++++ 1000.

Let me assure you that as a former high school teacher who also went to med school that;

1. A kid in year 8 will most likely change their mind about a future career multiple times between now and university
2. As long as it is his dreams he is pursuing and not yours he will be happy no matter what.
3. Med school is highly overrated. It is full of narcissists who are far more interested in status and money than should be the case. Your kid sounds lovely and motivated. Why channel him into a profession that is so dehumanising? Yes that's right. Being a dr, is actually dehumanising. Have seen it, and I live it. I can explain further if you wish.

I forgot to say in my previous post, that stepson shadowed a Dr. when he was in HS. It was a program they had at his HS. That's when he realized that being a Dr. wasn't for him. He didn't like the whole 'on call' thing. He realized that he'd be working ALL of the time. He also wasn't that fond of the patients he saw. That was the end of the Dr. fantasy.

" dehumanising " can you explain it?

The guy I didn't marry was pre-med BYU. Graduated high honors, etc.

Couldn't get into the schools he wanted, he really wanted to go to the U of U med school.

He ended up at Univ of Nevada Reno med school.

Not that he hasn't done well. He was not in it for the money.

He is now a geneticist in a large city and university back east.

But byu held him back from where he wanted to go. His parents were paying for school so that is why he went there.

Hikergrl, maybe you were there when he was. He graduated 1986.

Glad I never went to buy. Even though I am not where I expected to be now I can't imagine what my life would have been had I went there.

chances are I would maybe still be mo too if I had married the doc.

I attended med school in the Southeastern U.S. as a graduate student over 30 years ago. It was like having enormous volumes of information squirted at you from eight different directions with fire hoses. In one course we had 105 lectures in 71 days--including several Saturdays. I couldn't assimilate all this information fast enough, and did not do very well on the relentless multiple-choice exams. And there was nothing else: no lab, no papers, no quizzes, no homework. Nothing but unending lectures and exams. I watched my average go down, down, and down, and finally pretty much hit rock bottom.

I also was surprised to find an atmosphere of almost palpable hostility between the medical students and the faculty; but the reasons for this soon became clear. At the two-year point, medical students take the dreaded National Board Exams and move from the Basic Sciences to the clinical portion of the curriculum. If too many med students do poorly in some Basic Science section of the Board Exams, then it reflects badly on that department, and the department may shortly be getting a new chairperson and maybe even several new faculty members.

Thus the faculty see the students, and particularly the marginal students, as a liability. If you are having trouble, the faculty would prefer that you just go ahead and flunk out now, rather than reflecting discredit on the department later.

As a graduate student, I got caught in this crossfire. They lost two out of three grad students in my group including me, and three out of five the next year. I did a lateral transfer within the university, and eventually wound up with a second six-year Masters Degree. In retrospect, if I had just quit and walked away from it at any point, I probably would have been better off in the long run.

Just about the only good thing about it was that I wasn't hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt--though I was pretty close to flat broke.

Another thing to consider is that in the U.S., virtually everybody admitted to medical school was in the top of their class in pre-med. Guess what? Not everybody is going to be in the top of their class in medical school. Some of them are going to have trouble; some are going to fail courses for the first time in their lives; and some are going to bust out of medical school, in some cases with huge debts.

Anyone considering medical school or graduate school--no matter how good you are or think you are--should also consider the possibility that it may not work out, and should have an exit strategy and a plan "B." And maybe even a plan "C."

Best wishes.

1. What is the fundamental equation of medical school?

Answer: C = MD.

[That one didn't apply to me. The corresponding graduate school equation is B = PhD.]

2. What do you call a person who graduates last in his/her class in medical school?

Answer: "Doctor."

What do you call a person who graduates last in his/her class in medical school?

Answer: "Doctor."


While the above joke is technically true, it doesn't tell the whole story. Yes, you will become a doctor but you will not be able to specialize in the more desirable sub-specialties.

So, a better answer would be "General Practitioner, Psychiatrist, Pediatrician, Obstetrician / Gynocologist"

Fascinating, all of it! I am devouring this information as fast as you can post it. I wish I had time to reply to every post. Just know that the objective opinions from all of you are a wealth of information, and I am thinking about things that had not crossed my mind at all.

Thank you, thank you, thank you!!!!

1) Definitely have your son stay in band rather than going to Early Morning Seminary. EMS just makes for tired kids, and gives them no further academic benefit beyond hanging out with their friends for an hour every day. Isn't 3 hours of church on Sunday plus an hour or so of YM/Scouts enough indoctrination?

2) byu is a good school, FOR THE MONEY. Nearly every claim touting the quality of the education must be tempered with the statement FOR THE MONEY. A few programs, especially in the Business/Accounting. departments are highly rated without the caveat. The engineering Dept is decent as well. If your son wants to have byu as a fallback plan, so be it. It is highly desirable due to the low cost so admission is highly competitive, so the university can afford to be selective in admissions. This leads to better results across the board and makes the university look better. But living in Provo is tough to handle for some people because so many people act as though they never evolved emotionally beyond high school. And if he happens to question the church he will walk a tightrope until graduation. Avoid the hassles, and just stick with the UC system.

3) my dad is an OB. There certainly are a lot of perks associated with the field (healthy babies and happy parents), but there are also moments of profound sadness and significant emotional challenges. Working fewer than 60 hours a week will rarely happen, and 100+ hour weeks are common. I rarely saw my dad when I was growing up, although we always enjoyed the time we did spend together. Dad was Magna Cum Laude in undergrad, was at the top of his Med school class, and was Chief Resident after his residency. He knew he all along that he wanted to be an OB because he wanted to be like a neighbor who was an OB. It is OK to want to be an OB at an early age.

