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[Jsmith34]

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Ok so I am very new to these forums and have learned an incredible amount of information in the few days that I have been looking through them. Anyway I am a recently switched-to Nursing major from Biology while always having the intentions of going on to medical school. After taking Bio 1/2, Chem. 1/2, Calc. 1/2 my first year I ended up with a 3.96 total GPA with all A's and only one A- in Gen. Chem. I. Over the summer I volunteered at an outpatient surgery center and I worked very closely with the nurses at the facility. While watching them do their work I realized how much of an effort they put into the medical field, but nevertheless I still had no intentions of being a nurse. I decided to purse a BSN as my undergraduate degree because I truly belive that by going through teh clinical process I will become a better doctor in the long run. However, after doing a little research I am starting to get scared because people keep saying that adcoms will deny me because of the nursing shortage. However, my question is if I maintain my current GPA and get a >35 on my MCAT, and of course do the necessary volunteering and shadowing experiences, do I still have a great shot at medical school? I realize this is a very general question but any advice would be greatly appreciated!

 

[Avoidthetiger]

Nurses for some reason have a tougher time being accepted into medical school (I quick only search shows a 27% acceptance rate vs 44% for biology majors). While I do not think medical school should deny a nurse because of the nursing shortage (if someone wants to apply to medical school and has the background to show they can go it -- they should be accepted -- regardless of past experience) BUT you really need a good reason for why MD/DO and not nurse. Especially if you plan on applying to medical school directly out of college -- it would be different if you worked a few years as a nurse before realizing you wanted to be a doctor (or have you ever considered a nurse practitioner?)... but going to undergrad and just getting a nursing degree is pretty weak. You could state that you wanted to make sure you had a stable career after college if you didn't get accepted into medical school -- but then that makes you sound like you were unsure of your credentials and are a weak applicant.

Going to nursing school with the hopes of being a doctor is a catch 22 in some sense. You will have more clinical experience and you will have some of the more fundamental medical knowledge, but your motives for being a nursing student and applying to medical school will be questioned.

Also -- I would recommend making sure you participate in research somehow as a nursing student (whether clinical or bench -- maybe aim to be included in a publication or at least a school poster presentation). An interest in research makes physicians different than nurses in some respects and will help increase your qualifications in applying to medical school.

honestly -- if no one is forcing you to be a nursing major (which I have known parents who only would pay for their daughter's college if she went to nursing school -- not wanting her to be a doctor) AND if you still have time to switch majors, choose a major you will enjoy and make you well rounded. If your goal is to be a physician, you will have your entire career to work with patients. Why do you need to start in undergrad?

 

[WeAreNotRobots]

I still had no intentions of being a nurse. I decided to purse a BSN as my undergraduate degree because I truly belive that by going through teh clinical process I will become a better doctor in the long run

i personally would not get a degree for a profession that i had no intention of pursuing. it would be up to you to convince the ADCOMS of the reason for doing so which you just stated.

However, my question is if I maintain my current GPA and get a >35 on my MCAT, and of course do the necessary volunteering and shadowing experiences, do I still have a great shot at medical school?

yes, of course. but those are big "if's".

 

[QuizzicalApe]

The reason that nursing majors have a hard time getting into med school right out of the gate is that you willfully entered a professional training program for a job that isn't being a doctor.

 

[Jsmith34]

Thanks you everyone for all the advice! One more question, if I were to continue on my current path and apply to medical school. Let's say I get denied to every single school I apply to right out of the gate because of my major. I have also heard that if I work as a nurse for a few years then reapply to medical school that is more "distinguished" than applying right out of the gate? Is there any truth to this statement?

 

[Avoidthetiger]

Thanks you everyone for all the advice! One more question, if I were to continue on my current path and apply to medical school. Let's say I get denied to every single school I apply to right out of the gate because of my major. I have also heard that if I work as a nurse for a few years then reapply to medical school that is more "distinguished" than applying right out of the gate? Is there any truth to this statement?

