Success Stories- Non Trad Style!

[bidiboom]

Mithril thank you..

[igeorgex]

In the year above me at Mac, there was a guy in his early 50's starting med school. What did he do before medicine??...he was the CEO of RadioShack.

 

do you remember this guy's name? I read a maclean's article about him, it'd be good to find and post in this forum!

[jayehs]

For those entering from a completely different field, what type of EC's do you guys have? I'm currently in IT field and haven't been doing the typical volunteering work that other premed students have.

[rmorelan]

Work experience mostly, plus the usual hospital, research, student mentor.

 

same - I also have a very long IT background and a lot of my ECs were related (medical imaging)

[sleeping_sickness]

For those entering from a completely different field, what type of EC's do you guys have? I'm currently in IT field and haven't been doing the typical volunteering work that other premed students have.

 

I'm coming from geology. I've got lots of research in geochemistry but not much in terms of typical pre-med volunteering. I've never volunteered in a hospital in my life.

[sfuguy]

do you remember this guy's name? I read a maclean's article about him, it'd be good to find and post in this forum!

 

Wow....that is NONTRAD!!!

 

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/report-on-business/pursuing-a-dream-after-corporate-life/article1410957/

[crisco7676]

crisco7676: Yes, hells yes!!! You and I have very similar backgrounds. I think you will have a very good shot at meds when you finish.

 

I tried for medicine after a pre-med undergrad and didn't get in. So I did a masters and decided to stick it out to do a PhD because of the fun I was having in the lab and the excellent lifestyle.

 

I defended last month and am starting meds in the fall. My grades also weren't so hot. They were all over the place (ie my average looked a lot better than my GPA)... So don't fret too much about GPA, I got into more than one school with my GPA and I am too ashamed to even post it here! A lot of Ontario schools like grad students/mature students with life experience.

 

I would say there is a huge relevance for a chemist in medicine. Examples: (1) In the lab next to mine the PI is an MD in an internal medicine subspecialty and does straight up chemistry work. At least what I perceive as chem: DNA adducts, HPLC, mass spec. (2) In my lab work (and in other nearby clinician-run labs) we have talked with the chemists a lot when trying to target a receptor to develop a drug. We use their libraries to screen with an assay we developed. IMHO the MDs and chemists have much better connections than the MDs and the life science PhD researchers because of the very unique skills/knowledge sets MDs and chemists can combine when looking to develop drugs (you could have both skill sets in one brain!). (3) Pharma will pay you $$$$$ if you are an MD/PhD with a chemistry background. Had a PhD friend at Merck making >300k (although she had to move to the states when the facility in Montreal closed down). She worked with MDs a lot too. (4) My wife is a life science PhD student and she does a lot of orgo stuff that is over my head... Take a drug, add a functional group here, take one away there, see how many mice get cancer, etc.

 

Oh man, now I'm all hyped up about research. Thanks a lot ! One suggestion might be to take a look at the skills/abilities/character traits that the med schools are looking at and see what you need to round out your background... Last year, I figured I'd need more leadership experience and a nonresearch LOC to go along with it, so I found a good volunteer position I was interested in and spent some time on that.

 

Thanks a lot EoE and astrogirl. You guys really hyped up my confidence! You're right, a lot of Ontario schools have a lot of interest in graduate students. I can definitely see the benefits. Graduate school is all about gaining maturity. The level of self dedication, self motivation and creativity that one requires to go through a PhD is truly unique and hardly found/acquired elsewhere. I'm glad I'm doing it. And I agree, there's definitely a spot for chemists in medicine; I get so many ideas for translational research projects. Hopefully I'll be able to try some of them in a near future, or at least present some as research proposals. I just started studying for the MCATs, getting ready for the january exams. Thanks again guys and congratulations for getting in.

[Andie]

So it has taken me awhile to write out my story since being accepted back in May. I apologize in advance for such a long post, but here is my bumbling path on the "scenic route" to med school.

 

I began university many years ago not really knowing what I wanted to do with my life. I was interested in science so I went into engineering. I had sort of thought about medicine a bit but it wasn’t really at the front of my mind at the time. Towards the end of university I'd realized that engineering was not for me and thought more seriously about medicine. So I wrote the MCAT and did well enough to meet all the cutoffs at the time. I looked into applying in my last year of undergrad. I thought my grades were pretty good for my program (my average was always above 80%), but then discovered that the average to GPA conversion is aweful. A 90% and 70% average out to 80%, so that’s like a 3.7 right?? Oh no, on the good old OMSAS scale a 4.0 and 2.7 (<-- omfg!!!) average out to something truly terrible, and I ended up with an OMSAS cGPA of ~3.2. I realized that I wouldn't get into medicine with those kind of marks so I looked at other options. I thought that medical research may be a good alternative and would hopefully be a satisfying career. So I applied to a bunch of grad programs and was accepted into my top choice.

