I've been thinking extensively about medical school. Is it right for me? (junior yr- business major)

[OneThoughtLater]

Hello!
To start off with a bit about myself, I am currently a first-semester junior majoring in business management. Lately, I've been really thinking about the idea of going to medical school. This is a process that I took upon myself to research all the required steps to applying to medical school, finding out the cores and structure of each year through medical school (and post grad via residency), and weighing out the fact that I may, or may not be too late in the game to change my major.
I'm incredibly fascinated with the concept of being a doctor and/or surgeon and sometimes even drift off to fantasize about pursuing a career as one. I try so hard sometimes to convince myself that this is NOT what i want to do (simply because my self esteem tells me I won't be able to keep up with the workload of medical school), but each time I do so, I ALWAYS end up feeling like I will regret the decision not to go to med school for the rest of my entire life. I sometimes even find it hard to imagine what other career will satisfy my interests other than a pursuit in the medical field. I watch videos of on YouTube that follow the "day in the life of" of medical student and I yearn to be them with a passion.
The real issue is that my science background is lacking, although I have an interest in Biology. On top of that, I have trouble in most mathematical areas (trig, pre calc, etc.) and can get really squeamish with certain areas of anatomy (I heard this can be tamed with time).
Currently I have a 3.8 GPA, but have no extra-curricular activities nor clinical experience.

The question(s) now is(are): Is this the right decision? Is it too late for me? How many more years would I need to remain in college to finish up the pre-med requisites?
Do I continue to finish my business major and move on in life? Or do I take this one chance in my life that I may regret not taking for many years to come to achieve something more than what I think I can accomplish in life?

Thank you all for reading this!
Hope to hear some great advice and responses from those with or without similar experiences.

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[deleted648172]

What an exciting time for you! It's great that you're looking into the mechanics of the whole process, but why don't you just jump in and get your hands dirty? Try it! experiment (but not with drugs)! shadow doctors, volunteer at a hospital, take bio 1, and/or chem 1 (maybe over the summer?), join the pre-med club to see if it's your 'crowd'.

- there are no such things as right decisions, just what you learn from your choices. You will probably want to focus your learning on if/why you want to be doctor.
- it is never too late, sometimes, the fruits of life take time to ripen.
- there are many chances, not just one. Every day is the beginning of the rest of your life - so do whatever the hell you want to do with it.
- it might take you another year or two, which really is nothing at all.

 

[MintLiminal]

It's never too late! Just the other day at an interview I spoke with a med student in his 40's. He's extremely happy that he's made the switch to medicine. I'm actually 28 and just going through the application process. I struggled with similar feelings across the board - would I be too old? could I keep up? The reality is you just have to take it one day at a time. Getting into medical school is definitely a lot of work, but if you're interested, it's totally worth it.

Also, since you're already so far along, you could totally finish you business major while also taking your medical school pre-reqs. Schools like students with variety and different majors. If you have no pre-reqs so far, and you start now, you could potentially finish as a 5th year student if you continue the business degree. That's not bad at all. I would say start volunteering and shadowing now. Try and volunteer with something consistent, a program that you can list a lot of hours with, and one that comes as close to clinical as possible.

All in all, I say go for it! Good luck

 

[PlaqueBuster]

Its great you want to do medicine, but you need to ask yourself why? Because this question will come to haunt you during applications and interviews. You cannot say I woke up one morning, had an epiphany and decided to research medical school structure and cirriculum and loved it.

Putting that aside, you are not late at all. Finish your business major and take the pre-reqs for medical school: biology 1 and 2, chemistry 1 and 2, organic chemistry 1 and 2, physics 1 and 2, stats or calc, english course and whatever the other pre-reqs are. Some suggested courses are biochemistry, genetics, sociology, psychology, and human physiology. Make sure you take all sciences with labs. Also try to maintain a 3.5 sGPA. Try to volunteer at a hospital and shadow physicians to gain clinical exposure. When you write a PS you need to convince admissions why you are ready for this field and what made you decide to go for it. Reflect on your business major and see how it may fit into your interests in medicine (maybe you want to open a private practice?). It is important to not dismiss your current major and say you had a change in mind and business is not something you want to do anymore. Complete it to show schools that even though you had a change in mind, you do not quit and you want to incorporate concepts of business into your career.

This will probably mean you will have to be a 5th year senior. If you can take classes in the summer then go for it, but planning is going to be crucial right now. Also remember that you want to take the MCAT a year before you graduate so you dont have a gap year. So if you graduate in May 2018, you want to take MCAT in May 2017 and apply to medical schools in June 2017. Try to take as many pre-req science courses before your MCAT along with the other suggest courses above since the new 2015 MCAT has these additional concepts. If you start now, you will have 2.5 years (with an additional year) including summers to get this done. Hope this helps.

 

[deleted648172]

Its not really a 5th year... consider it a victory lap! Queen says: "we are the champions, my friend ..."

 

[QofQuimica]

You need to spend some time shadowing/clinical volunteering to help you decide. Right now you're all about the glory and glossing over the guts. They're ain't no glory without the guts in any career, especially in medicine.