Parents of the HS Class of 2024 (Part 2)

Parents of HS Class of 20xx
5856

Absolutely. And in fact I have been looking at some of WashU’s prehealth advising materials (to HELP, not MANIPULATE, of course), and it is clear to me they are really trying to get as many kids as possible to slow down and just plan for one or more glide years.

In fact, they suggest this may lead to better admissions results. I think that might be hard to actually prove in a really scientific way, but I suspect they have also just observed that kids who slow down are more likely to have a good college experience in general. And that is reason enough, right?

Anyway, I am sold, like I would just make this the plan right now. But we’ll see what S24 is thinking next time we talk at length.

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5857

For sure. It’s become quite difficult for many students coming directly out of undergrad to compete with med school applicants who have thousands of clinical hours (among other experiences) that they did in the two to three years after undergrad to strengthen their apps.

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5858

So I learned something new today. Hadn’t heard of the term “glide year” before! :slightly_smiling_face:

From what I’ve heard around Internet-land, it’s very very common for med school students to have worked a couple of years after undergrad graduation before they get accepted to a med school. Not as common to go straight into med school after undergrad.

So it’s not the end of the world. It’s just a detour. AND it’s also an opportunity for the student to spend additional time really confirming that’s what they want to do.

D24, for example, wants to go to PA school. I strongly suspect that she’ll end up getting accepted somewhere AFTER college graduation. AND she might end up detouring to an ABSN program instead. Many PA schools’ accepted students profile has them having at least 2000 hr of direct patient care experience hours, which is equivalent to working in a patient care job full time for a year. I’ve read that PA schools have a direct patient care hour requirement because they want you to fully know what you’re getting into. Plus, it doesn’t benefit their accreditation status to have students drop out part way through.

There’s multiple roads to one’s destination. Sometimes the slightly scenic route ends up to be a little better. It all works out in the long run. Sometimes our kids don’t realize it yet. :slightly_smiling_face:

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5859

Not even when so many of us parents are ourselves excellent role models for this point!

I do think at least in my S24’s case, it is the classic issue that he is hearing one sort of message from his college and his parents, and then a different sort of message from a lot of his fellow first-years. And he is smart and experienced enough to know you can’t just believe what all those kids say, but I also think it can be hard to completely ignore them.

And actually, we really went through all this before with college, and even high school (we used a K-8 where the kids then had to go to different high schools). So I am sure it will all work out fine. Again.

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5860

D23’s school has a pre-health pathway program that I think is incredibly valuable to all students looking at health related grad schools.

From first semester first year, the students are given support and guidance into how to be the most successful in their undergraduate years as well as how to position themselves to be best prepared for grad school admission. The program includes field trips to hospitals and research facilities, guest speakers from all healthcare related fields as well as insights into how to prepare for research internships, summer jobs and important steps for students to take (many of D23’s friends interested in medicine are currently getting EMT trained this semester so that they can start building patient contact hours to help w/ their grad school apps)

At the first meeting of the program, the Director made it clear that each student was on their own journey and that journey would most likely not look the way they, as 18 year olds, envisioned it. She shared the average age of medical school applicants (26) and helped reset/level set expectations for incoming students.

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5861

I hear ya!

D24 tends to roll her eyes at us when we give her advice (I can hear the eye rolling through the phone sometimes, haha!). And then when she hears somebody else tell her the exact same thing, it’s like, “Check out what So-and-So told me!” We smile and nod and say, “yeah, that’s a good idea!” knowing the whole time that it’s exactly what we told her to begin with. :rofl:

Like the pre-health advising meeting she went to a couple of weeks ago for freshmen & sophomores…they said all the stuff I’ve been telling her about getting into the types of grad schools she’s hoping for. But because it wasn’t one of her parents saying it, she’s listening to the advice. Makes me both laugh and groan at the same time!

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5862

Apparently each person has a fixed lifetime amount of advice they can give, and we exhausted our balances at around his age 6.

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5863

The path to being a PA should be very different than the path to medical school. The training is so many fewer hours that encouraging her to be a paramedic or army medic for myna years first. Same thing with NP programs. Many years of working as a nurse in a high acuity setting before NP school will make sure that she is a NPP that can be an asset

Back in the day when med school was a more direct path I graduated college in three years and then went to med school. I wasn’t a full fledged doctor for 9 more years and has 10s of thousands of hours of training.

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5864

Definitely!

She’s planning on doing CNA training (certified nurse assistant) to start off with and later on might do the EMT thing. She really loves all of the hands on stuff of healthcare, so it’ll be interesting to see where she ends up.

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5865

Amazing!

