Opto needs help!

[ODMAN]

Hi, I'm a guy who's considering switching paths to med school.

I'm 25 years old and currently attending the UC Berkeley school of optometry. I graduated in 2004 with a BA in Neurobiology also from Berkeley. Due to difficulties in the summer of '06, I was essentially forced to take a "vacation" from school for a year without a bad mark on my record, and this spring '07 I'm being reintegrated back into the program, but I have my doubts.

Stats
* UG GPA 3.576 (3.446 science, 3.85 non-science), didn't take Gen.Chem II
* BCPM 3.485
* Opto school GPA 3.184 (2004-2006)

* Have volunteered for a hospital ~100 hours
* Have volunteered for a community optometry clinic 120 miles south of Berkeley ~128 hours
* Volunteered 200 hours in various optometry clinics
* Possess a variety of random non-health profession related extracirriculars

Problem
While I feel I got an awesome story to tell from another healthcare professional's POV, and great motivation, I still have doubts on whether or not the MD route is possible for me.

Since I'm not a minority, I feel like my undergrad GPA might be a bit subpar. I'm also worried that my opto school GPA might hurt me.

There's also the worry that most of my classes will have expired, since I heard that there is a six year limit on your premed prereqs.

Anyways, that's about it. Any thoughts or input would be appreciated.

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[awk]

Hi, I'm a guy who's considering switching paths to med school.

I'm 25 years old and currently attending the UC Berkeley school of optometry. I graduated in 2004 with a BA in Neurobiology also from Berkeley.

My undergraduate GPA was about 3.576, with a 3.446 science GPA and a 3.85 non-science GPA, BCPM 3.485. I never completed the second half of the one year requirement for general chemistry. My GPA for the past two years in Optometry school has been more dismal, with a 3.184.

I used to be a guy who didn't want to go through all the trouble with becoming a doctor. I was also disgusted with the arrogant egotistical attitude of alot of premeds as an undergrad, which somehow drove me away from medicine. So I thought being an OD would be a better option. So I worked hard, scored near perfects on the OAT and got accepted early into the best opto school in the nation.

Fastforward two years, and there's trouble in paradise. My first six weeks of performance in the clinic were less than stellar, and the school pretty much forced me onto a one year vacation plan to think about things, without any damage to my record.

It was a pretty rough year for me being thrown out of "paradise". But during that time, I did alot of thinking, reading, and volunteering. I volunteered at a hospital for about 100 hours. Through the help of the optometry school, I managed to be able to volunteer 128 hours at a satellite clinic 120 miles south of Berkeley during my "vacation" last semester. I had to travel there each week, starting at 4 in the morning, which took alot out of me.

During that time, things changed. Optometry is such a clean profession, and seeing young and old people at the hospital in their most vulnerable, wretched state didn't scare me away. I mean this was quite literally the first time I ever came across people in so much pain they were wimpering and unresponsive, or people so drugged up on pain killers that they couldn't think. This dirty experience did the opposite of driving me away, and attracted me. At the optometry clinic 120 miles south of Berkeley, I had a firsthand experience helping out an underserved community (we were the only clinic in the area). I was in a clinic that served like, 30 people a day. It was hectic.

I saw diabetics, stroke victims, amblyopes, paralyzed eye muscles... To say the least, these weren't the healthiest people in the world. But the one thing that did it for me was seeing somebody with papiledema. Bilateral swollen optic nerves, indicating increased intercranial pressure. We sent the patient, who had no insurance, in for a CT scan, and it was revealed that there was a brain tumor. Hopefully, it wasn't a glioma, and hopefully, they could have treated it with a gamma knife and saved her life.

And what could I do? Give them glasses, prism, a blessing, and maybe a few wimpy drops of fluoroquinolones or or systane? I felt so helpless and frustrated that I couldn't do more, yet these people called me "doctor".
I felt so ashamed of myself and the career path I chose. And so, I'm seriously considering dumping this path and going full steam ahead with medicine.

Extracirricular-wise, I haven't done much during my two years at optometry school besides try and survive my classes. I attended no association meetings or any optometry related clubs, and preferred to learn, perform, and teach martial arts to the public, which I did frequently, earning me the nickname of "Mr. Kungfu". As an undergraduate, I did nothing but martial arts also, but I also volunteered for a program to teach foreign languages to students, wrote in a student run medical journal, shadowed 200 hours at two optometry clinics, went to Christian fellowships, tried to breed my own subspecies of guppies, learned to play a two stringed violin, and painted.
In otherwords, I didn't do jack compared to my mother teresa premed classmates.

So here I am, at a crossroads. Should I put my troubled optometric past (and pretty much a ruined reputation at the school) out of its misery (in otherwords, leave the program while my GPA is still 3.184 and record is clean) and try to start a new life? Or should I stay?

I heard about post-bac's and SMP's, and am actually quite clueless about them. Most of the post-bac's in California don't seem to accept a guy like me since I'm not exactly a minority, nor am I disadvantaged, and because I am also a science major, or because I never took the MCAT or applied to med school. I also heard that your classes decay over time, so alot of my old premed classes won't count now that six years have passed. I'm also worried that my low optometry school GPA of 3.184 will hurt me. Needless to say, I seriously need help. Thank you in advance to anyone who reads this.

