Unique situation

[reiterin]

I am 29, a military wife and a mother of two. When I apply to medical school in a couple of years, I will only be applying to one school, because DH can't move (he's stationed where he's stationed and can't change that anytime he wants). Am I crazy for even trying this?

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[DrMidlife]

I am 29, a military wife and a mother of two. When I apply to medical school in a couple of years, I will only be applying to one school, because DH can't move (he's stationed where he's stationed and can't change that anytime he wants). Am I crazy for even trying this?

Assuming that the one school is UCSD, you're pretty crazy. The UC system in general excludes far more qualified applicants than it accepts, every year. Banking on getting into any one particular UC is very bad odds.

Last year, for instance, the median GPA for accepted students was 3.8, and the median MCAT was about 35. Out of about 3600 California residents who applied (assume they're all competitive), 484 got interviews, and 123 got in. That says to me that you need to be an extraordinary candidate.

So go be extraordinary! Best of luck to you.

 

[scottyT]

I am 29, a military wife and a mother of two. When I apply to medical school in a couple of years, I will only be applying to one school, because DH can't move (he's stationed where he's stationed and can't change that anytime he wants). Am I crazy for even trying this?

I'm confused. When I was in the military they made everyone change stations every few years. The longest tours were 3-4 years at a time in any one place. Married folk could sometimes get away with 6 years but it was very, very rare to exceed 6 years in one place.

Also, contrary to popular belief, the individual serviceman does have a bit of say in where he/she gets stationed. In the Marines there is a person called a "monitor" for each MOS. They do just what their title sounds like: monitor personnel staffing levels. They are also responsible for cutting orders to Marines who are coming up on PCS. Every Marine can speak with the monitor when they are on base (about once a year) or can have his chain of command put in a request to the monitor for desired duty stations. Granted, the needs of the military come first but the idea is that if there are 5 or 6 spots for place X and only one person has expressed interest in place X then they will likely go there. This obviously is Marine Corps specific so YMMV. I know the Navy has a similar setup and would bet that the other services do as well. If your husband is in a weird situation like active reserve or special duty or active guard then this doesn't apply.

Also, upon re-enlistment, all services will offer a choice of available duty station to the service member if they ask for it. That is something that absolutely can be stipulated on the contract.

If, like midlife pointed out, UCSD is the school you have in mind, then I think you are crazy. If your school is something a little more reasonable then you might have a shot but it would still be a long one just given the numbers of applicants to any given school.

Good Luck!

 

[bradt9881]

When it comes to competitive professional schools, putting all your eggs in one basket is suicide. And from the experience of 20 years in the Air Force, you are going to have the PCS monster always rearing its ugly head to interfere with your plans. Lets say you beat the odds and get into the nearby med school. Lets say you are even luckier and he doesn't PCS for the entire 4 years of your med school. You graduate, and now have to select for a residency; odds are, you are not going to get one close to his base.

To go to med school is going to require some sacrifices. He either gets out, or you need to be prepared to be trained wherever you can be accepted and endure a separation. Anything less sets you up for failure.

 

[njbmd]

I am 29, a military wife and a mother of two. When I apply to medical school in a couple of years, I will only be applying to one school, because DH can't move (he's stationed where he's stationed and can't change that anytime he wants). Am I crazy for even trying this?

As others have pointed out, applying to one school greatly decreases your chance of being accepted. If you have plenty of application money to spend and don't mind applying multiple years and likely not gain acceptance, go ahead and do what you want to do. My assumption (and I may be out on a very long limb here) is that you are an adult and can make adult-type decisions.

Your chances of getting accepted to any medical school increase with application to more than one school. The admission process is very competitive (to any school in the US) and getting more competitive every year the the economy is bad.

Sure its nice to gain acceptance into a school that is geographically close and suits your immediate logistical needs but at any point in medical school, your logistical needs can change. Suddenly, that school isn't all that suitable from a geographical standpoint.

The other thing is that you may be totally unsuitable for said "convienent" school. Not every medical school is a good "fit" for every candidate. By the time you get to your first block of exams, is not the time to become enlightened to this fact.

Finally, medicine is a very "demanding" mistress. It sounds like you are not ready to meet the demands of a medical curriculum by the fact that you are contemplating application to one school. If location is that critical to you, then you likely have needs that need to be met first before you make the commitment to medical school. A better course would be to wait until you are more flexible in both location and time before you enter into the fray.

I don't care if you have a stable of domestic help with your household, medical school is going to take up much of your time for three years. I am not talking about 2 to 3 hours every evening but more like six to 8 hours plus overnight call and plenty of weekends. That is the nature of what you seek. In today's world, you can't have everything that you think you want.

