Medical School

extremenoob--

Welcome to A2K.

Before applying to medical school you need a Bachelor's degree--heavy in math and science--from an acrcedited college or university.

What are your grades like? What does your H.S. guidance department suggest?

I have high grade; all As. But I've heard that u can directly apply for a straight medical program?

I won't say that you can't apply for six years of medical training right out of high school, but I'm not familiar with this system.

What does your guidance department say? They are much more likely than I am to have the newest wrinkles in education.

Are you in the US? You apply for "pre-med," which is part of an undergrad degree, then on to medical school. I've heard some places overseas you can go directly to medical school out of high school though.

Bachelor's generally is not required, though it's tricky to get through the prerequisite coursework without getting one.

It can be done, though.

On the other hand, if you have to leave med school for some reason, you end up without a Bachelor's. That happened to my father in the 1920's.

Back when I was interested, there was a catalog that was available through the MCAT, Medical College Admissions Test (I think that's the name), which lists med schools in and around the US, and their data re qualification and admission.
I presume there is something similar by now for the world at large, but I don't know.

Getting into medical school is so ridiculously competitive, I don't see how a high school grad would get right in. Guess it's possible though.

I think maybe someone sold this young person a bill of goods.
Do your research.

Slappy, there have been in the US in the past and are, I guess still elsewhere, programs when you enter college and do something like five years, or maybe six, which includes med school - my dad went to Santa Clara U, and then went in what would have been his senior year to med school, skipping the BA or BS. I think perhaps that once you get the md you also pick up the ba or bs.

This is messy if you don't make it, for whatever reason.


I don't know what it takes to get into various med schools in Mexico now, or Italy, or...

I seem to remember that a lot of places outside the US had it easy to get into school and hard to get out. I had a friend who went to dental school at the university in mexico city and he said the classes were very crowded... (that was in the seventies).

I don't think admission to medical school is quite as competitive as most of us (as consumers of its product) would like to think...

i think there may be a program here in norfolk, VA that is an accelerated program in combo. it is 3 years undergrad at Old Dominion University and then 4 years medical at Eastern Virginia Medical School. I think I have heard this somewhere and if you get into the program it is a straight 7 years and you graduate with an MD but you apply to the entire thing straight out of high school.

This is all speculation, but i am thinking it may be an option. (i have heard of it). and what they do is not force the students to take classes that have absolutely no purpose in the medical field (like public speaking-unless you want to be a researcher and then have to apply for grants etc). they skip all those useless classes you had to take as an undergrad (i mean what doctor actually needs english? heehee).

dragon--

What doctor needs English? The same doctor who needs a cultivated and sympathetic bedside manner.

I'm in a veterinary medical program, and we've got somebody who left college a year early to enter. She came in younger than everybody else, separated from the culturally and even legally (she was under 21 for the first 9 or 10 months, and very law-abiding, and so couldn't go out with a lot of folks). Her knowledge of the world is very narrow, she has no interests outside of veterinary medicine and yet can't really articulate why she wants to go into the field -- it's just the momentum of having wanted to do something since she was a little kid.

Academically, she doesn't suffer, but personally -- and perhaps, eventually, professionally -- she's definitely suffering.

Now, I have met folks who've gone into vet med or dentistry (for some reason I know a lot of vets and dentists, but no MDs that I can think of) who have gone into the profession without completing and undergraduate degree and have been quite successful (professionally and personally). But these were folks who worked in the field (as technicians/hygienists) who went back to school to pursue a career. That's a whole different kettle of fish...

Maybe, but I think I was told they select something like 1 out of 20,000 applicants to MD programs, but that number may be wrong? My sister is a resident surgeon, was a top student at a very good undergrad school, and only got accepted to one school off the bat, then finally let into another after put on a waiting list.

Being a top student at a very good undergrad school, I'd guess that she applied to very prestigious schools.

http://www.aamc.org/data/facts/2004/2004mcatgpa.htm

35,735 folks (mean undergrad GPA: 3.47) applied to U.S. medical schools in 2004. 16,648 (mean undergrad GPA: 3.62) matriculated somewhere. Dunno how many were offered spots and decided not to go to medical school, but there must have been a few hundred.

Not a cakewalk, but not exactly an exclusive club, either. If you're willing to go to a place and/or a school that's not particularly desireable and you've got decent credentials, you can go to medical school. (Whether you finish is another question entirely...)

actually the program i am talking about ( i think) earns you and undergraduate degree from ODU in three years in premed and if you don't flunk out you are automatically entered in to EVMS (it is a one time application straight out of high school that earns you both undergrad and MD but takes 7 years instead of 8). kinda like a combo i guess...

what undergrad did ur sis go to slappy?