If Not Medicine
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While we don’t have any numerical data on this, anecdotally, students’ career paths when they decide against medicine are often guided by where they found the most satisfaction, personally or academically (or both!), during college.
From my (Kate’s) example, I was pre-vet when I arrived at college. I liked my science courses and did well, but I loved being the equivalent of an RCA on my campus. I enjoyed providing guidance to others as they navigated the college experience, working in an environment that supported lifelong learning, and basically, I just loved college. So, I dropped prevet mid-junior year, finished out my Biology major, and went to graduate school for higher education administration.
At Princeton, we have worked with students who want to continue in a health care role other than medicine who went on to optometry, physician assistant, dentistry, and other health professions. We have worked with students who followed a love of service to non-profit work; students who loved fast-paced environments and problem-solving who went into consulting; students who wanted to share their love of the sciences with others as teachers; students who were passionate about a discipline they discovered at Princeton and pursued it in graduate school; and countless other routes.
It can feel scary to give up the “premed identity” and the reasonably straightforward path to medicine for the seemingly infinite number of other, less straightforward career trajectories, but at the end of the day, with a Princeton degree and the experience that four years on campus affords for students to grow and mature, to become liberally educated, deeper thinkers and stronger communicators who want to help others and their communities, we are confident that our former premeds are going to do great things no matter what careers they ultimately choose.
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The way that most premed students learn about different kinds of specialties is by shadowing physicians in those specialties and using the experience with someone in the field to think about their own fit for that field. Volunteering in a patient care setting will also provide some insight into a certain specialty; while you won’t necessarily spend a lot of time with doctors, you will get a sense of how the general environment and culture feels, for example, in an inpatient vs. outpatient setting. Rather than trying to learn about all 120+ specialties before medical school, focus on the kinds of interactions you might like to have with patients (some specialties focus on long term and continuous care, others with shorter interactions but perhaps more variety), what kind of work/life balance you seek, how much time you want available for non-clinical activities (e.g., research, policy), and whether you prefer work that’s more hands-on and procedural or more focused on reasoning and deduction. If you keep these factors in mind now, you’ll have more information to start narrowing down specialty choice once you get to medical school. Once you get to medical school, you’ll have an advisor who can help you think through your residency choices, just like at Princeton you have advisors to help you think through major choices. No need to absolutely decide until you’ve had much more exposure to medicine and much more time to think about other long-term life factors.
Of course, you can certainly read up and become more familiar with specialties beforehand if you’d like. The AAMC has a list of all of the specialties; the American Medical Association has blog posts about specialty choice, including specialty profiles; Wash U School of Medicine has some simplified specialty descriptions, and we have explored a few specialties in our HPA Careers of the Month.
And don’t forget, there are three human medical specialties that you “declare” before you begin professional school: dentistry, optometry, and podiatric medicine. -
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Much better to start considering other paths now rather than when you get even deeper—we’d rather you avoid the hundreds of hours you’d spend studying for MCAT, the thousands of dollars it costs to apply to med school, and especially the hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt that most medical students accrue. You'll be able to pay it back as a doctor, but there may be careers that will bring you equal or more satisfaction without the debt.
Over 23% of entering medical students took three or more years between graduation and medical school matriculation. It’s never too late to become a doctor, so if you do some exploration and then choose to come back to it, medical school will be there for you. But it can definitely be too early to commit yourself to this challenging path.
It’s better to take some time now to think about what you have liked in your time at Princeton—what are your interests, what are you good at, how can you envision spending your time? If you want to talk it through with someone, make an appointment with Career Development or with HPA, or if you’d prefer to do some research on your own, check out Exploring Options and the Junior/Senior Career Guide on the Career Development website, and the Exploring Health Professions section of the HPA website.
Dentistry
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Just like premeds, focusing on your passions and pursuing them in depth and over time is key. Shadowing dentists in different settings so that you can gain perspective on career opportunities is valuable.
A couple of areas that are emphasized more for predental students than premeds:
- Business skills: Many dentists go into private or group practice, and if that’s a route that you’re considering, some early preparation in business/management can be valuable.
- Manual dexterity, developed though activities like ceramics, hand crafts, video games, etc., is also beneficial.
It’s also important to be able to connect with others—both patients and colleagues—in close proximity. Dentists work side-by-side with their assistants and techs, often in close spaces. They must also be attuned to patients’ feelings via verbal and especially non-verbal cues in ways that physicians in many specialties do not. Activities that develop this team mentality and ability to put others at ease will prepare you well for the career.
For more perspectives on predental preparation, read through the information on the ADEA GoDental website.
Pharmacy
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Good question! Unlike medical school requirements, which are a little more uniform, different Pharmacy schools will have different course requirements, and may accept Princeton courses, but it’ll be a case-by-case basis. The courses that are most like an Anatomy and Physiology sequence are Human Adaptation (ANT 215 / EEB 315, offered in Fall) and Comparative Physiology (EEB 314, offered in Spring). Princeton offers Microbio with lab in some years – it’ll be MOL 380B, and Public Speaking is offered as ENG 230.
We recommend researching pharmacy schools of interest and keeping notes on their prerequisites (you can find a list of programs online: www.pharmcas.org/school-directory/#/) , and if a school requires Anatomy and Physiology, reach out to them directly to find out if our ANT 215 and EEB 314 will satisfy their requirements. Send an email to the admissions office, introduce yourself as a pre-pharmacy student attending Princeton, and attach copies of the course descriptions from Course Offerings along with the texts used in the courses. If you have trouble getting through to any of the schools, let us know and we can try to intervene on your behalf.
It may be difficult to fit these courses into your Princeton curriculum, and you may hear from schools that these courses will not meet their requirements. Many pharmacy schools require significant work in a hospital/pharmacy setting, so many pre-pharmacy students choose to work for a year or two after graduation; if you did this, you could finish up the required courses at a local college while you worked.