Some medical schools might deny you because of your major right out of college -- but I bet most will look at your whole application, GPA, MCAT, service, leadership, research, ect. You might get a few interviews but you will have a hard time selling why you did nursing in undergrad but now want to be a doctor. That's really the problem.

I wouldn't say it's more distinguished to enter the medical profession later after being a nurse. I think this plan works better only because you have more real world experience and will have a better reason for why you are switching occupations. I don't know why you plan on going this route though if you have no intention in being a nurse. Being a nurse takes a strong person that really likes people (even at their worse times), I for one know I could never be a nurse because I don't want that much patient interaction. I respect nurses sooo much but I acknowledge I could not do their job. As an individual wanting to pursue a career as a physician, have you really thought about why you don't want to be a nurse, PT, PA?

I'm not on Adcom nor am i a nurse though, so I don't know how appropriate it is that I am giving advice.

 

[roseglass6370]

Don't do it. Switch back to Bio. You'll get all the clinical knowledge you need in med school.

 

[Kaustikos]

i personally would not get a degree for a profession that i had no intention of pursuing. it would be up to you to convince the ADCOMS of the reason for doing so which you just stated.

Oh really, so you got your biology degree to go into a biological profession? Not a clinical profession?

 

[roseglass6370]

Oh really, so you got your biology degree to go into a biological profession? Not a clinical profession?

Not necessary.

 

[LizzyM]

There is no point in majoring in nursing and doing all that clinical training (the supply of training slots is fininte and contributes to the cap in admissions to nursing programs) if you know now that you do not want to be a nurse. It would be the same if someone applied to medical school and said, "I want to be a novelist and I think that medical school would be a good preparation for that career... there are many novelists and other writers who graduated medical school so why not?"

It is one thing if a student becomes a nurse and then has a change of heart and decides to pursue medicine... I think that one of the reasons that those students have a hard time getting admitted is that their gpa & MCATs tend not to be as strong as those applicants who have been pre-med from the start. Also consider that nursing clinicals are huge time sinks and often graded in a way that is both subjective and at a very, very high standard. It may be impossible to be perfect in that setting and your gpa will suffer and your time management skills will be stretched to their limits.

Do a BA or BS in biology or something similar and if you decide that you want to be a nurse after that you can easily do a post-bac nursing degreee rather than med school. No one in their right mind would do that before medical school which tells you why doing it now is not the best idea.

 

[gravitywave]

Oh really, so you got your biology degree to go into a biological profession? Not a clinical profession?

lol nursing is a profession. to do it, you need a professional degree ie it readies you to take a licensure exam and enter a specific occupation. medicine is also a professional degree. so is teaching, pharm, engines, psychology.

biology =/= a profession.

 

[Pons Asinorum]

I think this thread's a wrap...

There is no point in majoring in nursing and doing all that clinical training (the supply of training slots is fininte and contributes to the cap in admissions to nursing programs) if you know now that you do not want to be a nurse. It would be the same if someone applied to medical school and said, "I want to be a novelist and I think that medical school would be a good preparation for that career... there are many novelists and other writers who graduated medical school so why not?"

It is one thing if a student becomes a nurse and then has a change of heart and decides to pursue medicine... I think that one of the reasons that those students have a hard time getting admitted is that their gpa & MCATs tend not to be as strong as those applicants who have been pre-med from the start. Also consider that nursing clinicals are huge time sinks and often graded in a way that is both subjective and at a very, very high standard. It may be impossible to be perfect in that setting and your gpa will suffer and your time management skills will be stretched to their limits.

Do a BA or BS in biology or something similar and if you decide that you want to be a nurse after that you can easily do a post-bac nursing degreee rather than med school. No one in their right mind would do that before medical school which tells you why doing it now is not the best idea.

