Poll: The oldest medical student, I know is...

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Krisss17

Krisss17

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Since I really won't be able to apply much before 47, I was curious about the oldest medical school applicants/students that you know...
 
A 47 year old in my 1st yr. class. A bunch of us thirty somethings .
 
EastWestN2grt said:
A 47 year old in my 1st yr. class. A bunch of us thirty somethings .
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Yup, about the same here, at least by my impression. I think there is someone in their 40's in my class, a whole bunch of 30-somethings (I include myself in that group), and a good chunk of folks in their mid to late 20's. The class average for my class is around 24, however, so I guess on average you could say that we have a lot more young ones; at least that's how I interpret it, but to make a better determination, we'd have to examine the actual age distribution, among other things.

I heard something that there was an individual around his or her 50's in one of the classes above me, but I can't be sure, since I heard it in passing.
 
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40 or so that I know personally.
 
I'm 47 and glad I'm not the oldest one.
 
My best friend who is now an infectious disease specialist told me that everyone in his graduating class was over 40. He also said that medical schools are starting to show a little more preference for older students.
 
Personally? Late 30s.

I do know of people who started med school in their 40s though.
 
drtroy said:
My best friend who is now an infectious disease specialist told me that everyone in his graduating class was over 40. He also said that medical schools are starting to show a little more preference for older students.
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EVERYONE??!
Don't you think he might mean everyone is NOW over 40?? :laugh:
 
I am 53 and a M2. At Nebraska.
 
I will be turning 50 in the middle of next year which will be my first year at med school, either DMU or Western.
 
I'll turn 31 after matriculation.. wife 2 kids, cat, dog.. age is a state of mind.
 
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I have a question about older students in med school? Do they tend to have plans for FP or IM or maybe EM? Are any of these people looking at longer residency periods needed for surgery or cards or GI? Another problem with surgery might be concerns about manual dexterity and the extra harsh nature of surgical residencies.

Here is a question.............if you do a surgical residency and then, due to age, find your dexterity is lacking or you can't stand for long periods, can you switch to FP or IM or would you have to do an FP or IM residency? I suppose if you were in cards or GI, you could be a general internist. Could a general surgeon switch to FP with no additional residency?

Thanks a lot !!
 
There's an SDNer with the handle "oldman" who was a senior citizen (I'm not quite sure of this) by the time he applied to med-school. I think he's a 2nd year resident now. He's the one who originally started the Y!IFMBA! thread.
 
ayoung45 said:
I have a question about older students in med school? Do they tend to have plans for FP or IM or maybe EM? Are any of these people looking at longer residency periods needed for surgery or cards or GI? Another problem with surgery might be concerns about manual dexterity and the extra harsh nature of surgical residencies.

Here is a question.............if you do a surgical residency and then, due to age, find your dexterity is lacking or you can't stand for long periods, can you switch to FP or IM or would you have to do an FP or IM residency? I suppose if you were in cards or GI, you could be a general internist. Could a general surgeon switch to FP with no additional residency?

Thanks a lot !!
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You're way off, which is fine, but I suggest that you pick up the Iserson's guide to residency which explains all this reputably.

The way things are supposed to go: you figure out during 3rd/4th year rotations what you want to specialize in. You do elective rotations at hospitals that host residencies in your specialty. You apply to residencies in that specialty, you match, you go study that specialty, you take licensing exams for your specialty. Then you can do a fellowship to subspecialize, and take some more licensing exams. So, for example, you would do an IM residency, and then do a cardio fellowship. Some surg subspecialties are part of an integrated residency, and some require a full general surg residency followed by a subspecialty fellowship.

If you want to try to apply for residencies in multiple specialties, it can be done, but the workload of managing elective rotations, interviews and parallel sets of LORs etc. is probably not manageable. Trying for EM and IM is more manageable than trying for surg and IM.

Lots of people start a residency and then change their mind. When this happens, you start residency all over again. You get no credit on a surgical residency for FM: if you bail out of surg 3rd year, you have 3 more years of residency before you can be licensed in FM.

I'll start med school at 42. I would LOVE to do surgery. My eyes/back/knees/dexterity are excellent. My longevity is probably good (mom still works full time at 73) and I'm committed to fitness as a long term survival/sanity strategy. I have NJBMD's example to follow (she started med school at 45 and just finished her vascular surg residency). I shadowed several surgeons (DO and MD) and my housemate is a surgeon.

I expect to find out by mid-3rd-year whether I can handle surg, physically and emotionally. There's a months-long surgical rotation in 3rd year, during which (if I'm at a decent site) I'll be up all night, scrubbing in, going through the rigors with surgical residents. Long before 3rd year I need to have grades, LORs, board scores and probably research consistent with the pursuit of surgery. I expect to know by the end of 1st year which surg residencies I'm going to want to aggressively pursue, whether I actually pursue them or not.

But the list of specialties I'm NOT interested in is much shorter than the list of specialties I think are cool. I could go in any number of directions, and it's premature to speculate on my interests until I've done rotations.

Best of luck to you.
 
I know someone who graduated pa school at 72.....not kidding...he's a young 72 as you might have guessed.
 
I started med school at 47. With some time off I graduated at 52. I started in FP but was not happy for a variety of reasons and resigned. I had to go through the match again and started an internal medicine internship at 54. The overnights were really tough, both in FP and IM. It's not that you can't make it through the night. That's pretty tough for everyone. But recovery takes longer when you're older. I could have stayed and finished a full 3 years in IM but decided that I would focus on combining my public health interests with clinical ones. So now I am in the second (and last!) year of an occupational medicine residency. It's been a long haul but I've managed to also do personal things during the time off that have been meaningful. I have two grandchildren and my two children live in the area.

