.

Medicine is one of the few professions that literally consumes your life. If you don’t want to be defined by your job, don’t go into medicine. If you want to be able to leave work at work, don’t go into medicine (unless you’re doing radiology or pathology). If you’re wondering if medical school is for you, ask yourself if you’re okay with giving up a significant portion of your life to study, and whether or not you will find satisfaction in your job.

I’m going to be a doctor because at the end of the day, nothing else feels right. No other profession gives me the satisfaction and sense of accomplishment that medicine does.

But it is hard.

Next up:

Early Application vs. Regular Pool
What kinds of questions will I be asked on my interview?

Advice to Pre-Meds, 2nd Ed.

3. How did you study for the MCAT? (Course vs. study on your own)

$1500 is A LOT of money. I didn’t have that kind of money to spend on an MCAT course, so I bought the big Kaplan book and a couple of practice tests and hunkered down during Christmas break of my Junior year of college (I applied Early Admission, so I had to take it early. That’s another post). It was terrible, but I did it.

If you’re the type of person who is not well organized or focused, then maybe it might be a good idea to take a study course just so you have something to discipline yourself. If you do okay studying on your own (or if you’re just broke as all get-out, as I was), then just get a book. The consensus from our panel of med students was that having a class to go to that would force you to study was more valuable than the actual information in the course. So if you’re disciplined enough to do it on your own, you’re not really missing out by not taking the class.

I couldn’t study at home, so fortunately my mom’s office had an empty room that they let me use for my studying. I went and studied 6-8 hours a day for 2 weeks and then took a few practice tests. It worked okay for me. The moral of the story is: know how you study best and stick with it.

4. When is the best time to take the MCAT?

If you do early admission, I’d say March-ish of your Junior year. I took it in January just because I figured I’d be freshest from studying over Christmas break. Also it gave the time to take it a second time if I needed it. There’s really no right time or wrong time. Just leave room for the possibility that you might want to take it a second time and you don’t want to have to wait a whole year for that second chance.

5. How many times is too many?

Now that I interview potential incoming medical students for my school, I have a bit of an opinion about this. I had one applicant who took it 4 times. I’d say that’s too many. Two is respectable. Three is ok if you’re improving, but don’t just keep taking it to inch your score up one point each time. A 27 on the first try is more impressive to me than a 32 on the third try.

Next up: Is med school right for me?

Advice to Pre-Meds

One of my favorite undergrad professors (whose “fermentation party” during our micro class was amazing) is my school’s Pre-Med Advisor now. Over the years, many of her students have gone on to our college’s medical school, so she has invited us back to speak to the undergrads and give them tips about med school. I have gone every year except last year (stupid clerkships).

So we went last week and sat as a panel in the front of a lecture hall and tried to answer the undergrads’ questions. I liked having 1st-4th years all together because there were questions I could answer that they couldn’t and vice versa.

I figured I’d compile the questions and answers from the other night here. So here is my first in a series of posts with advice to Pre-Meds.

1. What classes should I take to prepare me for Medical School?

You have to take the standard Pre-med classes (Gen Chem, General Bio, Organic Chem, and Physics). For the most part, they’re weeding-out classes, not stuff you’ll actually use much in medicine (although you do need to understand the concepts in order to go on and build on them). You can make it fine in med school with just those because they’re going to teach you everything you need to know once you get there. But if you want to expose yourself to some other classes to make your first year of med school go a little more smoothly, we suggest taking (most highly recommended stuff first):

Biochemistry (1&2)
Genetics
Microbiology
Histology

If your school offers physiology, I would highly recommend taking it, too. I took comparative animal phys cuz that’s all we had, and physiology still kicked my butt.

**Note that Anatomy is not on this list. You’ll learn anatomy in med school with everyone else. It’s really not that hard and you don’t really need early exposure to it to do well.

2. Am I at a disadvantage if I didn’t major in a hard science?

NO. In my class we have people who majored in Spanish, Anthropology, History, Accounting, Business, and Sports Medicine/Kinesiology. They have all done just fine. Like I said in number 1, as long as you have the basic pre-med classes, you really are on a level playing field with everyone else. Being a science major might have held the slightest advantage while we were studying biochemistry and genetics, but after that, everyone’s even.

A non-science major might be a slight advantage when you’re applying to med school. Schools like diversity, and your major might be a big talking point in your interview.

And if you are a science major, don’t fret that either. I majored in Biology and had minors in Chemistry and Photography. I picked the photography minor because I was interested in it and because I didn’t want to be all science. And my interviewer ended up asking to see some of my photography work. It was something the interviewer could remember about me that stuck out from the crowd. Always try to have something like that.

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