 

[WeAreNotRobots]

lol nursing is a profession. to do it, you need a professional degree ie it readies you to take a licensure exam and enter a specific occupation. medicine is also a professional degree. so is teaching, pharm, engines, psychology.

biology =/= a profession.

thanks. i didn't even have to say it.

 

[Kaustikos]

lol nursing is a profession. to do it, you need a professional degree ie it readies you to take a licensure exam and enter a specific occupation. medicine is also a professional degree. so is teaching, pharm, engines, psychology.

biology =/= a profession.

WOW. Are you really that narrow minded? Do you even know what goes on to become a nurse? It's synonymous with being a bio major. You can take the requisite courses/etc, but if you don't reach beyond that; you're screwed. If a nurse just graduates, she might land a job working the ER (which isn't top of the line), same with someone who graduates bio with the prerequisites and lands a job as a research tech). Also, let's not forget you need to pass the NCLEX to become a nurse, something LOTS of nurses fail to do (no offense), so if you want to go ahead and pre-judge and compare two career fields, go ahead. But at least know what you're talking about. An undergrad in Bio is synonymous with a BSN in nursing because the prerequisites provide the same degree of preparation for their respective fields. You just never hear about the nursing majors that fail...because they never talk about it (I've already heard of 13 in the past year).

 

[Kaustikos]

thanks. i didn't even have to say it.

Join me. God, do people even know what's required to become a certified RN and how many people actually pass?🙄

 

[UbuntuGM]

ummm let's not equate the clinical knowledge of the two professions plehz

 

[Pons Asinorum]

WOW. Are you really that narrow minded? Do you even know what goes on to become a nurse? It's synonymous with being a bio major. You can take the requisite courses/etc, but if you don't reach beyond that; you're screwed. If a nurse just graduates, she might land a job working the ER (which isn't top of the line), same with someone who graduates bio with the prerequisites and lands a job as a research tech). Also, let's not forget you need to pass the NCLEX to become a nurse, something LOTS of nurses fail to do (no offense), so if you want to go ahead and pre-judge and compare two career fields, go ahead. But at least know what you're talking about. An undergrad in Bio is synonymous with a BSN in nursing because the prerequisites provide the same degree of preparation for their respective fields. You just never hear about the nursing majors that fail...because they never talk about it (I've already heard of 13 in the past year).

Why so defensive? None of this has anything to do with what the OP asked, and it really doesn't have much to do with what the people you're responding to were saying. Go rock that shoulder chip on All Nurses if you feel the need to beat people about the head and shoulders with your nursing stick. They're less "narrow-minded" over there. Who cares if nursing students fail out of nursing programs? If the OP wants to get into medical school, they have a statistically better chance of doing that with a BS or BA in biology than if they get their BSN. Facts. A BSN is synonymous with an undergraduate degree in biology just like it's synonymous with an undergraduate degree in art history or an undergraduate degree in civil engineering. If the OP wants to major in something health- or biology-related, because that's what they enjoy and will do well in in undergraduate, then they have a better chance at an MD acceptance with biology than with nursing. Go read LizzyM's post. If you disagree with her advice, then bring it back. Nobody wants a discourse on NCLEX pass rates.

 

[Kaustikos]

Why so defensive? None of this has anything to do with what the OP asked, and it really doesn't have much to do with what the people you're responding to were saying. Go rock that shoulder chip on All Nurses if you feel the need to beat people about the head and shoulders with your nursing stick. They're less "narrow-minded" over there. Who cares if nursing students fail out of nursing programs? If the OP wants to get into medical school, they have a statistically better chance of doing that with a BS or BA in biology than if they get their BSN. Facts. A BSN is synonymous with an undergraduate degree in biology just like it's synonymous with an undergraduate degree in art history or an undergraduate degree in civil engineering. If the OP wants to major in something health- or biology-related, because that's what they enjoy and will do well in in undergraduate, then they have a better chance at an MD acceptance with biology than with nursing. Go read LizzyM's post. If you disagree with her advice, then bring it back. Nobody wants a discourse on NCLEX pass rates.

