27 y/o non-traditional applicant seeking advice (warning: long)

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TRF84

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Hey y'all. This is my first time posting here, and I'm really hoping you guys can help me out. I ended up writing a novel's worth of backstory on how I got to this point in my life, but figured I'd save you guys the agony and hide it under a spoiler tag in case you want to read it after looking over everything else (i.e. the important stuff).

I started out in college as an electrical engineering major even though I didn’t have much interest in it as a career path, and ended up failing a lot of classes due to lack of effort. After getting academically dismissed after two semesters, I spent a year re-evaluating at community college, decided I wanted to pursue medicine, and turned myself around. I got back into my original university, changed majors to biomedical engineering, and did great for three more years before graduating with high honors in 2012. During this time I did a lot of research, but neglected the volunteering and clinical exposure components of my application.

Sometime around my fourth year of undergrad (1 before graduating), I decided I enjoyed the BME subject matter enough that I wanted to find a way to incorporate it into my practice by creating my own device IP and working with the industry to bring my ideas to fruition. In order to achieve this, I decided to go get a 1 or 2 year master’s degree for more in-depth coursework and to gain a better understanding of the medical device industry.

Unfortunately, somewhere around the time I started my 2-year master’s program, I started dealing with some depression and anxiety issues that have been plaguing me on-and-off ever since. These were exacerbated by the fact that my family, friends, and girlfriend (then of two years, currently of six) were all still back in the city where I’d done my undergrad, and I was now halfway across the country.

Thanks to some ridiculous mental gymnastics, I managed to convince myself that I wasn’t cut out for a career in medicine after all, despite the success that I’d had, and despite the fact that it had been my dream since I was 19, and resigned myself to entering the medical device industry instead. Fast forward a couple of years to 2014 and I graduated from my master’s program, having done well enough in my classes, but without having put forth much effort towards finding a job, since my heart was never really in it to begin with.

I moved back home to be close to the people I care about, but thanks to the combination of financial security, worsening depression, and lack of a clear direction moving forward, I was in no hurry to find a job. I submitted the occasional application and had a few interviews, but never had any success.

I finally got help for the depression in the subsequent months, and started to get back on the right track. I realized that I had been lying to myself about not wanting to pursue medicine, and a lot of my dissatisfaction with life came from the fact that I was moving away from that goal. I started making preparation to take the MCAT and apply during the 2015-16 cycle, though I didn’t really know where to look for advice on my application or the process itself, and jumped into it without understanding my shortcomings or the seriousness of the AMCAS timeline.

In what at the time seemed like a great thing at the time but in hindsight was actually horrible timing, I finally got a job offer to start in March of 2015 at an orthopedic implant start-up. This completely derailed my MCAT prep since I had to move, once again, halfway across the country from my girlfriend (who was now out of school and working) and my family and get settled into a new job in a new city. I scheduled myself to take the MCAT that July, knowing that, it being the new MCAT, my score would be released for over a month. I figured that delaying the completion of my primary by a couple of months wouldn’t be a big deal, but boy was I wrong. At any rate, when all was said and done and I finally had all of my secondaries submitted and letters in, it was approaching October. Of the ten schools to which I applied, I ended up not getting an interview at any of them. This was obviously very discouraging, but I realized post-mortem that my mismanagement of the timeline was largely to blame.

The months rolled by and I heard nothing from the schools I applied to. Meanwhile between increasing stress at work, worsening weather, loneliness from living far away from my loved ones, and the extreme difficulty of finding a therapist in that city, my depression grew pretty severe. I finally concluded in December of 2015 that I couldn’t cope with it anymore, and decided to quit and move back home once my lease was up in March.

That pretty much brings me to where I am now. I lost confidence in my chances at getting into med school, and talked myself once more into thinking it was a bad idea to begin with. As before, I had enough money available to get through several months of joblessness, so I wasn’t under a lot of pressure to find anything right away, and held out for something that I really liked and which was close to home.

