Advice about Second Degree

[Guest hopestar1023]

Hi All,

 

First, I'd like to express thanks to everyone participates in this message board! The wealth of information found here is very helpful.

 

Now, I have a question about how to apply to med school with my situation. I'm currently a 4th year student in Computer Science. I recently realized how much I love medicine and health related subjects. I would love to be able to attend med school. However, I have not taken a full course- load for any of the years that I have been in University.

 

I am planning on doing a second degree. Many of my credits are transferable so I know that I could complete my second degree within two years if I take some summer courses. That means that I will have two years with full course loads.

 

(I'd rather not to a Masters program since after doing a Computer Science internship for 16 months, I realized that I do not care for any tech related jobs or research. )

 

My question is, is two years enough to apply for med school? Or do I have to do at least three years? I would like to be able to start Med school as soon as possible.

 

Also, what are some suggestions for volunteering? The hospitals that are close to me have mostly admin volunteer positions. And I quite enjoy volunteering with the homeless but am not sure if that is valuable in my application to med schools.

 

Thanks for all your help!

[Guest Ian Wong]

Heya,

 

The hardest part of applying to medical school is figuring out what you need to do, and then organizing a timeline to make it happen. The most important part about this process to get familiar with the pre-req requirements for each medical school. This includes any required courses, and any published cut-offs for GPA and MCAT scores. Therefore, your first course of action (assuming you haven't done this already), is to visit each medical school's website and familiarize yourself with their pre-req requirements.

 

Here's a link to each med school's website, as well as any admissions statistics that were released from that website:

 

premed101.com/medschools.html

 

I would tend to focus the most on the med schools where you hold in-province classification. Most medical schools have higher expectations of out of province (OOP) applicants. As a result, your best chances of admission are within your own province's medical school. At that med school website, figure out which pre-req courses are required for you to have taken before you can apply. Then figure out which university you plan to take those courses.

 

It may not be necessary to do a second degree if you are only required to take those pre-req courses in addition to your first degree's requirements. Once you've got a reasonable idea regarding which med schools you are aiming for (obviously in the ideal scenario, you'd want to fulfill all the requirements for every Canadian med school so you could apply country-wide, such as taking certain science courses, writing the MCAT, etc, although this may or may not be a realistic goal), you can find out a lot more about that school's admissions process in each medical school's sub-forum on this website.

 

You need to factor in the MCAT as well, and assuming that you've not done any sciences in undergrad (Biology, Inorganic and Organic Chem, Physics, Biochem) it'll probably take you at least a year if not more to take all those undergrad courses, after which time you could write the MCAT. I would bank on an absolute minimum of two years more work, and much more likely three years more work unless you were accepted into Mac or Ottawa, where the MCAT is not a requirement.

 

Just as an example, at UVic, where I did my undergrad, Biochem 300 (full-year course) was a pre-req course for UBC med. Of course, in order to take Biochem 300, you had to have taken Biochem 200 the previous year (there was no provision to take the two courses simultaneously). Unfortunately, to be eligible to take Biochem 200, you needed to have some other required courses like first-year Chemistry, and that usually meant that in order to get into UBC med from UVic, it would take you three years if you were starting all your pre-reqs from the traditional beginning of a degree.

 

Volunteering is done both for the admissions committee's behalf, and most importantly, for yourself. Working with the homeless could be very rewarding position for you personally, and if you enjoy it, you should definitely continue to pursue it. Don't do something because it looks good, do it because you enjoy it and get fulfillment from it. Still, I believe that volunteering in a patient setting is something everyone needs to in order to find out whether medicine and taking care of people is the right environment for you. Volunteering jobs with patient contact could include the following settings (hospice, ER, long term care home, etc),

 

If we take the absolute shortest route of 2 year pre-reqs + 3 years med school + 2 years Family Medicine residency, you are going to be investing the next 7 years of your life and will undoubtedly be over $100,000 in debt after this time (especially considering the way tuitions have shot up Canada-wide). You might not be a fully-licensed physician for 12 years if you go the longer route of 3 years pre-reqs + 4 years med school + 5 years of specialty residency (ie. Surgery, Anesthesiology, Psychiatry, Ophthalmology, etc). I think having that patient-care volunteering experience is very important in helping you decide whether medicine is right for you, because as you can see from above, the committment and training time is extremely long and intense.

 

True, there's a lot of mobility and diversity within medicine to fit most every personality-type, but still, I think everyone needs to know if they have that sort of mindset that wants to help people and are willing to endure sacrifices to make that happen.

 

Anyway, to summarize. Your first goal should be to familiarize yourself with each med school's list of pre-requisites, particularly your in-province medical school(s). You can then plan your undergrad courseload to meet as many medical schools' lists of pre-requisites as possible. These pre-reqs are usually the same science courses that will provide the background for your MCAT studying. Also, don't hesitate to contact each school's admissions department to clarify any questions; they are always the authoritative final word although there's a pretty good chance that your questions may have been asked and answered at some point on this website or one of its sub-forums. Definitely take a look through all the previous messages in each forum.

 

Best of luck!

 

Ian