Unsure of how to proceed...

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Austin1989

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I am a senior double majoring in Business and Elementary Education and will graduate in May with initial goals to pursue a teaching career and eventually be an education administrator. However, I've always had an interest in medicine but never tried to pursue it and I now that I've reached a fork in the road I don't want to miss an opportunity to pursue that interest. All of my ECs are in the education and business field, internships, student teaching, volunteering, and mentoring. Will medical schools question my commitment to the field because of these types of activities? What should my next step be, provided that I've made a decision to pursue the pre-med path?

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SDN has an entire forum committed to those who started on another career path before deciding on medicine (see the Nontraditional Forum). Rich life experiences actually makes you more interesting to many adcomms of med schools.

What is your overall GPA and your GPA for only math and science classes?

As a first step, consider shadowing a doc to see what they do all day and/or starting a volunteer gig in a clinical environment where you have contact with sick people to test your interest.

If that works out, then you'd want to make a plan for completing the prerequisite coursework.
 
I agree with Cat. Go shadow a physician or two in specialties that interest you and maybe volunteer at a hospital 5-10 hours a week and see if medicine interests you. If it does, my guess is that you'll have at least another two years of accumulating EC's and completing pre-reqs before you apply. Unless, of course, you have already completed the pre-reqs? As you are and Education/Business major my gues sis that you haven't, but if you have, let us know!

Pre-regs are usually General Chem I & II w/ Lab, Organic Chemistry I & II w/ Lab, Physics I & II w/ Lab, Bio I & II w/ Lab, One Year of Math and One Year of English (Am I missing anything?). Biochem, w/lab, is also being added to the list of pre-req requirements for some schools.

EC's usually include 50 hours of shadowing, 150 hours of clinical volunteering, some nonmedical community service, leadership positions, and some teaching/tutoring/Taing. Research is a good idea for the more competitive med schools.
 
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