Despite having several interviews since I moved back, I didn’t have any luck in finding another job. Ultimately, this past October, after a particularly bad interview, it finally clicked again that I was trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, so to speak, and that I was never going to find success or happiness in pursuing a career I didn’t have any interest in. In spite of that, moving back home, in addition to adopting a more active lifestyle, has been pretty effective in combating my depression, though I feel like my continuing lack of a sense of purpose in life has kept me from actually feeling happy.

After toying with lots of other career ideas over the past few months, I realized that I still want to go to medical school, and want to try to re-apply. The conundrum I’m facing now is how to go about it. As such, I’m appealing to you, SDN, to help me plan out what I should be doing going forward. Note that as I am still jobless, I am able and willing to devote 100% of my time towards improving my application in any way possible. Given my stats and the fact that I’m hopelessly ambitious, I intend to aim for a top-25 school if that’s realistically still within reach.

TL;DR: I was a biomedical engineering major in undergrad and did all the pre-med coursework in anticipation of matriculating after I graduated in 2012. I decided partway through that I liked the subject matter of my major so much that I wanted to get a master’s in first it so I could be better prepared to incorporate medical device IP generation into my practice after entering the medical field. Unfortunately, I started dealing with depression during my master’s program, convinced myself I wasn't cut out for med school, and pursued an industry job instead.

Got a job a few months out of school, but after getting treatment for depression decided I still wanted to pursue med school after all. Took MCAT, but didn’t have sufficient knowledge of the application process and ended up squandering my first application cycle by submitting my application materials too late. Received no interview invites. Got depressed again, quit my job and moved home. Depression got better, and I hoped I could find a better job here, but was unsuccessful, and, after a few months, realized that despite everything I still want to try to get into medical school. This time, however, I want to make sure I do it right. Now I’m seeking advice on how to make the most of the time I’ve got on my hands to optimize my next application, whenever that ends up being.

Here are the questions I would like some help with:

1. What kind of timeline should I be looking at?

The main quantitative weaknesses in my application are my relative lack of volunteering experience and clinical exposure. I need to figure out some volunteer opportunities and start doing some shadowing, but I'll save that for another thread. Regardless, I’m not altogether convinced that beefing those up between now and the end of May 2017 will be enough to convince adcoms of my dedication to, and thorough understanding of, this career path. My current belief is that I should plan to apply next year, for the 2018-19 cycle, in order to maximize my chances of getting accepted to my target (i.e. top-25) schools. This leads me to another question:

2. Should I pursue some kind of post-bacc if I have the time to do so?

This seems like a good idea to me for a number of reasons – I can get rec letters from professors I’ve worked with recently, which I think is really important; I’m missing a genetics class, which excludes me from a number of schools, so a post-bacc would allow me to shore up that requirement; and I would have pre-med advisement as well as potential volunteering and research opportunities available to boost my application.

My only misgivings about this path are that it’s fairly late in the application cycle and a lot of them have rolling admissions, which means my chances of getting in might already be zero. Additionally, not many are geared towards people in my particular situation. As an alternative, my undergrad institution allows me to take a number of courses as a post-graduate, so I may be able to create some kind of build-your-own-post-bacc there, but I think I’d miss out on a lot of the benefits of a real post-bacc.

3. How do I explain the gaps in my resume that resulted from my depression on AMCAS or in an interview?

This is definitely a touchy subject. I feel like if I’m completely forthright about my history of depression with the adcoms, they’ll only see me as a potential danger to a patient waiting to happen. Obviously I wouldn’t be pursuing this career path if I had any belief whatsoever that that could even possibly be the case, but since they don’t know me personally, I can’t imagine any way I could bring this up without it reflecting negatively on me.

On the other hand, if I’m not open about it, then all they’ll see is large swaths of time where I appear to have been doing nothing with my life, which I imagine will make me look unmotivated or undedicated. That probably wouldn’t go down too well with them either.

Can someone give me some advice on how to approach this?

