What is the best course of action for a pre-med freshman?

[Rustie]

---

Members do not see this ad.

Hi! I'm new to this site, as you can probably tell. I've done a lot of medical school research throughout my years in high school, and now that I'm beginning my college career, I suppose it's time to begin building my resume.

From what I've read, to be competitive for medical school, you want approximately a 3.7 cGPA, 3.6 sGPA, and a 31 on the MCAT. Please correct me if I'm wrong. In addition to excellent academics, I've read that research hours and clinical exposure are key to proving not only your capability in the field, but also your commitment. Furthermore, strong letters of recommendation appear to be essential.

Learning how to become a competitive medical school candidate is extremely overwhelming. All of the hours, relationships, and study required to stand out is highly motivating, but it also leaves me wondering where to even begin.

What should be my first course of action, and what should I hope to accomplish by the end of my freshman year?

 

[johnston9234]

Maintain a very good GPA. This may sound obvious, but its hard to count how many freshmen pre-meds with a excellent high school record bomb their first year with a <3.0 GPA because they werent prepared for the workload.

 

[Rustie]

Maintain a very good GPA. This may sound obvious, but its hard to count how many freshmen pre-meds with a excellent high school record bomb their first year with a <3.0 GPA because they werent prepared for the workload.

Thank you for the response.

To graduate in four years at my university, you need to be putting in approximately 15 credits per semester. For the sake of maintaining a high GPA, I chose to do only 13. Fortunately, I have 7 AP credits that will help buffer my initial lighter load. My first-semester schedule looks like this:

Introduction to Chemistry (4 crd)
Calculus I (4 crd)
American Indian Culture (3 crd)
Accelerated Writing (2 crd)

I was very fortunate to test out of the "regular" writing course that would have otherwise been 5 credits.

I appreciate your response, but should I not be looking to EC's and volunteering that would help build my resume? And if that's the case, how do I find good medical volunteering/shadowing opportunities?

 

[Contr0lz]

Sounds like a good, easy, and light starting course load! I think you will do well 🙂 Good luck!

 

[mimelim]

#1 Prove that you are a serious academic. This means having a good GPA and MCAT. There are dozens of posts on this elsewhere on the forum. The key points are to pick a major that you enjoy (only criteria that should matter) and to realize that you don't need a 4.0 and a 45 to get in. You need to be an excellent student, not a perfect one.

#2 Enrichment is important. You are so lucky compared to most people. You know very early that you are interested in medical school. Do NOT fall into the trap of talking or thinking about "research hours" or "clinical experiences". People that do, end up "checking boxes" which will hurt you in the long run. Do things that you enjoy that are going to make you better prepared to be a medical student and more importantly a future physician. Think you might be interested in research? Get involved. Learn something. Do something productive. Nobody cares how many hours you worked in a lab. I care that you got something out of it. I care that you learned something about yourself from it. I care that you took a project to completion (even if you don't publish it). Research is just one example, there are dozens.

#3 Regarding LOR: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/letters-of-recommendation.985472/ again, you are early. This is HUGE when it comes to figuring out LOR.

And by far the most important:
#4 Have fun. You are a failure if you get into medical school and didn't enjoy your undergrad. Why? Because, I guarantee you, by starting early and having a plan, you can have both.

 

[tantacles]

Thank you for the response.

To graduate in four years at my university, you need to be putting in approximately 15 credits per semester. For the sake of maintaining a high GPA, I chose to do only 13. Fortunately, I have 7 AP credits that will help buffer my initial lighter load. My first-semester schedule looks like this:

Introduction to Chemistry (4 crd)
Calculus I (4 crd)
American Indian Culture (3 crd)
Accelerated Writing (2 crd)

I was very fortunate to test out of the "regular" writing course that would have otherwise been 5 credits.

I appreciate your response, but should I not be looking to EC's and volunteering that would help build my resume? And if that's the case, how do I find good medical volunteering/shadowing opportunities?

For the first year, your top priority should be doing well in your courses.

