Weighing options- need advice!

[NATTAY30]

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Thank you for taking the time to read/respond to my post. I’ve thrown around the questions below to all of my friends and family for the past two years but am looking for advice from those who can speak from real experience.

Here’s the deal- I’m 26 years old, I graduated from The Evergreen State College in 2012 with a BS focused in biochemistry- TESC does not give GPAs but rather has a non-traditional narrative evaluation and pass/fail system grading system. Although that may sound hokey to some of you (understandably) the science education I received at Evergreen was top-notch and I did rather well.

Directly after graduation, I landed a job as an assistant chemist formulating household, industrial and institutional cleaning products. Since then, I have moved up to lead chemist and am making a reasonably comfortable annual salary of 60K.

But- I have always wanted to go to medical school. I’m interested in the field because considering our careers are something we spend so much of our life doing, I want mine to mean something to me, allow me to help others, be engaging, exciting and challenging.

I’ve taken the MCAT once, about 1.5 years ago and did not do too hot. I did not study at all, and after being out of school for pushing 3 years, it was reflected in my score of a 27. I’ve rescheduled to take it this May, and have purchased study guides, which I’ve been working through daily and am really committed to preparing this time.

So, my questions really are:

· I’ll be 28 when/if I enter a program, is this too late? Is med school harder for older students? Does a negative/undesirable stigma exist against older graduates?

· Financially, is it smart considering I’m still paying of my undergrad degree (20K left there)?

· What has others experience been leaving a financially secure career to become a poor college student again?

· Has anyone else had an experience apply to medical schools with an undergraduate degree from a non-conventional college such as Evergreen? If so, what your experience like?

· Is it worth it? Just generally, starting over, leaving a comfortable position where I’m treated well and generally happy to uproot, move to a new city and spend the next 8 years struggling. Even though I don’t have children, a house payment or similar obligations.

Thank you again for reading this over. I hope I can get some reassurance or guidance or just a feel for what other people have gone through starting from a similar position.

Cheers!

 

[DrMidlife]

one problem here is that you're claiming you did rather well in ungraded science, but the one reasonably objective measure of "rather well" other than GPA, just 3 years after graduating, doesn't remove much doubt from your GPA-less story. regardless, even if you got a 40, you'd still not be taken seriously by default. there are way too many interesting applicants who get rejected to sit on a narrative that *requires* med schools to bet on an unknown.

the one evergreen grad i met on the med school interview trail a few years back had to apply for multiple years and ended up at a DO school in florida. that school is more competitive now. the new DO schools that have lower requirements imho are in the locations least likely to appreciate the evergreen purpose. maybe so, maybe not.

you're ahead of yourself with retaking the MCAT and planning your app. before you go down that path you need to find out if you'll just get kicked off that path for being GPA-less.

the finance story is completely different if you're competitive for UWash vs not. if you're still a WA resident, that is your only option under $200k. Well, maybe LECOM, but LECOM's low cost means LECOMs are hard to get into.

in your shoes i'd be looking at a 2nd bachelors to get a GPA, which better be good. that's almost certainly the shortest path on which you can feel anything like certainty of a good outcome.

best of luck to you.

 

[Goro]

No. Some of my all-time best students have been in their 30s and 40s. i graduated a stellar one at 50 last year.

· I’ll be 28 when/if I enter a program, is this too late? Is med school harder for older students?

Far from it, older applicants bring a lot of maturity and wisdom.
Does a negative/undesirable stigma exist against older graduates?

You'll be under-earning for about ten yearsm, and then making six figures (and 2x what I, a full Professor make. You tell me.
· Financially, is it smart considering I’m still paying of my undergrad degree (20K left there)?

Go look up Law2doc's posts on this subject.
· What has others experience been leaving a financially secure career to become a poor college student again?

As an Adcom member, it's hard to interpret P/F grades.
· Has anyone else had an experience apply to medical schools with an undergraduate degree from a non-conventional college such as Evergreen? If so, what your experience likei

Only you can answer this. If you're looking at this from pure financials, then no, it's not worth it. But Medicine is a calling. What does your heart tell you?
· Is it worth it? Just generally, starting over, leaving a comfortable position where I’m treated well and generally happy to uproot, move to a new city and spend the next 8 years struggling. Even though I don’t have children, a house payment or similar obligations.

 

[muirite]

· I’ll be 28 when/if I enter a program, is this too late? Is med school harder for older students? Does a negative/undesirable stigma exist against older graduates?

Some schools are more open than others. I was talking to a Dr that i know and he point blank told me that there are some schools that will not even care that I was in the top of my class, have a ton of long term volunteer hours and hopefully a great MCAT while others will be more open.


· Financially, is it smart considering I’m still paying of my undergrad degree (20K left there)?
I dont think its great but not bad. I know many people who go to advanced degrees with debt. I think that 20k is pretty good.

· Is it worth it? Just generally, starting over, leaving a comfortable position where I’m treated well and generally happy to uproot, move to a new city and spend the next 8 years struggling. Even though I don’t have children, a house payment or similar obligations.

Only you can decide that for yourself. I think it is for me I wanted to go to med school but i had to work and pay for my undergrad my self with no help. I had to work full-time did not have time to do extra classes (not a possible major at my school) and volunteer. If you think its worth it for YOU go for it. IMHO its better to try and not get it than to wonder what if when you get older.