My current application strengths and weaknesses:

Strengths:

-Stats: 3.94 UGrad GPA (discounting my first year), 3.88 Grad GPA; 3.63 UGrad and 3.83 Grad BCPM GPA per AMCAS; 521 MCAT (127 Bio, 132 Phys, 131 CARS, 131 Psych)
-2+ Years research experience
-Have a master’s degree
-Worked professionally in a medically-oriented field

Weaknesses:

-Track record of inconsistent success
-Limited clinical experience, even less volunteering experience
-Haven’t maintained relationships with previous recommenders or other professors, so I’m not convinced I could get good rec letters

In Conclusion:

If anyone has any general advice for me outside of the questions I asked, feel free to share. I'd also be happy to clarify if there's anything I left out or failed to describe in sufficient detail.

If you've gotten this far, thanks so much for taking the time to read this monstrosity, and I appreciate any advice you can give me from the bottom of my heart.

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Recommendation letters - it won't matter if you haven't maintained relationships. I applied for medical school 15 years after my master's degree and still got a solid recommendation letter from my advisor (she was still working with the program).

Volunteering and Clinical Exposure - Get your butt in gear and get some volunteering experience. How will you know strongly enough that you want to complete medical school without it? One of my classmates is a biomedical engineer, and you have a strong GPA for that major. But you need something to drive you enough to get through the rough spots in medical school.

Biggest issue - your depression. Make sure you're on whatever meds you need to be stable before starting interviews and school. Medical school is stressful for those with underlying mental health disorders and often triggers exacerbations. Put yourself in the best position possible to succeed. Then, when you go in for interviews, if you think you need to bring up your medical/mental health issues (you don't have to) you can say you are now being successfully treated.

Post bacc - I wouldn't. It's a waste of time. Your classes are recent enough.

Explaining away depression - many ways to do it - Quitting your job and moving home due to family problems would cover it. You are part of your family, so it's not a lie. Re-focus the discussion with a statement about how as soon as possible you got into a job that was medically related. I know someone who took many years off to raise kids and still got accepted to medical school.

Refocusing - also stating that you spent time doing things medically related because you enjoy medicine, but then got a lot of exposure to physicians working with patients and realized that medicine was your true calling then took the time to better understand the application process and took the time to improve your application.

That's what I would do. I wish you the best.
 
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I'm a 29-year-old applicant with a similar LizzyM to you who has also struggled with mental illness. First and foremost, I think that what others have said on this thread is really important: your top priority should be making sure that you're receiving the care you need to manage your chronic illness and that you have a plan for how to handle the stress of medical school and your career as a physician. Second, you will get interviews with your stats (which are great by the way!), so you should practice whatever explanation you'd feel comfortable giving honestly for any gaps in your background with people you trust. It's up to you HOW you want to craft your explanation and if you would like to be upfront about your depression. I'm only an applicant, so I can't give larger advice as to what adcoms discuss behind closed doors. What I can tell you is that I struggled with this question a lot (I have two Ws from undergrad during a period from a period when I wasn't managing my depression well), and ultimately decided that I need to be at a school where I feel comfortable and supported in who I am: a school that sees how I've grown and also how my own struggle can be a source of strength and connection with others from different backgrounds. I've been fortunate enough to have several interviews with psychiatrists this cycle (including one who specializes in physician wellness) who appreciated my honesty and were also impressed to see from my most recent grades/accomplishments that I had found successful methods to manage my illness. Given that both medical students and physicians have been talking about trying to remove the stigma surrounding mental illness and so many presentations at interviews discuss "wellness", it's important for me to be in a community that truly believes in treating the mind and the body not just the jargon. You need to figure out for you what matters most for you in terms of finding a school where you feel like you fit. Be aware that there is still a stigma against mental illness in the field. However, as an older applicant with good stats who's high-functioning, you are in a better place than many applicants who have struggled but haven't figured out how to get the help they need.

