Looking for some guidance

[floridafireman]

I'm 24 years old, I currently work for the Fire Department. Long story short, I don't want to be a firefighter/paramedic forever. My end goal is to work in medicine as a Physician. The difficult part for me is choosing a Major. I've taken some classes to knockout an AA as I will then transfer to a 4 year University. But I am having difficulty deciding whether I should proceed into a degree in say Biology or Biomedical Science, which truthfully I'm not extremely interested in. Or if I should go the route of doing something that interests me like Sports Medicine or even a degree in a language like Portuguese or Spanish. The catch is that with my schedule I am looking to do a large amount of the program online, obviously my med school pre reqs will not be done this way. But do schools (DO and MD) look down on doing a large percentage of your degree online? Also, I've heard rumors that my experience as a paramedic is a plus when it comes to application time, any light to be shed on that?

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[DrMidlife]

Online coursework is generally a bad idea if you want to go to med school. A few online courses is fine. But you need to get your degree through traditional classroom study if you want to maximize your chances of being a physician.

You don't have to have a typical premed major like biology. Pick whatever you like. However, you have to be the one responsible for figuring out how to get the med school requirements done if you don't do a typical premed major. Sometimes people do a minor so they can get the premed classes.

Your experience as a paramedic is not considered until you pass academic review. So getting good grades (3.6 is where "good" starts) and succeeding on the MCAT are absolutely required if you want to go to med school. Once you have made it past academic review, experience as a paramedic gives you nice coverage of the clinical exposure requirement. But you still have to directly shadow physicians and get some other clinical experiences so that you know more than the ER.

Best of luck to you.

 

[Goro]

100% agree especially with the bolded text.

Online coursework is generally a bad idea if you want to go to med school. A few online courses is fine. But you need to get your degree through traditional classroom study if you want to maximize your chances of being a physician.

You don't have to have a typical premed major like biology. Pick whatever you like. However, you have to be the one responsible for figuring out how to get the med school requirements done if you don't do a typical premed major. Sometimes people do a minor so they can get the premed classes.

Your experience as a paramedic is not considered until you pass academic review. So getting good grades (3.6 is where "good" starts) and succeeding on the MCAT are absolutely required if you want to go to med school. Once you have made it past academic review, experience as a paramedic gives you nice coverage of the clinical exposure requirement. But you still have to directly shadow physicians and get some other clinical experiences so that you know more than the ER.