do I have a chance to get into medical school?

[Dolly the Sheep]

I'm at a point in my life where I feel that if I don't act now, I will be doomed to $10 an hour jobs. Right now I am a tech at a g.i. lab... only 9 college credits under my belt, and 23 years old. I graduated from a continuation high school with a 3.1, and for 3 years worked in a cafe and partied. I've been working in a hospital for the last couple of years. Not an impressive background at all. So if I go to college and get good grades and do well on my mcats would I have a chance to get into med school? What else can I do to improve my chances? Will my past be held against me? My desire to become an MD is getting stronger and stronger by the day, now that I see first hand what our doctors go through it confirms my desires... Sorry for rambling on but I just need some opinions on this.

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[geromine]

The one thing you can do to is to make sure this is what you want to do. There are far easier ways to make money. If you're just starting undergrad, you'll be looking forward to at least 4+4+3= 11 years of school and training until you can get a job as a doctor. In the meantime, unless you're loaded, you'll accumulate $80-160k in loans and will be living poorly. The point is that the road will be tough and I wouldn't start unless I was sure I'm going to finish it.
As for your background, there is nothing that should stop you from it. Nobody's gonna care what you did before you went to college, if anything you can use it as a topic for talking about your dedication and how you decided to start over, etc. etc. If you can go to a decent undergrad school and do well in terms of grades you'll do just fine. Working with the underserved populations, esp in a medically related context, would strengthen your application a great deal also.

 

[tBw]

Well hello Dolly...

Actually I dressed as you for halloween a couple of years ago (along with a friend obviously...) but to answer your question, yes of course you can go to med school. It may be a long path but there are plenty of people on here who started later and had less illustrious backgrounds. Part of the fact that it is such a long path ahead of you means the things in your background that you are worried about and that may seem significant now, will be long distant issues by time you come to apply and I doubt any adcom is going to pay any attention to it as long as you now go on to give a strong performance in college.

Oh and save that last post of yours...with a small amount of work it'll make a great opening paragraph to your personal statement explaining the long path, personal exposure to medicine and determination you have had to become a doctor....

 

[Doctor Octopus]

I was in a similar situation several years ago. I'm now 28 and going to medical school this fall. My past has not been held against me that I know of. In fact, if you can show that you didn't know what you want to do, figured it out, then made it happen--they like that stuff. One of my interviewers told me that my decision to drop out of college my first time because I didn't know what I wanted was a very wise decision. You should re-enroll, pick a major that you like, and take the prereqs for med school. No medschools care how you did in high school. If you have any questions look to sdn for (usually) pretty good advice.

 

[Supernumerary]

Well, I'm not really pre-med but I'll share my thoughts with you anyway. I dropped out of high school when I was junior and worked, went back the next year and graduated - barely. Didn't start college until I was 22, and even then I only went because my family lives in the sticks and there were NO girls my age not related to me for around 50 miles. But when I got to school, I found that I enjoyed it so much more than high school. I was getting grades I never would have dreamed of in high school simply because the material was interesting to me. I will soon be graduating with a degree in biology and ~3.9 GPA. Would totally floor my high school teachers. It's not from Harvard or anything but from a respected state university.

Grades are not so much a reflection of intelligence as they are of work ethic; if you want to be a doctor, give it a shot. The worst that could happen is you end with an education. I wouldn't worry about your past failures either, when it comes time to apply to med school, most places aren't gonna care as long as you show that you've matured.

 

[Trix]

Hi Dolly,

You are still really young, and yes you can absolutely still go to medical school!!

I spent all of my 20's doing exactly what you have been doing-living my life/partying. I flunked out of a vocational school at 19, and didn't return to school until I was 30. Then I did two years at a community college, transferred to a 4 year to get my degree, and I will be entering medical school this fall at the age of 35.

What Supernumerary said is really important. The worst thing that can happen is that you will end up getting an education. You have plenty of time along the way to realize there is something else that you may be more interested in. The best thing you can do is to get started, and it makes the $10/hr job much easier if you are doing it to work towards your dream.

 

[Dolly the Sheep]

Thanks everyone, untill now I was under the impression that med schools were only interseted in people with more "focused" backgrounds.

Another concern of mine is the impact going to school will have on my marital life (no children). I don't know how flexible and accomidating I can expect my husband to be, we do have bills to pay and his line of work is very vulnerable due to the state of the economy right now. I guess going into debt wouldn't be a bad thing if I actually became a doc and made up that money, but if anything goes wrong it would impact two people instead of one. Oh well, I guess it's something I need to take one step at a time, let me get through college first and see what happens.