Regardless of what you choose to say in interviews, you should definitely get more clinical experience ASAP and volunteering experience! The clinical experience will help with the refocusing/confirming that you can see yourself living the daily life of a physician. It will help you fill your personal statement with true, specific answers to WHY MEDICINE? WHY MD? WHY NOW?. For volunteer experience, I recommend doing something that you feel passionately about -- not necessarily the standard cookie-cutter position, but something you feel like you'd do even if you weren't applying to medical school. For me, my volunteer work is one of the things that makes my application year feel valuable.

Feel free to PM me!
 
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As long as you need to show Adcoms that you can handle a rigorous course load. I estimate 1-3 years for the pre-reqs + MCAT prep.

1. What kind of timeline should I be looking at?

Yes.
2. Should I pursue some kind of post-bacc if I have the time to do so?

You tell the truth. Sustained academic excellence will allay Adcom's concerns.

3. How do I explain the gaps in my resume that resulted from my depression on AMCAS or in an interview?
 
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As long as you need to show Adcoms that you can handle a rigorous course load. I estimate 1-3 years for the pre-reqs + MCAT prep.

1. What kind of timeline should I be looking at?

Yes.
2. Should I pursue some kind of post-bacc if I have the time to do so?

You tell the truth. Sustained academic excellence will allay Adcom's concerns.

3. How do I explain the gaps in my resume that resulted from my depression on AMCAS or in an interview?

@Goro - He already took the MCAT - from original post: 521 MCAT (127 Bio, 132 Phys, 131 CARS, 131 Psych)

I too wonder what your whole cGPA and sGPA are inclding freshman year.

OP - how long since your last not-working-staying-in-bed period? I think if you've been employed for 2+ years after treatment/meds you don't need to go into the depression on your resume/application. In fact I suggest that you don't make it a "thing" in your application. Many, many applicants are depressed (maybe 10-20%?) it's how it affects you and if you've addressed it that matters. Those with untreated depression/anxiety are the ones that I worry about and if you have a masters and have been working at a professional job that's not you.
 
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Hi, thank you for sharing your story. I think was in Feb- I hope you made progress on what you hope/intend to do to move forward.

I am a non-trad student too, 31 this year, and reapplied to medical school this cycle. It's tough, and "it" hasn't event started. I made sure I wanted to be a doctor before I decided to go back to school to get my pre-reqs, and a lot of the motivation to push forward came from volunteer experiences on a ICU unit. I keep finding new reasons to affirm my decision the longer I work at this. Basically, when things got tough at each junction, there was something intrinsic to pull me through. Even failing to land any interviews last cycle was such an invaluable experience for me to assess why I wanted to be a physician, and coping with the failure was perhaps one of the most trying experiences I've had to endure. To navigate any life, whether in medicine, finance ( my previous profession) - you have got to take solid care of yourself first- before you can make any sort of meaningful impact on someone elses life. Being tasked with responsibility to advise on anothers care and wellbeing is stress inducing, a thankless role, and we've got to want this because we want this for good and selfless reasons.

Other responses on here hit the nail already- you've got to work on you and depression first- show yourself you have triumphed first, then how to speak to it with an admissions person is really secondary. Admissions people speak to many students and they probably can spot a dis-ingenuine response a mile away. I actually think if we're forecoming about our handicaps in a productive way, fully taking ownership of a possible liability, and show that we are self aware and have got this under control might be better as far as strategy goes. But then again, I dont know what admissions people look for. My goal is present a version of myself I believe in to adcom and hope for the best. Good luck.
 
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Hmmm. I often struggle with the concept of sharing a mental illness. I'm like you - I struggled pretty significantly in college and applying to graduate school with poor grades were difficult to "explain" away.

If I were an adcom (pulling from my own experiences when I've had to evaluate people for a job/position), I would have tremendous respect for someone who shared about their mental health struggles and how they managed their illness to find success. However, even in the most progressive environments people harbor deep stigma about folks with mental illness. Is it ironic that it's coming from health professionals? - absolutely - but that is a reality. It may be something that you have to feel out when talking to interviewers.

