A series of questions

[Shaffer]

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I’m a college junior, dual majoring in Psychology and Religion. My cumulative GPA is a 3.23. I know it’s not great, but I’ve been doing much better as each semester passes.

I switched from a Secondary Education/English major, to English, and finally to what I am now. I’ve withdrawn from 2 classes my entire college education (an education course, when I decided not to be an Ed. major anymore, and a religion course I was taking this past summer that I just loathed, plus I needed the refund money).

Does changing my major or withdrawing from classes hurt my chances at getting into a graduate school/Post Bac/Medical school?

My high school was a joke, so I just say I know nothing useful about Bio and Chem. My major only requires I have one science course, and I want to take Astronomy or Forensic Chemistry, but if I decide to go with this pre-med thing, I’ll be doing my requirements for that instead. If I do decide on pre-med, I’ll be going into psychiatry, most likely.


So, I ask:
-Should I tack on another year to my undergrad, graduate in 2012 instead of 2011, and complete the pre-med requirements, or should I graduate on time with my degree and get do PostBac (since my GPA is crap, anyway?) Or should I do something completely different?

-I am a polite, idealistic, and very helpful person. I am not very competitive. Will this make me look weak, and will it hinder my chances of getting into and succeeding in med school? The whole “gunners” and “cutthroats” thing terrifies me. I mean, I thrive by interacting with others, especially when it comes to my academics.

-I’ve heard that everything you learn in undergrad/pre-med has nothing to do with medical school. It’s just a test of how much stress you can handle. How true is this?

 

[krisrox]

I’m a college junior, dual majoring in Psychology and Religion. My cumulative GPA is a 3.23. I know it’s not great, but I’ve been doing much better as each semester passes.

I switched from a Secondary Education/English major, to English, and finally to what I am now. I’ve withdrawn from 2 classes my entire college education (an education course, when I decided not to be an Ed. major anymore, and a religion course I was taking this past summer that I just loathed, plus I needed the refund money).

Does changing my major or withdrawing from classes hurt my chances at getting into a graduate school/Post Bac/Medical school?

My high school was a joke, so I just say I know nothing useful about Bio and Chem. My major only requires I have one science course, and I want to take Astronomy or Forensic Chemistry, but if I decide to go with this pre-med thing, I’ll be doing my requirements for that instead. If I do decide on pre-med, I’ll be going into psychiatry, most likely.


So, I ask:
-Should I tack on another year to my undergrad, graduate in 2012 instead of 2011, and complete the pre-med requirements, or should I graduate on time with my degree and get do PostBac (since my GPA is crap, anyway?) Or should I do something completely different?

-I am a polite, idealistic, and very helpful person. I am not very competitive. Will this make me look weak, and will it hinder my chances of getting into and succeeding in med school? The whole “gunners” and “cutthroats” thing terrifies me. I mean, I thrive by interacting with others, especially when it comes to my academics.

-I’ve heard that everything you learn in undergrad/pre-med has nothing to do with medical school. It’s just a test of how much stress you can handle. How true is this?

You probably want to leave this to the folks in the pre-med forums to answer. I doubt we can give you any helpful information about getting into med school. Good luck!

 

[pingouin]

You probably want to leave this to the folks in the pre-med forums to answer. I doubt we can give you any helpful information about getting into med school. Good luck!

Speak for yourself. 😉 However, you are correct- this belongs in the premed forums and I'll move it there after a few comments.

I’m a college junior, dual majoring in Psychology and Religion. My cumulative GPA is a 3.23. I know it’s not great, but I’ve been doing much better as each semester passes.

I switched from a Secondary Education/English major, to English, and finally to what I am now. I’ve withdrawn from 2 classes my entire college education (an education course, when I decided not to be an Ed. major anymore, and a religion course I was taking this past summer that I just loathed, plus I needed the refund money).

Does changing my major or withdrawing from classes hurt my chances at getting into a graduate school/Post Bac/Medical school?

My high school was a joke, so I just say I know nothing useful about Bio and Chem. My major only requires I have one science course, and I want to take Astronomy or Forensic Chemistry, but if I decide to go with this pre-med thing, I’ll be doing my requirements for that instead. If I do decide on pre-med, I’ll be going into psychiatry, most likely.


So, I ask:
-Should I tack on another year to my undergrad, graduate in 2012 instead of 2011, and complete the pre-med requirements, or should I graduate on time with my degree and get do PostBac (since my GPA is crap, anyway?) Or should I do something completely different?

-I am a polite, idealistic, and very helpful person. I am not very competitive. Will this make me look weak, and will it hinder my chances of getting into and succeeding in med school? The whole “gunners” and “cutthroats” thing terrifies me. I mean, I thrive by interacting with others, especially when it comes to my academics.

-I’ve heard that everything you learn in undergrad/pre-med has nothing to do with medical school. It’s just a test of how much stress you can handle. How true is this?

