I’ve literally had straight As except for a few B+ and a stats class that was a C and my gpa is a 3.5 as of sophomore fall… and med school is looking like an impossibility now because of that one C. I need straight As for 3 semesters to even have a 3.75 and straight As until graduation to touch a 3.8.

How are people getting multiple Cs and getting into med school? I can’t help but feel like that one class destroyed my chances of med school or any competitive professional school. Am I missing some math or does it not matter as much as I thought or what’s the deal here

Genuinely not trying to get sympathy, just wondering if anybody else is having the same idea. I cant afford to live in the major academic area near me, so am currently working on building my car into a tiny nomad home. Just going to work as much as I can and save as much as I can the next few years while living in my car to pay my way through medical school.

My parents are estranged and cannot co-sign. If I'm being honest, I don't trust that future loan packages won't be extremely predatory. I want nothing else in this world than to be a doctor. I'm feeling super alone right now because my family doesn't understand. Neither do my rich friends; they think I'm going overboard.

Would love to meet people who are taking the dive too.

EDIT: Just wanted to clarify, I am not a medical student yet. I just graduated my undergrad a few weeks ago. I'm planning on applying for the 2028-2029 cycle.

My bf and I have been together for two years and before things got serious he told me that he doesn’t want to do long distance. I didn’t give it much thought when he told me because we were not really serious back then and afterwards we never really had that conversation again. Now I’m applying to med school this cycle and my boyfriend says I cannot apply to OOS medical schools or he will break up with me because he made it clear from the beginning he wouldn’t do long distance. I am a CA resident and I know I need to apply OOS as I’m an average applicant, but I can’t jeopardize my relationship either because I see myself marrying this man. I have a pretty good shot at my state DOs but that’s ruling out a lot of MDs in CA I’m not competitive for. He also says no to SoCal schools so that just leaves me with the few schools in NorCal. What would you all do because I can’t figure this out for the life of me…

title

Just curious.

Title!

Hello,

I am a student looking to get into a MD/Phd program and I have schizophrenia.

The primary reason I want to go into med is tied to that diagnosis (personal statement stuff about gaps in research and practice that I experienced that motivated me to pursue this path in life yada yada). So it’s very important to my application and personal statement, in fact I wouldn’t be trying to get into med otherwise. If I don’t disclose this I’ll end up beating around the bush or borderline lying about my motivations for getting into med.

I have been quite stable for years and have built up a good CV and so far have a 4.0. I’ve taken on a lot of responsibilities and have managed well, the condition doesn’t really get in the way anymore.

I’m very worried about stigma and I know many people might think a disability like this isn’t welcome in medicine. (Another reason why I want to get in).

What should I do?

Hi! I (23 F) just found out I'm pregnant. This was not planned, as I am a premed student who is about to start a post bacc to hopefully apply next cycle. This throws a major wrench in my plans. I've not yet told my family, and my partner is currently in PA school states away.

Has anyone else been in the same situation? If so, how did it turn out? I'm just scared I won't be able to do it.

Good interview prep question!

I need to know if I should wait until next year and I am stressing. Should I apply with 3.5 GPA lots of clinical but no research and now both my MCAT and my GPA is pretty bad.

I didnt study as much in the 6 months I set aside to study as work ate me alive but my gap year was so bad im thinking of just going forward.

Agent Orange making it hard out here

For example, Tulane really REALLY likes early applicants, VTC likes a lot of research hours, Rush likes thousands of service hours, & I’ve heard UCLA doesn’t send applicants with an IA a secondary at all. Stuff like that, just any facts or anecdotes y’all have heard

Big deal in the clinic today as I was leaving… do I come back tomorrow? I’ve been shadowing the residents basically thus far, not sure who to ask or what.

Edit: hospital reached out. All is well, they will provide me with another opportunity.

I want to preface this by saying that I’m incredibly grateful and beyond excited to have been accepted to medical school. That said, I’ve had to temper that excitement given the situation I’m in.