If your husband is military, you don't have control over anything. He might be where he is and things may change overnight in today's world. You could be in medical school and suddenly he is 6,000 miles away. You wonderful local medical school could become not so local in addition to added duties for you.

Loads of folks are have romantic notions of being a physician and be "supermom" or "superdad" at the same time. Most of the time, this become an expensive and terrible decision. Medicine is a huge demand on the applicant and the applicant's family for the four years of medical school and for three to seven years of residency. Not only are you out of the workforce, but you have zero control over the demands that a medical career imposes on your life. It's a commitment within the confines of the commitment that you have already made in terms of your family. If you are ready to accept this, then the question that you asked had it's own answer. If not, wait, until you can.

 

[reiterin]

I'm confused. When I was in the military they made everyone change stations every few years. The longest tours were 3-4 years at a time in any one place. Married folk could sometimes get away with 6 years but it was very, very rare to exceed 6 years in one place.

Also, contrary to popular belief, the individual serviceman does have a bit of say in where he/she gets stationed. In the Marines there is a person called a "monitor" for each MOS. They do just what their title sounds like: monitor personnel staffing levels. They are also responsible for cutting orders to Marines who are coming up on PCS. Every Marine can speak with the monitor when they are on base (about once a year) or can have his chain of command put in a request to the monitor for desired duty stations. Granted, the needs of the military come first but the idea is that if there are 5 or 6 spots for place X and only one person has expressed interest in place X then they will likely go there. This obviously is Marine Corps specific so YMMV. I know the Navy has a similar setup and would bet that the other services do as well. If your husband is in a weird situation like active reserve or special duty or active guard then this doesn't apply.

Also, upon re-enlistment, all services will offer a choice of available duty station to the service member if they ask for it. That is something that absolutely can be stipulated on the contract.

If, like midlife pointed out, UCSD is the school you have in mind, then I think you are crazy. If your school is something a little more reasonable then you might have a shot but it would still be a long one just given the numbers of applicants to any given school.

Good Luck!

My DH has been in SD about 10 years now, and just extended for another 3. He is SpecOps and they only have a few places in the country they can go. He can choose to go to another one of these bases when his orders are up, or he can choose to stay in San Diego. So every 3 years he can choose to go to somewhere else (limited) or stay here. He is an E6 with 13 years in and will have 16 years in at the end of this tour. He can choose to go or stay wherever he wants.

 

[reiterin]

You guys really have no hope for me, that's sad. I knew it would be difficult being a military wife and going for my dream, but I didn't think it so impossible.

 

[bradt9881]

Nobody is saying its impossible. But you are most definitely severely limiting your chances. I ran through this several years ago applying to physician assistant school. I lived in San Antonio after retiring there from the military. I desperately wanted to go to school at the University of Texas Health Science Center San Antonio. 900 applied, 24 were accepted, and I didn't even get an interview despite 20 years experience and a science GPA of 3.8. I DID get in, however, because I 1) applied to other schools and 2) was willing to move to NC to the school that did accept me.

Dreams sometimes takes sacrifice to achieve.

 

[efex101]

Like the above posters had very well stated....yes, you are nuts to attempt applying to only ONE school and to boot it is a Cali school. Also, if your husband is Special Ops does he not deploy? and if not could he potentially be deployed at some point? I think that you need to wait until he is through with the military and then you can apply. Because it is not just getting into medical school that will be difficult but what will you do for residency? where you may or may not get your choice. Medical school and beyond is a HUGE sacrifice and most pre-meds have no clue just how much of a sacrifice time wise/money wise/family wise/yourself wise it is. I am prior military and married to an SF guy and I am telling you that this is NO JOKE. You better have a solid plan and apply broadly and be willing to move away from your family for this goal to become reality.

 

[sindadel]

Wow, lots of negativity here.

It's important to have a solid plan in place and backup plans, but I certainly don't see anything wrong with applying to UCSD the first time. Work really hard, get the best GPA and MCAT you can and if you do get rejected, you and your husband can sit down and talk about your options together. Will he get some kind of retirement option at 20 years, for example? Perhaps he could leave the army so you could have more flexibility to move around while he provided the continuity for your kids.

I don't think you're any more crazy than a lot of us.

 

[bradt9881]

Wow, lots of negativity here.

It's important to have a solid plan in place and backup plans, but I certainly don't see anything wrong with applying to UCSD the first time. Work really hard, get the best GPA and MCAT you can and if you do get rejected, you and your husband can sit down and talk about your options together. Will he get some kind of retirement option at 20 years, for example? Perhaps he could leave the army so you could have more flexibility to move around while he provided the continuity for your kids.

I don't think you're any more crazy than a lot of us.

