What should be the first step for someone who has just started to consider medical school? I'm a senior psychology major currently on track to go to occupational therapy school after I graduate (which will be next january). However, I've been having a nagging thought that maybe med school is a better route for me. I have been volunteering with a couple of OTs, and while I really enjoy working in the early childhood intervention setting, I'm not sure that it would be intellectually challenging enough to suit me long term and I'm not really interested in doing OT in other settings (and working with pediatrics doesn't pay as well as most OT specialties). I'm very interested in how the body works and diseases, and becoming a doctor could allow me to still have the social aspect that attracts me to OT while having the opportunity to challenge myself more and use more science. I also want a profession I can do internationally (in developing/tropical countries if possible) and medicine might be more conducive to that.
One of the main factors that draws me back to OT is that I could go to a highly ranked graduate school immediately after graduating, and be gainfully employed and making a decent living within 2.5 years after that. Whereas, medical school would take a year of post-bac prereqs, 4 years of school (probably only getting into a lower-tier program), then $$ (yes, residency, but residents make about the same as starting salary for a pediatric OT). So, obviously, there are opportunity costs.
Besides online research, what should I do to help me figure out whether med school is the right choice for me? How did everyone here decide to leave their current fields and pursue medicine? I'm leaning strongly towards it right now, but the opportunity costs are so high I'd like to be sure. I'm still in school so I have a pre-med advisor that can set me up with some shadowing experiences that I could start in the fall and I could do a 1-month premed internship (I graduate after next january term -- my school is expensive so I'd rather do postbac work at a public school than stay here longer). If it's relevant to anything, my GPA is currently 2.9 but I anticipate bringing it up to at least 3.1 by graduation (the 2.9 is due to one awful semester which brought my GPA down from 3.2 to 2.8). I also haven't taken any of the prereqs besides high school AP credits for intro bio and calc 1-2, so I'll have the opportunity to get a good GPA in those. (Feel free to move this if I'm not non-traditional enough -- but with the GPA issues and needing to do a post-bac program eventually, I felt like I have more in common with the posters in this forum than the regular pre-MD forum.)
One of the main factors that draws me back to OT is that I could go to a highly ranked graduate school immediately after graduating, and be gainfully employed and making a decent living within 2.5 years after that. Whereas, medical school would take a year of post-bac prereqs, 4 years of school (probably only getting into a lower-tier program), then $$ (yes, residency, but residents make about the same as starting salary for a pediatric OT). So, obviously, there are opportunity costs.
Besides online research, what should I do to help me figure out whether med school is the right choice for me? How did everyone here decide to leave their current fields and pursue medicine? I'm leaning strongly towards it right now, but the opportunity costs are so high I'd like to be sure. I'm still in school so I have a pre-med advisor that can set me up with some shadowing experiences that I could start in the fall and I could do a 1-month premed internship (I graduate after next january term -- my school is expensive so I'd rather do postbac work at a public school than stay here longer). If it's relevant to anything, my GPA is currently 2.9 but I anticipate bringing it up to at least 3.1 by graduation (the 2.9 is due to one awful semester which brought my GPA down from 3.2 to 2.8). I also haven't taken any of the prereqs besides high school AP credits for intro bio and calc 1-2, so I'll have the opportunity to get a good GPA in those. (Feel free to move this if I'm not non-traditional enough -- but with the GPA issues and needing to do a post-bac program eventually, I felt like I have more in common with the posters in this forum than the regular pre-MD forum.)