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I suspect this has been done a good deal, but looking for a general assessment as well as some feedback on what the path to med school might look like.
Background: 35, married, working for 4 years as an engineer. Have realized that it’s not the career for me. Biology, specifically medicine, has always been what’s interested me the most, and the kind of thinking that describes most engineering is what I enjoy the least. The kind of thinking that you see in research or medicine ends up being what I find an order of magnitude more interesting.
Situation is ugly, hence the assessment.
Did my first undergrad in biology, graduated in 2012 with a 2.9. Rising trend, but not substantial.
Few years off pursuing pro cycling, then got somewhat pushed into doing engineering as a way to make decent money. Entered with little enthusiasm and just kinda skated by. That was a 2.5 year undergrad that I finished in 2020, graduated with a 2.7gpa in EE.
I’ve been preparing for the MCAT as a bit of a test of the intensity of med school, mixing full time work with MCAT studying and seeing how I hold up. That’s going well, practice test average has been 524 on full length. Don’t expect major issues.
It's everything else that would be the concern, and in general what the non traditional path looks like. It’s been over a decade since I took the pre-reqs, not sure if I’d need to retake those, or if that would help as a small demonstration of “This guy can handle upper level academic STEM courses.”
From there, my understanding is even with a reasonably strong MCAT that kind of application just isn’t going to get looked at and pass muster at the nearly all MD schools and likely the vast majority of DO options.
Way to many credits to appreciably repair GPA, so my current understanding is that the main option is that the MCAT +Pre-Req retake + non-trad background would be enough to get into some of the SMPs, ideally with linkage.
Mostly looking to see if that’s a correct understanding of my situation based on what you guys have experienced yourself and observed over time, as well as trying to get an assessment of what the odds of getting into a decent SMP program would be. I think that would be the main thing that would stop me from pulling the trigger full stop. Don’t really want to go 10-30k more in debt, potentially stop working, only to discover that I don’t have much of a shot at any SMP that would give me a decent shot at getting med school interviews.
Background: 35, married, working for 4 years as an engineer. Have realized that it’s not the career for me. Biology, specifically medicine, has always been what’s interested me the most, and the kind of thinking that describes most engineering is what I enjoy the least. The kind of thinking that you see in research or medicine ends up being what I find an order of magnitude more interesting.
Situation is ugly, hence the assessment.
Did my first undergrad in biology, graduated in 2012 with a 2.9. Rising trend, but not substantial.
Few years off pursuing pro cycling, then got somewhat pushed into doing engineering as a way to make decent money. Entered with little enthusiasm and just kinda skated by. That was a 2.5 year undergrad that I finished in 2020, graduated with a 2.7gpa in EE.
I’ve been preparing for the MCAT as a bit of a test of the intensity of med school, mixing full time work with MCAT studying and seeing how I hold up. That’s going well, practice test average has been 524 on full length. Don’t expect major issues.
It's everything else that would be the concern, and in general what the non traditional path looks like. It’s been over a decade since I took the pre-reqs, not sure if I’d need to retake those, or if that would help as a small demonstration of “This guy can handle upper level academic STEM courses.”
From there, my understanding is even with a reasonably strong MCAT that kind of application just isn’t going to get looked at and pass muster at the nearly all MD schools and likely the vast majority of DO options.
Way to many credits to appreciably repair GPA, so my current understanding is that the main option is that the MCAT +Pre-Req retake + non-trad background would be enough to get into some of the SMPs, ideally with linkage.
Mostly looking to see if that’s a correct understanding of my situation based on what you guys have experienced yourself and observed over time, as well as trying to get an assessment of what the odds of getting into a decent SMP program would be. I think that would be the main thing that would stop me from pulling the trigger full stop. Don’t really want to go 10-30k more in debt, potentially stop working, only to discover that I don’t have much of a shot at any SMP that would give me a decent shot at getting med school interviews.