K.I.S.S.

 

[spicedmanna]

Hi, I'm a guy who's considering switching paths to med school.

I'm 25 years old and currently attending the UC Berkeley school of optometry. I graduated in 2004 with a BA in Neurobiology also from Berkeley.

My undergraduate GPA was about 3.576, with a 3.446 science GPA and a 3.85 non-science GPA, BCPM 3.485. I never completed the second half of the one year requirement for general chemistry. My GPA for the past two years in Optometry school has been more dismal, with a 3.184.

My first six weeks of performance in the clinic were less than stellar, and the school pretty much forced me onto a one year vacation plan to think about things, without any damage to my record.

[volunteer experience at a clinic/hospital; exposure to real patients]

I felt so ashamed of myself and the career path I chose. And so, I'm seriously considering dumping this path and going full steam ahead with medicine.

Extracirricular-wise, I haven't done much during my two years at optometry school besides try and survive my classes.

So here I am, at a crossroads. Should I put my troubled optometric past (and pretty much a ruined reputation at the school) out of its misery (in otherwords, leave the program while my GPA is still 3.184 and record is clean) and try to start a new life? Or should I stay?

I heard about post-bac's and SMP's, and am actually quite clueless about them.

I edited your statement for clarity and simplicity. It sounds like you were not doing well in OD school, and you were placed on something like an academic sabbatical, without penalty. You had some pivotal experiences volunteering at a hospital and a clinic, where you were exposed to the messy suffering that many patients face. The reality of this experience really hit home, and made you want to be able to aid your patients beyond what an OD degree would give you. Am I on the right track?

I think you need to first be clear about what you want to do. Medicine is no panacea. It has it's ups and downs, just like any other profession. You have to love the practice of medicine at the level of a physician. That being said, follow some docs around and try it on for size, see if it is a better fit for you than being an OD. You need to be relatively clear and specific, both for your own sake and in order to answer, "why medicine over OD?" This is something only you can answer for yourself. Set it up so you'll have no regrets.

I think you will want to prove your academic ability and new commitment to the medical school admissions folk. You can pursue post-baccalaureate work in order to do this. It's fairly easy to accomplish. You needn't go with a formal program at all. You can hook this up at practically any undergraduate institution. You can take classes a la carte, albeit full-time, or if you want to be eligible for loans and whatnot, you can enroll as a degree-seeking student. In medical school admissions, your undergraduate GPA and MCAT score are quite important. Your undergraduate GPA, as it stands, isn't that bad; you can take some advanced science classes to show that you still have what it takes, or you can take/retake some prerequisites, or both as it were, seeing as you haven't taken Gen Chem 2 yet. I don't really know though, since I'm not in your situation. You'll want to check with the medical schools in which you are interested in applying for advice on how to proceed academically; it's your best resource, in my opinion. Rock your MCAT, though, and apply broadly.

I wouldn't worry so much about EC's. Keep up with the clinical volunteering, especially in the medically-underserved areas. I think medical schools will love that.

 

[helpfuldoc2b]

Hi, I'm a guy who's considering switching paths to med school.

I'm 25 years old and currently attending the UC Berkeley school of optometry. I graduated in 2004 with a BA in Neurobiology also from Berkeley. Due to difficulties in the summer of '06, I was essentially forced to take a "vacation" from school for a year without a bad mark on my record, and this spring '07 I'm being reintegrated back into the program, but I have my doubts.

Stats
* UG GPA 3.576 (3.446 science, 3.85 non-science), didn't take Gen.Chem II
* BCPM 3.485
* Opto school GPA 3.184 (2004-2006)

* Have volunteered for a hospital ~100 hours
* Have volunteered for a community optometry clinic 120 miles south of Berkeley ~128 hours
* Volunteered 200 hours in various optometry clinics
* Possess a variety of random non-health profession related extracirriculars

Problem
While I feel I got an awesome story to tell from another healthcare professional's POV, and great motivation, I still have doubts on whether or not the MD route is possible for me.

Since I'm not a minority, I feel like my undergrad GPA might be a bit subpar. I'm also worried that my opto school GPA might hurt me.

There's also the worry that most of my classes will have expired, since I heard that there is a six year limit on your premed prereqs.

Anyways, that's about it. Any thoughts or input would be appreciated.

"Since I'm not a minority, I feel like my undergrad GPA might be a bit subpar. I'm also worried that my opto school GPA might hurt me."

I dont think not being a minority is the issue, stop shifting blame on other reasons, being a dropout from an OD program and having less than average performance is what should get you worried, not the fact that your not a minority...

 

[NonTradMed]

"Since I'm not a minority, I feel like my undergrad GPA might be a bit subpar. I'm also worried that my opto school GPA might hurt me."

I dont think not being a minority is the issue, stop shifting blame on other reasons, being a dropout from an OD program and having less than average performance is what should get you worried, not the fact that your not a minority...

I don't think the OP is saying that being a minority is the reason for his poor performance, he/she is only saying that as a nonURM, he/she will not expect any type of "advantage" that URM may receive.