Degrees & Rumours

[Guest JSK]

Is it a big deal (or a big stain on your application) if you don't apply to med school with a degree or an almost-degree? For example, I pursued 2 years of undergraduate business at college before switching and taking only med pre-requisites.

 

Also, the college I attend has many non-mainstream courses (such as higher level biology and chemistry courses) restricted to career-program students only. Is it bad if I only take the basic pre-requisite courses and nothing beyond that?

 

Lastly, I was speaking to a physiotherapy student who was telling me about her friend that applied to medical school (UBC). Apparently, this friend applied with an A+ average but was rejected on the sole count that she "did not participate in any national sports." Does it really come down to this?

[Guest Ian Wong]

Ideally you would have directed your studies towards a major or degree. I think there's a medical school or two out there that explicitly says on their website that they "frown on people taking random courses for the simple reason of improving their GPA" or something to that effect. Of course, I don't remember where I think I heard that from.

 

In any event, you can't really change the past, and you need those med school pre-req courses, so the bottom line is that once those are done, you'll be free to apply to med school. Why not give it a shot and find out at that time, since starting a major over right now probably isn't what you're thinking of doing.

 

As far as the national sports thing, we've got a former Olympic athlete, and two national team people in our class, but I'd say the other 98% of our class are normal individuals. There was probably something else on that person's application/interview that UBC just didn't like for some reason. Who knows? The admissions process just isn't entirely predictable.

 

Ian

UBC, Med 3