Nontraditional undecided btwn NP or Doctor

[Marlee]

Hello everyone,
This seems to be like a helpful site and I just want to put my dilemma down since it's driving me nuts and hopefully some of you will sympathize and give some advice

I am 29 yrs old currently working in the IT field and hated it from the beginning. As an undergrad student I was pre-med and fulfullied all of my pre-requisite course work except for inorganic chem and a 2nd semester of physics. The school that I went to has a rigourous science program specially in bio! The classes were very hard and I struggled all throughout my 4 yrs there, I ended up with a 2.7 gpa! (I know, bad). So that's what deterred me from completing the pre-med courses and applying to med school. Only elite students got encouraged to apply.

So, here I am 8 yrs later wanting to go back into the health field. I researched nurse practitioner programs and thought that it might be a good fit. I am currently enrolled in a community school to fulfill the pre-reqs for that. But lately, I just have this feeling that I could be a good doctor.

What is stopping me is my low GPA and having to re-take those pre-requisites. Does anyone know if there is an expiration on the science courses. I took most of the them in 1997 & 1998. Obviously the time comitmment is another factor. Looks like I would have to put in alot of time in but being that I'm starting off so badly I might not even get in!

Ok, sorry I know that my story is not exactly original but just wanted to vent. Thank you all.

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[FutureDrB]

Hello Marlee,

I think that you’ll find a lot of us non-trads are in similar situations.

First, you’ve probably done this already but you’ll want to really research the difference between being an NP and being a doc. That decision is entirely yours.

Second, your GPA is not devastatingly low. If you retake some courses you got D’s in and get your GPA to a 3.0+ you should be ok for D.O. schools. (Taking into account the rest of your application, MCAT scores, extra-curriculars, personal statement, etc. are good.) M.D. schools usually want 3.5+ GPA’s and do not figure in retakes to replace previous grades.

Three, as far as the expiration of your previous courses, I’m not too sure. I’ve heard that some med schools require they be completed within the past 10 years, but I may be wrong. Someone else will know for sure.

Finally, the time commitment is usually the biggest concern (especially for non-trads who are older). You just need to do the math. If you go the doctor route then you are looking at another year to complete your remaining pre-reqs and retakes. A year for the application process. 4 Years of med school. 3-7 years of residency. So, you are looking at a minimum of 9 years before you are a full-fledged physician.

If you go the NP route, you’ll need to get an RN (which can be done in 2 years) and then move on to a BSN (another 2 years). However, you may be able to go straight into a BSN program and you probably have the majority of courses completed since you already graduated. In either case, you need a masters in nursing to be an NP. Which is another 2 years. So basically 5-6 years depending on your situation. Someone please correct me if I’m wrong.

So, 6 years for NP or 6 years for doc, your decision. I say 6 years for doc because technically after 6 years you’ll be a doctor. Still in residency, but you are practicing medicine, and to me that is a doc.

For the record I am also 29 and completing pre-reqs and retakes. My undergraduate GPA was MUCH worse than yours. I have the same 9-year road in front of me.

 

[beanbean]

Have you looked into becoming a PA? Although you will still have to retake your prereqs and boost your gpa, PA training is 2 years with an optional 1 year residency. PA school is modeled after MD training, while NP's focus on a nursing model. There is a great deal of controversy surrounding the new Doctor of NP degree which the NP leadership expects will be the standard degree by 2015. NP programs vary widely in scope and requirements; in contrast PA schools are more tightly regulated by their governing organizations. For more information, there are several threads in the General Residency Forum on SDN detailing some of issues regarding the DNP degree.

Good luck to you whatever path you choose. FYI, it is in your favor that you are a few years out from undergrad. I started my premed journey at age 33 and had a 2.5 undergrad gpa. My 4.0 post bacc gpa and a good MCAT score outweighed my old gpa.

 

[DrMidlife]

As for figuring out nurse vs. doctor, I'd send you off to volunteer in a hospital, where you have access to lots and lots of medical professionals that you can talk to. Personally, my experience volunteering in a teaching hospital's ER set me up to effectively stalk all the residents in various specialties, and interrogate them about why they're doing what they're doing. I was also able to get insight from nurses and respiratory techs and management etc. about who does what. I also found it valuable to stalk the "old white guy" doctors who are really pissed off about how the medical system works now vs. when they started. If you can get a male ob/gyn, who is about to retire, to pontificate about what's wrong with going into medicine now, that will make the cons crystal clear.

