Advice- switching from law

[FA5297]

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Hey everyone! I've been lurking here for a while and wanted to get your input, especially those of you with experience. I just graduated from a top-ten law school, but want to go to medical school. Most of my interaction with law involved health, and I've been fascinated with it. I'm taking some of the pre-reqs at a local university. My undergrad GPA was around 3.7- and no sciences because I had AP'ed out of chem and bio. What do you suggest I do? A formal program? Assuming I can make As in my classes, what are my chances at a great med school and/ or scholarships? Should I be trying to get research and clinical experience? If not, will it be held against me? I'm working part time, and concerned that I won't have enough time for a full schedule of classes and clinical experience.

Any advice you give will be greatly appreciated!! Thank you!

 

[startoverat40]

Most of my interaction with law involved health, and I've been fascinated with it.

Hi, your GPA is great so you should be in good shape. But you need to shadow doctors and do some hospital volunteering to really get a sense of what the practice of medicine is like. Health related law practice is not enough to give you an idea, and med schools would question your level of understanding of medicine and your motivations for wanting to switch.

you can do research if you're interested in it, but I don't think it is required, unless you want to apply to md-phd.

I think you have to take the prereqs as actual courses, i don't think med schools will accept AP credit as substitute.

 

[startoverat40]

Some do.

OK, better check the MSAR then...

 

[Law2Doc]

Hey everyone! I've been lurking here for a while and wanted to get your input, especially those of you with experience. I just graduated from a top-ten law school, but want to go to medical school. Most of my interaction with law involved health, and I've been fascinated with it. I'm taking some of the pre-reqs at a local university. My undergrad GPA was around 3.7- and no sciences because I had AP'ed out of chem and bio. What do you suggest I do? A formal program? Assuming I can make As in my classes, what are my chances at a great med school and/ or scholarships? Should I be trying to get research and clinical experience? If not, will it be held against me? I'm working part time, and concerned that I won't have enough time for a full schedule of classes and clinical experience.

Any advice you give will be greatly appreciated!! Thank you!

First, don't do anything before you do some shadowing/ volunteering. You need some exposure to the field BEFORE you start taking prereqs because adcoms expect nontrads to have looked BEFORE they leapt. Second, you will need clinical experience/exposure to get into med school. It is an unwritten prerequisite. Its not a question of being held against you, you will not get in without it. Nor should you want to go to med school without doing your due diligence and see what you are getting into. It's often not what you imagine. Research isnt as mandatory, but looks good if you have it. Third, if you have taken no college sciences that's great because you will qualify for the formal prereqs, should you decide to go that route. I'm not sure if you have already screwed this clean slate up with the local university courses though. I wouldn't bank on AP credits to be useful, and as a nonscientist you are going to want to retake the whole slate anyhow to allay fears and to do well on the MCAT. Next, you need a good reason why you want to go to med school, and why not law. It's going to give some people pause that you are jumping from school to school without giving law a chance, so you need a good reason that doesn't make you seem flighty or a degree collector. I wouldnt bank on "scholarships" for med school. There are some out there but They tend to be small and you probably won't get them. Finally, if you are working part time, it's going to be a much longer process.

 

[tantacles]

Hey everyone! I've been lurking here for a while and wanted to get your input, especially those of you with experience. I just graduated from a top-ten law school, but want to go to medical school. Most of my interaction with law involved health, and I've been fascinated with it. I'm taking some of the pre-reqs at a local university. My undergrad GPA was around 3.7- and no sciences because I had AP'ed out of chem and bio. What do you suggest I do? A formal program? Assuming I can make As in my classes, what are my chances at a great med school and/ or scholarships? Should I be trying to get research and clinical experience? If not, will it be held against me? I'm working part time, and concerned that I won't have enough time for a full schedule of classes and clinical experience.

Any advice you give will be greatly appreciated!! Thank you!

I'm going to address, because I have some experience in this, an analogy between law and medical schools.

As you probably realized when you were applying to law school, not all law schools are created equal. The graduates of some law schools have trouble getting jobs, and others are vastly underpaid compared to their colleagues from more prestigious schools.

While prestige matters in terms of getting the best residency out of medical school, any competent doctor graduating from a U.S MD granting school has a strong chance (I don't feel like looking up the stats, so SDN pals, away!) of getting a residency, meaning that prestige doesn't matter as much for medical school as it does for law school.

Keep that in mind as you go through this process. When you take the MCAT, make sure you don't rule out medicine just because you can't get into a top research school, because all U.S. MD schools provide education that will, in 95% of cases, lead to residency, which will lead to being an attending.

Nitpickers, note that I'm leaving out D.O. schools because most of my experience is with U.S. M.D. schools, but if someone is offended that I didn't mention them, go ahead.