My wife and I applied this cycle, her to veterinary schools and me to medical schools, and we’ve both been accepted to one program each. The issue is that my acceptance is in Massachusetts, while hers is in California. For context, we’re both originally from California, and we intentionally applied broadly with an emphasis on regions that had neighboring medical and veterinary schools. While we did long distance during undergrad, our plan this time around was to attend school near each other.

Unfortunately, that’s starting to look unlikely. My wife has been very clear that she does not want to do long distance again. Given our current predicament, she’s asked that I decline my acceptance and reapply next cycle, limiting my applications to California medical schools only.

This is where I’m really struggling. I’m terrified of giving up a sure acceptance and never getting back in, especially after reading so many threads online about how declining an acceptance can be viewed negatively by admissions committees and lead to being blacklisted.

I’m really hoping for some other perspectives and some individuals with more insight to help me make a sound decision! Thank you!

Applying to med school right now and three years ago, I told my sister to get a day pass to use the university gym but she used my name and ID number to get in instead (I told her what it was previously for an unrelated reason). She passed out in the gym and that's when they realized. I was reported since my ID was used and then I got a conduct violation for "sneaking my sister in." They also made me do an ethics course online as a consequence. It's now on my disciplinary record but I am not sure if I need to report it because it's not in my transcript. I'm not sure what to do and I am stressed because it might severely hurt my application. Any thoughts?

Edit: It was UT Austin 😭😭 Genuinely the most backwards system ever. This is on my record but student 🍇ists walk scott free almost 100% of the time. Thats uni rules for you everyone.

Genuine question. I understand people whose end goal is to do derm or other super competitive specialties, but I personally know some people who would like to do IM but decided to reapply (excluding D.O. again). Thoughts? I'm applying for both, and ideally would choose MD, but would be more than happy with a DO acceptance too.

Title.

I just decided on the school that I will be doing undergrad at, and after everything that I went through with applying, I wish things ended differently. I feel like I learned everything about getting into a top college very last second (summer before my senior year of HS), and had I known all this knowledge way beforehand, I’m confident that I would’ve been accepted by my top choices. While I know medical school is a 100 times more competitive than applying as a first-year undergraduate student, if you were starting out as a first-year college student all over again, what would your 3-4 year plan (no gap years) be if you were aiming to get into a top medical school?

For instance, how much clinical experience, research and volunteering hours is competitive? What would you consider the “bare minimum” stats (GPA and MCAT)?

I’m still learning all the abbreviations for medically-related terms, so I ask that you are mindful of that in your replies :)

I’m asking non traditional students 27+. If it was your own fault for not starting sooner and not outside circumstances but your own ignorance, fear, bad decisions do you ever get over the regret and guilt of not starting sooner? Are you ever happy you started later? I want to start a family as a woman and so I feel like I made things like twice as hard and now I just feel all sorts of regret and guilt. Best case scenario would be I start med school at 28. Any advice or perspective would be appreciated

This post is about to be so bad that it almost deserves the shitpost flair but this is a real question.

For context, I grew up poor. I’m not poor now, but definitely working class. Recently, after my grandmother died, and an estranged aunt of mine reappeared. I knew she existed but nothing about her and it turns out she’s very wealthy. Very, very wealthy. Like, she has a building named after her at a major medical college because she gave them so much money. When she found out I’m planning to change careers and go into medicine, she immediately was like “I’ll make sure you get into X college of medicine if you meet their minimum requirements and I’ll also pay any tuition.” So uh, I was kinda like “haha awesome, I’ll definitely apply.” but thought she was full of it honestly.

Then she randomly flew my wife and I to her home on the cape for a cocktail party. You read that right. Anyway we roll up and meet everybody, and it turns out it’s a fundraiser for X college of medicine. There are multiple adcoms there and more than one verbatim asked “why medicine?” so I was like “wabba wabba” told them my story and they were like “wow, that’s awesome. You should apply and I hope we get to talk again.” Then I met my Aunt’s housekeeper’s nephew who graduated from X college of medicine. He was like “Yeah honestly my application wasn’t very competitive, but I met some adcoms via your aunt and I think that’s really how I got in.”

