biz owner with aviation degree seeks change....advice helpful

[clearsky24]

Complete career change and looking for some advice. Here’s my situation……

Throughout most of college and for the past 6 years I have owned and operated a successful summer business (mid June-Labor Day) in Michigan. The wonderful thing is that it produces a net income of around $45,000 which allows me to pursue other endeavors during the rest of the year.
I graduated in 2005 with a degree in Aviation Management with a 3.64 GPA. I spent another year in college pursuing an advanced accounting degree and the other 2 years working and internship experiences in airport management to find out neither is not for me. I need a career that has an impact on people, ever changing and always learning, has ability to be one’s own boss eventually, and has excellent pay and so medcine has been in mind for some time. I spent time volunteering in the OR when I was in grade school.

I am 26, single and have no real ties except for mortgage and business which includes lots of equipment. My initial thought was I could almost pay cash for medical school if I could just have July through August off (two months)!! Are there medical schools that have this???? It appears to be wishful thinking but I would have 3 summers to save during postbacc.

Is it better to do the prereqs at a school that has a med school? Will it increase my chances of getting in after completing the prereqs? Is it better to do a postbacc program? From my researc it is not wise to do prereqs from a CC.....is that true? My choices in Michigan are MSU, UofM, Wayne State, and by 2010 Oakland University. Any thoughts on these schools/programs? UofM is very pricey. I think my 3.64 GPA is good enough? I won’t be able to start prereqs until fall 2009 and am looking to volunteer at a hospital over the next year. Any recommendations on things to do to build up a nice resume and prepare myself for getting into med school? Any words of wisdom would be much appreciated!

Thanks

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[nontrdgsbuiucmd]

Wow! That's a lot of things to consider!

Here are a couple thoughts from a former business owner & current cycle applicant.

I'd started premed courses with the business intact, with an admin person there to continue running things while I was in class. Ultimately I sold the firm shortly after starting premed courses due to the requirements that I keep a close eye on the company to ensure customer issues didn't slip and that our customer base (which made up most of the value of the firm) didn't decrease substantially. In my case, the risk of losing a big chunk of customers (and therefore suffering a large decrease in company value) was too great for me to continue to run the company versus selling it as a "going concern". If you're making 45K NI now, it'd be a thought to run it for a few more years & then sell it; business brokers could help although often they'll charge 10% or so as commission.

Timing? Summer after M1 is your only summer "off"; after that, you're in rotations year round. Which leaves either hiring staff to run the firm or selling it prior to the M2 (second year) med school.

I spoke with U of Michigan Ann Arbor, they (of course) have a strong instate preference. Not sure what their cutoffs are, but there are quite a few schools in Michigan if you want to stay there. Probably it'd be wise to consider applying close to the "average" number of 15 or so schools that many applicants apply to; other states' private schools would be good ones to add.

ECs? First, focus on GPA/MCAT. ECs are essential to have, but having 200 hours ER clinical volunteer time versus 300 hours? Not much difference. 30 MCAT versus 28? Much bigger difference there.

But for ECs, just get some clinical hours with patient contact such as OR/ER/Health Clinic, maybe hospice, definitely over 100 hours per experience, ideally a few experiences, some schools consider length of experience i.e. 1 year 4 hrs per week beats 1/2 year 8 hours per week for some schools. Michigan schools could tell you what's important for them, this varies greatly by school.

Some schools value research; any type of research is better than none, medical research is considered more valuable by some schools than other types of research, many schools don't value this too highly. I'd go with what interests you. Schools have said "we want to see how you invest your time". The primary question is: Do you know enough about medicine to make an informed decision about entering the field? Get enough experience to answer this question thoroughly..

Business owner experience? This will probably sound impossible, but in my experience applying with substantial managerial experience including profit & loss, staff management, customer service management, etc, NO ONE CARES!! This is seen as possibly something to mention during the interview, and if you get a question about "toughest situation you've handled", you'll do great on this question. But many schools see us nontrads as more work in the sense of needing to be retrained after learning a different profession. This surprised me. To be successful, one needs to be the "round peg going into the round hole".

Final point, although you're some way off..apply as early as possible, August is fine and considered early at this point although in a few years this may change. Completing secondaries in November or later, regardless of qualifications, and at most schools your app is DOA. Seems silly, but I've heard from many schools that the same applicant rejected after a December secondary submission would have gotten some consideration if they'd applied several months earlier.

 

[clearsky24]

Thank you much for the info!! I do have a lot to consider. Yeah my business is very demanding and customer oriented and as always...no one will work as hard as you do. I know I will not want the headache or stress of someone running my business while in med school. Especially with the nearest school being 3.5 hours away. I am thinking I will have 3 more summers to save beforehand and line up a potential buyer. Hopefully then the housing market isn't in the ****ter either! At the moment I am trying to plan this out the best I can.