Ruminant,
I don't think anybody spoke with the intent to dissuade you from applying to medical school. We're just trying to be helpful and direct in our advice. However, this thread compares NOTHING to the process you are about to begin. The process is not just humbling, its a hard kick in the butt every time you have contact with schools. I don't know if you've been following the threads, but people get hurt every step of the way so you have to learn to toughen up a bit and take the best you can from it. You'll have schools cash your check the day they send you a rejection (not even looking at your application first), you'll have schools that won't answer the phone and won't send you any correspondence, you'll talk to really b****y secretaries who make you feel an inch tall and many other things.
Sometimes you might get interviewed. You'll get nervous and excited, then you'll go in and they'll rip you apart. I've come out of interviews where I just wanted to crawl into a hole because they made me feel so unworthy. You have to know the answer to why you did and chose everything in your life so far, you have to be sincere (none of this "I want to be a doctor to help people" stuff - the interviewer will just laugh and tell you to become a teacher). Answering "why" is the easy part. Some interviewers give an air of disapproval no matter what you say. Somehow you have to find a way to talk to them when they're like that without being defensive, arrogant or falling apart. My mom is convinced that the whole process is sadistic, and I agree to a degree.
The reason I'm saying all this is because the advice we're giving in this thread is aimed towards helping you minimize the pain that we went through and helping you gain a realistic perspective. I thought my advisor was nuts when she said wait until i had the best application because i thought i could always reapply. Reapplying isn't as easy as sending in a new application. You actually have to prove what you did to improve your application (secondary applications will have essay questions asking re-applicants this) - do you think you can make significant improvements during your senior year while waiting to see if you get in? If not, you'll have to take 2 years off instead of one. I'm not saying you won't get in this year, it's just something to think about.
The process sucks. It really wore me down - I'm just trying to help so you don't go through the same. All the best of luck - apply to a broad range of schools and find a unique way to present yourself in your personal statement and you'll have a shot.
i'll be damned if i buy this. please do not embarrass yourself with comments like these. unlike you, i appreciated the intelligent feedback and i am looking forward to being colleagues with the other posters. people like them make me optimistic of the future of medicine. there is such a thing as critical thinking so excuse me if in reading your posts i doubted your motivations for becoming a physician. let me summarize: you asked a question, you received helpful and well-meaning answers, you wondered what the deal is with app uniqueness, you got eloquent, introspective and sensible answers, then you find out how hard the md app process is and so you resort to 'i am also considering d.o.' comments and completely regressed to 'actually i just want to apply once and if i don't get in, i'll be happy in another career.' many things worth having would involve struggles. why are you so easy to give up? you were given the hard truth not to dissuade you but to better equip you with knowledge. can you be more obtuse?
