Session 108

Today we talk with a nontrad premed who has questions about in-person vs online classes, gaining volunteer experience as a nontrad, and GPA cutoffs. Join us!

Listen to this podcast episode with the player above, or keep reading for the highlights and takeaway points.

By the way, the episodes in this podcast are recordings of our Facebook Live that we do at 3pm Eastern on most weekdays. Check out our Facebook page and like the page to be notified. Also, listen to our other podcasts on MedEd Media. If you have any questions, call me at 617-410-6747.

[00:19] Question of the Day

“I am currently taking online courses for prereqs to go into medical school. Right now, the online courses are helping me because I’m working full-time and a father to children. I started in a fire department as an EMT, promoted to a paramedic, and I’m a firefighter. So that’s the history of 13 years right there.

I’ve been taking courses in and out. I’m a nontraditional student, I just finished my bachelor’s in December last year. So now I’m taking the prereq courses to go to medical school. So far, I’ve done general bio and gen chem. I am taking the first part of organic chemistry and physics right now. But it’s all online. So now I’ve been looking into it. And I know most, if not all, medical schools say no online prerequisites.

My concern is do I wait until school is back in session? I know some colleges are open now for taking in-person. Where does that leave me with my prereqs?”

[02:03] Taking Online Prereqs

Where you are taking classes, whether that’s a community college, a four-year university, if they’re in person, and you can go in person, great. If they’re online-only, then I wouldn’t delay your schedule. I wouldn’t change anything about what you’re doing.

There are a few medical schools that may be real jerks about that. And they could say there are some schools in-person so you should have found a way to go to those. If schools are going to have that attitude, screw them. You don’t want to go there anyway.

If they’re going to take that stance because they think in-person is “better than” – then they haven’t lived through a pandemic and seen a huge cultural shift. We can do things online and still accomplish, if not, be better than what we were doing in-person.

That being said, keep doing what you’re doing now. I wouldn’t purposefully avoid going in-person because it’s “easier” for you and your schedule and working and being a dad and all that stuff. You have to balance that. But I wouldn’t be worried if your school is still online. I wouldn’t stop going to school just to potentially appease some medical schools. The student goes on to say that he’s in a four-year university. Everything was in-person and because of this, everything moved online. So he wasn’t obviously avoiding it. It just happened.

[04:37] Another Concern on Shadowing and Volunteering

Ff-up Question: “Because of my tight schedule, shadowing, volunteering, and all those things are kind of hard to fit in. So those things I would probably have more time for after I do my prerequisites or maybe while I’m studying for the MCAT. So I’m wondering, do I also delay just to try and find time for volunteering or will my 13 years of paramedic EMT, also first responder, suffice?”

There’s a very big misconception around what “volunteering” is. In your case, who actually has a job doing these things where you are getting amazing clinical experience and whether that counts as “volunteering.”

A lot of people use “volunteering” generically to mean clinical experience. But clinical experience is clinical experience whether it’s paid or unpaid. So you have an amazing track record of being an EMT, and then a paramedic, and now a firefighter. And obviously, as a firefighter, you’re still a paramedic. So you’re still rendering care to “patients” and that’s an amazing clinical experience.

Now, from a shadowing perspective, obviously, you’re not getting a ton of shadowing. You may get some interaction with the medical director for EMS but that could be a little bit of interaction there. So from a true shadowing standpoint, you’re probably not getting a ton.

Obviously, during COVID times you’re not getting any. Try to check out what I’ve been doing with eShadowing. It’s a free platform so you could do that as a bare minimum. You don’t have to be there live. You can just watch the recording for the week. We have a recording every weekend, on a Sunday night. So it’ll give you time to get 10 minutes here, 20 minutes there. You take a quiz that will go towards some credit. Then you get a certificate. I don’t know if medical schools want to use that. But it’s better than nothing, at least right now.

So again, I wouldn’t necessarily hold off on applying because you’re not getting the experiences you think you need. You have the clinical experience. You’ve been in that job now for over a decade. Don’t worry about shadowing. You don’t have a ton of that, sure, but I wouldn’t let that hold you back at this point. I think your clinical experience is strong enough. The pandemic obviously, is a nice excuse to potentially not have a ton. 

Medical schools do understand that you’re working, you have kids, and that you have other responsibilities. You’re not a 20 something-year-old kid with no other responsibilities other than going to school, getting good grades, and getting the experiences you need to put on your application. So that’s okay.

Keep moving forward. Do well on the MCAT when that comes. Crush the application, tell your story in the best way possible, and get into medical school.

[08:35] His Aha! Moment

Ff-up Question: “With my nontraditional background, I started out in 2006. And I took biology back then. And I got a C. I started out wanting to be premed. I didn’t do well in biology. I didn’t give up. However, I saw an opportunity to become an EMT for the fire department. I did the EMT course and I enjoyed it. I loved it. 

I got a job with the fire department in New York City. And that stopped me for like a semester or two then I went back and started taking classes. Then they had a free promotion where paramedic will pay for your nine months to go to school and then you work for them for three years to pay them back. I thought it was awesome so I had to take advantage of this too. And then there was another promotion at the fire department.

While I was taking those courses in between jobs or training, I wasn’t doing as well as I should have been doing. I have gotten B’s, one A, and I got a D in organic chemistry. So I stopped going to school for a good four years. And so I’m a firefighter working, also working another job as a paramedic. 

And then I had another aha moment. I got another job as a paramedic. And I intubated this patient. We got his heart rate started back and got a rhythm and a ROSC (Return of Spontaneous Circulation). And I realized this is what I want to do. I got back in and started getting A’s. My GPA, in the beginning, was very low. 

Now that I’m going back to school, you see an upward trend, as medical schools like to see. So now I’m on this upward trend and now to get where I need to be where it needs to be, at least 3.0 for them to see it. I have to get straight A’s from here on out for this organic chemistry or physics that I’m in now. 

So my question is, even if I missed that margin of that 3.0, do I still go, or do I take more classes to try and get to where I need to be?”

[12:05] When It’s Time to Go

Getting to that 3.0 line is a huge conversation that I have with so many students. And for a lot of students, it makes sense to put in a little bit of extra work to get to that level. Because that seems to be a very common cutoff for some schools.

For other students, at some point, it’s just futile. There are just so many obstacles and hurdles to overcome and so many more credits to take with needing a guaranteed 4.0 to even get up to that 3.0 mark. And so at some point, you just have to go and what you’ve done has to be good enough. Whether you just can’t do it anymore or you can’t seem to have any more money to get into more classes. Or if there’s all that stress of needing an A in every single class.

That being said, you have to have those conversations with yourself and your loved ones and everyone else that’s on this journey with you.

There are going to be medical schools that are going to shut you out because of this. There are going to be plenty more that may filter you out at the beginning. But there’s someone who is looking at all those other applications and will see your upward trend, who will see your story, and who will want to talk to you. And so you just have to keep pushing forward.

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