Anyone active on these forums over 30, and planning to apply to med school? I work full-time and generally have to take classes in the evening and use my vacation for short (2-week) field studies. Any tips for speeding up the process, such as field study credits? If so, any you would recommend?
Any other advice would be appreciated.
Have you already completed a bachelor’s degree and are just trying to finish your pre-reqs?
Or are you working on your BA/BS?
I’m not sure field studies are useful since they do NOT fulfill med school admission requirements and may be of limited utility for fulfilling BS graduation requirements. Please check with 4 year university you plan to enroll in to see if they will accept the FS credits and whether these courses will be considered as meeting graduation requirements.
Correct; I finished my Bachelor’s degree and just need to complete a few advanced science prerequisites. As part of one of the field studies I completed, I enrolled in and got credit hours for Bio II (lecture and lab). FS credits – can you advise?
Thanks for the advice.
What are field study credits??? …and why are you pursuing them? I don’t know of any premed student with those or maybe I don’t understand what they are. Are those some sort of EC?
I’m familiar with a number of field study summer programs (in anthro, archaeology, paleontology, archeobotany)–and while they are excellent hands-on learn experiences, they are not equivalent (nor viewed as equivalent) to academic coursework. Also the ones I’m familiar with aren’t graded, but P/F.
D2 had some FS required for part of her ecology elective in college. But the FS was a minor portion of the class which was consisted of regular classroom lecture, exams, homework sets and required final paper on a topic approved by the professor.
I think admission committee might view such coursework skeptically, especially if the academic content was limited (or nonexistent). I am not sure that field study will be accepted as a substitute for traditional laboratory experience in fulfilling the 2 semester bio lab requirement for med school admission.
You should contact the admissions offices of several in-state and target med schools and ask if they will accept this coursework.
I also think you’re shortchanging yourself w/r/t MCAT prep by taking field study instead of traditional coursework since topic coverage in a FS class is hit-or-miss.
I’ve never heard of this field study approach. The 30 somethings I knew who were in my first year class mostly did career changer post-bacc pre-med programs (http://www.princeton.edu/hpa/post-bac-programs/2015-PostbacPaths-career-changers.pdf) in the year or 2 before enrolling. I believe they all left work to pursue the post-bacc full time but I’m not sure (I know at least one of them did that).