My advice about activities? Find a volunteering opportunity that you could see yourself doing for four years. Start doing it for 3-4 hours per week.

E-mail doctors. See if you can shadow them.

Do anything else that's an EC that you want.

 

[Rustie]

#1 Prove that you are a serious academic. This means having a good GPA and MCAT. There are dozens of posts on this elsewhere on the forum. The key points are to pick a major that you enjoy (only criteria that should matter) and to realize that you don't need a 4.0 and a 45 to get in. You need to be an excellent student, not a perfect one.

#2 Enrichment is important. You are so lucky compared to most people. You know very early that you are interested in medical school. Do NOT fall into the trap of talking or thinking about "research hours" or "clinical experiences". People that do, end up "checking boxes" which will hurt you in the long run. Do things that you enjoy that are going to make you better prepared to be a medical student and more importantly a future physician. Think you might be interested in research? Get involved. Learn something. Do something productive. Nobody cares how many hours you worked in a lab. I care that you got something out of it. I care that you learned something about yourself from it. I care that you took a project to completion (even if you don't publish it). Research is just one example, there are dozens.

#3 Regarding LOR: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/letters-of-recommendation.985472/ again, you are early. This is HUGE when it comes to figuring out LOR.

And by far the most important:
#4 Have fun. You are a failure if you get into medical school and didn't enjoy your undergrad. Why? Because, I guarantee you, by starting early and having a plan, you can have both.

Thank you for the response!

I guess I'm a little confused. What you're saying definitely makes sense, but admission websites always seem to emphasize the importance of clinical exposure. I'm confused as to what to do there.

I've been contemplating volunteering at one of my local hospitals. From your perspective, is this not worthwhile? One of the positions I'm looking at is a waiting room attendant for critical care patients. The description says that the volunteer would be providing information and host services, as well as patient-related errands.

Is that the type of thing you're saying is not worthwhile?

 

[mimelim]

Thank you for the response!

I guess I'm a little confused. What you're saying definitely makes sense, but admission websites always seem to emphasize the importance of clinical exposure. I'm confused as to what to do there.

I've been contemplating volunteering at one of my local hospitals. From your perspective, is this not worthwhile? One of the positions I'm looking at is a waiting room attendant for critical care patients. The description says that the volunteer would be providing information and host services, as well as patient-related errands.

Is that the type of thing you're saying is not worthwhile?

When you are thinking about doing something "for" medical school, think about WHY adcoms think that it is important. It is a common misconception among pre-meds that adcoms want them to check boxes off for the sake of checking boxes off. That it is just random stuff to do. Essentially what they are saying is that they think adcoms are a bunch of idiots. So...

Why is clinical exposure important?

Answer: Medical training is long and hard. See here: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/thr...ical-school-vs-reality.1093178/#post-15593843 @Planes2Doc and I discuss a very specific part of the training, but it is just that, a very small part and a very real concern that you should have and know about. We are talking about 4 years of pre-med, 4 years of medical school, 3-9 years of residency/fellowship. Add in the average cost of ~150k and we are talking about a huge investment. To quote a terrible movie with a hot girl in it... You have to know if, "the juice is worth the squeeze". Medical school is NOT the golden job at the top of the mountain that everyone should want to do. It is tremendously rewarding for certain people. What I need from you, is to be able to tell me to my face, "This is what I want, and this is how I know it is what I want." I need to #1 believe you and #2 believe that you know what you are talking about. This is where clinical experience comes in. I love the @LizzyM quote, "If you can smell the patients, it is clinical experience." Clinical experience is the only thing that you can draw on to effectively make me believe that you know what you are talking about. Ask yourself, is doing volunteer job XYZ going to help me figure this out. Does it expose me to things that I've never seen before and people I've never been able to interact with. If the answer is yes, it is probably worth doing. It isn't about the hours, its about the experience. For something like what you described, 100 hours is better than 1000 hours. Doing it along with other, different things is your best bet. This isn't to say that you should do a ton of different things. There are areas where continuity is king, ie. research, jobs, volunteering etc.