 

I began grad school full of enthusiasm, and was happy for the first little while, but then the same nagging feeling kicked in that it still wasn't quite right. I was working in a hospital and had the opportunity to shadow in clinic and absolutely loved it, and decided to go for it and apply. I thought I’d be finished my masters in 2 years so applied in my second year of grad school but then didn’t get any interviews. Since I had totally avoided the whole pre-med crowd in undergrad I was pretty much clueless about what it really takes to get in. I'd figured now having a grad degree and a good amount of EC's that they would somehow make up for my low GPA. My experiments didn't quite work out as planned so I ended up staying for a third year, and during that time got my paper published, and I applied again. I thought “sweet I’m totally getting in now”. LOL! Needless to say it didn’t happen!

 

At that point I googled something like “Canadian medical school admissions” and came across good old PreMed101. I couldn't believe that there was so much that I didn't know about the application process, and how competitive it actually was. I went on a giant fact finding mission to get as much information about what was required to get in. I scoured admissions websites, called schools, searched PM101 for all the information I could get my hands on about admissions cutoffs, average accepted GPAs, ECs etc. I was pretty sad when I realized how much I'd screwed up by not working harder in undergrad and paying more attention to my grades. I'd always thought that I was well rounded and that all my ECs would count for something. (Seriously, when do you ever see someone on here post that they don’t have “Excellent!!!!!!!!!!!” ECs? I’d done varsity sports, student council, TAing, peer tutoring, surely that can compensate for a few bad grades right?? right??) Well, I realized that my grades totally sucked and no amount of ECs would ever compensate for the fact that I’d likely never make it past the initial file screen at a majority of schools.

 

I realized that I would have to fix my GPA before I was going to be competitive, so I got the idea from PM101 to do a second undergrad degree. I figured I’d focus on 2 year schools (Calgary, Western, Queen’s, Dal), and this would also open the door to McGill and NOSM who would only look at my new degree once finished. The wild cards were UofT and McMaster that had a cutoff of 3.0 to apply. I figured this plan would give me a reasonable shot at a good number of schools.

 

At this point my family and friends thought I was totally crazy. I had a masters and could get a good job in research, so why on earth would I go back and do another undergraduate degree?!?! In my mind, the risk in taking 2-3 years to do a second undergrad was worth it to potentially be able to work in a job that I would absolutely love, and would make me happy for the next 30-40 years of my life. I would put in 100% effort and give it my absolute best shot. If I didn't get in, then I would be able to move on with no regrets wondering what would have happened if I'd only tried.

 

So I studied hard and my grades were good, it was amazing how much my marks improved by putting a little effort in! But I then faced another hurdle with the MCAT. In the mean time since I’d been at grad school they switched to the electronic format and you could now write the MCAT 3 times a year rather than 3 times total. I think that because people can essentially write it an unlimited number of times, that people just keep writing it until they get the score that they want. This coupled with an increase in the number of applicants over the years had caused the cutoff scores to steadily increase. I wrote the MCAT again and 3 sections went up, but my verbal went down. I wrote it a total of 4 times (and almost a 5th time but I chickened out the day before) to try and meet the cutoffs at all the schools I was aiming for. I was fine in the sciences, but hitting the magic 11VR and R WS together to meet both Queen’s and Western proved elusive. I now had a good 2 year GPA to apply to these schools but I was afraid that depending on how the cutoffs fluctuated in a given year that I might not make the silly MCAT cutoffs.

 

During my second undergrad I tried to work on every area of my application so that there were no weaknesses. I began volunteering in a hospital waiting room where I spent a lot of time talking to patients. I also spent my summers/spare time working in research and tried to publish as much as possible. I applied in the first and second year of my second undergrad with no success. By my third and final year I was pretty stressed out. In the summer I practically killed myself with the number of hours that I worked, but by trying to work and collaborate with as many people as possible I ended up with 8 publications by this last application cycle. With my publications and fancy new GPA I felt like this was going to be my year. I had done absolutely everything possible to improve my application and if I didn't get in, then it wasn't meant to be.

