updated:
2/ 2002
Next update: 2002
Copyright 1999-2002.
Alex Shteynshlyuger
Master.com.content
Medical Careers for High School Students
Contents:
- Becoming a Doctor
- Applying to College Advice
- Choosing College & Major
- Premed Mentality: Truth in Advertisement
- Beating the Competition
For information about career and educational paths for doctors, please read The Ins and Outs of Medical Profession
If you're a high-school student, you have a number of options both where to go to college and consequently how to get into a medical school.
If you're 100% certain that you want to go to medical school, you may want to go to a 6-year program offered by a number of colleges that combines college with medical school. This saves you 2 years but of course you will not have the usual college experience. Alternatively, to get into a medical school you must graduate from a 4-year college. Again there are choices that you will make: where to go, what to study.
If you were to look at the roster of students admitted to medical schools, you will notice that medical schools that are affiliated with undergraduate college/university have a disproportionate number of students from their undergraduate college (such as Duke, NYU, etc for example). This means that they give preference to people who did undergraduate education at their institution. The implication for you is that you may want to make a strategic decision to go to college which has an affiliated medical school. Be warned though, that it does not mean that you will get accepted with sub-standard grades just because you went to their undergraduate school. You may just get preference over equally qualified applicant, of which there are thousands, who did not go to their undergraduate school.
There are colleges that have special programs that guarantee you a seat in medical school if you finish their college with certain distinction: keep up certain GPA, etc.
There are also colleges that have cooperation programs with certain medical schools. If you get accepted into such a program, which you may need to do either before going to college or while in college depending on the program, you will again get a guaranteed seat in medical school. Again you will have to show some minimal level of performance.
The upside of all these programs is that you know what's happening tomorrow. You know that if you do OK in college and graduate you will definitely go to medical school. If you go to college without the benefit of such programs, even if you do well you will still have to roll a die and see whether you get admitted to medical school.
The downside of such programs is that you commit to attending them and you may not have to take some premedical classes which means you will not be able to apply to other medical schools. Here are some of the reasons that you might want to apply to another medical school once you're in college:
(1) you may think that given your college performance you can get into a more prestigious school
(2) you may want to apply to a state school--which tend to be at least half as expensive as private schools--this can mean something like $70,000 less in loans.
(3) you may get married, divorced, sick of the East/West coast, etc, etc
I recommend that you check CAREERS IN MEDICINE: A Guide for High School Students which is published by the American Association of Medical Colleges. The guide is pretty good, but remember who publishes it and they will never say or admit many of the things that I have written on this web site even though they are true.
Your high school grades, your SAT scores along with recommendations and college application essay questions and your other achievements will determine where you will get in to college.
It is obvious that the better your grades, the better off you're. You should nonetheless spend your time preparing for the SAT. Even a relatively insignificant amount of work can pay off, especially on the math section. You can always read up on the topics you get wrong, and practice solving the problems. With the reading comprehension part, practice also pays off since the more you practice the better your skill at choosing the right answer becomes. Do not despair if you have hard time, it should come to you with practice. Get some SAT review books with practice questions. You may also consider taking some of the commercial courses, if you can afford them. I personally have not taken any, but some people find them useful. Some of the more popular SAT preparation books and college admission guides are listed at Premed e-Library.
The final point I wish to make deals with college applications. Essays are an important component of your application and they can help you with getting into your favorite college. Do not be abstract--be detailed and observant in your essays. Also make sure you proofread your essay thoroughly.
A final note: Believe it or not but there are ABSOLUTELY no writers who can produce a polished first draft. Every good piece of writing that you ever came across must have been rewritten at least 4-5 times and edited many more times. This is true of books, popular journal article you read--in Time, US News, etc, and every editorial written on the editorial pages of such publications as the New York Times, as well as the articles in the Sunday New York Times magazine. The reason I am writing this is to make you aware that it is not just OK, but a must-do to rewrite, rethink, re-edit your essay to perfection. First draft is never good enough.
It is appealing to go to the best college you can get into, sometimes though less prominent schools will offer you an enticing scholarship. Which one should you choose?
First, it is hard to tell. Certainly attending a more prestigious college or university known for its academics will be to your benefit. On the other hand, many public colleges/universities have very good academic reputations and good medical school placement record for their graduates. It is best to ask the school how many of their graduates go to medical school or at least pursue graduate school. If all they had is one person who got into medical school three years ago, you should probably stay away from that place no matter what they offer you.