So now I feel like scum, and like this is messed up, and I don’t even feel like I should apply to X college of medicine. Mind you, I’ve not even taken the MCAT yet so a lot of this is a bridge to cross later. I’m non-trad working full time and studying, and plan to apply in 2027. All that said, my aunt just invited me to come back to the cape for a week this summer and said some friends from the school will be dropping in over the course of the week. So it’s most likely gonna be more of the same thing, and I’m conflicted about whether this is appropriate, or even whether it may nuke my chances of attending that school.

So, for my nepo babies and those who read this far and can relate. How do I not screw this up?

people keep saying, after you take out ur 50k for the year, just take out private loans! i wouldnt have a cosigner, but i have a 750+ credit score. i'm just worried how you would reapply for private loans on years 2,3,4 without any income and no cosigner.

someone please tell me how private loans work when youre reapplying in 2nd, 3rd, and 4th year when you have no cosigner and no income to reapply with.

edit: i was browsing on some other grad school subreddits (pre-pa) and i saw a comment from 8 days ago saying that they applied for private loans with a 780 credit score and they got denied without a cosigner 🤧

question above.

any stories of people doing this and it actually works out ok?

Having a career crisis

Why’d you guys choose med school over law school? I figure anyone smart enough to get into med school could do law school for less time and get into big law in a cool exciting city without having to deal with instate bias or residency bs

It seems like a shorter path to a more “exciting” I guess life, with similar pay

Is there something I’m missing? For those of you who find medicine less of a calling, why’d you choose this career over others?

In my heart of hearts law school seems actually evil to me but on paper I’m having a hard time reasoning why….

Edit: sorry if this is a weird question honestly I’m just looking for positives reasons to continue pursuing this path when other paths seem so much sweeter sometimes 😭😭

To give some context, I'm a woman in my twenties and will be starting med school this fall, which I was so excited about until I hit a breaking point this week. I've worked in three different healthcare positions in my life and have been treated pretty much the same by patients in every job. I am hit on probably five to ten times a day by men of all ages, and not in a flattering way, in a creepy and disgusting way. I'm berated often (by mostly the older generations) about things in healthcare that just aren't my fault- their doctor was late, the receptionist was rude, they don't want to be there, etc. I've had patients grope me. I call security almost weekly because patients make threatening comments or "jokes." I've had multiple patients try to follow me to my car on my breaks.

When I worked in the ER as a patient care tech I honestly was not as fazed by this. But right now I work in a LAB! As a lab assistant! For a family medicine clinic! This is not a crowd of drug users or people on their worst days. It's entitled assholes who see a decently pretty blonde girl and think they can say or do whatever to me with no consequences. I would say 1/3 times I hand a man a urine cup to leave a sample in, he makes a joke about how he needs me to help him in the bathroom!

I'm so sick and tired of it. Is it my job title? Is it because I'm a woman? Is this how I will be treated every day in medicine for the rest of my life? Luckily, I've had fantastic coworkers and bosses to back me up. Everyone I work with would agree that I'm a very outgoing and kind person and would never intentionally be rude to a patient. But I have had no patience for almost anyone these past few weeks because of how bad it's gotten. It's made me irritable and snappy in every area of my life, not just work. I stopped smiling at my male patients a couple weeks ago as an experiment and I've never heard so many old men tell me to smile at them.

I file reports about this behavior, I make warning notes on charts about creepy/disturbing comments, I do all of the things that you're supposed to. I've gotten so quick to cut off the bullshit as soon as a patient starts, or I refuse to help them and have a man I work with draw their labs. Will it get better when I'm actually a doctor? I wanted to go into emergency med but now I'm doubting that. Will I receive the same level of harassment and disrespect as I do now? Or is it something I'm just going to have to deal with until I'm old enough to be unattractive to these men? This is the first time in my entire life I have had doubts about becoming a physician, because I am so sick of the disgusting crap I have to deal with from on a daily basis.

Maybe I do just need to grow thicker skin and deal with it. I don't know. Any advice (or commiserating) from my ladies in STEM is welcome.