<p>Few go to med school or vet school regardless of average or not.</p>
<p>Many go into medical fields of various sorts - including many of those who previously thought they wanted to be doctors. Some do it by choice deciding they’d rather be an ultrasound technician (or whatever). Others do it when they realize they won’t have the grades to be an MD.</p>
<p>Average students in school rarely go on to med school. Those who do tend to be the late bloomers or those who were thoroughly bored in high school, but then perked up when they hit the more freedom and more challenge of college. Those kids are rare, but they are out there.</p>
<p>Kids from average high schools do go on to med school, but generally they were at or near the top (top 10 or 20%) in their class. And then, the percentages given above still apply. I can only think of 2 doctors (for sure) from my 14 years of teaching (remember, most of those wouldn’t be even remotely through med school yet). I know of several in medical fields from nursing to technicians.</p>
<p>kcjphmom: 17 year olds’ declarations about their future careers can be taken with a grain of salt. We can imagine the pool of well-known professions that a poll of graduating HS seniors might say.</p>
<p>How many of them will say: Asst manager of a grocery store? Stay at home parent after 3 years in the labor force? Multi-degree person not working in chosen field? Drone-like officer worker. Struggling real estate agent?</p>
<p>Yet many people fill these areas. Not surprising that medicine, engineer, law and “business” are often cited.</p>
<p>But to add to the anecdotes: my own Father in law as a very average HS student (Bs and Cs). Faced with the reality of a lifetime working in the steel mill or suceeding in college, he chose the latter. Worked his tail off. Paid for his college and eventual med school, graduating near the top of his class. A stint as an Army doctor and rose to a fabulous profession. Retired at 60, financially secure, and never looked back.</p>
<p>FWIW - My husband’s and my internist grew up in a West Virginia coal camp, graduated from the same college as us and went to medical school in-state. We’ve gone to him for 17 years and would recommend him to anybody. A kid who was a year behind me in school and got left back in sixth grade is now an MD. Some kids are late bloomers and don’t find their feet until college. After a while, high school doesnt matter anymore.</p>
<p>It can be done if that is what the student really wants. The student will have to work hard to increase college gpa and realize that most of their 20’s will not be fun. There were no vacations or dinners out until we were in our mid 30’s. It was hard when a lot of our friends would go skiing for the weekend or out to the clubs on Friday, Saturdays. When DH was in a resident and for the first 10yrs after, I felt like a single parent due to his work schedule. Four years ago as our oldest was finishing 7th grade we realized that he was missing way too much time with his kids so we moved to a position that gave him more time off. Sometimes the kids complain about the things they miss from where we came from but they agree how much nicer it is having Dad around. There are many doctors who are doing the job because they really want to help people and not for the $$. Like Garland my DH is a pediatrician who works in a rural hospital and we do not live a “doctor” lifestyle. We are very blessed but we have also put in many years of hard work so that now in our mid 40’s we are close to paying off student loans and turn around and pay for kids college. We live in a medium price house, drive average cars, and will pay for college but not 50k a year schools. Due to carefully planning we should still be able to retire somewhere in our late 60’s, god willing. </p>
<p>I advice kids who say they want to be doctors to just go in with their eyes wide open. I actually think the best job in medicine is PA or Nurse Practitioner.</p>
<p>Lots of good feedback in this thread. I like UCBAlumnus’ stats in post 38 - very telling. I love Shrinkwrap’s story in post 39. This all reminds me of a joke. What do they call the bottom graduate from Med school? Doctor.</p>
<p>Just after Freshmen move-in my daughter called - a little freaked-out. “Mom, EVERYONE is pre-med. EVERYONE” (well, she was in a learning community with biology majors) Everyone was bragging. I had to keep telling her it means nothing to say you’re “pre-med”. That’s not impressive. Time will tell.</p>
<p>^^ said daughter is now in the PharmD (pharmacy) program. Will graduate in 2 yrs. She won’t have any loans but should I worry about job prospects -still a good field? Asking since this thread is attracting MD’s.</p>
<p>I love the inspiring stories, but my reality is very different. Every year, of our new program freshmen, I’d say a third have indicated some kind of competitive medical career as the ultimate goal (DPT, MD, PA, DDS, DVM) and almost none of them make it. And yes, high school performance is a pretty good indicator or who will manage to pull off the grades in college and who won’t. </p>
<p>BTW, a kid with a 26 ACT composite is scoring at the 83rd percentile, or well above average. With a good work ethic, I’d have no trouble believing that kid could earn the grades required for medical school admission.</p>
<p>Sure, I want my doctor to be smart. But I know some smart people who are so arrogant they really have a hard time listening. Poor listeners make lousy detectives, and sometimes, when dealing with a strange collection of symptoms, what you need is a good detective.</p>
<p>I’ll just post my opinion from my D’s group of friends that all wanted to be vets. These girls grew up riding and competing horses with my D and more than 3/4 of the girls started college with the idea they would go onto vet school. My D was one of the few that had zero interest in being a vet.</p>
<p>We know one girl who will be graduating from vet school at UC Davis next year with a specialty in equine radiology. She is a smart girl with two undergraduate science degrees from UCSD at 20 years old. D has another friend that is a senior this fall at UC Davis and we think she has an excellent chance of making it into a vet school. Again, she is another very bright girl with a science major. The other 5 girls who all started out wanting to be vets have switched to non science majors as they could not keep up their grades. Not to be condescending, but just being truthful I would put these girls in the category of more average students in high school and most have struggled a bit in college.</p>