Woah. I apologize for the misinterpretation. I didn't mean to step over anyone's feet. I'm simply offering clarification on minor points. I might be hasty/aggressive, but it's only because people become presumptuous on certain details. I never said that nursing is better than biology for going into medicine. I meant to clarify the idea that going into a profession (in general) doesn't mean you'll land that profession and shouldn't be a mark on you; like going into nursing. We've become too accustomed to the "pre-med" ideology where they follow the biology "profession" to go into medicine while forgetting that they're essentially pursuing a profession themselves. I'm not trying to offend anyone, but I really have a hard time believing the statistics being thrown around in this thread. Yes, Nursing may be harder to sell, but you have to look at EVERY aspect of that nursing major's criteria. Nursing majors average a lower gpa than most and their MCAT scores are also lower. Not to mention that people pursuing nursing have a lower gpa in general. The OP (unless he/she is lying) clearly has a distinguishing academic record that separates him/her from the pack. Put that with his/her clinical skills and an ability to show that nursing isn't their thing and medicine is, and you've beat out (I'd say) 50% of med applicants already.

I'll say that I disagree with LizzyM only in saying that the clinical training one gets in Nursing WILL help someone going into medicine just like someone going with a strong background/coursework in physiology/biology will gain over someone with no experience. I hate doing this, but I don't get how learning some of what nurses do isn't advantageous to an enormous degree over other people. Sure, you'll learn it later, but it's not like knowing something beforehand "hurts" you. It is an advantage, so is being accustomed to the clinical/healthcare setting.

 

[Pons Asinorum]

Woah. I apologize for the misinterpretation. I didn't mean to step over anyone's feet. I'm simply offering clarification on minor points. I might be hasty/aggressive, but it's only because people become presumptuous on certain details. I never said that nursing is better than biology for going into medicine. I meant to clarify the idea that going into a profession (in general) doesn't mean you'll land that profession and shouldn't be a mark on you; like going into nursing. We've become too accustomed to the "pre-med" ideology where they follow the biology "profession" to go into medicine while forgetting that they're essentially pursuing a profession themselves. I'm not trying to offend anyone, but I really have a hard time believing the statistics being thrown around in this thread. Yes, Nursing may be harder to sell, but you have to look at EVERY aspect of that nursing major's criteria. Nursing majors average a lower gpa than most and their MCAT scores are also lower. Not to mention that people pursuing nursing have a lower gpa in general. The OP (unless he/she is lying) clearly has a distinguishing academic record that separates him/her from the pack. Put that with his/her clinical skills and an ability to show that nursing isn't their thing and medicine is, and you've beat out (I'd say) 50% of med applicants already.

I'll say that I disagree with LizzyM only in saying that the clinical training one gets in Nursing WILL help someone going into medicine just like someone going with a strong background/coursework in physiology/biology will gain over someone with no experience. I hate doing this, but I don't get how learning some of what nurses do isn't advantageous to an enormous degree over other people. Sure, you'll learn it later, but it's not like knowing something beforehand "hurts" you. It is an advantage, so is being accustomed to the clinical/healthcare setting.

I guess I would say that the "clinical" experience that you would get in a nursing BSN program is not much different at all from what you could get between any number of hospital-based volunteer programs and clinical physician shadowing. Add that to an undergraduate program that doesn't have some of the stigma, rightly or wrongly, that has been raised about completing the BSN, and I think you can see where LizzyM (I'm presuming a lot) is coming from with her advice. Just make it easy for an adcom to say "this person knows what being a physician is all about, clearly wants it and is academically up to the challenge." That's all everybody on here's trying to get to, I hope.

 

[Avoidthetiger]

There is a huge difference between entering a liberal arts or science major which is not a professional degree and entering a professional program like nursing school.