At the end of the day, this actually ISN'T about convincing me. It is about you figuring out for yourself, "should I go into medicine." Almost as important as getting the right students into medical school is keeping the wrong ones out, for both our sakes and the student's.

 

[Rustie]

When you are thinking about doing something "for" medical school, think about WHY adcoms think that it is important. It is a common misconception among pre-meds that adcoms want them to check boxes off for the sake of checking boxes off. That it is just random stuff to do. Essentially what they are saying is that they think adcoms are a bunch of idiots. So...

Why is clinical exposure important?

Answer: Medical training is long and hard. See here: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/thr...ical-school-vs-reality.1093178/#post-15593843 @Planes2Doc and I discuss a very specific part of the training, but it is just that, a very small part and a very real concern that you should have and know about. We are talking about 4 years of pre-med, 4 years of medical school, 3-9 years of residency/fellowship. Add in the average cost of ~150k and we are talking about a huge investment. To quote a terrible movie with a hot girl in it... You have to know if, "the juice is worth the squeeze". Medical school is NOT the golden job at the top of the mountain that everyone should want to do. It is tremendously rewarding for certain people. What I need from you, is to be able to tell me to my face, "This is what I want, and this is how I know it is what I want." I need to #1 believe you and #2 believe that you know what you are talking about. This is where clinical experience comes in. I love the @LizzyM quote, "If you can smell the patients, it is clinical experience." Clinical experience is the only thing that you can draw on to effectively make me believe that you know what you are talking about. Ask yourself, is doing volunteer job XYZ going to help me figure this out. Does it expose me to things that I've never seen before and people I've never been able to interact with. If the answer is yes, it is probably worth doing. It isn't about the hours, its about the experience. For something like what you described, 100 hours is better than 1000 hours. Doing it along with other, different things is your best bet. This isn't to say that you should do a ton of different things. There are areas where continuity is king, ie. research, jobs, volunteering etc.

At the end of the day, this actually ISN'T about convincing me. It is about you figuring out for yourself, "should I go into medicine." Almost as important as getting the right students into medical school is keeping the wrong ones out, for both our sakes and the student's.

I see... or at least, I think I do.

If clinical exposure is more about determining whether or not an individual is genuinely interested in medicine, what types of clinical exposure would you recommend? What kind of clinical experience is worth my time? Is shadowing better or worse than, let's say, the given volunteer opportunity I mentioned earlier?

 

[tantacles]

I see... or at least, I think I do.

If clinical exposure is more about determining whether or not an individual is genuinely interested in medicine, what types of clinical exposure would you recommend? What kind of clinical experience is worth my time? Is shadowing better or worse than, let's say, the given volunteer opportunity I mentioned earlier?

Any, any, and no, not necessarily. It's just different. Both are valuable.

Just get clinical experience that gets you interacting with patients and do it long term. This isn't necessarily about the type of clinical exposure you get, but rather whether you're able to handle long term exposure to sick people, in my opinion.

If you feel you can't learn anything more from a particular clinical experience, consider switching to another one; often volunteering programs allow you to switch within the hospital, and this is a great chance to get exposure to multiple clinical environments.

 

[Aerus]

I was just like you….knew I wanted to go into medicine early on, so I wanted to prepare myself before first year kicked in. I can say that preparing early has allowed me to not only explore activities and topics that I am passionate about (eg. I LOVE teaching), but has also allowed me to have a relatively stress-free undergrad. I was able to have a lot of fun and not worry too much about preparing my resume for medical schools because I started early.

The 7 tips that I can give you:

1) Definitely find out how you best learn. Many times, students who were at the top in high school fall flat in a college level environment because they don't know how to study properly. You NEED to master this. This means learning how to go through and process information effectively and efficiently. Studying for 6-8 hours every day is NOT good studying, even if you are able to pull off good grades.