Physician Assistant
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It’s absolutely fine to take these courses away from Princeton—most students end up taking them during a summer or after graduation, so taking them now makes good sense as long as you’ve completed the prerequisites for them. You can check with your residential college dean or director of studies about pre-approval for courses to transfer back—it would require that the courses meet certain hours requirements and that there is approval from an academic department to accept the credit.
Whether or not the courses do transfer to Princeton, when you apply to PA schools, you will send the original transcripts from the college where you took the courses—it is not required that the credits transfer in order to count them toward professional school prerequisites. If the classes you plan to take are being offered remotely, double check with PA programs of interest to ensure that they will accept remote courses (they almost certainly will—we’ve found that schools we’re in touch with have been very understanding of students’ situations during the pandemic, but it never hurts to check directly).
Keep in mind that all grades from all US college/university courses must be reported to professional schools, whether you transfer them to Princeton or not.
Podiatric Medicine
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According to the the American Association of Colleges of Podiatric Medicine, which represents the eight podiatric medical schools and about 200 hospitals, "Doctors of Podiatric Medicine (DPMs) strive to improve the overall health of their patients by focusing on preventing, diagnosing, and treating conditions associated with the foot and ankle. They treat a variety of conditions and employ innovative treatments to improve the well-being of their patients."
Applications to podiatry schools have been on the rise in recent years, and average GPA and MCAT scores for those accepted to DPM programs are somewhat lower than those for medical school.
Most importantly, you might consider pursuing a career in podiatry if you've spent time with someone who practices in this field, and if you believe that the approach to the patient and the lifestyle is consistent with your interests.
Getting exposure to a wide range of medical practices (as a volunteer, doing "shadowing," or in the course of clinical research) is the best way to assess which specific direction makes the most sense for you.
HPA at Princeton sees many more students interested in allopathic medicine than osteopathic, podiatric, or dental medicine, but we do have information about numerous health professions in our library and on our website. We hope you'll take a look at the resources soon!
Public Health
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If your science GPA is strong and you're interested in public health, this could be a possibility. We've seen alums pursue public health programs before, during, and after medical training and each timeline has its benefits.
If you know you need to boost your science GPA for medical school admission, the best evidence for ability in the sciences is taking additional, advanced courses in the sciences and doing well (hopefully also securing letters of recommendation that speak to your ability). Most MPH programs do not provide access to these kinds of advanced science courses. The academic record enhancer post-baccalaureate programs are more specifically geared toward students in your situation. Many of them allow you to take the same courses that first-year medical students are taking, so if you do well in them, it’s showing that you’ll also be able to do well in medical school. We have a handout and some sample programs listed on our website under Record Enhancement Programs.
And of course, if you’re interested in public health and are debating whether or not to work in public health instead of medicine, pursuing an MPH could be a great next educational step.
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An MPH leads to a wide variety of career options. A great place to start researching career options is the American Public Health Association "What is Public Health" resource, where you'll see, among other things, that an MPH leads to work in environmental health, biostatistics, health administration, nutrition, epidemiology, health education, and more. Many of the prehealth students we see at HPA elect to go for the joint MD/MPH degree because they want to study health as it pertains to larger populations and cultures (public health) while still treating the individual (human medicine). A background in public health can benefit nearly any doctor in their desire to treat the "whole" patient and to be a leader within the community. For a list of joint MD/MPH programs and other information, check out the Association of Schools and Programs of Public Health.
Veterinary Medicine
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There aren’t many pre-vet students on campus, but we certainly enjoy working with pre-vets. We have specialized listservs for pre-vet, pre-dental, and MD/PhD through which we share targeted messages, so be sure to email Jennifer at [email protected] and ask that she put you on the pre-vet email list. Most often, we answer pre-vet students’ questions about coursework (the required courses for vet school are very similar to the ones for med school, but there are a few anomalies at certain vet schools) and about applying to vet school.
When it comes time to apply (your junior summer if you’re hoping to matriculate right after graduation, or your senior summer if you’re taking one glide year), we’ll work with you on application logistics. You’re always welcome at the programming we offer for pre-meds, such as the Interviewing Info Session or the session we do on writing a personal statement for your application, since the vet school application process is very similar to the med school one.
The key differences are in timing and your letters of recommendation. You will need 3-4 individual recommenders who will complete forms via VMCAS, the application service that most (but not all!) vet schools use. The committee letter process through HPA is optional – vet schools do not expect committee letters in the way that medical schools do. You’ll also submit your application in the fall rather than early summer.
The AAVMC website and their pre-vet newsletters provide helpful advice, so we’d recommend bookmarking that site, as well as using our HPA resources, and be sure to contact Princeton’s Pre-Veterinary Society officers to be part of the pre-vet student community on campus.
In any case, we’d like to meet you and talk about your pre-vet path in general, so please don’t be a stranger!
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Great question. Don’t forget to email us at [email protected] and get yourself on the pre-vet email list for your class year, in case we have any vet schools visiting or any of your peer pre-vet students plan any related programming. As for the vet school requirements, alas, you are correct in that they often have slightly different requirements than med schools. A list of each school's requirements is available on the AAVMC website. You may have had enough genetics within one of the biology courses you’ve taken already, and physiology isn’t a standard requirement (fairly rare, actually). As for microbiology and public speaking, you should probably do these. Public speaking is offered once per year at Princeton via the English Dept (ENG 230, a fall course). Microbiology (MOL 380) is sometimes offered with a lab at Princeton, usually in the fall semester. All in all, come in to see us and we’ll discuss your interest. If you can get biochem, public speaking, and microbiology done before you apply, great. As for the others, we’ll tailor our advice depending on your possible list of schools.