5866

Isn’t it amazing how quickly we all went from “You’re the smartest and most awesome person I know!” to “You’re embarrassing and you don’t know anything.” :joy:

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5867

I have found that kids go from “you’re the greatest person in the world” (ages 4-9) to "you have no idea what you’re talking about (ages 13-17). There is probably one step in-between those ages. I just hope they revert back to “yes, you were right all along” as they get into young adulthood.

In fact, I think this is why we had to hire a college counselor for a non-trivial sum of coin. They were telling The Child the same exact things I already knew, but of course they would never listen to the old know-nothing parental units.

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5868

I believe it was a Tuesday.

To be perfectly honest, it took me having my own kids to realize this about my parents.

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5869

1000%!! I am seeing all these kids who are headed to BSN programs saying they want to be a nurse anesthetist and I hope they are aware they need at LEAST two years of CCU/ICU RN work before they even apply to graduate programs. I would be very suspicious of any nursing program telling them they can do a 4+2 without any work in between.

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5870

There are some programs that you do the entire thing online and then arrange your own clinicals.it is insane

5871

A lot of those students have no clue how small the # of admitted CRNA students there actually are. :slight_smile:

5872

Here in AZ, between the Phoenix and Tucson metro areas, there’s a good number of ABSN/Master’s Entry to Nursing Practice programs to choose from, if D24 decides to move back home after graduation from her LAC and pursue an ABSN. They’re all in areas where she could either live at home with us or live with my sister for free/almost free rent.

We’ll see how she does in organic chemistry next year. That will probably be a deciding factor whether she goes the PA or ABSN route. And even if she eats it in organic chemistry, if her heart is really really with the PA route, then she can always retake it at a community college.

And yes yes…there are some grad schools that prefer/want/require your prereqs to be taken at a 4 yr institution. Not every grad school has that requirement, though. :slight_smile:

I’ve also encouraged her to consider doing an ABSN first before PA school as a way to quickly pay off her undergrad student loans & save up some $$ for grad school somewhere. OR she could go the nurse practitioner route instead. But so far, she really likes the flexibility of PA’s…when I had my double mastectomy 6 yr ago, a PA was assisting the surgeons in the OR and it was the PA who handled all of the tissue expander appointments for several weeks after that. D24 thought that the idea of her helping out surgeons in the OR by suturing up patients and stuff like that sounded pretty cool.

I suggested to her last week that she go talk to the career center on campus because she could do some job shadowing during their 3-week Jan Term next school year. Do one this coming January with a PA and then do another one some other time with an RN or NP and compare them for yourself.

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5873

It’s a measure of how rocky my D24’s first year (in everything but academics) was that she thinks we’re pretty awesome right now. I bet this general attitude changes after a week at home this summer. :slight_smile:

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5874

D24 has had some frustrating bumps in the road this week with trying to register for fall classes. First, the college’s business office had a registration hold on her account, which appeared to be a mistake. D24 couldn’t sign up for classes on Monday at the time slot she thought she had, and then she thought, “Oh my registration time must be on Wed evening, not Mon evening.” So when she went yesterday evening to do it, she couldn’t register and she didn’t think to look into why on Monday she coudn’t register…

And then that’s when she discovered the hold…which got cleared up this morning.

But then in that timeframe, the O Chem class she needed entirely got filled up. She emailed her advisor and the chemistry professors for the lecture & labs to basically say, “Please can you add me?” and was told that due to problems in getting students registered for lab sections, they might not be able to accommodate her.

And 1st semester O Chem is only offered in the fall.

Which will mean that she’ll have a one year gap between general chem and O Chem. She is really really worried about that. I’m going to suggest to her that she take an online O Chem lecture course this summer and she could use that to build a foundation of the material…then when she takes it in Fall 2026, it will be a review and hopefully will help her get a good grade on it.

This then means that she won’t be able to take Biochemistry until senior year.

A Plan B she’s pursuing is to take Genetics, which is in the Bio dept, but the lecture is full even though there’s 2 spots left for 1 of the labs. So she emailed that professor today to say “Can you please add me to this class & lab?”

If THAT doesn’t work, then Plan C is for her to take Intro to Public Health, or a “Persuasive Media” class or a “Viking Literature” class or a Nutrition class in the Kinesiology department.

…and all of THOSE would then allow her to also sign up for this 1-hour-a-week class that’s basically an intro to healthcare professions; it’s intended for sophomores, and completing the class gets you preference in the career/internship center on campus.

So all is not lost. I feel bad for my kid right now. But it’s also been a flashback to DH’s college days when he had to scramble at the start of every semester in an attempt to get into all of the classes he needed. So frustrating.

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5875

The whole thing gave my DH flashbacks to the circus he’d go through at the start of every single semester, trying to get added to courses he needed to finish his degree. Literally every class would be full by the time he’d be able to register so he would have to go in person to a ton of lectures the first week and then talk to each professor to ask nicely if he could be added to the class. Today he said, “Yeah I don’t miss those days.”

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