A couple of points here. She most certainly should work really hard, and by all means apply to UCSD. But there is nothing "solid" in a plan that limits you to ONE medical school and ONE area for a residency.

San Diego is a Navy town; I expect her husband is Navy, perhaps a SEAL.

All military have the option to retire at 20 years for 50% base pay; I retired as an E-7 in 2003 with 20 years and get around $1500 a month take home. If he stays longer, he gets 2.5% per year more, for a maximum 75% at 30 years.

 

[it2med30]

You guys really have no hope for me, that's sad. I knew it would be difficult being a military wife and going for my dream, but I didn't think it so impossible.

I understand your situation. My wife is and AF Nurse and she'll be at 12 years when it's time for me to get into med school. I'm going for it and we've talked extensively about retirement and the possibility of not being able to retire due to my career decisions and where it takes me. If I get into med school, my career will drive hers and she's prepared to get out if necessary. That's our stand. Ofcourse we'll do everything possible to make it work out with the military and my career, but the military rarely budges so we are prepared for that.

As others said, work hard and try to get into UCSD, there is nothing wrong with that plan except for the fact that you may not get accepted.

You're a military wife so I'm sure you've dealt with seperation so the possibility of seperation should not be new to you. If it happens, atleast it's something you both want instead of getting orders from the higher ups.

All in all, my advice is to go for it, apply to several schools, hope that your husband can get a special duty or something and make it happen. Nothing is impossible.

 

[Travisgee]

Regardless if you end up moving or not, you will really be playing the odds, and the odds will be against you greatly as Dr.Midlife had pointed out. You must be somewhat pragmatic about this and realize that it's going to be a lot like playing the lottery for you, if you only apply to one med school.
I myself will not be able to apply to as many schools as many members on the SDN forum suggest, so I can moderately relate, but nonetheless I will be applying to all within my state.

 

[student1799]

My situation is somewhat similar to the OP's, but I agree with the other posters that it's terribly risky to apply to a single med school.

I am 45 with a husband and two kids, and I live in NYC. I, too, don't want to leave my family if I can help it.

NY is a super-tough state for med-school admissions--almost as bad as CA--but the one advantage I have is that there are many schools in my immediate area. However, my chances of admission at any one of these schools are extremely low: most admit 2-5% of applicants (even the state schools). So I applied to all 9 NY schools, public and private, excluding the 2 upstate schools, and the 2 NJ schools. However, becuase I have a low uGPA due to probs. In college 25 years ago, I realized that "only" 11 schools wasn't enough to give me a reasonable chance of even one acceptance, so I also applied to 4 schools in Philadelphia. While Philly is a backup plan rather than my first choice, if it happens that my only admit is in Philly, I'm going there. While I can't commute, it is close enough that I could come home on weekends.

Even with more schools on my list, I still think my position is anything but secure. I think it would be utterly suicidal to apply to just one place--and all of my schools have equal or higher admission rates than UCSD.

One more thing you should keep in mind: if you apply to UCSD and are rejected, you would be classified as a "re-applicant" by ALL the schools you apply to subsequently, because you've been rejected by one school. This will probably cause the other schools to look at your app in a different light, and may reduce your chances of admission to those schools.

I know you want to preserve your family life as much as possible while doing this, but you have to give yourself reasonable odds of success, and realize that sometimes you may have to sacrifice to achieve your goals.

 

[shamrock]

I have been in your exact situation so I know what you're going through. My husband is active duty, and for 3 years in a row I applied to the "local" school. The 2nd year I applied the dean told me they didn't think I was serious b/c I only applied to their school. That was completely ridiculous. Just b/c you only apply to one school does not mean you aren't committed to medicine. You just have other interests/priorities in your life.

I applied to more schools the next year to make it appear that I was "serious." And I still didn't get into the local school! I felt the whole time they were very suspicious of my husband's job, and they thought I would just up and leave at any minute (the dean said something to this effect at one point). Eventually I said screw them and went to another school in an area my husband was actually able to get transferred to. While this wasn't ideal for his career, he made the sacrifice so we could live together.

My point in telling you this is that you can make things work. Being a military wife, you know that optimism and flexibility are key to surviving anything. I would suggest applying to several schools (even if you have no intention of attending them) so you don't have to keep explaining why you only applied to one. I think it's illegal for schools to ask about your spouse's career, so I wouldn't bring it up. Is that they way it should be? NO. But some people/schools have preconceived notions about members of the military and their spouses. If you and your husband have decided that you're BOTH onboard for this serious commitment, then someone else (ie a member of a med school admissions committee) shouldn't substitute their judgment for yours and decide that you wouldn't be a good fit.

You can do it! Just know that it will be an uphill battle, and you're putting all your eggs in one basket. Study hard and keep your head up.