As for GPA repair and premed prereqs and such, here's what you need to know:
- Some schools will not care at all how old your prereqs are, based on a current MCAT score (since it tests prereq material). Some schools post their statute of limitations, such as UMass at 6 years. Anecdotally, I took physics in 1988, and none of the 45 schools I applied to gave me any grief. I recommend not retaking prereqs if you don't have to.
- If you don't retake prereqs, it's a good idea to take some upper-div science to demonstrate current academic rigor and relevancy. That means courses for science majors like biochem, microbio, immunology, physiology, etc.
- Retaking prereqs is an ineffective way to prepare for the MCAT, compared with a prep course, even if you took the prereqs 10 years ago.
- Retaking courses does NOT fix your GPA for MD schools. New grades just get averaged in. For DO schools, retakes wipe out the old grade.
- Community colleges carry unpredictable stigma. You might be able to get away with doing all your premed prep at a community college, and you might be as well prepared as anybody at a 4yr. Or you might have your med school apps fall only in front of people who think community colleges are inferior and this kills your app.
- More to the point, with a low cumulative GPA, you don't want anything casting aspersions on your academic mettle from this point on. It's not a good story to say "I got a 2.7 at a university but hey look at my CC 4.0!" You want to say "I got a 2.7 in my past but look at my shiny new 4.0 in rigorous 4yr science coursework"
- I'm confused as to how you haven't taken inorganic chem, but you seem to have taken organic chem. That says to me that the o-chem you took may have been the nursing version, or something less rigorous than the premed curriculum. Fundamentally what matters is whether you've studied, in depth, the subjects that will be on the MCAT. You need to be set up to do review and test prep, not to learn material, when you start MCAT prep.
- Finally, for us nontrads with multiple transcripts and messed up GPAs, you need a spreadsheet that you can play with to see how much work you have to do, and to set goals. My personal app-ready metric is that for MD schools, cumulative GPAs need to be a bare minimum of 3.4, and for DO schools, 3.1. If you are at these bare minimums, then your MCAT score must be 30+. If you cannot meet these bare minimums (because your averages won't move no matter what you do), then you need an SMP.

Hope this is helpful. Best of luck to you.

 

[Marlee]

Thank you everyone for your good advice. I will start volunteering at a hospital next week so I'm going to get a clearer idea of what path I am going to take. I'm glad that I found this site, has been very helpful.
The road ahead of me is long and I have to do some deep soul searching but I always say that time passes anyways so might as well be doing something productive while it's passing

 

[ChairmanMao]

DrMidlife brought up some good points and you should definitely follow her advice. To begin with, your GPA (in its present form) is too low for any US medical school. Second off, there is no statue of limitation for grade forgiveness - those grades will stick with you whether you've just graduated or graduated 20 years ago. As you probably figured out, plan on retaking some of the pre-req classes that you got lower than a "C" in. If your plans are to go to DO school, this will be easier since you can retake the old classes that you bombed in and if you do well with a retake your new grades will replace your bad grades.

If you plan on applying to MD schools though, this will be tougher since your old grades will be factored in (your old grades and your new grades from the same classes will be averaged together in the MD application). While a lot of people say that you have to have a 3.5+ to be competitive, this isn't necessarily true for non-traditional students who have been out of school for 10 years. Depending on how high you score on your MCATs (> mid-30s) and how well you improve when you start taking classes again, you might be able to get in with a 3.3 or a 3.2 - nothing less than a 3.0 for sure since most schools have cut-offs at that point.

Defnitely try to improve your GPA by taking post-bac classes. Do take a few months to think this through though. From your prior GPA, I get the feeling that you may not have properly developed your study technique, which is how you wound up with a 2.7 (I also went to a school with a rigorous bio curriculum. I wound up doing OK, but a lot of smart people wound up dropping or failing the classes because they never developed the proper technique for understanding or retaining the information that was being taught). I would highly recommend that you take a few intro science classes to refresh yourself and to get a feel for the material. Only once your comfortable with the material being taught in class should you realistically consider applying to medical school since medical school will reflect a lot of the classroom experience that you will learn in your science classes.

