LAW STUDENT applying to medschool. Please help!

blossom
Wed, 30 Sep 2020 19:11:57 +0000

With no practical exposure to patients, medical issues, etc. other than what you’ve learned in a bio textbook, what assurances are you giving a Med school admissions committee that you understand what you are getting into AND that you are committed to becoming a physician?

Law school admissions is a different beast from Med school. The law school adcoms look at GPA and LSAT’s to determine if you can keep up with the rest of your class and the expectations of their faculty. You wanna pass the bar? That’s on you- it takes place after graduation. You want to practice or not? That’s on you. You want to become an immigration attorney without ever having taken a class on immigration law? Nobody cares- go for it, you’ll figure it out. You can graduate last in your class in law school, pass the bar, and make a million dollars a few years later as a personal injury lawyer with no questions asked.

Med school? They want to know that you have what it takes to become a physician. Period, full stop. Nobody is worried that you aren’t smart enough to keep up with your classes, assuming you do well enough on the MCAT’s. They are worried that you have no clue what it’s like practicing medicine and working with real live people- some of whom are really sick, others are just vulnerable and poor or disabled.

You think your current situation is stressful? Wait until you are a first year resident, haven’t slept in two days, and a bus overturns on the interstate at 2 am— and a bunch of nurses, orderlies, etc are waiting for you to tell them which patients go to the ER, which ones get the paddles, which ones can wait an hour while additional resources show up, and which ones are either already dead or beyond help. That’s stressful.

What appeals to you about medicine, besides kicking the can on “getting a job” for another bunch of years??? Maybe we can help you strategize around finding a career that won’t take quite so long or isn’t quite as expensive…

Do you have law school loans coming due? THAT’s stressful!