4
3 years ago
Admissions Advice

Med School

Hey there! I'm hoping to be a doctor in the future and I want to know if getting into a good university also highers my chances of getting into med school? If I go to community college will I still be able to get into Med School?

communitycollege
medical
2022
MedicalSchool
medicine
4
2

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2 answers

1
3 years ago[edited]

Honestly, it doesn't matter where you go to a college undergraduate. Since community college is only 2 years, use that time well to get good grades and take some core classes that will count towards your undergraduate degree when you transfer into a 4-year college. After your 3rd year, you will have to take the MCATs which is a difficult standardized test to get into medical school. So if I were you I'd buy the MCAT study guide as soon as you transfer from CC to a 4-year school and work on it as much as you can.

How well you score on your MCATs will definitely affect your ability to get accepted into a good medical school so you will have to work very hard as a part-time job to grind on that test. You will need a 512-523 (say 520) out of 525 to get into a top 10 school and a 508-521 (say 515 avg) to get into a Top 50 Medical school. You also want to keep your GPA up to like 3.8+ for top medical schools and do some research, community service and other medical-related ECs.

If you are low-income, then I would definitely try to get into both the UCLA Geffen School of Medicine or the NYU Grossman School of Medicine since both schools offer full-ride scholarships for their Medical Schools due to very large donations. At most other medical schools you will get financial aid but have to take out loans to attend. Right now the average graduate of medical school in America carries about $240,000 in debt they have to pay off after attending college. So that's a lot of financial stress even if you end up at a great hospital to do your medical internship. I'm not sure what interns get paid but my guess is a good salary would be in the $60-70K range. (Internships last 3-4 years depending on your medical specialty). So in all seriousness, you really can't make much of a dent in that $240,000 debt until you are a full-fledged doctor making $200,000+ per year. It still might take 5 to 10 additional years to pay that off.

So you are looking at 10-12 years from HS student to board-certified medical physician/surgeon/specialist.

Good Luck.

1
0
3 years ago

Hi, thank you for asking your question! I agree with everything that @CameronBameron has shared in her post (thanks Cameron!!). I will add some details to shed light on the matter, but I will reassure you that getting into medical school is totally possible from a community college degree.

That being said, sometimes the institution that you study at can provide an advantage. For many top-tier medical schools, about 10% of their accepted class actually comes from their undergraduate institution. Additionally, many incoming medical students (the average incoming age is 24 years old), have taken gap years between college and medical school to pursue research, work, or graduate studies in order to boost their medical school application resume.

Coming from a community college background may provide some obstacles for you including: availability of pre-med courses, access to top-tier research opportunities with publications, and clinical experiences at nearby hospitals. These are truly necessary elements of your application that you will want to have on your medical school resume before applying as a competitive applicant. Many pre-med students who are coming from urban, university campuses will likely have these opportunities on their resume. Additionally, the average medical school GPA in the US (this varies drastically based on rankings) is a 3.6 and MCAT score of 80th percentile. These are minimum scores that you want to try and achieve.

Hope this helps!

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