 

I had a giant excel spread sheet that I figured out my GPA for every Canadian school and applied to as many schools that I thought I was even reasonably competitive at - Calgary, Western, McMaster, UofT, NOSM, Queen's, McGill, and Dalhousie. Finally I ended up getting four interviews at Calgary, UofT, Queen's, and Dalhousie. I did mock interviews with friends who are in med school and with other applicants and tried to prepare as much as possible. On the actual interview days I wasn't too nervous because I felt like everything I had been doing for the past three years had been in preparation for that very moment, so there was no point in fretting at the last minute. My interviews went well and I had a good feeling coming out. I tried not to think about it too much after out of fear that I would somehow jinx myself.

 

The wait until May 5th almost killed me. That morning I stayed away from my computer. I didn't think I'd be able to handle hitting refresh every second for hours on end until all the emails came in. I made myself wait until 11am when I figured they would have sent all the emails out by then. When I finally checked I couldn't believe my eyes, I'd been accepted to UofT and Queen's! I was just totally stunned that my crazy hair-brained scheme had actually worked out and I had been accepted to medical school. All my dreams had come true! To top it off, a few days later I was accepted off the Dalhousie waitlist, and a few weeks after that I was accepted at Calgary off the waitlist as well. So after 4 years of applying and getting nothing, on the 5th try I got 4 interviews and 4 acceptances. Pretty friggin' amazing.

 

So my advice to everyone out there is if you really want it, just go for it. Put all your effort into it and just go. It is better to have tried and fail, then to never have tried at all. Don't listen to people who say you are crazy or should give up. If you are reasonably competent enough to be able to get the grades, then all you need to do is work hard and keep at it. Every year your application will get better and better. Eventually you will hit the magic threshold and have what the schools are looking for.

[Applemanv3]

@ Andie: .... Wow.... I am humbled by your relentless pursuit of your dream. You've truly inspired me (almost to TEARS!)!

 

All the best and I'm sure you'll make an excellent physician!

[mr.o]

@ Andie, humbling and inspiring, thanks for taking the time to write that out! Hope that you enjoy the incredible ride that medical school is going to be for you.

[bored]

Andie, a very nice story,

 

but how come you never tried at american med schools or carribeans? It would bette to wait for 4 years to get residency rather then wait 4 years to get into canada..

[jdr44]

Andie,

 

Amazing.

I did tear up ahah.

 

It's a **** show.

But if we can push through this part - imagine how wonderful it's going to feel when we actually make it !!

 

CONGRATS!

[Andie]

but how come you never tried at american med schools or carribeans?

 

So this is just my personal opinion on the US and Caribbean, I don't mean to offend anyone...

 

For me there were personal reasons to stay in Canada, my boyfriend/family/friends are all here. If I were to go to the states or the Caribbean I would be committing to living abroad for at least 4 years, maybe another 2-5 depending on what happens in residency. For me, I knew that my poor grades the first time around were due to lack of effort and I was capable of more. I knew that with a new undergrad over 3 years that I could be competitive at Canadian schools.

 

There is also the cost of going to the US/Caribbean, ballpark its $50,000/year vs $20,000/year in Canada. That is an extra $120,000 to pay off, which is a lot. Maybe other people may have their families to help out, but it wasn't an option for me. I did pay $7,000 x 3years for my new undergrad (+ the time cost of not working, delayed time to starting working as a staff doctor etc), but I still figure I'm about $100,000 ahead.

 

But my main reason for not going to the states or the Caribbean was that I wanted to have the option to apply to any residency program I wanted. If you go to the Caribbean you are in the IMG pool which is really a huge lottery. Check out the Carms match statistics for this last year. Only 265/1565 matched to their first choice discipline, and another 33/1565 matched to another discipline in the 2011 match. 1267/1565 (81%) did not match at all. So to be $200,000 in debt and only have a 19% chance of being able to do my residency in Canada didn't seem like a good option to me. Also, 130 of those people who matched, matched to family medicine. I want to have the option to choose family medicine or some other specialty because I like it not because it was my only option. Sure some people do match to good programs in Canada, and if you are that lucky person who made it back then I know that you must have worked insanely hard, but the majority do not. Many of the Caribbean grads go to the states for residency which is a bit more friendly to IMGs, but the political situation is changing and they are cutting back the number of residency spots so it's only going to get harder and harder to match.

http://www.carms.ca/eng/operations_R1reports_11_e.shtml

http://www.carms.ca/pdfs/2011R1_MatchResults/12_Match%20Results%20for%20the%20IMGs%20by%20Discipline_en.pdf

 

If you go to the states, then you can apply in the CMG stream which is good. But I still felt there would be this question when applying to residency or applying for staff jobs as to why did I go to some small states school that no one had ever heard of? Why didn't I go to a Canadian school? Sure it would be great to go to a top tier US school, but that's not very likely. It's easier to get into the mid/low tier US schools, but again it is very expensive, and I think it leaves a big question as to how people will interpret this choice if you want to come back to Canada to practice.

