too old for medical school?

[Dbonnie]

I am about to be 27 years old and I am in my sophomore year of college (Undergrad). I have been out of school for 6 years because of getting married and having two children. I am wondering if it is still worth it to pursue medical school? Is this pretty uncommon for someone to start medical school around 29 or 30? My field would be pediatrics. Anyone, please comment on this
Thanks!

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[funkydrmonkey]

I am about to be 27 years old and I am in my sophomore year of college (Undergrad). I have been out of school for 6 years because of getting married and having two children. I am wondering if it is still worth it to pursue medical school? Is this pretty uncommon for someone to start medical school around 29 or 30? My field would be pediatrics. Anyone, please comment on this
Thanks!

No, the average age for medical school is 26, and considering that there are many 20 year old premeds that apply, there must be quite a few of the "older" crowd. There are even mid 30 year olds in med school. You will do fine, and i wish you the best of luck!

 

[starfishprime]

No, the average age for medical school is 26

[citation needed]

 

[MilkmanAl]

Yeah...I think it's more like 24, actually. My class's average is 24.3. To answer the original question, no, you won't be too old for med school, and there'll be plenty of people around your age in your class.

 

[nontrdgsbuiucmd]

I am about to be 27 years old and I am in my sophomore year of college (Undergrad). I have been out of school for 6 years because of getting married and having two children. I am wondering if it is still worth it to pursue medical school? Is this pretty uncommon for someone to start medical school around 29 or 30? My field would be pediatrics. Anyone, please comment on this
Thanks!

Yes it's pretty uncommon, as you will be well older than the average applicant when you apply at age 29 or 30. The MSAR book has some graphs on ages of matriculants, as well as AAMC.ORG

But there are plenty of us out here, mid-30s or so for me. I would be concerned, or possibly look at the DO route, if I were mid to late 40s from what I've heard from DO applicants (that DO schools give more weight to the experiences of older career changers)

Part of what got me thinking about this was meeting several people in their mid 30's to early 40's who were in the med school/residency process; it was clear that these folk had not started med school as 22 year olds.

What I'd think would be a bigger concern would be the financial impact of going to med school and residency with young children - us older folk would have a tougher time living on the $1,600 a month financial allowance given our family financial needs.

 

[Nanon]

I'm 40, and matriculating this year. But I will echo what was said above about finances with a young family - you'll need to be cool with living like a poor person for a very long time. Good luck!

 

[russkayadusha]

Little bit about me: I am 32 almost 33.
I started college in 95 after 3 years of liberal arts classes I still wasn't sure of what i wanted to do, all my friends were telling me that I have a creative mind and that i should try myself in advertisement, so I've decided to transfered to an art school. Because it was a different curriculum I lost most of my credits so i basically started from scratch. I got my AS in advertisement, BFA in graphic design, went on to Grad school in 2005 I got my MS in web development and administration. After all that I was not able to find a job and ended up doing everything but ... A year ago because of the economy I lost my job as a director of a wholesales company, during this time i have been trying to get back to doing web design and development. Technology had evolved so much and I am lacking skills, so I am basically having to learn everything all over again.
Basically all this made me do some soul searching. i came to realize that I want to do something that is meaningful I want to help people.
I have always been fascinated with human behaviour, psychology and also criminology. i want to combine the two which made me think that i should pursue a degree in Psychiatry.
As I've mentioned I am almost 33 I can go back to school and complete 2 years of pre-med prerequisites, then take the MCAT and finish the 4 years and move on to residency another 4 years. We are talking about 10 more years of school possibly more.
I am not yet married nor do i have kids, I plan to start a family in the next 2 years so if I start this journey it would be while I am starting motherhood.
I am still paying for my grad school. I imagine that this journey will cost me around 100k-150k but I am sure that I will be well paid once i complete my MD/PhD

Any advise?

