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[confusedstudent2021]

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[Mike Bagwell]

1. How can you take microbiology without biology of the cell?

2. Medical school requires the MCAT. Without an MCAT score, you're going nowhere no matter what you want to do or what your heart tells you.

3. Medicine is not "going all the way." People are genuinely happy as nurses, PA's etc. because that's what they want to do. You don't need to be an MD to feel that you went "all the way." If you want to go "all the way," go into research and cure some of these diseases that some of these MD's have no idea how to treat.

 

[Darth Doc]

Don't plan on becoming a NP because you're scared. Don't give up before you start. Take a class that intimidates you, get some tutoring, and see how you do.

You also don't sound like you're ready to make a decision on your career path yet. You may need some more exposure to the day-to-day in those different careers.

 

[Mike Bagwell]

Hello, My school does not require for your to take general biology in order to take microbiology or anatomy & physiology I or II. So, I took them, studied, and did well anyway.
I know Med school requires the MCAT! That is something I would take on and think about once i get there. The first step for me is really just the prerequisites in order to even have enough knowledge to do well on the MCAT.
I know people are genuinely happy as nurses or PAs! That is why those are both still in the cards for me.
When I say all the way I mean that a physican is going all the way rather than a nurse and unfortunately I stand by that. You get full anatomy and are really able to help the patient to a higher clinical standpoint that a nurse can not. They are all great, but a physican would be the top in terms of experience and knowledge.
I know what you mean about research, while I do find that interesting I could never do lab work for the rest of my life. One of the things that attracts me most to the healthcare field is truly the patient interaction

You're thinking is wrong.

Nurses do not practice medicine hence there is no comparison to a medical doctor and their autonomy.

You need to finish your pre-reqs, take the MCAT and do A LOT of shadowing first. I don't think you understand these careers the way you should.

 

[lalalallala]

Hey everyone! I am in a bit of a limbo here and would REALLY appreciate everyones help. Upon entering college I was a bio major and wanted to go to medschool. That being said, i joined a sorority and did not take school seriously and did TERRIBLE. C+ in government, C+ in history of motion pictures, D in pre calculus (retook 2nd semester only to get C), and D in general chemistry 1. I was living by "Cs get degrees" and never studying. My sophomore year I decided to stop that and switched my major to business management. I was still adjusting and not 100% serious yet so i got mainly Bs and some As. I took Geoscience I & II that year to satisfy my sciences and got a B+ and B. Finally my junior year I decided to start actually being serious and got straight As in all my classes. Because I did so well that year, the summer before my senior year I decided to try for my dream of entering healthcare/medicine again. I was most interested in Dentistry at the time (hence my username). I started volunteering at the oral surgery clinic at a local hospital and retook Chem I and took Chem II after. I ended up with a B- in both. I was devastated because I really wanted to do well, but chemistry was just so hard for me. I realized I would probably never get into med school or dental school with this record and was about to give up. Until I learned about becoming a nurse practitioner. I realized that I can still fulfill my dreams of being a provider through this route and it will be easier than the two above. I also saw that I could do accelerated/direct-entry programs for this.
Long story short, I finished all the necessary courses for my business degree in those 4 years and buckled down. I stayed 1 extra year in college to fulfill the prerequisites to apply to accelerated nursing programs. I graduate in April(next month) with my bachelors after these 5 years.
Here are my stats:
3.5 cumulative gpa, Bachelors of Business Administration-Business Management (Business core GPA 3.7)
B- =Chemistry I (replaced D from freshman year),
B- =Chemistry II
B =Statistics
A+ =Nutrition
A =Anatomy & Physiology I
A =Anatomy & Physiology II
A =Microbiology
A =Sociology
A =Abnormal Psychology
A =General Psychology
A+ =Human Lifespan Development
9 months volunteering (little over 100 hours) in oral surgery clinic assisting surgeons/residents & nurses
2 business internships (one in HR and one in management)
2 months as a volunteer/trainee in genomics laboratory in London
Active member of 6 student organizations throughout college
3 teachers who really like me and can write strong letters of recommendation for me for any program

I really worked hard this year to get those straight As in my prerequisites and this is my current standing for when I graduate in a month. I will be set to apply to all of the accelerated/direct-entry nursing programs and hopefully start my journey to becoming a Nurse Practitioner. I think my stats are good enough now to get in to one of the programs somewhere... I hope. But after working so hard this last year and proving to myself that I can get As in these classes, a part of me feels like I am selling myself short of my ultimate goals of dental or medical school. I know that I am really smart and can achieve greatness. But at the same time I know chemistry is my weakness and I know the classes that I would still need to take are orgo, biochem, gen bio I&II. Not worried about gen bio at all because i am genuinely good at biology, but I feel like I would be 100% wasting my time & money if i took more chem classes and didn't score high enough. If I got B- in chem I & II... how am i going to get As in biochem or orgo!
I am also considering PA because it makes more sense given what I want to do as a provider that I would do something that allows me to go straight in rather than having to become a nurse first... but its the same thing... the orgo/biochem and crazy competitiveness that scare me. I have improved my GPA and grades now, but the beginning of college bad grades will always haunt me. All of these programs are so competitive. I want to be realistic here.
I do want to start this next journey and get my life together by choosing what I want to do and stick with it..... I am able to apply now for the Nursing programs anytime since i am done with the prerequisite classes and did well, but I feel lost if this is where i am meant to be and if i will regret not going all the way later in life. A little help, guidance, and real advice regarding my stats and chances of admission would be GREATLY appreciated.

