ATS thinking about med school

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lionslhp

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Hey, I am new here and had a few questions. I am currently a junior in an Athletic Training program at a mid-major D1 university. I am on track to graduate in 4 years. I also play on the baseball team at the university. Due to an injury redshirt year I will have one year of eligibility left to take classes after I receive my degree. I know I do not want to work in the traditional Athletic Trainer setting. I have looked into PT, PA, and Med school. Due to my injury I have recently been leaning a lot toward Med school for Orthopedic Surgery. I know I will need more prerequisites than what are included in my four year degree program, but have 2 summer semesters, a fall, and a spring semester to take prerequisite classes. I have a 3.8 GPA through my undergrad studies. I will most likely be applying LSU Med school in New Orleans or Shreveport. I was wondering if anyone had any advice as what to do?

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Hey, I am new here and had a few questions. I am currently a junior in an Athletic Training program at a mid-major D1 university. I am on track to graduate in 4 years. I also play on the baseball team at the university. Due to an injury redshirt year I will have one year of eligibility left to take classes after I receive my degree. I know I do not want to work in the traditional Athletic Trainer setting. I have looked into PT, PA, and Med school. Due to my injury I have recently been leaning a lot toward Med school for Orthopedic Surgery. I know I will need more prerequisites than what are included in my four year degree program, but have 2 summer semesters, a fall, and a spring semester to take prerequisite classes. I have a 3.8 GPA through my undergrad studies. I will most likely be applying LSU Med school in New Orleans or Shreveport. I was wondering if anyone had any advice as what to do?
You are in great position with your current GPA. You will need 1 year each general chemistry, organic chemistry, physics, and biology. Each of those need to be taken with the lab. You also generally need 1 year English, but that is usually included in gen ed requirements for any major. A semester or a year of math is required by some schools. Biochem is helpful for the MCAT, but not required by most schools, the same with cell biology, microbiology, genetics, and anatomy and physiology. They can be helpful, but you can definitely do well on the MCAT without taking any of them.

First, start physician job shadowing right away, including a general practitioner as at least one of the doctors you shadow. You want to know for sure being a doctor is what you want to do with your life. Also start volunteering, hospital or clinic ideally, but if you have another interest, doing something you want to that helps others but isn't directly medical also helps your app. Take the pre-reqs, get all A's if you can, but definitely keep the overall GPA of the pre-reqs over 3.5, take the MCAT after the pre-reqs are done and get as high a score as possible, and you will be in excellent shape. :luck:
 
The problem with the shadowing is I will only be able to do it in the summer. Being an ATS I have 225 clinical hours a semester. I will have a general medical rotation with our team doctor my senior year for 25 hours. I am concerned due to the fact that everyone I have spoken to says extra curricular activities are a big deal. I really have no time to do these with clinical hours and baseball. I have taken 8 hours of Anatomy & Physiology, 4 hours of Biology, 6 hours of Math, Statistics, Psychology, Public Speaking, Sociology, and 9 hours of English. I have taken chemistry, but it was not for science majors so I will need to go back and take the higher level. How many extra curricular activities/shadow hours are needed?
 
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The problem with the shadowing is I will only be able to do it in the summer. Being an ATS I have 225 clinical hours a semester. I will have a general medical rotation with our team doctor my senior year for 25 hours. I am concerned due to the fact that everyone I have spoken to says extra curricular activities are a big deal. I really have no time to do these with clinical hours and baseball. I have taken 8 hours of Anatomy & Physiology, 4 hours of Biology, 6 hours of Math, Statistics, Psychology, Public Speaking, Sociology, and 9 hours of English. I have taken chemistry, but it was not for science majors so I will need to go back and take the higher level. How many extra curricular activities/shadow hours are needed?

Your ATEP and Athletic program should have a team doc or team of docs no? And you probably have like a athlete clinic day? That would be the day that would be easiest to get your doc shadowing in. Your direct patient care will be fine. You've probably had that for a while. If you'd like more, see if you can cover some summer sports camps. Usually UDA(dance)/UCA(cheer) are always looking for first aid coverage and they pay.

Anat and phys are great (especially phys) but sadly not required at most schools. As long as your bio had a lab(with 4 credit hours it looks like it) you are ok there. You're probably right about chem. Also, look at the difference in your PA/PT prereq. I know here in MI, there really arent THAT far off from premed reqs.

You dont really NEED hours. But they are HIGHLY suggested. extracurriculars can be something as simple as playing IM ball, being apart of any res hall event, umm a one day soup kitchen event. Organize your ball team to do something like paint an elderly persons porch, or organize a little kid bball "camp" etc etc, they really add up quickly if you think about it. And if you did any shadowing or ATS work in high school, that certainly counts too!
Trust me, I remember the lack of time. But think that you have off season ball that you can get alot done. Talk to your ATEP coordinator or advisor and tell them of your future goals, you will be surprised how supportive they may be.

There are a few of us ATCs on this board, two start med school in the fall :) I take the MCAT next spring.
 
The problem with the shadowing is I will only be able to do it in the summer. Being an ATS I have 225 clinical hours a semester. I will have a general medical rotation with our team doctor my senior year for 25 hours. I am concerned due to the fact that everyone I have spoken to says extra curricular activities are a big deal. I really have no time to do these with clinical hours and baseball. I have taken 8 hours of Anatomy & Physiology, 4 hours of Biology, 6 hours of Math, Statistics, Psychology, Public Speaking, Sociology, and 9 hours of English. I have taken chemistry, but it was not for science majors so I will need to go back and take the higher level. How many extra curricular activities/shadow hours are needed?
Doing it in the summer is perfectly fine. It doesn't have to be that often, just enough for you to say "I want to be a doctor because I shadowed X and could see myself doing A, B and C as a career" or some such. EC's can be a big deal, but if you are in a good position academically (GPA and MCAT) you don't need the commonly-spouted SDN minimum numbers. Baseball, by the way, would be listed as an EC. If you volunteer occasionally that would also be an EC; it doesn't have to be 20 hours a week as long as it is meaningful to you and you get something out of it. Since you will have significant clinical exposure with your degree, you don't even have to be volunteering in anything medical.

Ignore the common pre-med notion that EC's are a set of hours you have to get done, and look at it as a set of meaningful activities that interest you, so you have something to talk about at interviews and on your application. Talking about something that you have a great deal of interest in that is completely unrelated to medicine and you only did for a week over the summer will be more impressive than the applicant who said "I changed sheets in the ER for two hours a week for my first three years of college."

In my interview, we talked about my job in New Orleans after Katrina as an armed guard, and my wife's pre-eclampsia that led to the pre-mature birth of our son. Other than taking note of some shadowing I did after submitting my application, the interviewer wasn't interested in how many of the 'normal' EC's I had, how many hours (my personal number of hours was pathetic, FWIW) etc. Other than having enough exposure to be able to intelligently talk about medicine and show some extracurricular interests, you don't necessarily have to follow in the footsteps of every other run-of-the-mill applicant in your EC's.
 
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