Perhaps a compromise would be to share that you struggled with a chronic illness? Vague enough, but still puts the point across that you had significant challenges to your health (which you did).

Wish I could offer better advice, but know that I have a lot of empathy. Wishing you the best in the application process.
 
Do not mention your history of depression. There are people that will jump at the idea that med school will be too hard for you. As for gaps in your resume, the way I'd approach it is just saying you were doing temp jobs with an agency because no solid offer had come. They won't investigate that.
 
Hey y'all. This is my first time posting here, and I'm really hoping you guys can help me out. I ended up writing a novel's worth of backstory on how I got to this point in my life, but figured I'd save you guys the agony and hide it under a spoiler tag in case you want to read it after looking over everything else (i.e. the important stuff).

I started out in college as an electrical engineering major even though I didn’t have much interest in it as a career path, and ended up failing a lot of classes due to lack of effort. After getting academically dismissed after two semesters, I spent a year re-evaluating at community college, decided I wanted to pursue medicine, and turned myself around. I got back into my original university, changed majors to biomedical engineering, and did great for three more years before graduating with high honors in 2012. During this time I did a lot of research, but neglected the volunteering and clinical exposure components of my application.

Sometime around my fourth year of undergrad (1 before graduating), I decided I enjoyed the BME subject matter enough that I wanted to find a way to incorporate it into my practice by creating my own device IP and working with the industry to bring my ideas to fruition. In order to achieve this, I decided to go get a 1 or 2 year master’s degree for more in-depth coursework and to gain a better understanding of the medical device industry.

Unfortunately, somewhere around the time I started my 2-year master’s program, I started dealing with some depression and anxiety issues that have been plaguing me on-and-off ever since. These were exacerbated by the fact that my family, friends, and girlfriend (then of two years, currently of six) were all still back in the city where I’d done my undergrad, and I was now halfway across the country.

Thanks to some ridiculous mental gymnastics, I managed to convince myself that I wasn’t cut out for a career in medicine after all, despite the success that I’d had, and despite the fact that it had been my dream since I was 19, and resigned myself to entering the medical device industry instead. Fast forward a couple of years to 2014 and I graduated from my master’s program, having done well enough in my classes, but without having put forth much effort towards finding a job, since my heart was never really in it to begin with.

I moved back home to be close to the people I care about, but thanks to the combination of financial security, worsening depression, and lack of a clear direction moving forward, I was in no hurry to find a job. I submitted the occasional application and had a few interviews, but never had any success.

I finally got help for the depression in the subsequent months, and started to get back on the right track. I realized that I had been lying to myself about not wanting to pursue medicine, and a lot of my dissatisfaction with life came from the fact that I was moving away from that goal. I started making preparation to take the MCAT and apply during the 2015-16 cycle, though I didn’t really know where to look for advice on my application or the process itself, and jumped into it without understanding my shortcomings or the seriousness of the AMCAS timeline.

In what at the time seemed like a great thing at the time but in hindsight was actually horrible timing, I finally got a job offer to start in March of 2015 at an orthopedic implant start-up. This completely derailed my MCAT prep since I had to move, once again, halfway across the country from my girlfriend (who was now out of school and working) and my family and get settled into a new job in a new city. I scheduled myself to take the MCAT that July, knowing that, it being the new MCAT, my score would be released for over a month. I figured that delaying the completion of my primary by a couple of months wouldn’t be a big deal, but boy was I wrong. At any rate, when all was said and done and I finally had all of my secondaries submitted and letters in, it was approaching October. Of the ten schools to which I applied, I ended up not getting an interview at any of them. This was obviously very discouraging, but I realized post-mortem that my mismanagement of the timeline was largely to blame.

The months rolled by and I heard nothing from the schools I applied to. Meanwhile between increasing stress at work, worsening weather, loneliness from living far away from my loved ones, and the extreme difficulty of finding a therapist in that city, my depression grew pretty severe. I finally concluded in December of 2015 that I couldn’t cope with it anymore, and decided to quit and move back home once my lease was up in March.

