Hello! New Non-Trad - About Me - Seeking Advice

Started by deleted1219029
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If you're trying to apply in ~12 months, you need a clinical gig, preferably working with a doc, and at least one consistent volunteering gig yesterday. Med schools want to see longevity of activities. Most of the time, I try to discourage people who say they want to speed run premed in a year because they require coursework on top of everything, but if you gets some irons in the fire in the next month or two it might be doable for you. It's unnecessary for you to do random science courses at a CC imo, especially if you crush the MCAT.

For the MCAT, go check the MCAT subreddit. Tons of great advice on there. Basically get a copy of one of the book sets to quickly review everything, download Anki and whatever the current top MCAT deck is at this point, and buy UWorld and all the practice exams and do every single question. You have a year to take it, but I'd set yourself a strict 3 month study period at the most. If you grind much longer than that you're gonna get crispy and bored, and I doubt you'll need it anyway. Take the free diagnostic at the beginning of your study period then a practice exam once a week or every couple days once you feel like you're doing reasonably well on UWorld. T inake the real thing once they're all completed unless you're unhappy with your average score.

Basic low level healthcare roles such as a medical assistant or certified nursing aide may or may not require some basic licensing; if so, sometimes you can just challenge the licensing exam with self-study, sometimes a course is required. These courses are a couple hundred hours or so, nothing crazy long. Figure out your state laws in this regard. If you want to do an EMT, there are some accelerated courses you can cram into a couple weeks or a month, but you'll probably have to travel because they're pretty rare. Also confirm that you can get certified in your state if you do a program that's out of state. You can also consider something unlicensed like being a patient transporter or potentially a patient sitter. You'll get a lot of stories out of either of those gigs and hospitals are usually dying to hire people for that stuff. 3 12s in the hospital or a 40h outpatient job and you'll have around 2k clinical hours.

Shadowing docs is a pain, NGL. I cold emailed about 30 within an hours drive and got 2 eventual offers to shadow. You only need like 50ish hours and most docs will let you do a couple days, so 2 is a good goal to aim for. Include a PCP.

Pick a couple from the list: Habitat for Humanity, Food Bank, Homeless Shelter, Nursing Home/Hospice Companion, Community Center working with elderly/kids type stuff, other unique opportunities where you're working with disadvantaged individuals as a form of service. Do 1-2 4 hour shifts of each one you pick for the next year and you've got 200-800 hours of community service depending how hard you go.

Good luck!
 
If you're trying to apply in ~12 months, you need a clinical gig, preferably working with a doc, and at least one consistent volunteering gig yesterday. Med schools want to see longevity of activities. Most of the time, I try to discourage people who say they want to speed run premed in a year because they require coursework on top of everything, but if you gets some irons in the fire in the next month or two it might be doable for you. It's unnecessary for you to do random science courses at a CC imo, especially if you crush the MCAT.

For the MCAT, go check the MCAT subreddit. Tons of great advice on there. Basically get a copy of one of the book sets to quickly review everything, download Anki and whatever the current top MCAT deck is at this point, and buy UWorld and all the practice exams and do every single question. You have a year to take it, but I'd set yourself a strict 3 month study period at the most. If you grind much longer than that you're gonna get crispy and bored, and I doubt you'll need it anyway. Take the free diagnostic at the beginning of your study period then a practice exam once a week or every couple days once you feel like you're doing reasonably well on UWorld. T inake the real thing once they're all completed unless you're unhappy with your average score.

Basic low level healthcare roles such as a medical assistant or certified nursing aide may or may not require some basic licensing; if so, sometimes you can just challenge the licensing exam with self-study, sometimes a course is required. These courses are a couple hundred hours or so, nothing crazy long. Figure out your state laws in this regard. If you want to do an EMT, there are some accelerated courses you can cram into a couple weeks or a month, but you'll probably have to travel because they're pretty rare. Also confirm that you can get certified in your state if you do a program that's out of state. You can also consider something unlicensed like being a patient transporter or potentially a patient sitter. You'll get a lot of stories out of either of those gigs and hospitals are usually dying to hire people for that stuff. 3 12s in the hospital or a 40h outpatient job and you'll have around 2k clinical hours.