 

[GreenDuck12]

I wonder if a full second bachelor's degree is necessary or if the OP could get by with a 3-4 semesters of science heavy coursework and a strong MCAT performance? This of course is assuming the narrative transcript is strong.

 

[Eccesignum]

I think I remember @QofQuimica saying she went to a P/F undergrad (I may be misremembering). Maybe she can offer some wisdom?

 

[QofQuimica]

I think I remember @QofQuimica saying she went to a P/F undergrad (I may be misremembering). Maybe she can offer some wisdom?

Yes, I went to New College of Florida, which also uses NEs. All of my UG grades, including the premed prereqs, were P/F. However, I had several other things going for me: 1) I scored ridiculously high on the MCAT (43 under the old system), 2) I had a 4.0 GPA for my PhD in chemistry, and 3) I had stellar college prereq NEs (which I sent copies of to each med school) where the profs said I was an A student/the top student in my class (and in one case, the top student he'd ever taught). Nobody questioned my academic gravitas. That being said, as Goro pointed out, my app didn't easily fit the mold, either. I would have been screened out by any school that uses auto-screens based on UG GPA, and even with a 43 MCAT, I didn't get invited to interview everywhere I applied.

OP, first of all, if you're serious about doing this med school thing, no more excuses. With no UG grades, you need an MCAT that is better than average, not average to below-average. And getting a good score is definitely doable. I had been out of college for eight years and hadn't taken physics in 11 years when I took the MCAT. But I was serious about being the best candidate I could be, and I studied my butt off to relearn all that material. So to paraphrase Dave Ramsey in another context, you need to focus with gazelle-like intensity on your goal, and make up your mind now that you will do what is necessary to go after it.

Second, what kind of clinical experience do you have? The chemistry experience is great, but if you haven't spent any time working with patients, then you're just talking out of your derrière at this point when you say you want to work with patients. Go volunteer/shadow/work in a clinical context, and see what it's really like in the trenches, working with patients. Start doing this yesterday. Talk to some docs who hate their jobs, and find out for yourself why. Because being a physician is not always "engaging, exciting, and challenging" any more than doing any other job is always "engaging, exciting, and challenging." This experience will also help you answer your existential questions about whether a career in medicine is "worth it."

Third, taking some upper level science classes may not be a bad idea, especially if you need to take some of the prereq classes for the new MCAT anyway. But you better be prepared to jump in full-force and make As. See my first point again.

 

[DrMidlife]

get by with a 3-4 semesters of science heavy coursework

That's a 2nd bachelors' worth of courses. Adding "degree-seeking" to the enrollment status, which you do by pursuing a 2nd bachelors, opens up financial aid eligibility, registration priority, and other benes that the normal undergrads get.

Any rational person is going to try to avoid doing more undergrad in the OP's situation. Q didn't have to do more undergrad, so we're cool now, right? Kindly notice 2 critical differences between Q's narrative and the OP's narrative:
1. Florida has 4 public med schools, and the Florida privates have instate preference. Wash state has one public med school, shared with 4 other states.
2. MCAT of 40 was a top 1% score. 27 was a top 40% score.

There's no formula for what to do here.

 

[QofQuimica]

That's a 2nd bachelors' worth of courses. Adding "degree-seeking" to the enrollment status, which you do by pursuing a 2nd bachelors, opens up financial aid eligibility, registration priority, and other benes that the normal undergrads get.

Any rational person is going to try to avoid doing more undergrad in the OP's situation. Q didn't have to do more undergrad, so we're cool now, right? Kindly notice 2 critical differences between Q's narrative and the OP's narrative:
1. Florida has 4 public med schools, and the Florida privates have instate preference. Wash state has one public med school, shared with 4 other states.
2. MCAT of 40 was a top 1% score. 27 was a top 40% score.

There's no formula for what to do here.

I did not have to do more UG classes, but FWIW, one of the advisors I spoke to prior to applying recommended that I do some. I chose not to follow that rec. It may or may not have hurt me at some schools; we'll never know. Interestingly, I did get accepted to that advisor's affiliated medical school, but ended up going elsewhere OOS. And in an ironic twist, I now work at that same med school as an academic physician. Which just goes to show you that advisors don't always know what to do either, and particularly when it comes to people like the OP and me who have such nontraditional academic records. As you said, there is no formula to follow.

Not that it's relevant to the OP's question, but in case any other Floridians are following along: Florida actually now has six public medical schools: FAU, FIU, FSU, UCF, UF, and USF. All six give strong preference to state residents, although stellar OOS applicants are certainly welcome to apply to any of them. There is one private allo school (Miami) that used to give preference to state residents but no longer accepts state money and therefore no longer prefers Floridians. There are two DO schools here as well: NSU and LECOM-B. I do not believe either of them gives preference to state residents, but I'm not certain about that.

One other thing I'd point out is that all nine of the FL med schools are very familiar with New College and have accepted NC grads. Unlike most liberal arts colleges, NC is part of the state university system; in fact, NC used to be part of USF at the time that I attended. (They have since broken off and become an independent public LAC.) I don't know what the relationship between Evergreen and UWash is, if any. But for Florida residents, I can tell you in my experience from both sides (as both a NC grad and a FL med school faculty) that being a NC grad is not an issue for those who want to attend a FL med school *if* you have a competitive MCAT score and you do well in your coursework at NC.