Career break before starting classes

[bigredterp]

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Any other nontrads take a career break where they may have done some traveling, teaching abroad, volunteer work (peace corps related) before coming back to begin the long road of taking pre-reqs for med school?

If so, I'd love to hear about their experiences and whether they felt it may have help/hindered their application. I am coming from an unrelated field (engineering) and have enough saved up at this point where I could afford to go overseas and "indulge" in some sort of unique life experience.

Would love to hear others opinions on this...

Thanks!

 

[Sol Rosenberg]

Not sure what you are asking here. Do you want to go overseas or not? I doubt it will affect your application in any way, positive or negative.

 

[ntmed]

Any other nontrads take a career break ... before coming back to begin the long road of taking pre-reqs for med school?

Personally, I think this will hurt you. It is very difficult to get into medical school unless you are totally committed to it, to the exclusion of most everything else.

The bottom line is what do you really want out of life. If you want to travel or experience other things, then do that. But if being a physician is what you truly want, then the time to start is now.

BTW "bigredterp", I was a Terp too. 🙂

Best of luck.
Mike

 

[Dfg]

well if you can't get any feedback here you could try calling a couple med schools for their advice.

 

[bookmaven]

You could save your money for tuition, or take your pre-reqs now, and then go abroad during the time between acceptance and matriculation.

 

[bookmaven]

sorry duplicate

 

[SoonerGeek]

If you are able to get into the Peace Corp and do medically related work, then that would actually be HUGE on your application. However, the Peace Corp usually requires like a 2 year commitment. As long as their is a logical progression to your med school application once you begin prereqs, I think this sort of experience would look great on an application.

I am certainly not on an admissions comittee, but long term overseas "aid" experience will be a pretty significant "Z" factor. In my opinion, even if you are only doing it to pad your application, it shows a clear commitment to helping people.

However, if you JUST want to travel, by all means, go for it. If you have the money and the time, I doubt you will regret taking a month or two as a beach bum on the mediterranean. However, it won't mean anything for your application. Take a summer or a semester to do your own thing before you get burdened with medical debt or family obligations.

 

[chopstick1]

you can always do a medical missions trip, they're usually short (3 weeks go by fast!), great experience, see diff parts of the world, nice on resume, and extremely rewarding. as soon as I got my acceptance letter I traveled all that I could but bottom line is........max your mcat scores and pre req grades. that's the real key. good luck!

 

[soonereng]

Any other nontrads take a career break where they may have done some traveling, teaching abroad, volunteer work (peace corps related) before coming back to begin the long road of taking pre-reqs for med school?...I am coming from an unrelated field (engineering) and have enough saved up at this point where I could afford to go overseas and "indulge" in some sort of unique life experience.

I'm currently in engineering as well (mechanical) but I worked it so that I could keep my current job and do the pre-reqs at the same time (one of the perks of being in the energy industry during an up cycle is that they need engrs badly and will do whatever to keep them around).

I decided this past summer (~June) that I wanted to do medicine after considering a career move for over a year. I studied for the August MCAT during July while doing a summer school pre-req and working 20 hr/wk. I went back to work full-time in August while continuing pre-reqs. I applied for 2007 admission and got accepted to my first choice state school and will start this coming August.

Not that my experience is typical, but my point is that the process of taking pre-reqs doesn't have to be a "long road" nor do you necessarily have to quit your job (unless you want to). With an engineering degree you should already have the physics and inorganic chemistry out of the way (and maybe even organic if you are ChemE). When I started, I needed @ 22 hrs of pre-reqs. From the start of my remaining pre-reqs to finish of pre-reqs for me will only be 11 months (13 months from start of pre-reqs to start of medschool), not very long in the time frame of medical education.

 

[Deepa100]

I will (sorta') take a break after MCAT for 12-18 months before I start med school. I have a very good reason- a new baby! I plan to work part time, travel and continue to take some useful courses.