I just wanted to chime in with my story. This post is also in the Non-trad forum as well.
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rom: Texas
My story:
So it all started (as all good stories must) on a dark and stormy night many, many moons ago - 1996. I was a freshman in college following a five-year stint in the Marines. I knew that I wanted to be a physician, and in typical gung-ho Marine style I had jumped feet first into pre-med coursework. I did okay my first semester, getting four A's and a B. But there were two big problems: the school's pre-med office and the feeling that I was older, out of step with the young gunners straight out of high school.
My pre-med advisory office told me that medical schools wouldn't take someone with a B on their record. That they didn't like older, non-traditional applicants , and that I might as well just forget about it.
Seriously! They said this! It felt like running into a brick wall....and as for feeling out of place, well, I had a difficult time relating to kids barely old enough to vote.
Anyway, long story short: the next three semesters were relatively bad for various reasons, but I managed to drastically improve by graduation. I scored decently on the MCAT. However, despite this, my applications to various programs produced nothing. Not even interviews. Very depressing. Who likes to fail?
After talking with several Deans of Admission I determined that I'd need to do a lot of postbacc work to get myself into medical school. It was a difficult time, because I really doubted whether I'd ever be able to acheive my dreams. I'd never failed before and this was hard to take.
In any event, I did very well in a post-bacc year. I then decided to face reality: if I never made it into med school, what would I do with myself? I didn't figure that I could just do endless postbacc coursework, and besides: I had taken sooo many undergrad science courses that there just wasn't much left. Which lead to my enrollemnt in a MS program in genetics.
Which has turned out wonderfully. I have really come to love doing research, and more importantly I have learned how to read/absorb/excel with really difficult material. I have learned how to effectively learn large volumes of new, often difficult material. Most of all, though, the experience has given me the confidence that although difficult, medical school is completely possible.
I suppose that this confidence has infused everything I've done in the last few years. I re-took the MCAT this past April. I did well because I believed in myself. I'm due to have two first-author publications in good journals, and I even managed to get accepted off a waitlist for Fall 2005 ( crazy story!).
Acceptance in hand, I'm looking to see if any TX or AMCAS schools are going to show me love. It's been a long, hard journey but here I am. It still hasn't really occurred to me that I've already acheived one of my major life goals......yet every so often I look at the doctors around me and think: "Yep, that'll be me in a few short years."