2) Start finding out volunteer opportunities that fit your interests ASAP. I started tutoring immediately at the beginning of my first year. It has allowed me to accumulate not only hundreds of hours of volunteering by the start of my third year, but has also given me many experiences to talk about. It has also allowed me to better figure out why I love medicine and has given me a better idea of what I want to do in it.

3) Get started on your clinical experience ASAP. There usually is a long process of orientation and paperwork/vaccination forms that you must go through, which can take up to 6 months depending on the place. So start on that as soon as you can. I want to emphasize that you want to find some clinical experience that will allow you to do something other than make beds. You're starting early so you can afford to be picky.

4) Start on some hobbies! You have 4 years to become good at something. College is a new place to grow! Explore campus groups and see if there is an activity that you would love to learn or become better at! This will often help you de-stress when school becomes overwhelming.

5) Make A LOT of friends in the beginning. By covering as much ground as possible, you run into the possibility of discovering friends that you will stick to and become your support group. It also helps you feel like you belong in a community if you know a lot of people.

6) Find some extracurricular activities that are not for the purposes of putting on your application to medical school at all! It should obviously help yourself grow in some way, but it should be done purely for that reason and not to put on your app, although it usually does end up sounding good on your app later on!

7) Last, but not least, figure out your 4 year plan. Make a draft of all the classes you plan on taking. Classes that you want to take before the MCAT, the timing of your MCAT, how you will group your prerequisites together, what semesters you can afford to take fun classes and what semesters will be science heavy. Undoubtedly, you will change your 4 year plan many times over, but having a template to change is MUCH better than randomly adding classes, hoping that you will graduate on time. I cannot tell you how much less stressed I am about school and the timing of my classes because I made my 4 year plan before going in. Too many times, my friends have always stressed out about what classes they should take and then regret later about not taking certain classes before their MCAT or not having the time to take extra classes because they were interesting. PLAN THIS AHEAD OF TIME.

Hope this post helps. Best of luck!

 

[Goro]

Concur. Also:
develop good time mgt skills
develop good coping skills
take classes you're really interested in, and not because you think it will impress us. Doing well impresses us.
have fun. These are the best years of your lives.

Maintain a very good GPA. This may sound obvious, but its hard to count how many freshmen pre-meds with a excellent high school record bomb their first year with a <3.0 GPA because they werent prepared for the workload.

 

[Rustie]

I was just like you….knew I wanted to go into medicine early on, so I wanted to prepare myself before first year kicked in. I can say that preparing early has allowed me to not only explore activities and topics that I am passionate about (eg. I LOVE teaching), but has also allowed me to have a relatively stress-free undergrad. I was able to have a lot of fun and not worry too much about preparing my resume for medical schools because I started early.

The 7 tips that I can give you:

1) Definitely find out how you best learn. Many times, students who were at the top in high school fall flat in a college level environment because they don't know how to study properly. You NEED to master this. This means learning how to go through and process information effectively and efficiently. Studying for 6-8 hours every day is NOT good studying, even if you are able to pull off good grades.

2) Start finding out volunteer opportunities that fit your interests ASAP. I started tutoring immediately at the beginning of my first year. It has allowed me to accumulate not only hundreds of hours of volunteering by the start of my third year, but has also given me many experiences to talk about. It has also allowed me to better figure out why I love medicine and has given me a better idea of what I want to do in it.

3) Get started on your clinical experience ASAP. There usually is a long process of orientation and paperwork/vaccination forms that you must go through, which can take up to 6 months depending on the place. So start on that as soon as you can. I want to emphasize that you want to find some clinical experience that will allow you to do something other than make beds. You're starting early so you can afford to be picky.

4) Start on some hobbies! You have 4 years to become good at something. College is a new place to grow! Explore campus groups and see if there is an activity that you would love to learn or become better at! This will often help you de-stress when school becomes overwhelming.

5) Make A LOT of friends in the beginning. By covering as much ground as possible, you run into the possibility of discovering friends that you will stick to and become your support group. It also helps you feel like you belong in a community if you know a lot of people.

