Unemployed before deciding to pursue Medicine

[GapLustrum]

I graduated in 2013 with a degree in Finance. Upon graduating I was planning on taking actuary exams and working in the Insurance field but couldn't ever motivate myself to study for the tests. I started to look for other jobs that would use a finance degree, but didn't have much luck getting past the initial screening because I didn't have any work experience or internships or know anyone. Just good grades from a good college. I began to get discouraged, depressed and stopped putting in much effort into finding a job, instead sleeping a lot, lifting a lot and browsing the internet in hopes I could find a solution that never really came. I asked a lot of people advice during this time, including my Uncle who was a firefighter. He said he thought I would be miserable in a desk job and suggested I consider firefighting, it was an active job that he woke up every day excited about what would happen that day, and felt good at the end of the day after doing what he could to help out the people in his community. This really resonated with me and I began thinking that might be something that would make me happy, so I signed up for an EMT class to kind of test out being a first responder and get my foot in the door. This was Fall 2014, about 1.5 years after graduating. After completing the class and beginning to run 911 calls, I caught the "bug". After almost 2 years of feeling useless and unwanted, it felt amazing when I was able to help someone who truly needed it and they were appreciative of my being there. I began to think a career in healthcare may be what I actually wanted to pursue and began taking some science classes at my community college, initially to pursue PA school, but now for the greater potential of medical school. I've excelled so far in my pre-reqs and will probably end up with a good GPA and hopefully decent MCAT, but I'm worried I don't have a great explanation for those 2 years of not much. Is that a red flag that I'm not the "go-getter" these schools are looking for? Is there anything I should be doing differently now to remedy my history?

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[Law2Doc]

I graduated in 2013 with a degree in Finance. Upon graduating I was planning on taking actuary exams and working in the Insurance field but couldn't ever motivate myself to study for the tests. I started to look for other jobs that would use a finance degree, but didn't have much luck getting past the initial screening because I didn't have any work experience or internships or know anyone. Just good grades from a good college. I began to get discouraged, depressed and stopped putting in much effort into finding a job, instead sleeping a lot, lifting a lot and browsing the internet in hopes I could find a solution that never really came. I asked a lot of people advice during this time, including my Uncle who was a firefighter. He said he thought I would be miserable in a desk job and suggested I consider firefighting, it was an active job that he woke up every day excited about what would happen that day, and felt good at the end of the day after doing what he could to help out the people in his community. This really resonated with me and I began thinking that might be something that would make me happy, so I signed up for an EMT class to kind of test out being a first responder and get my foot in the door. This was Fall 2014, about 1.5 years after graduating. After completing the class and beginning to run 911 calls, I caught the "bug". After almost 2 years of feeling useless and unwanted, it felt amazing when I was able to help someone who truly needed it and they were appreciative of my being there. I began to think a career in healthcare may be what I actually wanted to pursue and began taking some science classes at my community college, initially to pursue PA school, but now for the greater potential of medical school. I've excelled so far in my pre-reqs and will probably end up with a good GPA and hopefully decent MCAT, but I'm worried I don't have a great explanation for those 2 years of not much. Is that a red flag that I'm not the "go-getter" these schools are looking for? Is there anything I should be doing differently now to remedy my history?

Your firefighter part of the story/motivation is good, but the going to med school because you couldn't find a job in finance comes off really bad. You must have done something else in those two years besides look at want ads (I hope). Otherwise yes it's a big red flag.

You'll need a much better spin as to why you opted not to go into finance/actuary/insurance besides not being able to land a job. Med school doesn't want to see itself as the step up from unemployment. It doesn't want other fields washouts or non-starters. It wants winners, people who excel at everything but for an articulable reason chose medicine. So you'll need recast your story to fit that mode. What you really did during the two years of job seeking can help, maybe. Or suggest you need more time to reinvent yourself such that the trajectory isn't "unemployment so applied to med school". You can get there from here, but night need a step or two in between.

 

[GreenDuck12]

To answer your question, having a two year gap in a resume/application is a red flag for anyone. Period. It raises all sorts of questions about your character traits and why an employer did not hire you, neither of these are beneficial to your application. Next up, there is the problem of switching careers without really having a career. This is an area you will need to flesh out in your application and with your volunteer experiences. As a non-trad applicant, you are going to have to have a much stronger rationale for going to medical school than the standard 22yo "i want to help people" response. You can do this, but it is going to take time. If you apply after less than 5 years of undergrad, you can reasonably expect to have to account for what you did during each of those years.