Medical Switching from pre-vet to pre-med

[Catalystik]

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I just finished my second year of undergrad. I have been pre-veterinary for 2 years and have almost completed all the required pre-requisites, as well as several hundred hours of veterinary shadowing. I have a 3.85 cumulative (unweighted)GPA and a 3.7 science GPA (hoping to improve this coming year). However, after much research into vet schools, potential debt, salary, job outlook, and testimonials I have decided to switch to human medicine. I have always been interested in disease and pathology, so I am still passionate.

My question is: Is it too late to transition from pre-vet to pre-med? Assuming I want to matriculate in fall 2021,
1) I would need to take the MCAT next spring and apply next summer. Is this enough time to study and prepare?
2) Do I even have a decent change of getting in?
3) I am also concerned that I have taken so much time for veterinary shadowing, and thus have no physician shadowing yet.

4) I apologize for how long-winded this is. Just looking for advice during this change, and wondering if I’m crazy.

Welcome to SDN. I also transitioned from Pre-Vet to Pre-Med. It's not too late if you hurry in some areas outlined below, so you can apply in summer 2020 for Fall 2012 matriculation.

1) A typical applicant needs 2 months of dedicated study time, or 4+ months part-time, so you should have no trouble with this.

2) Your GPAs are quite competitive. The MCAT is unknown, so far, but you'll probably do well if you take studying for it seriously. See the MCAT discussion forum of SDN for study schedules, prep course reviews, and good guide books to consider.

Your bigger challenge will be getting your Extracurriculars and Activities list shaped up.

Your vetmed shadowing is useless, of course. But you only need 40-50 hours of dedicated physician shadowing, which should include primary care (pediatrics, internal med, family med, OBGYN, psychiatry). This could be acquired in a week's time, or slowly over many months, but I suggest getting in some soon to be sure this career is for you after witnessing what docs do all day. The challenge will be finding a doc who permits it.

You also need clinical experience with humans. This means a job or volunteering in a clinical environment where you have face-to-face interactions with current patients. The average applicant has 1.5 years volunteering at 3 hours per week, usually in a hospital department, skilled-level nursing home, hospice, free/low-income clinic, family-planning clinic, VA clinic, etc. You need to get this started ASAP, aiming to accumulate at least 150 total hours of one or two activities in this category. Longevity is more important than total hours. Some venues require shots and titers + TB test +orientation and training, so start looking soon.

Nonmedical community service is also so highly valued that its pretty much an unspoken requirement. Do you have any? This includes Humane Society volunteering.

Teaching, research, and leadership, as well as activities demonstrating teamwork also add benefit to your application. Do you have any experience in these realms?

You will also need to accumulate strongly supportive Letters of Recommendation this next academic year. Plan at a minimum 2 letters from science faculty and 1 non-science who have taught you, and possibly a research letter, community service coordinator, and or employer LOR, depending on individual med school requirements. Alternatively, if your school will provide a committee letter, that would suffice, even if their requirements differ.

3) This is the least of your concerns, as outlined above.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

I'll also agree that you need to bulk up on the proper clinical shadowing. Your experience in veterinary medicine could help you gain some insight on how working in a vet clinic as an owner or partner of a practice is different from working in a larger hospital/health care system. Keep that in mind as you are shadowing physicians because I find many who would love to work outside that type of bureaucracy where insurance codes are king, compensation may not be as lucrative, and hierarchical politics is more a skillset to navigate.

 

[Catalystik]

1) Thanks for the reply. In response: I am involved in an animal therapy organization that volunteers at nursing homes and memory care centers once a week for around 2-4 hours. There is opportunity to do it more often if I need to. There I interact and talk with patients, not on a clinical level, but a personal one. (Ex: we have conversations about pets they used to have, if they grew up on a farm, etc). Does this count as clinical experience? I have been doing this for about 6 months and plan to continue.

2) I have quite a bit of animal-related community service (3 different animal shelters/rescues). I am also on the board of directors for my local humane society (it is mostly "real adults", but they occasionally accept a student to help with outreach to the university). I participate in environmental community service with a club, mostly cleaning up waste from rivers and next to roads. I had a leadership position in this last year, but will not this coming year.

3) I have no teaching experience. But, I am involved in research at my university, working with snake digestive efficiency. I have only done this for a few months but it is about 10 hours per week.

Please let me know if you think these activities are useful in this context.

1) It depends on what you mean by "nursing home" as to how the activity would be viewed. Are you referring to independent living centers, assisted living centers, skilled level-nursing home units, hospice, retirement homes, inpatient dementia unit, or Alzheimer's daycare, or what? Are you interacting with patients, clients, or residents? Are RNs on the unit? Does a doctor visit patients on the premises? Regardless, it's an excellent activity, but at issue is how to classify it.

2) This is all good and everything you've mentioned has a place on a med school application.

3) Any original, hypothesis-based research "counts" regardless of discipline.

 

[Catalystik]

1) We go to a variety of facilities, but I would say skilled-level nursing homes are the most common. One of the facilities has different wings which we visit all in the same day; so there is independent living, assisted living, and a “memory care unit”, as they call it (inpatient). I would say we visit mostly patients and residents, with the exception of one alzheimer’s daycare, which i’d classify as clients. At most facilities, there are RN’s and doctor visits.

4) Thanks for taking the time to look this over and being patient with me; I would never know how to classify everything.

1) I'd count the time in skilled-level nursing homes and inpatient Memory Care Units as patient interaction and therefore "clinical"; I encourage you to continue with it. However, I also feel this activity should not stand alone as a source of active clinical experience. You also need to experience acute illness- and/or injury-patient interactions somewhere in another clinical facility. Broader experience will appeal to a greater number of medical schools.

4) You're welcome.