 

[nabeel76]

Little bit about me: I am 32 almost 33.
I started college in 95 after 3 years of liberal arts classes I still wasn't sure of what i wanted to do, all my friends were telling me that I have a creative mind and that i should try myself in advertisement, so I've decided to transfered to an art school. Because it was a different curriculum I lost most of my credits so i basically started from scratch. I got my AS in advertisement, BFA in graphic design, went on to Grad school in 2005 I got my MS in web development and administration. After all that I was not able to find a job and ended up doing everything but ... A year ago because of the economy I lost my job as a director of a wholesales company, during this time i have been trying to get back to doing web design and development. Technology had evolved so much and I am lacking skills, so I am basically having to learn everything all over again.
Basically all this made me do some soul searching. i came to realize that I want to do something that is meaningful I want to help people.
I have always been fascinated with human behaviour, psychology and also criminology. i want to combine the two which made me think that i should pursue a degree in Psychiatry.
As I've mentioned I am almost 33 I can go back to school and complete 2 years of pre-med prerequisites, then take the MCAT and finish the 4 years and move on to residency another 4 years. We are talking about 10 more years of school possibly more.
I am not yet married nor do i have kids, I plan to start a family in the next 2 years so if I start this journey it would be while I am starting motherhood.
I am still paying for my grad school. I imagine that this journey will cost me around 100k-150k but I am sure that I will be well paid once i complete my MD/PhD

Any advise?

Well, if you are wondering whether you are too old to pursue medicine I would say no - it can be done. However, is there a specific reason why you want to pursue MD/PhD?

As it stands right now, it would probably take you 2 years to complete the med school pre-req's and the MCAT. Your most likely going to have a lag year prior to actually starting medical school, so it will be 3 years minimum before you actually matriculate. So at a minimum, your going to be about 36 years old. If you do get married and decide to have kids in two years then I would imagine that at the very least your going to have to push back matriculating for at least another year - if not more. That is assuming you feel that you can realistically go through medical school with an infant at home. Either way, if you do have a kid then your going to add at the very least another year between now and medical school making you 37 years old prior to matriculation.

Now, at 37, your going to have 4 years of medical school in addition to 4 years of residency. This will put you at 45 years old if you were to only go MD. If you want to go MD/Ph.D add another 4 years to that. That'll put you at 49 before you can actually start to practice, is that in line with your objectives? I would drop the Ph.D, as I am not sure how much it's really going to help you if you want to practice as a clinical pyschiatrist.

Also, being an older matriculant, your going to have to realize that its going to be extremely hard for you to have another child during that 8-12 year period that your going to be completing your MD+residency or MD/Ph.D + res. If more than 1 child is what you have in mind, than I think your really going to have to reconsider this route, as your going to be well into your 40's before your ideally going to have another chance to have a child.

 

[Birdeee]

my husband is finishing his second year and is 51 - he was just chosen for a teaching fellowship at his school that turns his last two years into three.

He is doing well, I am doing well and two of our three kids are in university too - the other had graduated.

Life is an interesting journey

 

[Dr. Saturn]

I will be 41 in November. I have 14 year old twins starting high school and a husband with a job. That means I can only apply to the med. sch. in town (OHSU). I am fine with the school but nervous about putting all my eggs in one basket. They say they get 4500 applicants and take 115. I am at an advantage being in state at least. But it seems like good people have to get overlooked with those numbers.

I have an BA in English and French and an MA in English. I did my prereqs these past two years. I have an overall gpa of 3.87. My science gpa from my prereqs is a 3.72, but unfortunately they throw in my high school calc class (dual enrolled at a university) and my freshman year astro class which were Bs, which takes sci gpa to 3.65. Those classes are 23 years old, and the calc class is also counted as AP calc test credit, and for some reason no matter what I say, AMCAS insists on giving me 9 credits for one calc class (4 credits of B for class and 5 of pass for AP).

I am still awaiting my MCAT results. Soon. Ugh.

I have a ton of activities (girl scout leader for 7 years, school volunteer, I was a TA in grad. school, etc), and honors (summer internship at OHSU in research lab, two Mellon Fellowships from grad school, A publication in Journal of Biological Chemistry), a lot of shadowing activities, etc.

