Goucher post-bacc! What are my chances?

[MalenurseRN]

Hi everyone,

I'm a non-traditional student and I'm thinking about applying to Goucher's post-bacc pre-med program. I hoped current, or former, post-bacc students can give me advice. Here is a quick bio and my stats:

Age: 31
Degree: Bachelor of Science in Nursing
Job: Registered Nurse who will have over a year of experience on a Medical Surgical floor before starting.
GPA: Community college-4.0, 4-year college-3.746
Standardized tests: Did not take SAT, ACT, or the GRE
Community service: Going to start volunteering as an RN at a clinic that serves undersourced population.

Thanks in advance to all who respond!

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[medmedman]

I don't think you'll any problems with those stats. I mean you are a registered nurse so that's pretty big imo.

 

[darkjedi]

There is a dedicated postbac forum that can help you even more here: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/forums/postbaccalaureate-programs.71/

I'm not 100% sure about Goucher, but most of the top-tier postbacs require some sort of standardized test. You should consider taking the GREs to show that you can perform well on standardized. Your GPA is great, and being a nurse you obviously have the clinical experiences necessary to prove you are familiar with the field.

You should also consider JHU and Bryn Mawr for postbacs if you do well on the GREs.

 

[MalenurseRN]

Thank you all for the advice. This has been a dream of mine since the first time I stepped foot into an OR(spring semester of junior year). Do you think med school adcoms will reject my application because I'm a nurse? Fortunately, the "projected" nursing shortage is exactly that, a projection. Most say that medical schools frown upon nurses applying to medical schools because of the "shortage." However, nursing programs have seen a tremendous increase in the number of applicants in recent years that, according to an article in the New England Journal of Medicine (April 2013), by 2020 their projections won't materialize. Any advice?

 

[darkjedi]

Thank you all for the advice. This has been a dream of mine since the first time I stepped foot into an OR(spring semester of junior year). Do you think med school adcoms will reject my application because I'm a nurse? Fortunately, the "projected" nursing shortage is exactly that, a projection. Most say that medical schools frown upon nurses applying to medical schools because of the "shortage." However, nursing programs have seen a tremendous increase in the number of applicants in recent years that, according to an article in the New England Journal of Medicine (April 2013), by 2020 their projections won't materialize. Any advice?

I know a nurse who is now in med school, so it's definitely possible. However I believe that @LizzyM has stated that nurses will be questioned extra hard on why they chose to do nursing in the first place and why the shift to an MD. I assume you would need to have a good narrative to talk about what drew you away from nursing and more into being a physician.

 

[AlexMack12]

I am an RN who will be attending an MD program in 2014. I applied to 9 schools and received 6 interview invites. I attended 3 of them and was accepted to all 3 schools. My point of telling you this is not to brag or show off (many others have better stats than I, more acceptances, and the like) but rather to provide an example of how being a nurse was not an impediment to my application.

In all three of my interviews, I was asked why I was interested in changing from nursing to medicine. I provided an answer, and that was the end of it. This did not, by any stretch of the imagination, take up more than a few minutes of my interview. I was not grilled or interrogated, and I had plenty of opportunity to discuss the other parts of my application. I'm sure this is school and interviewer dependent, and indeed there may be interviewers who will really want to make the nurse-to-physician transition the bulk of the interview, but by no means is there any requirement or precedent that interviewers have to follow to give a nurse applicant a "hard time."

Take your required classes and do well in them. If time/money allows for it, take additional science coursework. I had a chemistry degree before I went to an accelerated BSN program so I was fortunate to have other science classes on my transcript besides the prereqs but you certainly don't need an entire degree's worth to show you can succeed. Rock the MCAT, the great equalizer of medical school applicants.

On the flip side, you probably won't get asked a very popular interview question- "how do you know you want to be a physician and not an RN/PA/etc"? This can be a real head-scratcher for people who haven't really worked in other roles in the healthcare team. You can unequivocally say you've been in one of those roles and know with certainty you'd rather serve in the role of physician.

Always be positive- though nursing ultimately wasn't a good fit for me, I don't regret having gone that path first, since I believe I learned some really valuable skills that will carry over into my career as a physician (such as being comfortable caring for sick people, working with patient's families, and working as part of the healthcare team).
I'm sure you've gotten some good stuff out of it too!

Good luck!!