Pivoting to Med School From SWE job?

[Swetomed21]

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Hi All. To give you some context, I would think of myself as a pretty indecisive person. Anyways, recently graduated from university, majored in cs and neuroscience and now have a very well paying job in software engineering in financial sector. The hours are great, so are the people, and the projects aren’t too bad either. I’m in a rotational program as well which lets me touch multiple groups within the org. In college i pivoted from going premedical to going fully cs in junior year and also doing neuroscience as a second major purely out of an interest in the science as well as already having some courses fulfilled and overlapping. While I was happy with my decision since then I don’t know if it was correct. Lately I’ve been having this negging feeling that I’ve made a mistake going into this, because I set out career wise to try and help people and while I’m happy here I don’t really think I’m doing that. I have my neuro background, research and a good amount of premedical courses (bio, ecology/evolution, biostats, gen chem 1-2, maths) complete as well as shadowing. What really turned me off of medicine is the idea of doing the same speech day in day out. However what’s rekindling my attraction towards the field is the idea of truly helping people as well as the craft behind the treatment. I’m wondering how I can go about trying to explore my interests and if pivoting would be the right choice? What would be my options for education, would I be okay just taking the MCAT or should i pursue some type of partial post bac? Also if my stats from undergrad help, I had around a 3.6 overall and higher in neuroscience and went to a T30 school. Some advice would be great thank you 🙂 !

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Welcome to the forums.

Let's boil it down to this: why do you want to be a doctor? I'm not talking about what you want to do when it comes to helping people or learning any "crafts" about helping others... that's too vague.

Finding Your Purpose as a Health Professional | SDN

In the 2004 Tony-award-winning musical Avenue Q, Princeton, a recent college graduate (with an English degree from a prestigious university), searches to

www.studentdoctor.net

 

[Kataclysm]

What would be my options for education, would I be okay just taking the MCAT or should i pursue some type of partial post bac?

I'm pivoting from a programming / electrical engineering career into medical school. Just got an acceptance, so I can give you at least one datapoint.

When I started out, I was under the impression that I could just apply to get in like I would apply for a job. That is not how this works. These schools get thousands and tens of thousands of applications, so if you don't play by their rules, they will simply filter you out and never even look at your app. You have to do some work up front, and right now is a perfect time to do that!

Every year, around may, you will submit your AMCAS primary application. You get to submit it to a ton of schools, but the thing is each school wants unique stuff. If your primary application is sufficient, they will ask you to finish your application with them directly (the secondary application). If you don't have your prereqs and MCAT scores just right, then you won't even get a secondary. You gotta make a spreadsheet, write a scraper, or something, so that you know which schools you are even qualified to apply to (the MSAR tool is your friend for this, but you gotta confirm on the school's website). The initial AMCAS submittal will not give you this info!! You can submit your primaries (and pay money) even if you have no shot.

Once you know these schools' requirements and how your transcript overlaps with them, you can decide how to do a post-bac. You might be able to pull off a couple online classes. You might want to do a whole program. You will need to decide what to take to maximize the number of schools you are qualified to apply to in the range of your GPA and MCAT.

It's no joke, but understanding how to apply and strategizing about it needs to become a subject of intense study on your part. Any general advice will just not get the job done, and at worst, you will be mislead.

 

[Nontrad_FL_LGBT]

You should do clinical work in a couple of settings to see if you actually like it or not. Do a night EMT class, work the ambulance part time for a while, then get an ED tech or office MA job to try something else. Shadow a bunch of doctors. Be really certain this is what you want because there really isn't a viable way to back out of med school without completely derailing your life

- former lead swe, now M1