4) best of luck finding a comfortable boundary for your mother. I am in a highly similar situation. My son is in 7th grade and wants to be an Orthopedic Surgeon. He is involved In Jazz Band and the marching band, plays basketball, and carries a 4.0 GPA. My parents are steering him toward a mission and always want to talk Church Church Church ad nauseum. I know they will also push him to drop band and sports so he can go to seminary and YM/Scouts. If he is getting up early for a class, I prefer that he belts out tunes on his saxophone rather than sit in a mind-numbing discussion of how wonderful Joseph Smith was. I also prefer him to work like crazy as a college student rather than go on a mission. The mission was a MONUMENTAL waste of time for me, despite learning a new language and experiencing a new culture. I should have been working on my career rather than developing my used car sales techniques.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 04/22/2014 11:35AM by petrouchka.

I have a seventh grader who has already picked her medical specialty and a niece and nephew starting college as premed in the fall. I did bit of checking and found that the med school acceptance rates reported for BYU, the U, and UCSD were all about the same: 50%. UCLA did a little better, which is pretty impressive since a huge portion of their undergrads enter as pre-med. Admittedly, I only looked at a few colleges, but the school I found with the highest percentage accepted (around 80%) may surprise you: Utah State. They offer nice scholarships to good students and it's cheap; even from out-of-state a kid could afford to go there independently should you encounter a financial meltdown. Don't know about you, but I just found our backup plan. Who needs BYU? My impression is that being able to work on research with professors really helps, and it may be easier to do that at USU or one of the many good California schools.

To be honest, there are a lot of things I wish I had known when my older daughter was a HS freshman. First off, class rank is important. Being in advanced math already means your son can take AP math classes from 10th grade, bumping up his GPA. (Remember freshman year usually doesn't count, and sophomore year only 2 Honors/AP classes count in UC rules. That's not true for the private schools like Stanford. Don't rule those out because they have more flexibility to offer financial aid.) The people shooting for the valedictorian spot also try to do classes like PE and health in the summer or online, so they can take more academic prep/AP courses. Foreign language classes should be timed so you can either do AP or be done with them after sophomore year. Seminary will do absolutely nothing for your son in terms of acceptance to any school other than BYU, so to me it seems like a poor use of valuable time and energy during a critical two-year period. Band at least makes him look well-rounded, and if he takes on a leadership role could do even more for him. I think any college admissions advisor would consider your mother's advice absolutely crazy. As one of those over-the-top "education mamas" I would only allow him to do seminary if it's something he really wants. Scouting might be good to continue if he gets an Eagle, but I don't see much point in the rest from a college admissions standpoint. One reason we stopped attending was that the YW program was a huge time commitment that really offered no support for achieving my older daughter's goals.

My daughter applied to a number of UCs and was accepted at most. Her last two years she switched to a very competitive high school (one notch below Whitney/Cupertino level) and it was fascinating to see how uneven the acceptances were. It seemed like everyone in the serious college prep crowd had good grades and test scores, and thought of the top UCs as a backup option. The results were somewhat painful. Whites have it much easier than Asians, especially the girls. I saw kids with grades and test scores that were about average for Northwestern get in nowhere but Merced, and then come off the UC waitlists with scholarship offers. A student with around a 4.8 and over 12 science/AP classes did not make it into UCLA or Berkeley, but got full ride scholarships to UCSD and NYU, and acceptance to Duke. About 35 students were accepted to LA and Cal, but only about 8 of them were the same (those were the top 5-10 kids, who all ended up at places like Harvard and Stanford).

One thing I think can make a big difference, and did in the case of my daughter, is that she had a passion that she pursued with intensity for several years, and that passion was related to the major she applied for. If your son has the talent and interest to have a (possibly second?) major in music (lots of music majors are premed) or shows schools that he has the interest and ability to use that talent to contribute to the college, say by being a strong musician in the marching band, it will boost his admission chances. If he auditions, he will actually meet the faculty he would be working with, which is much less impersonal than the normal admission process. If he is just doing band to be well rounded, it should be something he truly enjoys because it will help more than seminary, but won't help his acceptance. (Yep, might be worth it to spring for private lessons on the side.) Same goes for sports. If you are good enough to play in a college on that team, it can help you get in with below average grades/test scores. If not, do it for fun, but maybe student government is a better investment because all of the schools like to see leadership.

For interests related to medicine, you might try to get your son to volunteer in a local hospital. It would help him understand what he is in for. My niece did an internship and then landed a part-time job helping at a local physical therapy clinic. Something like that, or doing research with faculty or attending science camps would really help much more than seminary or EFY. This website has a lot of useful information on UC admissions, and she updates her (separate) blog with valuable links to summer programs. http://www.askmssun.com/hs-extra.htm#why

As you get farther into this, check out the chat groups for parents and students applying to various programs on College Confidential - they have lots of inside insights around this time of year.

Good luck with your son. He sounds very bright. I think it's smart to have a back up plan, but there are lots of better options than BYU. I'm pretty sure he'll be in the top percentage of high school students guaranteed UC admission, and Merced will let you start there and finish at Davis. My local community college has admission guarantees for every UC except Cal and UCLA - and doing a year at a CC cuts costs even further. I will admit that the UC tuition is painful these days, but there are ways to reduce costs besides going to church schools. And for any premed student smart enough to get into BYU, USU seems a better choice.

And I guess I should admit, I hated BYU. Going there is my one big life regret. So I strongly encourage you to make sure that your son has lots of other options.