Some of the information posted here is what I did research on and is a big reason why I myself have gone from my past HS and first 3yrs of college dreams of being a physician to rather wanting to go into Biostatistics or Epidemiology. At the start of my senior year at Michigan State I had a 3.38 GPA and was looking at PA schools and hoping that my classes ahead of me weren't all that challenging and boy was I wrong. When I selected my major my sophomore year the counselors made it sound as if a Human Physiology degree was marketable outside of a goal of attending MD, DO, or PA school...and boy they lied their @$$ off to me. I graduated in 4.5 yrs and I remember going to talk to them in my first senior year to talk about backup plans and they told me the complete opposite of what they said two years ago and stated that really the ONLY thing you can do with your job is apply to med school or a masters program in biomedical sciences. My last three semesters consisted of taking probably 5 of the 10 most failed classes at MSU, in which all 5 were class ranked graded where the students you were competing with majority of the students already accepted to an MD or DO school and graduated with at least 3.6 GPA. When you have 5 classes where the bottom 30% automatically get a 1.5 grade or less you know that you are taking classes where the professors only cared about the success of the most brilliant students and could care less about the bottom 30% of the students. I graduated with a 3.19 GPA and a science+math GPA of a 3.01.
I always wanted to be a doctor and in 8th grade I realized I wanted to be a podiatrist. When I was a senior in HS I was under the impression that the only way you could become a podiatrist was if you went to MD school and you specialized in podiatry in your 3rd & 4th years at med school and then residency. I got to Michigan State and even was part of a residential college that was majority pre-med students and even the counselors my freshman year told me that the route stated above was the way you became a podiatrist. So for me, after my freshman year I knew I didn't have the grades to ever make it to MD schools, so I went down the PA route. Then I found out about podiatry in my 7th semester at MSU. My 7th, 8th semester I told myself my passion was to go down the podiatry school route. But while I was studying for the MCAT last May I was really wondering why I wanted to become a physician and it was haunting me. I already shadowed a podiatrist and liked it, but I kinda told myself I loved it. Truth was that I didn't really LOVE what he did, but since he was my podiatrist and a very close family friend and one of the best podiatrist in SE Michigan I told myself that I would love that route for a career. One of the best things that happened to me was my lab partner for my final semester in the Fall of 2013 was applying to a Masters of Public Health school and tell you the truth, the classes I have taken of diseases and mathematics were much more interesting to me than my physio and biochem courses, which I had already been told would be as challenging of courses as it will be at the med school since MSU decides to have harder undergrad physio and biochem courses than at the med school level by a wide margin.
Unfortunately, my parents didn't like my idea at all. I told them that I had no plans on going back to the podiatry route and they practically forced me to go back to the podiatry route. I told them I had no passion and they just believed that I was giving up because it would be hard. Really, the attrition rate is a big part of why I freaked out about the schools too. Some people may think 20% is worth the risk, but to me no way!!! I use to have a passion but really after being a physiology major it has taught me that I don't love the human body as much as I would dealing with diseases and statistics. After the 20% attrition rate there is then the residency shortage as well. I sit there and think that after 4yrs med school, 3yrs residency it wouldn't be till I was age 31 before I started my career as a physician and that is if I even make it. The way I look at it is that I may have a good enough GPA to get accepted, but do I have good enough GPA of making it through?? I don't doubt myself, but I didn't do so well in my 400 level biochem I&II or physio classes (I and II) in undergrad so what is it gonna be like in med school.
Too bad for me, my parents kept forcing me to go down the med school route when I told them I wanted to take the GRE for MPH or other masters programs in January so I can apply by mid February and have a chance at getting in...yeah they didn't like it and still told me to take the MCAT. I was studying for the MCAT from mid February to early April and just hated it because I had no passion on going to podiatry school. They think I have been studying for the MCAT since mid April, when in fact I have been studying to take the GRE and apply to master's programs in August so I can get into the 2015 cycle.
As I reflect back at college, I wish my counselors didn't baby me to make me think my GPA was good enough to get into PA schools to start off. I wish they did a better job at explaining how challenging a major is and noticing that here comes a kid who had just a 3.20 GPA after 3 semesters of college asking you how challenging this major really is and you straight up lie to his face by saying it isn't that challenging and no more than 3 semesters later telling this same kid that he decided to take the hardest major the college offers at the Natural Science college.
For me, I don't want to go down the route of depression to become a doctor. I know I am not the smartest person, or even close, but I also know I am not stupid. Yet, podiatry med school is still a type of medical school and will be just as hard of schooling as the DO students will take. I would love to know the stats from schools of how the bottom 25% of their entering students do their freshman year because really to me the average GPA of the dropouts is just as important as the GPA of the entering students as a whole.
