Medical School with a Mechanical Engineering degree

WayOutWestMom
Wed, 08 Apr 2020 18:03:30 +0000

Unfortunately California medical schools do not offer much in the way of an instate preference in applicants. (Exception: UC-Riverside admits student with strong ties to the Inland Empire area.)

Also because California produces far, far too many highly qualified applicants for the number of med school seats in CA. You will need to apply widely for med school and the odds say should you be accepted to med school it will be at an OOS program. (2/3rd of successful CA med school applicants matriculate OOS.). OOS adcomms won’t know the difference in academic reputation between Cal Poly and Long Beach (any other 2 CSUs) so don’t worry too much about that.

Med schools don’t give bonus points for tough majors. A 3.4 in MechE isn’t going to be favored over 3.9 in gender studies.

It’s next impossible to stand out in med school applications unless you accomplish something extra-ordinary: publish a first author paper in Nature, win an Olympic gold medal, headline at the Met, be award a Silver Star, find a cure for cancer… But you can strive to be a “average excellent” applicant. Average excellent applicants make up the vast majority of this accepted to med school.

Besides maintaining a excellent GPA and scoring high on the MCAT, you should seek out opportunities to demonstrate your leadership skills, to do community service with disadvantaged populations, to obtain clinical experience which puts in close contact with patients, and to shadow physicians in variety of specialties, especially those in primary care fields.

There is one engineering focused medical school, Carle Illinois, a small new school that admits only those with engineering/CS/Physics/mathematics type degrees. Should you get to the point of applying for med school, you might want to keep that school in mind.