That pretty much brings me to where I am now. I lost confidence in my chances at getting into med school, and talked myself once more into thinking it was a bad idea to begin with. As before, I had enough money available to get through several months of joblessness, so I wasn’t under a lot of pressure to find anything right away, and held out for something that I really liked and which was close to home.

Despite having several interviews since I moved back, I didn’t have any luck in finding another job. Ultimately, this past October, after a particularly bad interview, it finally clicked again that I was trying to fit a square peg into a round hole, so to speak, and that I was never going to find success or happiness in pursuing a career I didn’t have any interest in. In spite of that, moving back home, in addition to adopting a more active lifestyle, has been pretty effective in combating my depression, though I feel like my continuing lack of a sense of purpose in life has kept me from actually feeling happy.

After toying with lots of other career ideas over the past few months, I realized that I still want to go to medical school, and want to try to re-apply. The conundrum I’m facing now is how to go about it. As such, I’m appealing to you, SDN, to help me plan out what I should be doing going forward. Note that as I am still jobless, I am able and willing to devote 100% of my time towards improving my application in any way possible. Given my stats and the fact that I’m hopelessly ambitious, I intend to aim for a top-25 school if that’s realistically still within reach.

TL;DR: I was a biomedical engineering major in undergrad and did all the pre-med coursework in anticipation of matriculating after I graduated in 2012. I decided partway through that I liked the subject matter of my major so much that I wanted to get a master’s in first it so I could be better prepared to incorporate medical device IP generation into my practice after entering the medical field. Unfortunately, I started dealing with depression during my master’s program, convinced myself I wasn't cut out for med school, and pursued an industry job instead.

Got a job a few months out of school, but after getting treatment for depression decided I still wanted to pursue med school after all. Took MCAT, but didn’t have sufficient knowledge of the application process and ended up squandering my first application cycle by submitting my application materials too late. Received no interview invites. Got depressed again, quit my job and moved home. Depression got better, and I hoped I could find a better job here, but was unsuccessful, and, after a few months, realized that despite everything I still want to try to get into medical school. This time, however, I want to make sure I do it right. Now I’m seeking advice on how to make the most of the time I’ve got on my hands to optimize my next application, whenever that ends up being.

Here are the questions I would like some help with:

1. What kind of timeline should I be looking at?

The main quantitative weaknesses in my application are my relative lack of volunteering experience and clinical exposure. I need to figure out some volunteer opportunities and start doing some shadowing, but I'll save that for another thread. Regardless, I’m not altogether convinced that beefing those up between now and the end of May 2017 will be enough to convince adcoms of my dedication to, and thorough understanding of, this career path. My current belief is that I should plan to apply next year, for the 2018-19 cycle, in order to maximize my chances of getting accepted to my target (i.e. top-25) schools. This leads me to another question:

2. Should I pursue some kind of post-bacc if I have the time to do so?

This seems like a good idea to me for a number of reasons – I can get rec letters from professors I’ve worked with recently, which I think is really important; I’m missing a genetics class, which excludes me from a number of schools, so a post-bacc would allow me to shore up that requirement; and I would have pre-med advisement as well as potential volunteering and research opportunities available to boost my application.

My only misgivings about this path are that it’s fairly late in the application cycle and a lot of them have rolling admissions, which means my chances of getting in might already be zero. Additionally, not many are geared towards people in my particular situation. As an alternative, my undergrad institution allows me to take a number of courses as a post-graduate, so I may be able to create some kind of build-your-own-post-bacc there, but I think I’d miss out on a lot of the benefits of a real post-bacc.

3. How do I explain the gaps in my resume that resulted from my depression on AMCAS or in an interview?

This is definitely a touchy subject. I feel like if I’m completely forthright about my history of depression with the adcoms, they’ll only see me as a potential danger to a patient waiting to happen. Obviously I wouldn’t be pursuing this career path if I had any belief whatsoever that that could even possibly be the case, but since they don’t know me personally, I can’t imagine any way I could bring this up without it reflecting negatively on me.