 

(These are just my opinions. I know a lot of people on PM101 go to the states or the Caribbean and I don't mean to offend you. I made a choice based on my own values, so the right choice for me might not be the right choice for you, and vice versa. I do not want to start a flame war, I'm just answering a question.)

[Cerena]

Thank you so much for sharing everything, Andie!!

That was amazing to read. And I'm very happy your plan worked And that you were persistent!

[astrogirl]

Andie, you're awesome.

[mr.o]

I realized that I would have to fix my GPA before I was going to be competitive, so I got the idea from PM101 to do a second undergrad degree. I figured I’d focus on 2 year schools (Calgary, Western, Queen’s, Dal), and this would also open the door to McGill and NOSM who would only look at my new degree once finished. The wild cards were UofT and McMaster that had a cutoff of 3.0 to apply. I figured this plan would give me a reasonable shot at a good number of schools.

 

Andie, out of interest what do you mean by 2 year schools? Which second degree did you end up taking in the end?

[Andie]

Andie, out of interest what do you mean by 2 year schools? Which second degree did you end up taking in the end?

 

By two year schools, I meant schools that look at your most recent two years of grades only, so that they wouldn't be using my grades from my first undergraduate degree. So this year, they only looked at the 2 completed years of my new degree, and not my bad marks from many years ago that would drag me down. Calgary has apparently changed their admissions requirements, so I think they look at all your grades now, so they might not be a good school any more for people in a similar situation as I was. Saskatchewan also looks at your most recent two years, Ottawa looks at your most recent 3 years, but I didn't meet their cutoffs to apply.

 

I did my first undergraduate degree in engineering, and I did my second undergrad degree in Life Science. I did my second undergrad at UofT, so they gave me one year of transfer credits (basically all the first year courses), and then I did 3 years to finish the degree. If anyone is thinking of a second undergrad, there are some schools that will give you two years of transfer credits, so it will only take two years to finish the second degree, but I didn't know that at the time...so be sure to shop around.

[mr.o]

Thanks for the clarification Andie!

 

If you still remember, what are some of the schools that will give you 2 years of transfer credits?

[Andie]

I thought that York and Ryerson did... but your best bet would be to contact the schools directly.

[DeeKay]

This thread is amazing, two stories on here very close to mine. Thank you for the inspiration and motivation. 2nd Degrees for the WIN.

 

Keep up the great work everyone, and thank you all for taking the time to post in this forum. <3

[Real Beef]

yes very inspiring for sure! Makes me feel normal for being overly persistant in the face of adversity when most people would give up. I tell very few people that I am continuing to apply to med out of that fear of "You are still trying to get in?" But hearing people get in and thriving is so awesome.

 

Funny how today I was thinking about this specific thread and daydreaming about writing up "my" story ... LOL.

 

Beef

[UnstoppableForce]

Funny how today I was thinking about this specific thread and daydreaming about writing up "my" story ... LOL.

 

Beef

I truly hope that one day you and all the other persistent dream-seekers do write their own story. Good luck!

[Dino]

Due to unforseeable circumstances, I had to request a deferral for next year. I can't believe how nice, understanding and helpful the associate dean and the counsellor were. I will now be in the U of Ottawa class of 2016 (french stream). This happened very late (September 2nd). I really hope they had time to offer my seat to an unsuspecting waitlisted candidate. As I mentioned previously, maybe that candidate is the next Dr. Jarvik.

[ExplorerMF]

Wow - I'm truly humbled by everyone's persistence towards their dream! It gives me hope that I too can make this dream a reality.

 

I'm in my mid-twenties and just starting my BSc degree so I still have a long way to go. I haven't had much support from relatives because they believe a girl my age should be married and have children like all my other friends do.

I'm so inspired after reading all the previous posts from successful non-traditional students. Hopefully, I too, can write a successful story of my own in the near future.

[foad]

hey Andie,

 

Wow! what an amazing story! Congratulations on getting into med school. I'm in the exact same boat as you were and I was wondering if I could ask you a couple questions before I fully commit to a second undergrad degree. Feel free to email/message me and I'll get back to you ASAP.

 

 

thanks!