These are your parents’ reasons for med school. What about you?
Here’s a secret: the biggest screen for med school isn’t GPA or MCAT, but rather are you choosing medicine for the right reasons.
Fulfilling your parents’ expectations/desires is one of the worst reasons for going into medicine.
To be eligible to work in an urgent care (get a medical license), you need 4 years of med school and 3 years of residency (Family medicine or general internal medicine)–so minimum of 7 years.
Staring college at 16 or 17, graduating at 20-21, plus 1-2 gap years, plus 4 years of med school and 3 years of residency–you’re going to be in your late 20s by the time you’re ready to practice medicine. (20+1+4+3= 28 at the earliest)
Medicine as a career requires you to give up your 20s for education & training. Many young physicians don’t start their independent careers in medicine until their mid 30s.
If you’re planning on babies in your 20s–maybe marriage & children first, then med school. Med schools are welcoming to older students.
Sure, it’s possible to have children during med school, esp. during the first 2 years when it mostly classroom work, but 3rd & 4th year are clinical rotations where you’ll be working nights, weekends, holidays, all with odd hours.
Residency is even harder on family life because you will be working up to 30 hours straight at times, you will have multiple stretches of overnight hospital shifts. You will have zero control over when you will be assigned to work or where you will be assigned to work.
You need rock solid childcare, with multiple back-ups in case a child or caretaker gets sick. You cannot call in sick just because you have sick kiddo at home or your sitter/care provider is out with the flu. It typically requires a live-in round-the-clock caretaker (like at non-working spouse or a retired parent) or 2 shifts of nannies. (one day, one night). All that plus back up sitters just in case.
It’s tough to do. It’s why there has been explosion of new babies among D2’s friends recently (all in their mid-late 30s). They finished residency and are now attendings who have a bit more control over their lives. They now have the time to have babies
BTW, it’s fine to have big dreams. But you also need to be realistic about how achievable they are.
RE: law school. You can also major in anything and go to law school–even bio or one of the other typical pre-med majors. Law school is very stats driven in admissions. GPA + LSAT are more or less the sole determining factors for admission. You really aren’t expected to have extensive ECs like med students are. Maybe a summer interning in law office so understand what the day-to-day is like, but not the whole long list expected of pre-meds.
If you are interested in law (you said you were “passionate” about it above), maybe you should visit the pre-Law/Law school forums on this site to get better insights into how law school admissions work.