The two do not compare. And in fact what is a biological job? If you mean research, I'd say you would need extensive research or otherwise a MS or PhD to get a good research position. Biology and most of the college of arts and sciences majors are just 4 year degrees which are not professional degrees but degrees that are used as stepping stones for professional school or PhD programs or teaching jobs.

+1 🙄

 

[wiscRD]

I personally do not see a reason why getting a nursing degree would hurt you. While you are training you will see what MDs/DOs do, gain significant clinical experience (as opposed to traditional bio majors who have only shadowed a few times), and have a great base of knowledge for medical school. The acceptance rate difference could be due to grades - not all nurses are getting the grades you are getting. I would not base what you major in solely on this forum. Medical school admissions officers are usually extremely nice. Is there a medical school you are interested in? I would set up an appointment with someone from admissions there and see if you could meet them. Explain your situation and see what they say. They are usually quite insightful. You could also ask if they know of any 1st or 2nd year medical students who would be willing to talk with you in person or via e-mail that could give you some insight into medical school.

I would recommend writing down your goals as this will really help you figure out what path your should take to get to where you want to go. Talk with a few the nurse practitioners who are well respected where you live - maybe you don't need to go to med school to do what you want to do. The surgery APNP at the hospital I work at does a lot, is very well respected, works better hours, and doesn't have the liability of the surgeons. Sure she isn't making $300K or doing the surgery herself, but is very involved in the entire process and I don't think she would ever change the path she took. It all depends on what your goals are.

Lastly, check out the non-traditional forum as there are more people with different backgrounds that in this forum. Sometimes the pre-allopathic forum can be discouraging for people who don't have a 4.0, 38 MCAT and attended an ivy league school. There are plenty of people who get into medical school without those stats (hence the average MCAT and GPA being far below the aforementioned statistics).

 

[MilkmanAl]

There is no point in majoring in nursing and doing all that clinical training (the supply of training slots is fininte and contributes to the cap in admissions to nursing programs) if you know now that you do not want to be a nurse. It would be the same if someone applied to medical school and said, "I want to be a novelist and I think that medical school would be a good preparation for that career... there are many novelists and other writers who graduated medical school so why not?"

Gotta disagree with the great and powerful LizzyM on this one. Maybe it's selfish to attend a nursing program you have no intention of following up on, but last I checked, one doesn't get an education for everyone else's direct benefit. The clinical training you get will be immensely helpful to you. All the simple fundamentals you'll get down will have you far ahead of your med school classmates and will let you focus on learning the "doctor stuff" once third year rolls around. You'll already be proficient at basic patient management, placing IV's, and stuff like that. I find the quoted analogy confusing since if med schools only want clinical experience directly related to what you'll be doing professionally, the only things that would count would be shadowing and work as some sort of tech. That certainly doesn't sound like the mantra I've seen plastered on these boards for the last few years. Screw nursing; go volunteer to shuttle patients around if you want real clinical experience. 🙄

 

[gravitywave]

WOW. Are you really that narrow minded? Do you even know what goes on to become a nurse? It's synonymous with being a bio major. You can take the requisite courses/etc, but if you don't reach beyond that; you're screwed. If a nurse just graduates, she might land a job working the ER (which isn't top of the line), same with someone who graduates bio with the prerequisites and lands a job as a research tech). Also, let's not forget you need to pass the NCLEX to become a nurse, something LOTS of nurses fail to do (no offense), so if you want to go ahead and pre-judge and compare two career fields, go ahead. But at least know what you're talking about. An undergrad in Bio is synonymous with a BSN in nursing because the prerequisites provide the same degree of preparation for their respective fields. You just never hear about the nursing majors that fail...because they never talk about it (I've already heard of 13 in the past year).

