Do you honestly have any freedom as a medical doctor/pre-med student in college?

[ucbalumnus]

@silmaril

I strongly disagree that the path starts in high school—I had no idea I wanted to go into medicine while I was in high school and things have turned out just fine. There are even people who don’t realize they want to go into medicine until they’re several years out of college.

True.

However, some decisions made while in high school can affect a pre-med’s path:

• Choice of undergraduate colleges to apply to, due to the relevance of cost, accessibility of pre-med extracurriculars, travel to medical school interviews, and relative grade inflation on successfully gaining medical school admission without starting medical school with undergraduate debt on top of which medical school debt will be added.
• Taking college courses while in high school means that the courses and grades will be included in medical school applications and GPA calculations.
• It may be better not to take AP exams in subjects that the pre-med wants to (or has to for some medical schools) repeat in college, in order to avoid the possibility of having to mark "repeat" (of the AP scores) on them.