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This is why most BS/MD programs are stupid. Please explain to me how a 17 year old kid could know he wants to go into medicine. Please I'm dying to hear it.
I volunteered at a hospital for 500 hours in high school and shadowed about 200 hours. At that point, I was pretty confident in my choice to pursue medicine, though I will admit that my year of scribing in college was much more insightful than shadowing or volunteering ever were (this extra experience didn't change my mind any, just strengthened my resolve). But I guess my point is that, by age 17, I had a not insignificant exposure to the medical field, and I think I could have been a viable candidate for a BS/MD program if I had been confident enough to apply. I'm glad I didn't do a BS/MD program, since I've gained a lot of maturity and improved my work ethic by going through the traditional pre-med route. I also think that I'm a much stronger candidate for med school now than 17 year old me would have been. But the combined program would have saved me a lot of stress, so I can certainly see why it would have been beneficial.
Edit: I should add that neither of my parents are physicians nor were they even initially encouraging of my plans to pursue medicine. An early interest in being a physician is not always parentally driven.