The curriculum to become a nurse is nothing like the typical biology degree curriculum. there's nothing synonymous about the two. Nursing qualifies one to become a nurse: get a nursing degree and there's nothing stopping you from passing the boards and becoming a nurse. The downside is as you say: if you don't pass the boards your options are a lot more limited because the education is a lot narrower/more specialized. Bio isn't meant to prepare you for any particular career necessarily, but it doesn't narrow your options like nursing does either.

Can you perceive the difference? The education a nursing student receives is designed and imparted to the student with the intent that the student someday become a member of a specific profession. Nothing from a "College of Arts & Sciences" such as Bio is like that, not even close. The entire second half of a BSN program is clinically oriented, no electives. The first two years are less scripted, but well over half of it is health-specific basic science. There might be 15 credits total for electives over the entire four years. Compare that to a Biology degree: even if it's a B.S. program you're only looking at ~80 credits that are specific to bio. Your attitude almost makes me think you have it backwards: that you believe bio majors are screwed if they can't get into a professional program, just as nurses are in pretty big trouble if they can't pass NCLEX.

It's similar to other professional programs that I compared nursing to in my other post eg medicine, engineering, pharm... you undertake the curriculum to go into that profession. It's not a guarantee, but it's certainly more specialized than any biology undergraduate degree. BTW the pass rates for NCLEX(a professional licensing exam) aren't that dissimilar to those for USMLE Step I(another professional licensing exam), so 🙄

I guess I would say that the "clinical" experience that you would get in a nursing BSN program is not much different at all from what you could get between any number of hospital-based volunteer programs and clinical physician shadowing.

lol don't let anyone who's been a nursing student hear you say this! Nursing is FAR more intense than any volunteer or shadowing experience. The level and scope of responsibility are vastly greater. Direct patient care in an allied health field is the best way to show medical school adcoms that an applicant has the work ethic and the gumption necessary to be responsible for patients, and it's a great selling point for BSN -> MD. But I think this also becomes one of LizzyM's biggest concerns for someone like OP: you haven't got any time during a BSN program to do the EC's necessary for admission to medical school.

There is a huge difference between entering a liberal arts or science major which is not a professional degree and entering a professional program like nursing school.

The two do not compare. And in fact what is a biological job? If you mean research, I'd say you would need extensive research or otherwise a MS or PhD to get a good research position. Biology and most of the college of arts and sciences majors are just 4 year degrees which are not professional degrees but degrees that are used as stepping stones for professional school or PhD programs or teaching jobs.

👍👍👍

 

[gravitywave]

Gotta disagree with the great and powerful LizzyM on this one. Maybe it's selfish to attend a nursing program you have no intention of following up on, but last I checked, one doesn't get an education for everyone else's direct benefit. The clinical training you get will be immensely helpful to you. All the simple fundamentals you'll get down will have you far ahead of your med school classmates and will let you focus on learning the "doctor stuff" once third year rolls around. You'll already be proficient at basic patient management, placing IV's, and stuff like that. I find the quoted analogy confusing since if med schools only want clinical experience directly related to what you'll be doing professionally, the only things that would count would be shadowing and work as some sort of tech. That certainly doesn't sound like the mantra I've seen plastered on these boards for the last few years. Screw nursing; go volunteer to shuttle patients around if you want real clinical experience. 🙄

I liked her analogy, it had some punch to it 😍

for medical school admissions purposes, shadowing/tech CAN get an applicant to the minimum necessary demonstrated commitment just as nursing can, without going through the ardor of completing a nursing program. Nursing might be better for demonstrating those things, but it's not necessary. In the meantime, nursing is going to make other things necessary to a successful app more difficult. OP will spend a lot of time learning things that are not particularly relevant to medicine, which will then have to be unlearned and relearned later. The basic science nurses learn, for example, is not appropriate to either MCAT or most biomedical research.

and if Lizzy in her capacity as an adcom says that she considers the nursing cap when she reads a BSN applicant file, it makes perfect sense to me. One might not necessarily get an education for everyone else's direct benefit, but medicine is unique in that we are always rationing resources. I'd understand if the nurses who want to switch to medicine have a higher hurdle to cross when trying to demonstrate that it's their commitment to patient care that's pushing them to make the leap.