You are the only person who can decide what track is best for a medical school application. Your GPA could stand to be more competitive if you want a successful application: would you be best off trying to add the hard sciences into what you have left and juggling that? Or would you be better served by finishing what you need to do and then throwing all your focus into the sciences for a year or two? And yes, you would need to be able to explain to the admissions committees how you came to the decision to go into medicine after trying several other fields first. Many people are undecided in the beginning, but everyone needs to prove a commitment to the decision as it is a huge investment for a school to accept you. There are two routes to becoming a physician- MD or DO- so you may want to do some research about basic admissions requirements to both types of programs. Start with the FAQs at the top of each forum.

Regarding gunners and competition, some schools are known to be more competitive (after you're in) than others. And some individuals will be more competitive than others, whether the culture of the school is "cut-throat" or not. It's your responsibility during the interview process to get a feel for the community at each school so that you can find the program where you'll be happiest.

Generally speaking, the science that you'll learn in medical school is not an extension of the pre-med requisite courses. However, there are certainly times where you do see those principles pop back into your life- cardiovascular physiology and physics springs to mind for me.

Good luck with your decision. I'm sure others around here will have lots more opinions. They always do. 😉

 

[scattun]

Have you thought about a Ph.D in Clinical Psy? If you want to work in mental health, that seems like a much easier route to treating patients. I know you didn't specifically mention this, but if you are not a huge fan of science than I venture to say that pre-med coursework and med school are not going to suite you well. I say if you want to go the med school route, stay in undergrad and take science classes mixed in with your major classes. It doesn't really matter to adcom's, but going from having only one science class your entire undergrad to having a semester full of them and nothing else, seems like it would unnecessarily difficult, since you haven't graduated yet. There are gunners and helpful kids in every grad program, I wouldn't let that deter you. Though, I'm not in medical school yet, I have heard that undergrad classes serve only to build a very basic foundation for med school material. The good news for you, is that since you haven't taken any science classes yet, if you rock them all, than your "science" GPA will be very strong and might serve to off balance your overall gpa a bit. I would also recommend that you try to get some clinical experience to see if being a doctor is what you really want.

 

[Mattabet]

👍 to the above information, I'll add my two cents on a question by question basis.

Does changing my major or withdrawing from classes hurt my chances at getting into a graduate school/Post Bac/Medical school?

Withdrawing doesn't help, but you've only withdrawn from a few, relatively unimportant (from the med application perspective) classes. I don't think it will hurt your application much so far. Changing your major is absolutely fine - you're allowed to explore different interests.

-Should I tack on another year to my undergrad, graduate in 2012 instead of 2011, and complete the pre-med requirements, or should I graduate on time with my degree and get do PostBac (since my GPA is crap, anyway?) Or should I do something completely different?

I don't think one option is clearly better than the other. For me personally, I'd add a fifth year undergrad and get my requirements done that way, while also (hopefully) boosting my GPA. I think getting into a post bac (unless there's a good one nearby you) adds some hassle that I wouldn't invite.

-I am a polite, idealistic, and very helpful person. I am not very competitive. Will this make me look weak, and will it hinder my chances of getting into and succeeding in med school? The whole “gunners” and “cutthroats” thing terrifies me. I mean, I thrive by interacting with others, especially when it comes to my academics.

Medicine loves polite, idealistic, helpful people! You'll probably meet some gunners (very soon, if you decide to hit those premed requirements), but you don't need to be cutthroat to be successful.

-I’ve heard that everything you learn in undergrad/pre-med has nothing to do with medical school. It’s just a test of how much stress you can handle. How true is this?

Not 'nothing', but there is some truth to it. I'd say it's more of a test of how well you can handle information that it is to confer information you'll actually need for medicine. But this isn't a one or the other thing. It's like a 60/40 ratio, and it changes depending on the class. For example, my undergrad biology class helped me out a lot in my current medical school genetics class, but nothing I've done so far has really prepared me for gross anatomy. As medical school progresses, I'm likely to get less and less help from the premed requirements (but I'm here to learn new information anyway, not to review).

 

[Shaffer]

Thanks for the response, everyone (and for moving my post to the correct area...)!

I have been really uncertain as to what to do, and although I fancy saying I graduated college in 4 years, my adviser at school assured me that if I stuck around an extra year, no one would really care, so long as I had my degree.

scattun, I thought about the Ph.D. in Clinical Psy. But I do believe that psychiatry requires a medical school degree; since I haven't taken any college-level science courses, I'm dropping an elective this semester and picking up a bio with lab.

Since my GPA needs to be much higher than it is, I really need to buckle down this semester. I am giving myself leeway in that I am allowed to get A- in any of my classes, but nothing lower; if I get anything lower, I'm not meant to go to med school. If I can't get decent grades this semester, there's really no point in continuing, since my GPA will not be sufficient.

Right? No? I don't know.

My adviser also told me that a PostBac degree only really helps your chances of getting into med school by about 5%... he's sometimes an arrogant jerk, so I won't take that number to seriously. I mean, if it's only 5 percent, then why are so many people here going for it and making it?

I'm excited! Thanks, everyone. 🙂 I am looking forward to my 8 am Biology course... just not the $200 textbook haha.