Ok, so I'll give you a little background. I have OI which means my bones break a lot. I have the mildest form so it's livable... only had 22 fractures and 9 surgeries. But anyways, once I couldn't start playing sports with everyone I quickly became one of those smart kids that think they are king. I got to college assuming I could coast through with another 4.0 which I didn't I have a 3.4 cumulative and a 3.55 science. Being the idiot that I am I took the MCAT completely unprepared. I got a 20 5V 8P 7B... I felt like my life was over... I took it about 6 weeks after. So I studied for 2 weeks after I got my score... basically just improving verbal reasoning and I got a 24 with all 8's. I applied to 3 DO schools because I am ridiculously poor and couldn't afford to pay anything extra. I am roughly 15000 dollars in debt from student loans once I graduate in May. I was accepted to Midwesterns one year Post Bacc. I have been given a scribe position full time for about 9 dollars an hour in STL. And I am still on the waitlist for KCOM. I would probably do the midwestern post bacc except I had someone open a credit card in my name, still dealing with that, can't even open a new credit card to boost my credit. So once the stafford loans go through I am assuming I'll be 15000 short on paying for the post bacc... I have no cosigner. My end goal is a DO orthopod. Because I have student loans and I have ATLEAST a year until I matriculate into medschool I am assuming my grace period will be up while I would be working. Also if I do the post bacc and end up not getting in I am 50k more in the hole. What are your suggestions. Should I just live with my mom for a year in her tiny apartment and find a job that pays decent. Should I do the scribe job in the lou. Or go to chicago midwestern? What would you do?
What would you do?
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Your GPA is decent. You don't need to do a post bac. I would just work full time, sign up for an MCAT study course or get the materials to follow SN2ed's study guide, and rock the mcat when you retake it. Don't retake it until you are solidly scoring 32+ on your practice exams.
If you DO decide to go into the post bac, see if it is considered a grad program or not for financial aid purposes. Regardless, if you are enrolled full time in school, your loans should be in deferment while you are in school.
If you DO decide to go into the post bac, see if it is considered a grad program or not for financial aid purposes. Regardless, if you are enrolled full time in school, your loans should be in deferment while you are in school.
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There's a lot of other stuff going on here. Issue-by-issue:
OI: find somebody practicing medicine (preferably an orthopod) who has it too, and get them to advise you. There are physical/mental/emotional stress points during med ed that you can't avoid. Don't wait to find out the details, such as how long you're required to be on your feet holding a retractor in a 3rd year surg rotation, and what it means to require consideration of your condition by your superiors.
Credit card: whatever happened there, if your credit rating is trashed, you have a bigger problem than cash flow. Med ed costs much more than Stafford loans will cover - Grad Plus are required for all but 2-3 US med schools now. Grad Plus require a good credit rating and/or a cosigner. So you should find out if you are eligible for Grad Plus right away.
Student loan payments: look into Income Based Repayment (IBR) and other repayment considerations, if you need to be out of school.
Paying for more schooling: if you don't have financial means, you have to focus on degree-granting grad work such as an SMP or a traditional masters. You can borrow cost of attendance for those. You can't borrow cost of attendance for more undergrad (not even a 2nd bachelors).
Ortho residency: is incredibly competitive, DO or MD. Starting med school with a meh academic record is not a good strategy for success. You'd want to stack the deck in your favor by doing more work before you start med school, such as more academics with a very high GPA and a 30+ on the MCAT. Otherwise, you have to figure out how to be astonishingly excellent during med school and that's not realistic.
General employability: getting a real job would set you up to have more options for improving your DO acceptance chances and your ortho chances. You could work for a couple years so you can take a legit MCAT prep course and apply to more than 3 DO schools. Working as a scribe isn't an impressive med school app asset. You can get the same app impact from volunteering 4 hrs/wk in a clinical setting.
Best of luck to you.
OI: find somebody practicing medicine (preferably an orthopod) who has it too, and get them to advise you. There are physical/mental/emotional stress points during med ed that you can't avoid. Don't wait to find out the details, such as how long you're required to be on your feet holding a retractor in a 3rd year surg rotation, and what it means to require consideration of your condition by your superiors.
Credit card: whatever happened there, if your credit rating is trashed, you have a bigger problem than cash flow. Med ed costs much more than Stafford loans will cover - Grad Plus are required for all but 2-3 US med schools now. Grad Plus require a good credit rating and/or a cosigner. So you should find out if you are eligible for Grad Plus right away.
Student loan payments: look into Income Based Repayment (IBR) and other repayment considerations, if you need to be out of school.
Paying for more schooling: if you don't have financial means, you have to focus on degree-granting grad work such as an SMP or a traditional masters. You can borrow cost of attendance for those. You can't borrow cost of attendance for more undergrad (not even a 2nd bachelors).
Ortho residency: is incredibly competitive, DO or MD. Starting med school with a meh academic record is not a good strategy for success. You'd want to stack the deck in your favor by doing more work before you start med school, such as more academics with a very high GPA and a 30+ on the MCAT. Otherwise, you have to figure out how to be astonishingly excellent during med school and that's not realistic.
General employability: getting a real job would set you up to have more options for improving your DO acceptance chances and your ortho chances. You could work for a couple years so you can take a legit MCAT prep course and apply to more than 3 DO schools. Working as a scribe isn't an impressive med school app asset. You can get the same app impact from volunteering 4 hrs/wk in a clinical setting.
Best of luck to you.
What type of job would you suggest? I have no lab background and a BS in Bio with a chem minor.
It is roughly 1:1000000 for people in the united states with OI. I am assuming that is about the same number of orthopedic surgeons. so... one in a trillion chances that there is one. I am not saying there is, but I don't know of any way to find out. I have never even met another person with it besides my mom and my grandfather.
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Initiative. Resourcefulness. Self-advocacy. You'll want your patients to have these characteristics. You should have them too.
To find a job as a college graduate, you could start at your school's career center. You could look at monster.com. You could ask your former classmates.
To find a physician who has OI, you could look for researchers who are publishing about the disease and send them polite, concise email about your quest. You could use google to find which academic hubs have OI centers. If you don't find a physician with OI, get a physician who specializes in OI to speculate on rotations & residency in general and on ortho in particular. You might get no responses from 99 inquiries out of 100; 1 response could be worth it.
You have to own this. Or, you can wait for your 3rd year surgical rotation to find out that you had no idea what you were in for. Or, find yourself in residency interviews, unable to answer questions about what you've done to responsibly prepare for the rigors of training.
Best of luck to you.
To find a job as a college graduate, you could start at your school's career center. You could look at monster.com. You could ask your former classmates.
To find a physician who has OI, you could look for researchers who are publishing about the disease and send them polite, concise email about your quest. You could use google to find which academic hubs have OI centers. If you don't find a physician with OI, get a physician who specializes in OI to speculate on rotations & residency in general and on ortho in particular. You might get no responses from 99 inquiries out of 100; 1 response could be worth it.
You have to own this. Or, you can wait for your 3rd year surgical rotation to find out that you had no idea what you were in for. Or, find yourself in residency interviews, unable to answer questions about what you've done to responsibly prepare for the rigors of training.
Best of luck to you.
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