One thing is true is that if you go to a college from which few people go to medical school, it may mean their academics is not good enough. You don't want that. On the other hand, just going for prestige may not mean much. How well you do in college and how well you do on MCATs may be more important. Grades being equal you may be chosen over someone else if you went to a more prestigious school, but if you get B's in a prestigious school and someone got A's in a less prestigious school, you will not get any reprieve.
Medical schools do not care whether you major in sciences or not. In fact, some of the worst admissions rates to medical school is for biology majors, though it is higher than average for biochemistry majors. Philosophy majors tend to do well as do Economics majors for example. Though statistics does show that people who major in certain fields do less well or better in securing medical school admissions--the major may mask the real cause. It may be that the best philosophy majors decided to go to medical school or something like that. Despite the statistics I know Biology majors who got in--they did well on MCAT and had good GPA. On the other hand, if you major in Philosophy and do poorly--you won't get in. Again the bottom line is that your GPA needs to be good, and the best way to ensure that you do well in classes is (a) to study hard and (b) to study what you like.
For college and medical school rankings you can check US News & World Report Rankings of Colleges, Medical Schools. As always, these rankings are useful but whether the school is number 10 or 15 may not mean much, and some of the schools that are ranked high, I think are pretty shitty--which does not mean that schools that are ranked low are good!
I guess the best advice I can give is not to fall into the fallacious thinking that taking many and the hardest classes in college is the way to get into a medical school. If you can do that and still get good grades--by all means do it. But if the alternative is taking harder classes and getting lower grades, as it is usually is then you will definitely improve your chances of admission if you take it slowly and do better in your classes.
Premed Mentality: Truth in Advertisment
Q. One of the most frequent questions I have been getting is whether the "myth" of premeds as hyper-competitive workaholics who do not live a typical college life of booze & bars is true.
A: As much as I want to deny it, this myth has much truth to it. As far as I am aware, most students who plan to go to medical school work real hard. The reason is simple: to be successful in getting to medical school you need to be very good unless you have some special qualities that will allow you to get in with substandard grades.
Q. My friends who are premeds or the friends of my friends who are premeds are in college and seem to party as much as anyone else. Does this mean you're wrong?
A. I hope I am wrong. But from my personal experience, I can tell that most premeds who party a lot remain premeds and never become medical students. Remember, only 30% of people who apply to US medical schools actually gain admissions. This means that 70% of premeds who apply to medical schools do not get in--this is a very sobering statistics. Of course, life is too complex to draw generalizations and you will always find someone who is one of the best who did not get admitted while someone who partied hard and did poorly got it. But these are, as far as I know, exceptions to the rule.
As I see it, if you can manage school work successfully and still have time left to partying, by all means go have fun. On the other hand, if having fun detracts from your study, as it usually does, then you must choose whether to make this trade off. You must keep in mind that taking the trade-off, that is choosing to get lower grades and have some fun, might mean that you lower your chances of getting admitted to medical school.
Perhaps, I have drawn a bleak picture here. I think this represents reality. This, of course does not mean that to be a successful premed means that you will never go to the movies. It does mean though, that you will go to the movies MUCH less often than your friends and that you will find yourself studying when no one else is to be found within a mile-radius of you.
Choices have consequences. If you make a choice to become a doctor, you should accept the consequence that you will have to work more than others.
- Start Planning Early
- Plan Strategically: do everything with the goal of improving your chances of admittance.
- Stamina. It is a war of survival: only the fittest survive. Keep your eyes on the ball and don't look to the sidelines.
- Take it slowly, do it thoroughly in your studies and in life: Haste makes waste!
- The sad truth: if you do not heed the above prescriptions, Remember most people will not make it: Have exit strategies ie law school, business school, etc
- Take a look at what I say in Premed Requirements section
- Take a look at GPA advice I give.
For inspiration about medical school, you may want to read Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis.
A somewhat pervertedly funny and less inspiring fictional account of medical profession is given in a very well-written book: The House of God by Samuel Shem, MD (who is a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School in real-life.)
For a very thoughtful discussion of medicine and the role of doctor I highly recommend, Purposes of Medicine by Sir Theodore Fox. It may be a little hard to get your hands on this--but the effort is well worth undertaking it. This is the best essay on medicine that I am aware of.
