Related Posts
Anyone hiring Finance roles for 2021?
More Posts
uncle daddy 🥵
What is this cool bowl?
Additional Posts in Consulting Dads
Happy Father's Day! 🍒🥒
Any other adoptive parent 🐠 out there?
New to Fishbowl?
Download the Fishbowl app to
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.
unlock all discussions on Fishbowl.
Did he apply for MD programs only? Maybe this cycle he should consider MD and DO schools
I second this. Have some friends from non-traditional backgrounds need to go the DO route when they were rejected by every single MD program they applied to.
They're all doing really well, just didn't fit the original mold. Hell, one of them is now an attending at a University hospital of a University that rejected him twice. That makes him faculty of a school that rejected him...crazy isn't it?
Medical school admissions are tough. It doesn’t sound like he’s stagnating, looks like he’s still working hard toward his goal of medical school and not causing trouble at home. I would encourage him next time to apply for more safety schools and DO as others have suggested
At a local university (pays like $15/hr). He seems to be upset. But not that upset, says he will try again next year. Meanwhile, he continues to live at home and I think he’s sort of stagnating in his life. He hangs around with my wife and I, his younger siblings a lot, doesn’t date. Wondering if I should talk to him about other career choices. Or just let him be for another year? I mean I mostly love having him around, but I want to make sure I am sufficiently encouraging him.
I think it’s more important to grow and invest time wisely than arbitrary goals on whether they are in this career vs that one. Might seem like a big deal now, but he has options and shouldn’t be sorrowful. Spend some time grieving and then march ahead. That’s what I’d be looking for and talking about.
Is he taking steps to improve himself/his resume for future applications? If so I would be supportive. If not, that’s a different story.
1) Look to those DO schools as viable option
2) Build up or make his ‘business case’ on next year application different or better with more experiences via work, volunteer, etc. He has to do something different that stands out on his application
3) start working on back up option and look for professions and jobs that might be suitable for him as a stop gap or long term
4) you are going all the right things as a parent.
Tell him he is going to be alright
I was pre-med and got decent grades and MCAT score and got rejected 2x back to back years but was able to land on my feat and go into healthcare administration and moved up the ranks quickly and moved to healthcare consulting and got my MBA. But it was a challenge and struggle during that transition mentally but got out of that slump. I think that’s where you son is now. He just needs to stay positive and be open too many opportunities. But you should provide some ideas and things will work out.
Thanks all. Yes. Actually I just had lunch with my son. Nice to come back to this post and see so many helpful responses. Very good suggestions. So. He’s pretty fixated on going to a top 30 school in a 1-2 tier city, his competition is pretty fierce. We talked about casting a wider net to include more schools, tier 3 cities/rural campuses, international options, DO schools, etc. He doesn’t seem willing to do that at the moment. But maybe in the next application round. I might see if he can find another experience for this year as well. The group he is working with is doing really cool medical device stuff, but I’ll see if he can get something else to broaden his resume, maybe something related to patient care (and potentially move to another local or international.. which he says he’s interested in, but just needs some encouragement to make the jump). I think he has to decide if he wants to be a doc bad enough and make some tough choices.
I also mentioned getting an emt certificate (takes 6 months) and doing that for a year, waiting 2 years to start med school. We had one of our neighbors kid do that and he got in to a top school with recommendations from a bunch of docs he had worked with.
I mentioned other programs as well like dentistry, pharmacy, pt/ot, but he is not interested. He is also not very interested in “business” so he’s not really into administration type ideas. I think his fallback would be do to research/phd. Which of course I’m a bit nervous about. We have family and friends that have had a really tough time with academic careers. Maybe the route is phd->industry like for a medical device or pharma company.
I’m also a bit worried about him socially.. I think he needs a little push to be out on his own or move to another city. I haven’t mentioned this to him directly as my wife thinks he should stay home while he’s figuring this out. But I sort of feel like as long as we are a safety net, he won’t go out and be his own person.
At any rate. He’s a good kid and I’m sure he will be fine. Just a tough time for him right now.
One more data point. International options can work if motivated. My wife ended up going to St George’s after being rejected from all MD and DO schools she applied to. After a lot of hard work and dedication, she landed a fanatic fellowship at Cleveland Clinic. A lot of people discount the option but I’d encourage him to continue to consider it as you brought up today.
I think your mission should definitely be to get him to have some backups on the list for next year. I don’t think waiting for 5 years trying to get into Harvard/Stanford is a sane idea... I dated a well off DO years ago and have friend who is a very successful surgeon in NYC with a medical degree from Omaha...