 

[pietachok]

Since you are already 29, and many people on the forums you will encounter are much younger, I want to mention that you shouldn't forget that you are entitled to weigh the length and cost of your education significantly. A lot of 20 yr olds aren't going to do that if you get off the non-trad forums, talk to classmates, etc. Don't be disuaded...real life exists, and if you have a family to consider, you should feel entitled to consider it.

That said, there are people on these forums who have taken every path married, with and without kids...even living in different cities and states.

My intended point was simply that in addition to looking at the difference in roles and responsibilities between NP's, DO's, and MD's, don't forget to look at the duration of the education, the time elapsed 'til you are on your own and earning money, and what kind of lifestyle you can work out for yourself when you are fully licensed and during that education. Also...you didn't mention considering being a PA (physicians assistant), it is yet another path similar to the NP but based in different roots.

The "strongest" post-bacc programs recommend that you have done your pre-reqs within 5 years of applying. But, I just got into USC, got 6 other M.D. interviews, 6 D.O. acceptances...and I'm positive that some of mine were older than that, so I really think it's just the programs trying to make money.

I would just redo courses in which you (1) earned below a B-, (2) courses you don't remember and that you need to take for the MCAT, (3) courses that are pre-reqs for (1) or (2) and you can't confidently retake the others without them.

D.O. schools are pretty leniant to people who have been out of school for so many years Do a search on MD Applicants and you will see.

Good Luck! You can do it if you want to.

 

[midwesterner]

As for figuring out nurse vs. doctor, I'd send you off to volunteer in a hospital, where you have access to lots and lots of medical professionals that you can talk to. Personally, my experience volunteering in a teaching hospital's ER set me up to effectively stalk all the residents in various specialties, and interrogate them about why they're doing what they're doing. I was also able to get insight from nurses and respiratory techs and management etc. about who does what. I also found it valuable to stalk the "old white guy" doctors who are really pissed off about how the medical system works now vs. when they started. If you can get a male ob/gyn, who is about to retire, to pontificate about what's wrong with going into medicine now, that will make the cons crystal clear.

DrMidlife- sounds like good advice. Can you share more what you found out talking to doctors vs. nurses and also from stalking/interrogating residents?

 

[bioteach]

I entered med school this fall at 30 years old. My bachelor's (and all pre-reqs) were done in the late 1990's. None of them expired at any schools to which I applied. I debated between PA and doctor for awhile before applying solely to MD/DO schools. I realized that I wouldn't be happy unless I understood the science behind medicine. After fully researching the differences in the degrees, I knew I only wanted to go MD/DO, even if it took longer. So, for me it was worth it to take longer to get the MD. My GPA was not hot, either. 3.03 uGPA and 2.73 BCPM. My master's degree helped and got me into an MD program.

Just think about what you want out of your future career and how much time you can feasibly put into it. Those answers will be different for everyone. Good luck

 

[pietachok]

Yeah, something else that may not yet be clear to you is that you don't just have to choose your field at this point, you have to choose how you're going to tackle your pre-reqs/GPA.

You can do a post-bacc program or you can do a masters degree. SMP = Special Masters Program. Postbacc programs are for people who have less pre-reqs done, whereas SMPs are for people who have more prereqs done. The SMP confers a masters degree at the end and has the benefit that you are taking graduate level courses. You can still retake courses with a postbacc, however. Some more regimented post-bacc programs will not let you enroll if you already have a lot of pre-reqs done and have a low GPA b/c they are worried about their own success stats.

There may even be SMPs that have coursework that will exempt you from certain courses in your professional program (particularly NP, PA, although I know of one that gives MD credits accepted by its own MD program).

Oh...and if you are seriously considering doing the NP/PA path, I would also make an effort to talk to a well-respected/well-paid NP/PA working in a private practice. I have known several NP's who ended up wanting to go to MD/DO school b/c they wanted to do research...but I know NP's who do research with me and are highly specialize. It seems to me that the respect conferred to those practitioners once they have proven themselves and found a spot in a well-regarded private practice (hospital-affiliated in our case) is totally different, and that the scope of their work totally changes, since there are no residents or fellows in the workplace to treat you like a catch-all for cases they don't want to deal with (a problem on busy hospital floors). You wouldn't only think of DOs/MDs as being able to practice in a hospital or in a specific field, so make sure you assess NPs and PAs the same way, b/c it does change their quality of life.