Are you a Doctor or Medical Student? Would you share any advice to an aspiring Doctor?

Yes, I hope we get some Drs/Med students here to help. I’m premed as well and I would like some advice.

I’m a Neuroscience major with a minor in Latin/Ancient Greek languages (self designed). Cumulative GPA is ~3.5 (yeah, 3.0 my freshman year – bleh) and next semester looks fine as well.

Do you do any volunteer at all? That’s a very good thing. I am a hospice worker and I think it’s going to help. I’m going to get into a research project soon. Research definitely helps too. You can also shadow too if you want to get more of an idea of what the medical field is like. Both of my parents are docs so I’ve “shadowed” them since I was 6. I don’t think shadowing really makes much of a difference to admissions, but it does help you decide for yourself if medicine is right for you…and perhaps what field you’d like to do?

That would be nice, if there were some more. Nice GPA so far.

I`m guessing you`re going to go into Neurology if you get accepted into Med school? What year are you currently on?

I’ve heard that too about the shadowing, I probably will eventually but I’m not going to make it a priority. I have volunteer work at a Walk-In clinic plus a hell of a lot of First aid and volunteering with St.John’s Ambulance. Next semester I’ve got a spot at a counselling centre where I talk with others about any mental illnesses they may have. Through the same organization I hope to get a spot at a crisis line centre later on. Just can’t do em all at once. =P

I’m a sophomore. Bleh, I didn’t like my freshman GPA at all. I did well in my sciences and my Latin class, just calc wasn’t too good. But hey, I passed it. I’ll be re-taking Calc over the summer. I love science, but math is not my friend, unless it is in science. Because then it makes sense, haha.

I haven’t decided what I am going to do when/if I get into medical school. If I don’t accepted, I’ll probably take a year or two off to do some research work, and then apply again. I want to be either a General Practitioner or a Psychiatrist. nothing too specialized.

Yeah I would definitely keep working on volunteering and not worry too much about shadowing. I just did it early because, well, it was available. I’ll be going back to India for work in a wound clinic but we’ll see what happens.

That’s awesome that you get to work in a counseling centre…cool beans! tell me how it goes! I would love to do something like that here but the confidentiality laws are quite strong and sensitive when it comes to therapy.

Best of luck to you. :)

BTW – are you a freshman? Be careful all right? I didn’t party at all in my freshman year BUT I did get mono. Although I did well on my exams, it was very difficult and my whole winter was hell. So just be careful and stay clean and healthy! :)

Ya’ll need to take a look around for @shilolo.

I haven’t taken Calculus yet, only in high school. I’m going to review it in the summer as well. Yeah I know what you mean, applied math is my favourite between that and principles.

Ah, that’s cool. If I don’t get accepted right away I intend to pursue a Masters in Psychology, or Ph.D if I can get direct entry. I’ll probably re-apply every year. You’ll probably match pretty quickly if your wanting to be a GP. I want to get into Neurology or ER medicine.

How do you go about getting into research? Just talk to your professors? Yeah man I will, tell me if you get your research job. Good luck to you too.

Yeah I’m a freshman, I haven’t done any partying and I haven’t since I was in like…grade 10. Thanks, I hope nothing happens either, it’d suck to be out of commission on something like that.

@Darwin – “If you build it, he will come”

@LeopardGecko: I am not a med student but a grad student, so I can talk to you about research positions.

Different labs will have different standards, but I know for me, the only thing I really care about is finding a student who has a genuine interest in our research. That instills a level of commitment that you can’t find otherwise. So think about what scientific questions really interest you, and then start contacting professors in those labs. If they seem to be big labs, you might do better by going directly to grad students.

Good luck!

Sorry I am replying so late. I just checked my “Qs for you” tab and this was on top since andrew had sent this Q to me. I am a first year med student. To me, “would you share advice” is way too broad. Share advice about what? If you ask some more specific questions or tell me what kind of info you are looking for, I can go off from there. I didn’t read all the above responses ^, but if I skimmed right, you are a freshman at college. Based on that alone, I’d work on building that gpa a bit more.

I’m happy to help, just let me know what kind of info are you looking for. Feel free to PM too :)