Hello, I'm currently an Electrical Engineering student studying at a state school and I've recently had the desire to switch up my curriculum to include Pre-Med. Currently my GPA is very high (>3.9) but I've only now started to take the required med school courses outside of the maths and physics'. I'm wondering what my chances of starting this late and still looking good to a med school are and what besides the basic chemistry's and bio's I should do to look appealing to a med school?
Any advice is greatly appreciated!
Well you aren't going to impress medical school admissions committees (adcoms) by taking specific classes. You just need to fulfill their prereqs, which you can easily find on each school's website.
You do need to impress them with your extracurricular activities (ECs) and your commitment to medicine (articulated in your personal statement, or PS, and demonstrated in your ECs)
You absolutely
need to have clinical exposure. This means clinical volunteering, clinical employment, clinical research, or shadowing (at minimum, you should do one of the first 3 and then add shadowing as well). Speaking of minimums, I would say you need at least a year of either clinical volunteering, clinical employment or clinical research and at least a couple of days of physician shadowing, including primary care physician shadowing.
I would say you also
need EITHER nonclinical volunteering OR research. It is strongly recommended to have both of them, but you might get in with only one if it is strong. The research can be in electrical engineering if you want.
Other activities to consider: tutoring/teaching, peer leadership, hobbies
You are not at a significant disadvantage by starting late. However, you may need to spend extra time in college to finish all your prereqs and have appropriate time commitments to your ECs