Advice please! M.S. vs. dedicated post bacc

[ma32]

Hi all! First post.

I am a 23 year old chemical engineer at good public school in Texas. I recently took a physiology class, did biomedical engineering research involving animal surgery and volunteered at a hospital, and loved each one of those things infinitely more than the boring distillation columns and whatnot that make a ChE career.


I always wanted to be a doctor... so it is time to quit fighting and go to med school!

The problem is that I will probably need post-bacc work to get in. my gpa is about 3.4, which I hear is barely competitive. I also have a tragic lack of experience in hospitals and other biological/medical things.

So... here are the options I was looking at.

1) 2 year M.S. in biomedical engineering (BME) at a campus with a medical school.
2) Dedicated 2 year premedical post-bacc program awarding a (meaningless) masters in medical science.

What do you guys think the plusses and minuses are of each?

The BME path looks good because it is cheaper and I will end up taking graduate bio classes at a med school. Plus I love BME, and would get to do more animal surgery and work with more stem cells! This program would be at UT-Houston or UT-Southwestern, which both have top tier medical schools near the grad schools.

The dedicated post bacc program offers a more focused curriculum, and may make me look more committed when I apply in two years. Also, the curriculum mirrors the medical school classwork and will give me an edge when I do make it into an allopathic school. I can definetly see the appeal of one of these programs. This program would be at UNT in Denton, TX, which is a DO school and is not ranked as high as UT-Southwestern or UT-Houston.



Last question... I will be 25 at application time according to my plan. Is this a doomed career change? 25 seems so much older than all the 21 year old applicants at my university!

Thanks!!

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[betterlate]

Hi all! First post.

I am a 23 year old chemical engineer at good public school in Texas. I recently took a physiology class, did biomedical engineering research involving animal surgery and volunteered at a hospital, and loved each one of those things infinitely more than the boring distillation columns and whatnot that make a ChE career.


I always wanted to be a doctor... so it is time to quit fighting and go to med school!

The problem is that I will probably need post-bacc work to get in. my gpa is about 3.4, which I hear is barely competitive. I also have a tragic lack of experience in hospitals and other biological/medical things.

So... here are the options I was looking at.

1) 2 year M.S. in biomedical engineering (BME) at a campus with a medical school.
2) Dedicated 2 year premedical post-bacc program awarding a (meaningless) masters in medical science.

What do you guys think the plusses and minuses are of each?

The BME path looks good because it is cheaper and I will end up taking graduate bio classes at a med school. Plus I love BME, and would get to do more animal surgery and work with more stem cells! This program would be at UT-Houston or UT-Southwestern, which both have top tier medical schools near the grad schools.

The dedicated post bacc program offers a more focused curriculum, and may make me look more committed when I apply in two years. Also, the curriculum mirrors the medical school classwork and will give me an edge when I do make it into an allopathic school. I can definetly see the appeal of one of these programs. This program would be at UNT in Denton, TX, which is a DO school and is not ranked as high as UT-Southwestern or UT-Houston.



Last question... I will be 25 at application time according to my plan. Is this a doomed career change? 25 seems so much older than all the 21 year old applicants at my university!

Thanks!!

You have several good options here. Without actually knowing you, it is hard to give advice. That said, based solely on the information you provided, I say go for the BME path. It is one that you already know you enjoy, it could potentially lead you to a financially and emotionally rewarding career outside of medical school at a fraction of the time and expense, and it could offer unique skills/perspective/direction if and when you DO decide to go to medical school.

There's no bad there.

As to whether or not you'd be too old, the answer is 'clearly not.' Poke around the nontraditional ages forum for a while. That should reassure you that there really is no such thing as too old. If I'm not mistaken, 25 is the average age of applicants to medical school. It certainly doesn't rate as unusual.

 

[Isoprop]

Last question... I will be 25 at application time according to my plan. Is this a doomed career change? 25 seems so much older than all the 21 year old applicants at my university!

i'd bet money that when you get into med school, you won't be the oldest member of your class. so no, 25 is not "too old."

of course i'm biased b/c i'm 25.