Shadowing docs is a pain, NGL. I cold emailed about 30 within an hours drive and got 2 eventual offers to shadow. You only need like 50ish hours and most docs will let you do a couple days, so 2 is a good goal to aim for. Include a PCP.

Pick a couple from the list: Habitat for Humanity, Food Bank, Homeless Shelter, Nursing Home/Hospice Companion, Community Center working with elderly/kids type stuff, other unique opportunities where you're working with disadvantaged individuals as a form of service. Do 1-2 4 hour shifts of each one you pick for the next year and you've got 200-800 hours of community service depending how hard you go.

Good luck!
Beautiful - Thank You!

On volunteering, yes - I see a clear path to be consistent on both clinical and non-clinical hours. On clinical side I'm leaning towards hospice volunteering - Idk that one just stands out to me. To start - i'd like to get more broad experience too I guess. Non-clinical, was thinking food bank / soup kitchen. All-in towards a similar output you describe - I mean no reason I can't be doing 10+ hours a week total.

Sounds like you are saying, in addition to what would be a few hundred hours of clinical volunteering, I would need to get a low-level clinical job like an EMT too? I suppose that's a good idea to get more immersed in the path and make sure its for me. (Fact that any certification process is effectively "dead weight" time, and your point that this is a 1000+ hour commitment rather than a few hundred, does make me nervous in context of wanting to leave a ton of time for MCAT - so am curious what the floor here is - perhaps thats not an inspiring question).

Gotcha on shadowing. i guess they get that request a lot so its not totally weird. Prob best to start with friends and such.

Anything else you recommend doing to really confirm this is for me? Or is the answer just to process all the experiences above and I'll just know? I know I like science and want to more directly help people - but I don't know what I don't know
 
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Hospice is a great option. Very emotionally challenging at times but that's what makes it a great option both for your own persona growth and your application.

You need a real job working with patients and shadowing to really know if you want to do it. People get in without clinical jobs, but arguably outside grades and MCAT I feel that it's easily the most important aspect for an average application. You just can't be a doctor if you don't even know whether or not you like patients, and to know that you need to interact with them at a high volume for an extended period of time. You don't want to be 2 years deep into med school and realize you actually hate working with sick people. The advice is usually 150-250 hours of clinical as a floor which can include volunteer and paid.

Also, just my personal opinion, I think MCAT study period is very over hyped. I wasn't a science major and had only taken bio, gen chem, and physics when I took mine. No orgo or biochem yet. I taught myself enough to get a good enough score for a MD program and spent about 3 months of maybe 15-20 hours a week on it while working full time and doing all my premed activities. I honestly am not sure what people are doing when they say they study for 12 hours a day for months. Give yourself an end date and just grind to that point and take it. You'll get the grade you earned. 🤷‍♂️
 
Hospice is a great option. Very emotionally challenging at times but that's what makes it a great option both for your own persona growth and your application.

You need a real job working with patients and shadowing to really know if you want to do it. People get in without clinical jobs, but arguably outside grades and MCAT I feel that it's easily the most important aspect for an average application. You just can't be a doctor if you don't even know whether or not you like patients, and to know that you need to interact with them at a high volume for an extended period of time. You don't want to be 2 years deep into med school and realize you actually hate working with sick people. The advice is usually 150-250 hours of clinical as a floor which can include volunteer and paid.

Also, just my personal opinion, I think MCAT study period is very over hyped. I wasn't a science major and had only taken bio, gen chem, and physics when I took mine. No orgo or biochem yet. I taught myself enough to get a good enough score for a MD program and spent about 3 months of maybe 15-20 hours a week on it while working full time and doing all my premed activities. I honestly am not sure what people are doing when they say they study for 12 hours a day for months. Give yourself an end date and just grind to that point and take it. You'll get the grade you earned. 🤷‍♂️
Thank you - that all makes sense!