On the other hand, if I’m not open about it, then all they’ll see is large swaths of time where I appear to have been doing nothing with my life, which I imagine will make me look unmotivated or undedicated. That probably wouldn’t go down too well with them either.

Can someone give me some advice on how to approach this?

My current application strengths and weaknesses:

Strengths:

-Stats: 3.94 UGrad GPA (discounting my first year), 3.88 Grad GPA; 3.63 UGrad and 3.83 Grad BCPM GPA per AMCAS; 521 MCAT (127 Bio, 132 Phys, 131 CARS, 131 Psych)
-2+ Years research experience
-Have a master’s degree
-Worked professionally in a medically-oriented field

Weaknesses:

-Track record of inconsistent success
-Limited clinical experience, even less volunteering experience
-Haven’t maintained relationships with previous recommenders or other professors, so I’m not convinced I could get good rec letters

In Conclusion:

If anyone has any general advice for me outside of the questions I asked, feel free to share. I'd also be happy to clarify if there's anything I left out or failed to describe in sufficient detail.

If you've gotten this far, thanks so much for taking the time to read this monstrosity, and I appreciate any advice you can give me from the bottom of my heart.
for what it's worth, you seem to have recurring issues with depression that derail your life plans......I don't think that is a good indicator of success in med school. It's grueling, depressing and doesn't lend well to periods of not being able to function at full capacity.

If you like medical fields, look into nursing/respiratory therapy/OT/PT etc
 
I'm not sure I would advertise mental illness under any circumstances. While some might take pity, an equal or greater number will either judge or think you don't have the "right stuff"

Hmmm. I often struggle with the concept of sharing a mental illness. I'm like you - I struggled pretty significantly in college and applying to graduate school with poor grades were difficult to "explain" away.

Do not mention your history of depression. There are people that will jump at the idea that med school will be too hard for you. As for gaps in your resume, the way I'd approach it is just saying you were doing temp jobs with an agency because no solid offer had come. They won't investigate that.

It's not punitive judgement or scorn, not a lack of empathy, and not even hypocrisy that keeps many AdComs from admitting most applicants with a history of mental illness.

It's generally much more of a rational calculation of the likelihood of success that applicant faces given the nature of their struggles. An applicant with an up-and-down pattern during undergrad and the immediate pre-admission years is likely to present this same up-and-down pattern as a medical student and there simply isn't much space for a 'down' without failing out. The pressure cooker that is medical school can break even the mentally-healthy; the 'fragile' or 'brittle' have a much higher chance of failure.

Regulating your mental and emotional health is a critical skill to master, and you should have the life-experiences necessary to demonstrate you are fully in control before you apply.
 
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I'm not sure I would advertise mental illness under any circumstances.
While some might take pity, an equal or greater number will either judge or think you don't have the "right stuff"
My Gawd, this is an extremely ignorant statement. We take mental health issues very seriously. Medical school is a furnace, and I've seen it break even healthy students. The #1 reason my school loses students to withdrawal, dismissal or LOA is to unresolved mental health issues


It's not punitive judgement or scorn, not a lack of empathy, and not even hypocrisy that keeps many AdComs from admitting most applicants with a history of mental illness.

It's generally much more of a rational calculation of the likelihood of success that applicant faces given the nature of their struggles. An applicant with an up-and-down pattern during undergrad and the immediate pre-admission years is likely to present this same up-and-down pattern as a medical student and there simply isn't much space for a 'down' without failing out. The pressure cooker that is medical school can break even the mentally-healthy; the 'fragile' or 'brittle' have a much higher chance of failure.

Regulating your mental and emotional health is a critical skill to master, and you should have the life-experiences necessary to demonstrate you are fully in control before you apply.
Agree 100% with sb247 and the wise Doktermom. Allied health professions are perfect alternatives.
 
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