Thank you all for the advice, appreciate it. To answer a question that was raised a few times, the two med schools I'm most interested in have no prerequisite courses. Applying to med school in Canada is similiar to the US, in that you have the best chance of getting into your state(in my case provincial) med school. I'm something of a realist, and while my grades are exceptionally good (currently maintaining a 4.0) I am also very aware that getting into a med school out-of-province would be very very difficult. My best chance of getting into a med school is at Dalhousie or Memorial, both of which give preference to my province. So why worry about all the science courses if I don't really need them. To get into med school out of province they look for a GPA of 3.8+ and an MCAT over 30 for the most part.
On the other hand, there is an MCAT cutoff number to receive an interview. Nice thing about Dalhousie is they guarantee people from my province an interview if they get above the cutoff on GPA and MCAT. I generally do very well in face-to-face interview situations, so I am focusing on meeting the cutoff, which I believe is a minimum of 8 in all sections... I'm not worried about meeting the GPA cutoff anymore, but the MCAT is something I will have to prepare for.
Another question asked was why would I want to avoid sciences... well this is a good point I suppose. I'm already moving into my second semester of first year having taken no sciences... I am a non-trad sudent, returning to school at age 27. Having been out of high school for years I wanted to return and see how well I could do in a university setting. Even when I returned I was thinking med school would be great, but before I gave that a lot of thought I wanted to see if I was able to make the high grades I knew I would need to get in... Like I said I'm a bit of a realist, so if I couldn't pull off high grades at least I'd be working towards a degree I enjoy (degree in journalism). But as the first semester ended and I received straight A's I gained more confidence and started doing more research into medical school. Right, so all this yacking and I still haven't answered the question... The courses I'm signed up for are all full year long courses, except for one. I could drop philosophy II from second semester and take a science. After getting all these replies saying I should take the sciences, I might do that. Although I hate to do it, because philosophy is my second fav course so far, the prof loves me, and I could prob get a reference letter for med school from him. Hmmmm. Second year I can probably fit in 2 more science courses... third year I won't be able to take any. The Journalism course I'm taking is kind of unique in that third year they ship me off to a community college, which has a 10 month year instead of 8 months, and something like 40 hours/week classtime... That is where I get hands on experience in photojournalism and several other technical aspects of journalism that I'm looking very forward to, though it will be a lot of work. The end result of this is I receive both a degree in Journalism combined with a Diploma in Journalism from the college. Also leaves room for 0 electives third year. And since I'll probably have to take the MCAT at the end of third year, there doesnt seem much point to taking any sciences in my final year. I think I will sign up for a couple sciences over the summer to help me prepare for the MCAT, maybe that will solve my problem. Anyway thanks much for the advice, if you have more of it it's always appreciated.
