Is this an option for non-trads?

[Jack-of-all-trades]

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The individual in this video said she did not take the pre-req classes and only took a kaplan course to prepare for the MCAT. She then only applied to a med school that had no required pre-reqs and was actually accepted.

I guess my question is......how common is this? I know a lot of med schools only have the typical prereq courses as "recommended" now but I didn't think people actually could get away with not taking them. The individual in this video seems to prove that you can.

What do you think? Is this a viable option for motivated non-trads?

 

[Itisnottoolate]

Hmm. I didn’t know that. I go to another state South Carolina school. MUSC is a reputable school. I didn’t realize their requirements were only recommended. Most schools I know of have minimum prerequisites. I would recommend taking them first to do well on the mcat in my opinion.

 

[deleted1085158]

My honest advice from what I have observed over the years...

Do not take short cuts if you want to become a doctor. This is not the career for being an outlier.

 

[Dral]

The difference between knowing and understanding...

Just like in practice, overconfidence can be borne from ignorance (you don't know what you don't know).

Unless things have changed wildly since I ran the gauntlet, I find it nearly impossible to believe someone who hasn't taken Ochem or Physics can do well enough on the MCAT to get an acceptance.

I took a Kaplan course and it helped me immensely on the MCAT, but I already had the base knowledge....this isn't an IQ exam, it's an applied knowledge exam.

I find it hard to relate the word 'motivated' with this method myself.

 

[8YearsLate]

MOST schools REQUIRE the pre-req's. So if you're okay with being unable to apply to MOST schools, then go for it. They're probably going to look at you a little sideways, though. It's 8 months into the cycle and I *still* have schools hitting me up to verify my prereqs. 1 school rejected me before review because I was missing a (second) psych course they require. I wouldn't follow this YouTube lady's advice.

 

[DO_or_Die]

I didn't watch the video but I was an RN before med school. I had to go back and take all of the pre-reqs, very few of my pre-nursing/nursing courses counted towards the med school requirements and as a non-science major I feel like I really struggled on the MCAT/have struggled a bit in the first year of med school (not grade wise, but time wise as far as learning these core science concepts). There are no good short cuts, if you want to go to med school I would suggest being a traditional science major and getting a scribing job.

 

[Stranger00120]

I'd say it's maybe possible, but very unlikely. I think the thing that stuck out to me most in this video was that she was working where she was accepted to med school, that's very much networking rather than straight up application in the way many of us have gone through it (not discounting her drive, just pointing out the difference in circumstances). I very much doubt she would have had the same result under other circumstances. She also mentions that she applied with a below average MCAT score, which to me stuck out as possibly below average on the MCAT rather than just below average for her school (I may be wrong about this point).

How big of a risk are you willing to take? For her, it worked out, but it sounds like she would have felt okay with working a few more years and trying again. If you don't see yourself as a nurse or whatever you're doing while trying to get the pre-reqs to try again, I don't think I'd do it. I'm someone who has had an incredibly winding path to medical school (accepted in my fifth cycle, I've been working for this for almost a decade, a lot of reinvention and some bumps along the way), and I wouldn't change how I did it very much if I were to do it again, but I've been incredibly fulfilled by my career in the meantime, and I can't imagine a path like she talks about where she wasn't really getting that fulfillment.