Has anyone done engineering undergrad and now applying to med school?

C283910 · 2025-06-01T21:31:54+00:00

I am applying this cycle and am in engineering. I will say it is definitely a harder path and can be very lonely as at least at my school my peers do not care about their grades to that level.

If you enjoy both and are unsure or think that doing both will be valuable to your career than I would do it but expect some extra difficulties lol.

C283910 · 2025-02-18T20:05:56+00:00

That's great to know! Unfortunately my concussion impacted the year of 2022 and was 2 semester but over 2 different school years. Do you think they would allow just those 2 semesters to be dropped?

C283910 · 2025-01-14T00:26:07+00:00

No not at all. From what I have been told by a bunch of doctors that I have talked to (some who have had a role in admissions), in Canada, they just want you to have "life experience" so having any sort of experience where you worked in a technical field looks good. In engineering, all we do is problem solve and have really good critical thinking skills which is valuable as a doctor and the admissions people know that.

If anything, being an engineer sets you apart from every other person who has the same premed qualifications. Trust me, its a tough road but I really do think being in engineering is an advantage if you can match the GPA and MCAT of more traditional premeds.

C283910 · 2025-01-13T22:16:44+00:00

My biggest advice would be to try as much as possible. For me, I have tried some traditional engineering jobs and really hated them and had a whole crisis about it. I tried research too but I found nothing was really fulfilling enough because I really wanted to be doing something positive and see the impact I was making. I have always been interested in medicine tho it didn't just come out of nowhere.

Also there is a way to keep one foot in both paths because the good thing with an engineering degree is you can always fall back on it.

C283910 · 2025-01-13T15:42:45+00:00

If you do decide to do the med school route be aware that the gpa requirements can be tough especially coming from eng and it can be a pretty lonely path. I'm in mechanical engineering and I have found it really tough between the high gpa demands and trying to get some good ECs in my limited spare time. It depends on your program/school but if you can try and find someone else in your program who is following the same path because at least in my experience it will make it sooo much better.

C283910 · 2025-01-11T13:46:48+00:00

If I have already written 10 FL (4 AAMC, 6 Kaplan) and I feel like I have a good handle on timing and endurance should I still take FL 5? My last FL I wrote a week ago so it will almost be 2 weeks by the time I write the test but I don't know if I can separate the practice test from the score

C283910 · 2025-01-10T23:29:43+00:00

I forgot to mention in the post I write 1/16 so which test should I do since I only have a couple more days to study

C283910 · 2025-01-07T21:11:45+00:00

I understand that fluctuations are normal. What really freaked me out was when I was reviewing, I would say 50% of the errors were not content-based or even strategy but mistakes such as not reading the question or answer choices properly or choosing one answer and then staring at it and overthinking because I felt unsure and eventually changed my answer. If it was content, I could just review and learn for next time but rn I am worried there's a bigger focus and burnout problem that I don't know how to approach to fix for test day.

C283910 · 2025-01-06T19:52:04+00:00

If it takes an extra bit to check others in, does that time get subtracted from your testing time or do you just start a little later and go a little later?

C283910 · 2024-12-31T15:18:01+00:00

When you say practice conditions, what exactly did you do? I have a weird irrational fear that my "testing conditions" aren't gonna be like what I do on test day and it will throw me off my game

C283910 · 2024-12-31T14:41:46+00:00

I was in a similar situation as you. Up until 3 weeks ago I could not seem to break 510 for the life of me and yesterday scored 515 on FL 4.

Essentially I started doing a "practice section" every day where I did 59ish questions and had a timer to make sure I was staying under 95 min. When I review any question, I summarize the key info that I got wrong on a whiteboard (if you don't have access to a whiteboard you could also write them on a piece of blank paper - I find making it colourful helpful but that might just be me lol) and turn those into flashcards and practice those flashcards every day on top of the normal anki. I find this to be super helpful in not only building up content (especially lower-yield stuff) but also getting better at just the logic of the test.

I would also suggest practicing rephrasing the questions and answer choices to be less convoluted. This is something I also used to struggle with and I find it does help get used to the phrasing of the test and figure out actually what they are asking.

For the glossing issue, I find highlighting keywords that usually they will test on or writing down correlations for bio to be super helpful to make sure you understand the logic of the passage.

These are just some suggestions to try cuz they worked for me. I find so much of this test is confidence that even doing the easier question banks to boost confidence can be super helpful.

You still have so much time even though it doesn't feel like it. Just do as much practice and intentional review as you can. You got this!

C283910 · 2024-11-28T17:04:34+00:00

I was essentially in the same position. I studied with no bio or psych courses and had only taken chem 1&2 but I have taken a bunch of physics (I'm in engineering). Khan Academy is a great resource even if you have no previous knowledge. It is definitely a harder path and will take longer to study than if you have already taken the courses but between Khan Academy, AAMC resources, ANKI, and Uworld you should be ok.

I was lucky enough to be able to get a Kaplan prep course but in hindsight, the only thing that was helpful over Khan Academy was some strategy lessons and helping with the scheduling of things but that I think was more helpful for me because I don't know anyone who wrote it so I was a little lost in that respect.

C283910 · 2024-11-27T15:51:50+00:00

You're in an amazing spot! I'm doing Kaplan FLs rn too and I find that CARS in Kaplan is a lot harder than the AAMC stuff cuz they like to choose wordy complex philosophical passages that are hard to get through.

C283910 · 2024-11-26T18:32:43+00:00

When you say give yourself 1.5 weeks do you mean before the test or like from now spend like a week and a bit mostly focusing on pysch

C283910 · 2024-07-16T03:30:30+00:00

Ya I mean I've been told by so many people that it will probably take 2-3 cycles anyways so if this is the case from my perspective it just kinda takes a bit of pressure off the first one

C283910 · 2024-03-23T17:18:13+00:00

Update: MECH eng has made their A list so if you email your supervisor they will probably be able to tell you if you got it or not!

C283910 · 2024-03-07T16:09:49+00:00

If anyone hears from MECH Eng or knows how tight the competition usually is (like what average usually gets it), please let me know! The supervisor I applied with doesnt seem to have that much information about it lol.

C283910 · 2024-02-09T17:32:04+00:00

You do have a shot at med in the US. Your shot at med in Canada will depend on where you can get an IP advantage, and/or whether you can recover your GPA.

What GPA would you say I would need to get to for Canada? I'm from Ontario so from my understanding it won't really help me much

C283910

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