How to Pave a Career in Medicine
Want to give the gift of sight to the blind? Cure the sick? Make someone in a wheelchair walk again? Are you looking for a job where a day at work means saving someone's life?
No career comes as divinely close as medicine. It can be lucrative. It can be exhausting. And it can be incredibly demanding. Where there are sick people, there is a desperate need for a doctor.
Getting into med school, however, is no easy task. Most pre-med work satisfies the required A's in 2 years of Chemistry (including one in the famously difficult Organic Chemistry) plus one year each of Biology and Physics. Math must include a year of Statistics.
You don't actually need to be in a pre-med program to rack these credits up. In fact, in the quest for the well rounded, socially responsble doctor, many med schools are taking a hard look at Music and Social Science majors as potential graduates.
What you do need: A solid GPA. Note that A's in everything will not guarantee admission, but the competition is intense and a 4.0 average can only help.
Then there's the MCATs. Med schools are ranked largely by their students' GPAs and MCAT scores, so med schools weigh these test results heavily. Study programs like those offered atKaplanare standard requirements to maximize those test numbers. Websites likeStudentDocand will give you an idea of how you fare compared with the rest of the competition.
For the truly ambitious, there are accelerated degrees at a limited number of colleges where undergrads are admitted as future med students.
Penn State, for example, offers the 6- or 7-year program to about 25 students a year. The program requires straight 3 years of summer classes at Penn State and Philadelphia's College of Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University. To be admitted, you need a combined minimum score of 2100 on your SAT's or 32 on the ACT plus ranking in the top tenth of your high school class. The best thing about these accelerated programs is that you can skip the MCATs.
Due to the enormous shortage of doctors, Caribbean schools have sprung up for those who don't get into U.S. med schools. The most respected is Ross University, one of several for-profit schools that award M.D. (Medical Doctor) and D.O. (Doctor of Osteopathy) diplomas.
There is a downside to foreign med schools. Largest disadvantage you face as a graduate is the lack of quality clinical rotations in U.S. hospitals. The more prestigious hospitals - North Shore/LIJ on Long Island or Johns Hopkins in Baltimore, for example - coordinate rotations for their 3rd and 4th year students from higher ranked med schools. Hofstra University on Long Island started its own med school last year, intensifying the crush at nearby quality hospitals.
Public hospitals - Nassau University Medical Center, for example - accept rotations from the lower ranked med schools and weaker med students at other universities.
Once you start med school, the fun is just beginning. First comes a round ofUSMLE Board Exams- Steps 1, 2 and 3. This is a series of grueling oral and paper tests that must be passed before you graduate to the next level. A failure, or even a low pass on any of them, will almost certainly destroy your chances of being offered a paid residency position at any of the top hospitals. Insome states, you get only 1 to 3 chances to pass before you can't practice in that state. TheUSMLE website forumposts informative chats among those who've been there and done that.
You take Step 1 at the end of your 2nd year. Passing is mandatory for med students to being their 3rd year of med school, when clinical rotations begin. Failure rates are high. Some 40,000 med students take this test each year. This test is considered the toughest examination any of these students will ever take - and the most important.Researchershave determined that students who scored low on the Biological Sciences portion of the MCAT and received weak grades in their med school courses are good predictors of Step 1 failure. That's when the lectures and lab work ends and the patient work begins at hospitals around the country. These last 1 to 3 months, with a serious exam at the end of each rotation to see what you've learned and where your strengths and weaknesses lie.
Next comes Step 2. A pass grade on this test is required to enter the residency program at the hospital you've been accepted in. Top hospitals won't accept anyone who's failed Step 1 or done poorly on Step 2. Residents are paid anywhere from $1,000 to $1,500, but many hospitals provide heavily subsidized housing with 3-bedroom apartments renting at a steep discount for those doctors.
Completing a residency is required before you can get licensed. But you're not done yet. First, you have to pass Step 3, a 2-day test-7 hours of multiple choice questions plus breaks followed by 3 hours of 144 multiple-choice items and other material.
Then you're in. You take the Hippocratic Oath - first, do no harm - and begin to save lives, deliver babies, or perhaps do research that other doctors will someday use to change the course of history. No other career comes close. I once talked with a med student about why he wanted to be a doctor. The choice was easy, he said. Either he'd be a doctor, or a priest. .