There was another person in my class who started at the same age as me. I was really surprised! If you want it badly enough and can get the logistics of life arranged to accomodate the demands it works out. Non-traditional students generally have more to worry about outside medicine than traditional ones. So think about it long and hard but don't give up if it's right for you.
 
Krisss17 said:
Since I really won't be able to apply much before 47, I was curious about the oldest medical school applicants/students that you know...
Click to expand...


One of my classmates started at age 53. He is now practicing Family Medicine on a Native American reservation in South Dakota. Another friend was 52 when she started which means that both of these folks were applicants well above age 50. GWU graduated a gentleman who was 53 in the late 1990s.

University of Maryland graduated a 61 year-year-old in the late 1990s who went into family medicine. There have been reports of a couple of folks in their 60s who were able to gain admission to medical school.

It isn't so much the age as the energy level of the person and what they bring to the table. My classmate had been a very energetic minister and a graduate of Yale Divinity School before medical school. I used to run into him on the jogging trail at the end of the runway at National Airport in DC. The two of us ran on a regular basis.

I started at age 46, graduated at age 49 (turned 50 three weeks later) and now have completed General Surgery residency and Vascular Surgery fellowship. Just completed a 1 mile swim this afternoon (post call and did two cases overnight) and now planning to take my little Skyhawk out for a late afternoon flying session. It isn't the age, it's the person.
 
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Foghorn said:
There's an SDNer with the handle "oldman" who was a senior citizen (I'm not quite sure of this) by the time he applied to med-school. I think he's a 2nd year resident now. He's the one who originally started the Y!IFMBA! thread.
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he's not actually old
 
How do I get my picture inside the box on the left?
 
Last edited:
Gerardji said:
How do I add my own picture (not a premade avatar) to my post? Website instructions and pleas through emails have not brought the answer.
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There's a yellow box that looks like a landscape on the toolbar. If you hover on it, it says "insert image." It wants an URL. So put your image someplace where it will have a web address, such as a picture server like imageshack.us.

Pay attention to sizing - don't put big huge pictures in threads - it slows loading down and makes threads a pain to read.
 
Gerardji said:

I am 60 and about to start pre-med. It's five years here, not four, and includes Ayurvedic medicine in the curriculum. I won't be specializing in anything else.
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"What they are teaching in the world is not even Ayurved. I'm going to give you real Ayurved." --Maharishi Mahesh Yogi
 
You guys give me hope!!! I'm 31 and won't be done with the essential pre-reqs for another 2 years (part time)..I was thinking I was too old to give professional school a shot...but, I see, age IS just a number!!!
 
emedpa said:
I know someone who graduated pa school at 72.....not kidding...he's a young 72 as you might have guessed.
Click to expand...


That is awesome...what an accomplishment!!!
 
This thread definitely makes me feel better 🙂 I am 26 and have just decided to go back to school. I am hoping to get my bachelors in 2-3 years which would put me in Med School around age 30. I'm glad that I won't be the only older student there.
 
Thanks for the inspiration, guys. I'm still a pre-med but if all goes according to plan, I'll be starting med school in two years at age 40.
 
My birthday is in the summer, so I'll be 41 when I start med school next August. It doesn't bother me at all. Although I will say that a couple of the allopathic programs I interviewed with were extremely rude and negative about my age....... combative, even.
DO schools I interviewed with had no comment to make (and no attitude vibing around the room either). I guess it is more common to have non-trads there.
I have always thought that numbers are pretty unimportant.
 
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Awesomette said:
This thread definitely makes me feel better 🙂 I am 26 and have just decided to go back to school. I am hoping to get my bachelors in 2-3 years which would put me in Med School around age 30. I'm glad that I won't be the only older student there.
Click to expand...


I'll be 26 or perhaps even 27 by the time I really get back to completing my bachelor's (and I'm basically going to start over--only completed about a year the first time around), so I'm looking at being 31-32 before I start med school. It used to bother me, but now not so much, granted my priorities may change by then depending on my exact situation.

As for students I personally know, I don't really know any, heh. I know my medical director's wife is in med school, but I don't know how old she is (going by physical appearance alone, and knowing the approximate age of said director, I'd guess mid-30's or so).

My partner's life partner is 39, just finishing NP school, and has apparently expressed interest in going on to med school. I know he'll practice as an NP for a while first, so I imagine he'll be mid-40's or so by the time he starts towards his MD.
 
I know a lady who is 54 about to start her first year in August!
 
I'm a first year and I'm loving it at 51 years old!
 
njbmd said:
One of my classmates started at age 53. He is now practicing Family Medicine on a Native American reservation in South Dakota. Another friend was 52 when she started which means that both of these folks were applicants well above age 50. GWU graduated a gentleman who was 53 in the late 1990s. .
Click to expand...
He's an attending where I went to medical school. The oldest student in my class graduated at 54. He went into EM.
 
I'm loving this thread. I'm 43 and I need at least two years before I can return to school to finish my premed, so I anticipate starting med school at around 47 at the earliest. I was going to do it regardless, but I love hearing all the success stories.
 
I will be 49 when I start next summer. I'm leaning towards EM, but will have to see how 3rd year goes.

I have a friend who finished at 52.
 
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