Low course load / exploring other interests

[reechee]

Hey,

So Im currently in my spring of sophomore year at my college majoring in biology. I have maintained a 4.0 so far in all my classes and during this semester I was unsure if I even wanted to continue being pre med and I wanted to make an education and informed decision before dedicating the next decade of my life to medicine. So I took a break from the science classes and only took 2 computer science classes instead to see how I like it and to make a decision if pre med is actually for me(was also exploring other interests outside of school). I quickly realized that I didn't really enjoy coding(and nothing else appealed to me) and I also weirdly missed the feeling of the pursuit of becoming a doctor. Would ADCOMS look down on me taking a low course load(below full time) this semester to explore other interests or would this be ok?

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[shawolarmy]

Hi reechee. I have not yet applied to medical school. However, I don't think they will look down on you for taking other courses. College is about self-exploration after all. Also, they say variety is the spice of life, enjoy your time in college and try not to worry too much. Have you tried joining any science clubs/groups on campus?

 

[eigen]

In my experience, they rarely care how long it took you to graduate / your course load / etc. as long as it's clear you can succeed in a packed environment.

Additionally, exploration of other careers is almost always valuable: it lets you either find something else as good/better of a fit (yay!) or it lets you be more certain that medicine is for you, and explain that to the committee / in your application.

 

[reechee]

In my experience, they rarely care how long it took you to graduate / your course load / etc. as long as it's clear you can succeed in a packed environment.

Additionally, exploration of other careers is almost always valuable: it lets you either find something else as good/better of a fit (yay!) or it lets you be more certain that medicine is for you, and explain that to the committee / in your application.

Ah okay, thats reassuring to hear. All of my semesters have been full time so far and I have thankfully done well in the prereqs. Just wasnt sure how this semester would look in their eyes and if it seems like I couldn't handle my classes. I now know with certainty that medicine is really the only career path I can see myself doing. On a side note, do you think this is something I should mention on my application when the time comes? Or should I just keep it to myself?

 

[reechee]

Hi reechee. I have not yet applied to medical school. However, I don't think they will look down on you for taking other courses. College is about self-exploration after all. Also, they say variety is the spice of life, enjoy your time in college and try not to worry too much. Have you tried joining any science clubs/groups on campus

Yeah Im currently in my schools pre medical club although I dont attend their meetings too often. Im also part of my religous organization which I am very active in. Other than that I have not joined many other clubs although I do intend on joining my uni's chess club as it is something I am pretty passionate about.

 

[eigen]

Ah okay, thats reassuring to hear. All of my semesters have been full time so far and I have thankfully done well in the prereqs. Just wasnt sure how this semester would look in their eyes and if it seems like I couldn't handle my classes. I now know with certainty that medicine is really the only career path I can see myself doing. On a side note, do you think this is something I should mention on my application when the time comes? Or should I just keep it to myself?

Depends what you find out. A lot of my most successful students talk about "paths they didn't take" in a way that focuses on why they ended up coming back to medicine, and it's usually quite strong.

 

[reechee]

Depends what you find out. A lot of my most successful students talk about "paths they didn't take" in a way that focuses on why they ended up coming back to medicine, and it's usually quite strong.

Yeah so I was thinking of potentially creating something on a large scale using coding to impact as many people as I can. However, during this time I was still volunteering in the clinic and I just felt as though I was missing that human/patient interaction and the kind of impact a physician can make on an individual is just so deep compared to what you can in another field.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

A lot of people take a light load to prepare for the MCAT.