Hello and looking for advise

[sailor0231]

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Hello to everyone here.
I am a 25 yo engineer working for a medical device company, and am looking to start down the path to become a doctor. I have found my engineering work to be unsatisfying and am looking for a new career where I can do meaningful challenging work and have a more direct impact on people's lives. I have some experience in wilderness medicine and have been a patient far too often and believe the medical field would provide me with the career I am looking for.

I graduated from undergrad at Duke in 2006 with a 3.5 GPA in mechanical engineering so I have a strong science background but not quite the right focus for medical school. Throughout my education science and math have come easily for me which was part of why I ended up in engineering.

I know I need to take some prereqs but am unsure of what level to start at. I took had a physics minor in college and took math through diff. eqs. so that should be taken care of. Chemistry and Biology are sticky as I received AP credit for the general level of both, but did not take any classes in these areas in college. Would it be wise to try and jump into organic chemistry or would i be better off/required to retake the general level? Similarly for biology, I would assume it would serve me to take more classes in the area but where would be the appropriate place to start. It would also be preferable to continue working my engineering job while i take some of my classes and continue to school full time later in the process. I live in Seattle so there are multiple community colleges as well as two well regarded four year schools (UW and SU) that i could take classes at and the CCs are more schedule friendly but likely less rigorous, what should i consider in this tradeoff?

Ideally I would apply next fall for 2011 admission if I can make sufficient progress on my prereqs, is this a realistic goal?
thanks for any help

 

[vc7777]

Hello to everyone here.
I am a 25 yo engineer working for a medical device company, and am looking to start down the path to become a doctor. I have found my engineering work to be unsatisfying and am looking for a new career where I can do meaningful challenging work and have a more direct impact on people's lives. I have some experience in wilderness medicine and have been a patient far too often and believe the medical field would provide me with the career I am looking for.

I graduated from undergrad at Duke in 2006 with a 3.5 GPA in mechanical engineering so I have a strong science background but not quite the right focus for medical school. Throughout my education science and math have come easily for me which was part of why I ended up in engineering.

I know I need to take some prereqs but am unsure of what level to start at. I took had a physics minor in college and took math through diff. eqs. so that should be taken care of. Chemistry and Biology are sticky as I received AP credit for the general level of both, but did not take any classes in these areas in college. Would it be wise to try and jump into organic chemistry or would i be better off/required to retake the general level? Similarly for biology, I would assume it would serve me to take more classes in the area but where would be the appropriate place to start. It would also be preferable to continue working my engineering job while i take some of my classes and continue to school full time later in the process. I live in Seattle so there are multiple community colleges as well as two well regarded four year schools (UW and SU) that i could take classes at and the CCs are more schedule friendly but likely less rigorous, what should i consider in this tradeoff?

Ideally I would apply next fall for 2011 admission if I can make sufficient progress on my prereqs, is this a realistic goal?
thanks for any help

Welcome! All the former lawyers aside, I think you will find many of the nontrads have an engineering background, so you are in good (?) company!

I am also a medical device engineer (electrical). I was in a similar position just last fall.

However, I am a little bit older than you (33 y/o). I think a meeting with a local medical school admissions advisor (not an undergrad advisor, but someone from a medical school) would be a wise first step. Have them scrutinize your transcripts and perhaps have a cursory statement of 'why medicine? why now?' clarified in your head. Believe me, if it hasn't congealed yet, it will be codified in you mind before you get in!

Are you taking classes right now? What do you think you are deficient in? Is there a particular school to which you hope to gain admission? What are their requirements?

I have been out for over a decade from my undergrad (Michigan Engineering), and I didn't re-take any math, physics, bio. I have the chemistry and biochem already in my undergrad past (orgo I & II). Instead of a formal program I made my own personal post-bacc program at an accommodating local university (read: 'willing to help and less expense than Michigan').

In all of my interviews they never questioned my choice of coursework as a post-bacc. Then again, the schools that rejected me or have put me on hold probably DID care!

Do well on your MCAT and your engineering background will provide all of the "street-cred" you need to prove you can handle the level of coursework technically. The issues they will then focus on will be your maturity, determination, temperament.

Working full time, taking the MCAT AND taking the pre-reqs is probably on the outside of the realm of feasible, especially depending on how many courses you need to take between then and now...I would either push applying back a year in your schedule or quit working and go back full-time. Even then, it might be too aggresive.

I can tell you what worked for me: I decided in August of last year to apply, pushed for the May 1st MCAT, got high As in my courses between September and the MCAT, applied the first day possible in June (have everything done the first day including all of my letters uploaded).

Private Message me if you need further guidance or have specific questions about my journey from the working-engineer perspective.

Good luck!

-vc7777

P.S.

I'd like to hear more about what you do not like about engineering? I understand your comment about direct impact on people's lives, but I do think research in medical devices can be very gratifying. Were/are you more on the research or manufacturing side? Where you leading your work, independent, or a team player? How was it not challenging?

I personally am very interesting in applying my background in medical device engineering during and after medical school in translational and clinical research. It was a choice between a medical path or a biomedical research graduate path for me.

EDIT: I should note that I too had lots of bio and chem AP credits, so I focused on these in my post-bacc, but I took undergrad 300 and 400 level courses that were germane to medical school (human anatomy lab & lecture, microbiology, etc). I didn't retake anything I had already covered as an UG. My post-bacc university was completely cool with me taking whatever I thought I was a) capable of handling and b) found interesting and the department of biology in particular was pretty cool with me taking special courses for pre-meds that you needed written permission to enroll in.

EDIT (again): Oh, and if you haven't enough on your plate, you probably need to find some volunteering opportunities to bolster your application! Unfortunately, the application process is very competitive! It doesn't necessarily have to be medically related, but something you can be passionate about? It would be better if it was medically related or if you shadowed some doctors, for your sake as much as your application because it will help confirm your feelings that medicine is right for you. Hopefully, you already have a wonderful and personally fulfilling volunteering activity in your free time? If not, that's a heck of a lot to do between now and, say, June...

-vc

 

[sgtbrushes]

I know I need to take some prereqs but am unsure of what level to start at. I took had a physics minor in college and took math through diff. eqs. so that should be taken care of. Chemistry and Biology are sticky as I received AP credit for the general level of both, but did not take any classes in these areas in college. Would it be wise to try and jump into organic chemistry or would i be better off/required to retake the general level? Similarly for biology, I would assume it would serve me to take more classes in the area but where would be the appropriate place to start. It would also be preferable to continue working my engineering job while i take some of my classes and continue to school full time later in the process. I live in Seattle so there are multiple community colleges as well as two well regarded four year schools (UW and SU) that i could take classes at and the CCs are more schedule friendly but likely less rigorous, what should i consider in this tradeoff?

You must take the following pre-reqs for almost all med schools, 1 year of each:
Physics w/ lab
Chem w/ lab
Bio w/ lab
O Chem w/ lab
English
[Some] Math (calc I, calc II, stats, etc.)

I don't know of any med schools that count AP credit for pre-reqs, and even if they do, I would retake them. You need the lab component as well, so it would be beneficial to take the course with the lab. As far as community vs. university programs, people are split on this. Officially, med schools don't look down community college pre-reqs. Unofficially, it shouldn't hurt your app too much, except for top-tier schools, which a lot of the time, non-trads are not interested in. For schedule/ money purposes, I would suggest taking them at a CC.