Being a doctor, dentist, NP and PA are very different jobs with very different responsibilities and ways of life. Have you shadowed these different specialities? Getting into medical or dental school will likely be a long road including more classes and either the MCAT or DAT. It is a very long road and you don't seem quite ready for it. I'm not trying to be judgmental it is really just my assessment. I think you should figure out what it is that you really WANT to do. Do you prefer the type of patient interactions that NPs or PAs have? Do you want to help patients without all of the years of medical school and residency? Being a NP would be much less work than going to medical school, but many people do not like the roles that NPs serve. That sort of thing is up to you and you would really need to see it to know. Getting into PA school requires many clinical hours. Whatever you want to do you could make happen by doing the prerequisites and improving your application, but I am not really seeing the drive to do it. Try to shadow each of these and figure out which of these jobs feels most like you.

 

[Mike Bagwell]

i dont really think you understand what the point of my post even was

You said you're confused right? Hopefully I cleared up some of that confusion regarding pursuing a career in medicine.

 

[candbgirl]

Is that GPA including every course you have ever taken in college including the repeats? Every C and D is counted by AMCAS in calculating your GPA. There is no grade replacement.

It seems from what you have shared, that you have no clinical experience with doctors or even nurses. You do have some clinical experience with dentists/ oral surgeon. I agree with the posters above. I don’t think you have near enough experience working with the sick, injured and dying to know if you even want to spend the next 30+ years dealing with this population. You also don’t seem to have any shadowing of physicians( especially primary care docs). You need to get lots of that so you can make informed choices and decisions.

I do think you should hold off applying to nursing school until you figure out what path really appeals to you. Right now you are looking at going to medical school and being a doctor with rose colored glasses.

You asked if we thought you had a chance to get in. The answer is maybe. Depending on your GPAs and MCAT and your ECs you might but you need hundreds of hours of ECs. And ultimately only 40 percent of applicants are accepted each cycle. Every cycle stellar applicants are rejected . So as you can see the competition is steep. While you are sorting things out research DO med schools. They might be a viable option to consider too.

 

[Tenk]

i dont really think you understand what the point of my post even was

Actually gonna agree with thunder pecs here. Sure, all these fields work with one another with lots of overlap but they are vastly different in their scope of practice, training, and day to day jobs. You should do a lot more shadowing.

 

[sumtimesuwonder]

Also keep in mind that you still have a couple more prereqs to go in very difficult subjects (o-chem I and II w/ lab, biochem, some schools want calculus) to get into medical school. I'm not 100% sure about PA (but I know most of those schools require many hours of shadowing, in the 1000's). NP is totally possible but to echo what everyone else has said above, I'd make sure you shadow before you make any rash decisions. After you shadow, you can come back and take the prereq's you need/ start an accelerated nursing program depending on what you decide

 

[863168]

@wannabe.toothfairy12 I understand that you're worried about squandering your potential. But you took 5 years to graduate and had trouble with taking anything remotely resembling the hard sciences. You volunteered for a little over 100 hours over 9 months, which means that you weren't able to consistently volunteer for 4 hours every week otherwise your total hours would be substantially above 100 hours (my calculation had 144 hours). You did 2 internships, however neither internship apparently interested you as there is no mention of you possibly working for either of the companies that you interned for meaning that both companies didn't leave any impression on you and/or vice versa. You state that you're interested in an NP, but not in being an RN which means that this is a deja vu of your current circumstances. You have a business degree, but no interest in working a business related job. You want to consider nursing, but only out of some caricature of what you think the NP represents rather than having any solid foundation on what it means to be either an RN or an NP.

You're an active member of 6 organizations, but given your over provision of information you would have likely written if you held any significant board positions. The fact that you wasted your time with 6 organizations as an "active member" but have nothing to take away from it aside from a blurb is again another indication that there was possibly a potential opportunity that you lost by being involved in too many clubs rather than choosing to be involved in just a club. Perhaps you are still clinging on to the idea that you have potential because you did well in A&P as well as Microbiology. That's notable, but Biology majors have to take some combination of Calculus I/II, Organic Chemistry, with Microbiology and possibly Genetics which means that difficulty from courses tends to compound on one another with respect to time management & not so much with the individual courses necessarily being difficult as stand alone courses are much easier when taken a la carté over a 5 year time span.

I don't mean to dissuade you with this post, I still think you have potential as you are very much still young. But insinuating that anything you did in the past 5 years is representative of you being too academically gifted to consider working any type of job b/c it would be a regret of you burning your potential is frankly ridiculous considering you have been proactively burning down any innate potential that you would have had if you took the process seriously in the first place.

 

[highway31]

Hello, My school does not require for your to take general biology in order to take microbiology or anatomy & physiology I or II. So, I took them, studied, and did well anyway.
I know Med school requires the MCAT! That is something I would take on and think about once i get there. The first step for me is really just the prerequisites in order to even have enough knowledge to do well on the MCAT.
I know people are genuinely happy as nurses or PAs! That is why those are both still in the cards for me.
When I say all the way I mean that a physican is going all the way rather than a nurse and unfortunately I stand by that. You get full anatomy and are really able to help the patient to a higher clinical standpoint that a nurse can not. They are all great, but a physican would be the top in terms of experience and knowledge.
I know what you mean about research, while I do find that interesting I could never do lab work for the rest of my life. One of the things that attracts me most to the healthcare field is truly the patient interaction

You probably took microbiology for nursing majors. My micro class for nursing prerequisites was like you described and was a 1000 or 2000 level class. For my bio degree I needed a more advanced micro class, so if you need micro for med school you will probably need to take the other class.