How do graduate school admissions work?

Graduate School
1

<p>In particular, medical school admissions. I want to become a sports medicine physician, and I have the following questions to ask: </p>

<p>1) After finishing your undergraduate years, what usually happens next? Does one apply to graduate school to get a masters degree and then apply once again to earn your M.D.? </p>

<p>2) In terms of medical school competition. is competition based on what program one will specialize in or is it based on getting into a particular place for med school as a whole? (for example, will a person specializing in sports medicine who is applying to Stanford medical school face the same kind of competition as someone specializing in pediatrics? Or is admission into the pediatric program completely independent from the sports medicine program)</p>

<p>3) In your experience, what are the biggest components a competitive applicant must focus on when preparing themselves during their undergraduate years for admission into grad school, especially prestigious universities? </p>

<p>3A) Research will definitely be a major point, so can you also provide tips on how to partake in research related to sports medicine? </p>

<p>4) Does it matter at all where you went for undergrad? Is someone that went to community college and then to a UC such as UCLA anymore disadvantaged than a person who attended Yale or another that attended Chapman? And to be precise, does the strength of the sports medicine programs at these institutions affect how grad schools will perceive each applicant? (ex: someone applying from UC San Diego as opposed to someone applying from any other lower tiered university) </p>

<p>5) Relative to all other medical disciplines, how competitive is sports medicine?</p>

<p>6) How in demand are sports medicine physicians relative to all other medical specialists? </p>

<p>And finally, on a slightly unrelated note: </p>

<p>7) I will begin college in the fall, but I am still uncertain about what to major in. Can anyone tell me what to expect when committing to studying sports medicine? (I know I want to study sports medicine; I just want to know what to major in, what kind of course load to expect, and its overall difficulty) </p>

2

<p>Try the pre-med section of these forums (read the sticky threads first).</p>

3

<p>@ ucbalumnus Ill take a look at them, but the reason I posted some of these questions is because I wasn’t able to find information relevant to sports medicine specifically. </p>

<p>But now that you answered, I was hoping you can answer this question: Can undergrads who are planning on applying to med school take several years off to focus on research in order to strengthen their application or is there a time frame?</p>

4

<p>The forum you should be asking this in:</p>

<p><a href=“Pre-Med & Medical School - College Confidential Forums”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/pre-med-medical-school/&lt;/a&gt; </p>

<p>Medical school admissions (sports medicine or not) are completely and totally different than admissions for research-based graduate programs (which is what THIS forums focuses on). </p>

5

<p>I have 5 friends who are medical doctors.</p>

<p>In all 5 cases, they went from undergrad straight to med school, rather than doing any masters program in between.</p>

<p>One was a nuclear engineering major at MIT.
Another was a history major at Amherst.
The third did Brown’s undergrad pre-med-to-med school thing.
The fourth (younger sister of the Amherst one) studied English at Harvard.
And the other was an aerospace major at Purdue.</p>

<p>With the exception to my friend from Brown, none of them did any formal pre-med program prior to medical school. They just tried to get good grades in whatever major they studied, and studied for the MCATs.</p>

6

<p>Medical school is a professional school, like law school or vet school. It is not graduate school.</p>

<p>There is nothing “specific” to sports medicine. All future doctors attend medical school and learn exactly the same material. Specialization occurs after medical school, during residency.</p>

<p>Like cosmicfish said, go to the pre-med forum. Don’t ask any of those questions there–they have all been asked and answered thousands of times. See this thread specifically to find answers to all of your questions:
<a href=“Premed Resources Thread - Start Here First - Pre-Med Topics - College Confidential Forums”>Premed Resources Thread - Start Here First - Pre-Med Topics - College Confidential Forums;