Age of pre-requisites?

[OSURxgirl]

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My story, like those of most, is a long one. I did an undergrad major in Psych, but due to an oversupply of clinical psychologists and low salaries, I did not go on to do a PhD in Psych. Instead, I decided to use my science background to go into pharmacy and specialize in psychiatric pharmacy.Recently, however, major funding was cut for pharmacy speciality residencies, and I do not even know if the opportunity to do a psychiatric residency will exist when I graduate. That's why I'm considering the possibility of going to med school after pharmacy school to pursue psychiatry. However, by the time I graduate pharmacy school, all of my science pre-reqs will be 10 years or older. Is this a problem for medical schools? Will it be necessary or recommended for me to re-take my pre-reqs? I have made no decision yet, I'm just pondering my options. Re-taking my pre-reqs would probably be easy after pharmacy school, but I don't know if it's a hoop I'd be willing to jump through. Anyone have any experience with this or know if med schools have hard rules about the age of pre-requisites?

 

[Law2Doc]

My story, like those of most, is a long one. I did an undergrad major in Psych, but due to an oversupply of clinical psychologists and low salaries, I did not go on to do a PhD in Psych. Instead, I decided to use my science background to go into pharmacy and specialize in psychiatric pharmacy.Recently, however, major funding was cut for pharmacy speciality residencies, and I do not even know if the opportunity to do a psychiatric residency will exist when I graduate. That's why I'm considering the possibility of going to med school after pharmacy school to pursue psychiatry. However, by the time I graduate pharmacy school, all of my science pre-reqs will be 10 years or older. Is this a problem for medical schools? Will it be necessary or recommended for me to re-take my pre-reqs? I have made no decision yet, I'm just pondering my options. Re-taking my pre-reqs would probably be easy after pharmacy school, but I don't know if it's a hoop I'd be willing to jump through. Anyone have any experience with this or know if med schools have hard rules about the age of pre-requisites?

You should do a search -- this question has come up before and was dealt with significantly. Most schools don't have any hard and fast rules, but do like to see success in recent science courses, so even if you don't need to retake the prereqs, you will probably want to take a few upper level sciences to prove your current abilities. A handful of schools do like to see prereqs of more recent vintage, and some postbac programs have been known to suggest retaking all courses older than eg. 7-10 years.

 

[OSURxgirl]

Thanks, I tried searching, but all the keywords I chose yielded no results or pages and pages of results that were not pertinent to my situation.

 

[a_ditchdoc]

You need to check with the individual schools you are applying to, however, most of the schools I am aware of are happy so long as you have recent advanced course work. I am pretty sure that pharmacy school has you covered. It is not like I really used physics during my first two years of med school...

 

[Hoberto]

Ohio schools do not have any rules about age of prereqs. Some of mine are 10+ years old. My husband had some that were from 20+ years ago. The only problem you might have will be remembering all that old stuff for the MCAT. It's amazing how much can be forgotten!

Good luck!!

 

[ntmed]

I suspect that most schools don't care too much about the age of your prereq's. My prereq's were 12+ years old when I applied. However, most schools want you to have taken science courses (biology, chemistry, and/or physics) within the past 5 years.

 

[cfdavid]

I've spoken personally to 3 schools in Michigan (2 allo, 1 osteo). None had issues with the age of my prerequisites (all at least 10 years old). But they all indicated that it would be necessary to take some recent mid to upper level science classes (genetics, biochem, micro, physio, cell biology are some to choose from).

The actual number of classes you take may depend on your gpa from college. If you need a boost, they may require up to 16 credits of recent work to offset past grades. They want to see the trend.

Two of the schools I spoke to are going to require biochem and genetics as prereq's by 2008, so those would be good courses to take.

Good luck.

 

[QofQuimica]

I'm in the same boat. But I've been in graduate school, so the schools I'm applying to were all willing to waive the pre-req age requirement, if they had one.

 

[smokeycat]

My story, like those of most, is a long one. I did an undergrad major in Psych, but due to an oversupply of clinical psychologists and low salaries, I did not go on to do a PhD in Psych. Instead, I decided to use my science background to go into pharmacy and specialize in psychiatric pharmacy.Recently, however, major funding was cut for pharmacy speciality residencies, and I do not even know if the opportunity to do a psychiatric residency will exist when I graduate. That's why I'm considering the possibility of going to med school after pharmacy school to pursue psychiatry. However, by the time I graduate pharmacy school, all of my science pre-reqs will be 10 years or older. Is this a problem for medical schools? Will it be necessary or recommended for me to re-take my pre-reqs? I have made no decision yet, I'm just pondering my options. Re-taking my pre-reqs would probably be easy after pharmacy school, but I don't know if it's a hoop I'd be willing to jump through. Anyone have any experience with this or know if med schools have hard rules about the age of pre-requisites?

This really depends upon the school. Pre-reqs must be retaken for Duke and Howard (I called Howard and here's the link to Duke's web page http://dukemed.duke.edu/AdmissionsFinancialAid/index.cfm?method=AdmissionsRequirements ). For Duke, all science requirements must be no more than seven years old. The same is true for applying to Canadian Med schools. Some schools (Northwestern, UNC, ECU, Ross) do not require you to retake your pre-reqs BUT you do have to take some upper level science courses. However, if you have recently obtained a graduate degree (in some area of biology or chemistry), some schools will overlook the age of your pre-reqs. This also may change (admissions requirements can change each year).

 

[eccles1214]

However, by the time I graduate pharmacy school, all of my science pre-reqs will be 10 years or older. Is this a problem for medical schools? Will it be necessary or recommended for me to re-take my pre-reqs? I have made no decision yet, I'm just pondering my options. Re-taking my pre-reqs would probably be easy after pharmacy school, but I don't know if it's a hoop I'd be willing to jump through. Anyone have any experience with this or know if med schools have hard rules about the age of pre-requisites?

I have some experience. I took my basic science courses in the 1980s. I got As, but when I contacted medical colleges, many of them asked me to retake my science courses. They said they want to see if I can still handle the sciences. So I'm back in school taking them again.

Some medical schools want classes that are recent. Other schools don't care. Ask prospective medical schools what they want you to do.