ROTC/premed

[BLACKMD]

Are there any med students or residents here that would like to chat with me about the rigors of premed and ROTC in undergrad? I'd like a mentor. The typical premed doesn't understand the ROTC schedule. And the typical ROTC business major doesn't understand the rigors of premed. Has anyone done these things together and made it out alive with above a 3.6 GPA? I'm dreading the fall semester and its months away. I'm taking 13 science credits and 3 ROTC credits and it will be my MSIII year. A very busy year. Not to mention I have two children. (Im a nontrad) If you can give me a little hope please message me 🙂 thanks

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[Mirror Form]

Are there any med students or residents here that would like to chat with me about the rigors of premed and ROTC in undergrad? I'd like a mentor. The typical premed doesn't understand the ROTC schedule. And the typical ROTC business major doesn't understand the rigors of premed. Has anyone done these things together and made it out alive with above a 3.6 GPA? I'm dreading the fall semester and its months away. I'm taking 13 science credits and 3 ROTC credits and it will be my MSIII year. A very busy year. Not to mention I have two children. (Im a nontrad) If you can give me a little hope please message me 🙂 thanks

I did premed, ROTC, and engineering at a pretty tough school. Things worked out okay for me, but in retrospect ROTC is a really bad idea if your primary goal is to be a physician. Not because it will affect your grades that much (although it certainly won't help them). But it can potentially compromise your ability to progress through your training.

I'd recommend that you decide right now what your main goal is. Do you want to be a physician or an officer? If it's to be a physician, get out of ROTC. Consider HPSP or FAP instead (or better yet consider more loans). If it's too late for you to walk away from it, then just make it your bottom priority. Focus all of your energy on getting into med school and if you're the last cadet in your class it doesn't matter.

 

[colbgw02]

I went the same route as Mirror Form, minus the engineering, and I agree with everything he wrote.

Unless you want to be a line officer, then get out ROTC immediately. If you're not on scholarship, then do not enroll in ROTC for your MSIII year or sign any contract. If you are on scholarship, then you need to contact your program over the summer and let them know you no longer wish to continue. If you're lucky, they'll let you go with just having to payback the money.

For anyone else who may be reading, summer school is your friend. I did it twice, which freed up some time during the semesters when the course load was onerous. Actually, my experience was not so much that the workload was too taxing, but rather that the ROTC classes and labs (several hours at a time, only available at one time) were huge black holes in my schedule. They made taking the classes that I wanted/needed when I wanted/needed them very difficult, forcing me to take other classes that were more difficult and that I found less interesting.

 

[dwb8p]

ROTC + USUHS grad here. Even though I have been satisfied with my experience so far, I agree 100% with above: get out of ROTC now if you can. You have too much to lose and very little to gain.

 

[155HE]

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[Lil Mick]

HPSP or USUHS are probably your best bets, unless you would like to serve before medical school. ROTC and pre-med can work, but it can also make your life more complicated than you anticipated for MSIII or MSIV. PM me if you want to talk more.

 

[DocRGR]

ROTC, Infantry, HPSP, back in it. I enjoy the Army, but you're committing yourself to a bunch of unknowns a long way out. I'm hesitant to ever encourage a commitment longer than 4 years especially given the abysmal retention rates for physicians. You can PM me as well.

 

[Homunculus]

I went the same route as Mirror Form, minus the engineering, and I agree with everything he wrote.

Unless you want to be a line officer, then get out ROTC immediately. If you're not on scholarship, then do not enroll in ROTC for your MSIII year or sign any contract. If you are on scholarship, then you need to contact your program over the summer and let them know you no longer wish to continue. If you're lucky, they'll let you go with just having to payback the money.

For anyone else who may be reading, summer school is your friend. I did it twice, which freed up some time during the semesters when the course load was onerous. Actually, my experience was not so much that the workload was too taxing, but rather that the ROTC classes and labs (several hours at a time, only available at one time) were huge black holes in my schedule. They made taking the classes that I wanted/needed when I wanted/needed them very difficult, forcing me to take other classes that were more difficult and that I found less interesting.

agree 100% with mirror form and colbgw02. i did ROTC but was at a small liberal arts university and was cross enrolled in ROTC with the local state school. problem is my liberal arts school did not accept ROTC credit because of their "discriminatory policy" regarding sexual preference. so on top of having to drive to the other school on ROTC lab/class days for 4 years, i didn't get a single credit hour at my home school. nice, eh? summer school was a lifesaver, and i did a night class as well just to free up some time.

it really was a one time shot, and i imagine it still is, to get a medschool acceptance letter. in hindsight i was lucky and didn't know how lucky i was not to be sent out to be MSC or some insanity before reapplying.

if it is your #1 goal to become a doctor, don't do it. unless you are early decision-- where medschools take people like sophomore year or something-- not the regular early decision, lol. not sure if this still exists but my school had a couple of arrangements like this.

unless you are really in to crapshoots, i'd stay away.

--your friendly neighborhood listen to the peanut gallery on this one caveman

 

[Ioriscrub]

I did ROTC and am currently in medical school so I can weigh in.
The bottom line is that you should absolutely not do ROTC or pursue any military obligation if your goal is medical school. It will only hold you back and make achieving your goals that much harder.
I got a full-ride at my college via an ROTC scholarship that waived room and board, and I'm grateful for that, but if I could do it again I would have probably passed on it and just found other ways to pay my way through or gone to a cheaper university. The thing about signing a military scholarship contract is you lose a significant amount of control over your career, even if you do successfully get accepted into medical school during your senior year, which you can't count on happening. And while the obligations of particular ROTC programs can vary wildly, the burden an ROTC program can put on you can make it that much more difficult to excel in your classes/MCAT. I was very fortunate that I did well enough on my grades and MCAT to get in my first try. Others were not so lucky.
If you really can't see a way around it, at least make sure you sign a Guaranteed Reserve Force Duty contract. This will make it so you will not be placed on active duty and instead go Guard or Reserve, who will generally be more flexible as far as giving you time to apply to med school again if you don't get in the first time. Furthermore, the guard/reserve is an overall much better deal for medical students since you go through the civilian residency match like anyone else, and with their loan repayment options you really don't lose much in terms of benefits.
Hope that helps. Feel free to PM me with questions.

 

[BLACKMD]

Thank you all for the responses. I am already GRFD scholarship and contracted. I have been in the Army for 8 years so this new reserve contract puts me out to 2017. My #1 goal is to be a physician. I can't say I regret choosing the Army because it has gotten me this far but I hope they cut me some slack come fall. I've already noticed summer classes save lives and sanity so I knocked out 12 credits this semester. I guess I'll just take it all as it comes. It's too late to back out now. (Even though that's what all of the advice was ) but I've heard/ready several sources that say ROTC is a GREAT thing to have on your app for USHUS and HPSP. So I'm just going to tell myself PT makes me sexy at 6:30 am and I might get brownie points 🙂