Hi everyone!
This is my first post on this site so sorry if I do something wrong or post this in the wrong space. I know a lot of people ask for advice about these types of situations on here but I wanted to see if anyone had any specific advice that could pertain to my issue or has maybe been in my shoes before!
So basically, I had a pretty rough freshman year. I go to a competitive, private top-20 school (non-ivy) and coming from a semi-rural area I was not prepared for the challenges that awaited me. I entered freshman year as a 5 year dual-degree student in Biomed Engineering and Voice/Opera (weird combo, I know-- I was just really passionate about both!) I was very unsure about pre-med, and after making a C in my first quarter of accel chem, I decided to mentally drop being pre-med and pursue just engineering & voice.
Over the course of my freshman year, I started to realize that my voice degree was greatly limiting my level of success in engineering. Singing turned from a creative outlet to a stress-bearing chore, and took up SO much time-- I spent so much time doing required homework/practicing for my music classes that I had 0 time to study for my STEM classes that often had little homework (requiring more book-reading that I just did not have time to do). I often only slept 3-4 hours a night, which caused some medical issues that plagued me throughout the winter & contributed to my poor performance in my intro STEM classes. That being said, I ended the year with a 3.4 GPA, LARGELY bolstered by my music classes [my STEM classes were 1 A, 2 B's, 2 C's]. To take the stress off myself, I ended up dropping my voice degree to a music major, which also made graduating in 4 years more feasible.
Because of my poor STEM performance, I wanted to try something over the summer that might help boost my confidence and make up for my losses, and ended up applying for (and winning!) an undergraduate research grant for the summer. I spent the summer working on my own project in a tissue engineering lab, which was an amazing experience and made me realize how passionate I am about my major. I also decided that I really want to try to pick back up being pre-med and might try to apply to MD or MD/PhD programs-- but I just don't know that it will be feasible for me to do so right out of college given that I virtually cannot fit all the pre-med prereq's into 4 years without dropping my music major (which I cannot do due to financial aid reasons).
Is it worth it to take extra time to finish the premed classes? Would medical schools look upon me poorly for doing so, & would they understand my situation with my poor performance my freshman year? Would I be able to drop premed, work in industry, and then apply to med school later? I feel so much more confident and prepared going into this year now that I know what I'm really passionate about (biotechnology & medicine), but I just really don't know what my options are and what routes I might be able to take to medical school.
Thanks so much!
This is my first post on this site so sorry if I do something wrong or post this in the wrong space. I know a lot of people ask for advice about these types of situations on here but I wanted to see if anyone had any specific advice that could pertain to my issue or has maybe been in my shoes before!
So basically, I had a pretty rough freshman year. I go to a competitive, private top-20 school (non-ivy) and coming from a semi-rural area I was not prepared for the challenges that awaited me. I entered freshman year as a 5 year dual-degree student in Biomed Engineering and Voice/Opera (weird combo, I know-- I was just really passionate about both!) I was very unsure about pre-med, and after making a C in my first quarter of accel chem, I decided to mentally drop being pre-med and pursue just engineering & voice.
Over the course of my freshman year, I started to realize that my voice degree was greatly limiting my level of success in engineering. Singing turned from a creative outlet to a stress-bearing chore, and took up SO much time-- I spent so much time doing required homework/practicing for my music classes that I had 0 time to study for my STEM classes that often had little homework (requiring more book-reading that I just did not have time to do). I often only slept 3-4 hours a night, which caused some medical issues that plagued me throughout the winter & contributed to my poor performance in my intro STEM classes. That being said, I ended the year with a 3.4 GPA, LARGELY bolstered by my music classes [my STEM classes were 1 A, 2 B's, 2 C's]. To take the stress off myself, I ended up dropping my voice degree to a music major, which also made graduating in 4 years more feasible.
Because of my poor STEM performance, I wanted to try something over the summer that might help boost my confidence and make up for my losses, and ended up applying for (and winning!) an undergraduate research grant for the summer. I spent the summer working on my own project in a tissue engineering lab, which was an amazing experience and made me realize how passionate I am about my major. I also decided that I really want to try to pick back up being pre-med and might try to apply to MD or MD/PhD programs-- but I just don't know that it will be feasible for me to do so right out of college given that I virtually cannot fit all the pre-med prereq's into 4 years without dropping my music major (which I cannot do due to financial aid reasons).
Is it worth it to take extra time to finish the premed classes? Would medical schools look upon me poorly for doing so, & would they understand my situation with my poor performance my freshman year? Would I be able to drop premed, work in industry, and then apply to med school later? I feel so much more confident and prepared going into this year now that I know what I'm really passionate about (biotechnology & medicine), but I just really don't know what my options are and what routes I might be able to take to medical school.
Thanks so much!
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