I think the BSN -> MD route isn't necessarily a bad idea, but it has to be considered for its pros and cons. In my opinion there are easier ways of testing your suitability for clinical care while still being able to tick all the boxes for a successful med school app. If OP knows s/he wants to go to med school right now, nursing is a very roundabout way of doing it and the negatives are likely tipping the scales. OP almost certainly underestimates the time commitment necessary for BSN as compared to BS, especially during the crucial third and fourth years when the heavy lifting for application resumes usually happens.

 

[MilkmanAl]

Yeah, I agree it's probably not the best way to go about things and that the OP likely isn't working with all the necessary info to make a sound decision on the matter (hence the thread...). However, as you say, a nursing major certainly is not a bad or irrelevant thing to have (med school novelist?) under you belt and has some serious upsides for potential med students to go along with the not-so-useful parts.

The concept of docking someone for not pursuing their major is fairly baffling to me. I didn't have too many physicists on my butt for not becoming an engineer or astronomer or whatever. Cap or no, punishing someone for changing his/her mind during college is just stupid. Also stupid would be to admit that you did a nursing major almost solely for the built-in clinical experience. 😛 I suppose it works both ways.

 

[Pons Asinorum]

Cap or no, punishing someone for changing his/her mind during college is just stupid. Also stupid would be to admit that you did a nursing major almost solely for the built-in clinical experience. 😛 I suppose it works both ways.

I agree with that part. My feeling is that since the OP says they have always wanted to pursue an MD, they would be better served statistically going after that without the BSN. I think chasing the BSN isn't the best way to do that if you know, before even switching from bio to nursing like they said they did, that MD acceptance is the goal. As previously discussed, you spend a lot of time doing things that will not help you in terms of passing through the wickets that most people feel have to be hit to maximize the competitiveness of your application. And I think that there is a lot of overvaluation of the clinical skills that would be picked up as a BSN undergraduate and how useful they would be to a medical student. It's the equivalent of people saying that the A&P taken during the BSN track will make you better prepared for anatomy as an M1. Sure, a tiny bit. But you'll cover more terms and structures in the first week in the medical school anatomy lab than you learned in the two-semester A&P sequence, so the return on that investment is pretty low. Just low yield, if nursing isn't something you really want to do or would possibly also be considering. Which the OP says they are not.

 

[gravitywave]

I agree with that part. My feeling is that since the OP says they have always wanted to pursue an MD, they would be better served statistically going after that without the BSN. I think chasing the BSN isn't the best way to do that if you know, before even switching from bio to nursing like they said they did, that MD acceptance is the goal. As previously discussed, you spend a lot of time doing things that will not help you in terms of passing through the wickets that most people feel have to be hit to maximize the competitiveness of your application. And I think that there is a lot of overvaluation of the clinical skills that would be picked up as a BSN undergraduate and how useful they would be to a medical student. It's the equivalent of people saying that the A&P taken during the BSN track will make you better prepared for anatomy as an M1. Sure, a tiny bit. But you'll cover more terms and structures in the first week in the medical school anatomy lab than you learned in the two-semester A&P sequence, so the return on that investment is pretty low. Just low yield, if nursing isn't something you really want to do or would possibly also be considering. Which the OP says they are not.

agree completely👍

i'll add that this statistic that people keep kicking around that nursing majors are admitted at much lower percentages than the norm isn't relevant. i don't know why AAMC bothers to publish those, they're loaded with awful confounders. adcoms don't pick up a file and see "nursing major" and commit it to the circular file any more than they pick one up with "music major" and auto-invite. it seems there is a consensus here though: there are things about nursing programs that, on balance, make it qualitatively more difficult to have a competitive application IF your plan is to go to medical school directly out of undergrad - which appears to be what OP wants.