But am I too old? I think probably not. And can I beat the odds with all those applicants?? I wish I knew.

Any pep talk on the one school problem would be appreciated!

 

[njbmd]

I was 45 back in 1997 when I applied. I ended up getting accepted by six allopathic medical schools (didn't apply DO because there wasn't a school in my location range) and have gone on to a great career in academic surgery. In short, none of the six medical schools that I appled to mentioned anything about my age (focused plenty on my academics though). The oldest person in my medical school class was 53 and is now a practicing physician. There were 100 students in my class with more than 10 older than 30 and four that were 19 (BS/MD students). Our class average age ended up being around 25 that year.

Age won't keep you out of medical school but academics (uGPA/MCAT) can. There are no breaks here.

 

[Dr. Saturn]

I was 45 back in 1997 when I applied. I ended up getting accepted by six allopathic medical schools (didn't apply DO because there wasn't a school in my location range) and have gone on to a great career in academic surgery. In short, none of the six medical schools that I appled to mentioned anything about my age (focused plenty on my academics though). The oldest person in my medical school class was 53 and is now a practicing physician. There were 100 students in my class with more than 10 older than 30 and four that were 19 (BS/MD students). Our class average age ended up being around 25 that year.

Age won't keep you out of medical school but academics (uGPA/MCAT) can. There are no breaks here.

This is inspirational. Thanks for sharing. I exchanged a few emails with an AMCAS statistician after filling out the pre-MCAT questionaire which asked things like my parent's income. I asked him why kids and age weren't on there. He pointed out age is derived from birthday (duh) and kids are so rare it isn't worth asking. He told me the average age of student taking the MCAT is 20-22 and that anyone over 37 is in the 99th percentile.

I am still waiting for my MCAT scores (due out 8/31), but I am happy with my gpa.

Thanks again for the pep talk!

 

[Drjmd76]

I would honestly go for it. I had lots of classmates at UNC with me that were in their 30's and a decent chunk that were in their early to mid 40's surprisingly. Age is simply a number, and if you follow what you are passionate about, it will all pay off in the end. Best of luck to you!

 

[Dr. Saturn]

I would honestly go for it. I had lots of classmates at UNC with me that were in their 30's and a decent chunk that were in their early to mid 40's surprisingly. Age is simply a number, and if you follow what you are passionate about, it will all pay off in the end. Best of luck to you!

Thank you! I am going for it, and I really enjoyed doing the prereqs. School is cool! Hehe!

 

[danielterrones]

https://www.aamc.org/download/363478/data/msq2013report.pdf

 

[gyngyn]

Little bit about me: I am 32 almost 33.
I started college in 95 after 3 years of liberal arts classes I still wasn't sure of what i wanted to do, all my friends were telling me that I have a creative mind and that i should try myself in advertisement, so I've decided to transfered to an art school. Because it was a different curriculum I lost most of my credits so i basically started from scratch. I got my AS in advertisement, BFA in graphic design, went on to Grad school in 2005 I got my MS in web development and administration. After all that I was not able to find a job and ended up doing everything but ... A year ago because of the economy I lost my job as a director of a wholesales company, during this time i have been trying to get back to doing web design and development. Technology had evolved so much and I am lacking skills, so I am basically having to learn everything all over again.
Basically all this made me do some soul searching. i came to realize that I want to do something that is meaningful I want to help people.
I have always been fascinated with human behaviour, psychology and also criminology. i want to combine the two which made me think that i should pursue a degree in Psychiatry.
As I've mentioned I am almost 33 I can go back to school and complete 2 years of pre-med prerequisites, then take the MCAT and finish the 4 years and move on to residency another 4 years. We are talking about 10 more years of school possibly more.
I am not yet married nor do i have kids, I plan to start a family in the next 2 years so if I start this journey it would be while I am starting motherhood.
I am still paying for my grad school. I imagine that this journey will cost me around 100k-150k but I am sure that I will be well paid once i complete my MD/PhD

Any advise?

Your situation is different enough that you should start your own thread so we don't confuse you with OP.