6) Find some extracurricular activities that are not for the purposes of putting on your application to medical school at all! It should obviously help yourself grow in some way, but it should be done purely for that reason and not to put on your app, although it usually does end up sounding good on your app later on!

7) Last, but not least, figure out your 4 year plan. Make a draft of all the classes you plan on taking. Classes that you want to take before the MCAT, the timing of your MCAT, how you will group your prerequisites together, what semesters you can afford to take fun classes and what semesters will be science heavy. Undoubtedly, you will change your 4 year plan many times over, but having a template to change is MUCH better than randomly adding classes, hoping that you will graduate on time. I cannot tell you how much less stressed I am about school and the timing of my classes because I made my 4 year plan before going in. Too many times, my friends have always stressed out about what classes they should take and then regret later about not taking certain classes before their MCAT or not having the time to take extra classes because they were interesting. PLAN THIS AHEAD OF TIME.

Hope this post helps. Best of luck!

Thank you for the advice!

I do have a question about your third point: What kind of clinical exposure/experience is best? What is the best way to learn, but also have experience that is worthy in the eyes of ADCOM's?

 

[Aerus]

Thank you for the advice!

I do have a question about your third point: What kind of clinical exposure/experience is best? What is the best way to learn, but also have experience that is worthy in the eyes of ADCOM's?

That is up to you. Find some experience that allows you to interact with patients in a meaningful way. Those are the ones most worthy in the eyes of adcoms.


Sent from The World Tree using SDN Mobile

 

[AlphaKY1]

For me, finding a clinical volunteering opportunity was the greatest decision my undergrad (I am applying now). I've volunteered in the burn unit for about 2.5 years; I love every shift. When I first get there I do the typical volunteer activities: pass out meals and stock linens. As people finish eating, I spend the rest of my time talking with them. They open up about their lives, their hospital stays, their worries, their hobbies, etc. You name it; they say it. In addition to this, I have witnessed many many miraculous survivals. Those with 90% burns and through determination and the care of the staff they survive. Not everyday is full of roses, however. I have met many patients, talked to them for a couple of hours, then the next week they passed away. There were a couple patients I had gotten close with. That happens when they are there for months. I could literally write about my experiences here for pages, in fact, I have been (personal statement, work/activities, secondaries...). If you'd like to hear any specific stories, just ask me. Obviously, HIPPA still applies. The key is to find an experience you are passionate about and that will inspire you.

 

[tantacles]

Thank you for the advice!

I do have a question about your third point: What kind of clinical exposure/experience is best? What is the best way to learn, but also have experience that is worthy in the eyes of ADCOM's?

What we've been trying to tell you is that there is no "best" clinical experience. Just interact with patients in a clinical setting.

 

[Rustie]

What we've been trying to tell you is that there is no "best" clinical experience. Just interact with patients in a clinical setting.

I just want to make sure that I'm interacting "enough". I want my volunteer experience to be involved with patients, and I'm worried that this critical care position I'm looking at isn't involved enough. The description says that the volunteer would be providing information and host services, as well as patient-related errands.

Is that a position worthy of both learning and experience (in the eyes of ADCOM's)?

 

[tantacles]

I just want to make sure that I'm interacting "enough". I want my volunteer experience to be involved with patients, and I'm worried that this critical care position I'm looking at isn't involved enough. The description says that the volunteer would be providing information and host services, as well as patient-related errands.

Is that a position worthy of both learning and experience (in the eyes of ADCOM's)?

It isn't about the position you have; it's about how you frame it. The ADCOM isn't there with you. Here are two description of the position you're describing:

1. Critical Care Volunteer

-Provided information services
-Ran errands
-Provided host services

2. Critical Care volunteer

-Provided guidance to patients and family members
-Comfort care for family members of critically ill patients

This took me around 2 minutes, and I have no idea what your position is. Which sounds better?

 

[AlphaKY1]

Stop. Experience it and find out if YOU are getting anything out of it. Don't be this kind of freshman. Enjoy the process.

 

[lazyindy]

Start studying for step 1