<p>Vet schools are ridiculously hard to get into as there are so few of them in the US, especially if you want to specialize in equines. Since I have owned horses for many years I know how expensive vet bills are, but most equine vets do not make a lot of money.</p>
<p>I went to college at a SHYPM school with a high percentage of entering freshman pre-med and a much lower percentage of graduating seniors applying to medical school. I completed the pre-med track, so I met quite a few of this group. Some switched to a different career path due to grades or perception of grades (need to get all A’s and achieve a 4.0 type), but the vast majority switched for different reasons. Most simply found a different field/career that they felt they’d enjoy more and didn’t have exposure to in high school. For example, most high school kids are quite familiar with doctors and hold them in high regard, but they aren’t as familiar with other medical related fields, such as designing bio-engineering technology or a career in academia. In college they get exposure to many other areas and get a chance to determine what they’d enjoy most. Others appeared to choose pre-med as sort of default major without much personal interest. In some cases, the medical interest seemed to relate to their parents, and the major choice was more of a effort to please parents or “tiger parenting.” For example, I once asked my next door freshman neighbor why she wanted to go into a career in medicine. She said something to the effect of, “You know when people ask what you want to do? Parents want you to say be a doctor.” She switched to a different field after the 1st year. The ones I know who actually took the MCAT and applied to medical school were all accepted to a med school (often a far less selective one than the SHYPM school they chose for undergrad), even the ones whose GPA was below the overall average GPA at my college.</p>
<p>Granted the students I met were generally not average HS students. The students from my HS who I know of that went to med school all were above average students. None of them are were among who I’d consider to be the most intelligent students, particularly in math/science/tech, but they were all hard workers who received quality grades and tested well.</p>
<p>50 students admitted immediately on graduation.
94 students admitted after a gap year (makes the total 144).
8306 total graduates.</p>
<p>This means that 144/8306 (1.7%) of graduates are known to have gone to medical school. However, the actual number could be slightly higher, since some may not have released their AMCAS information to the university.</p>
<p>Note that only 253/8306 (3.0%) of the graduates are known to have applied to medical school. Success rate for them was 57%, slightly higher than the success rate for all medical school applicants in the US.</p>
<p>To answer the original question: No. Average people don’t become doctors.
There may be a few late bloomers who had merely above average scores in HS, but most who make it into med school are top students, as well as extremely driven/goal oriented/hardworking, and have the ability to memorize vast quantities of information and test well. Testing well is important, so it is unlikely that students who don’t test well in high school will do well on the MCAT. (Not saying it never happens, but rare.)
I went to an excellent suburban high school. Among the honors biology students, many talked about going into medicine. From a class of 650, there are only 2 physicians that I know of. Both were top ranked (1-5%) students, one was a governor’s scholar and received a full-ride. The other went ivy. The governor’s scholar was only in the middle of her med school class. Another doc I know was a top HS student, NM scholar, from a poor inner-city high school, also an ivy grad. He is an all-around brilliant guy, but was in the bottom quarter of his class at a low-ranked (US/MD) med school.
D just graduated with a bio degree and is applying to dental school. She said her pre-health group lost 3/4 of its members between freshman year and graduation. I’d say her chances of getting in are 50%. (SAT scores were 2100-2200, DAT scores just slightly above average.) Two of D’s HS friends, (valedictorian and another top scoring student) have been admitted to med school from a class of about 400.
I’ve known a lot of docs (used to work for a med school.) Most of them are super intelligent and hard-working. (Yes, some of them are jerks, too. But none of them are average.)</p>
<p>No, not many students who go to med school are average. But-- I met a great guy in my med school who was definitely a below-average late bloomer. Wanted to be a coach in hs, nothing else. Graduated hs with a less than 2.0 gpa! Then somehow ended up in a (state) school for college, discovered the love of learning, kicked butt, got into his (state school) med school and did just fine-- an ER doc! So yes-- kicking butt in college can sometimes result in a happy ending. I love hearing those stories. But-- they are rare…</p>
<p>Erin’s dad, I have to add this. My husband says he had a lower SAT than me and our kids, but I think he was an amazing student, and I know he has an amazing reputation in our community. Great bedside, and amazing leadership roles that expand far beyond our town. Oh yeah: he went to an ivy. He jokes that in school, I went to a party and a study group broke out. Whatever. It’s all good. </p>
<p>And he brought me to CC. When our d took the psat, and was getting crazy mail, he said she should take an SAT class, and I thought that was crazy. A Google led me here. What’s it all mean? It’s complicated.</p>
<p>If you were asking me, yes, med students were the same–mostly super intelligent and hardworking, though many different ages/lifestyles/backgrounds/personalities. Sometimes they did dumb things due to immaturity/inexperience. Still way, way above average.</p>