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Questions about becoming a Psychiatrist
Sanius
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So I have decided that I want to become a psychiatrist, and that I want to go through the years of schooling to become an M.D. But I want to know a good way to go towards it. I've asked my school counselor about such, but she doesn't know much about some of the questions I have asked. I'm not sure if you guys know either.
1) I live in Tulsa Oklahoma, so I want to try and attend OU. The OU campus (medical campus of all things) is no more then a 10 minute drive from my house, meaning I could attend there and still live at home and work for my first year. They also have a large psychiatric center here in Tulsa, which makes me assume it would be a good idea to attend there for this occupation. But, I don't know if they have any dual Bachelor/MD programs that I have heard about. I've been told that these let me get my bachelor's and MD in six years as opposed to eight.
2) In my Junior and Senior year in HS I will be taking Tech classes for medicine. But what kind of classes do I need to take for psychiatry?
3) How much to interns in residency's get paid? And better yet, what is the best way to pay for myself through these years of education and training? My GPA is a 3.8, and I was told that if I can get it to a 4 or above, I will be a shoe-in for large scholarships.
1) I live in Tulsa Oklahoma, so I want to try and attend OU. The OU campus (medical campus of all things) is no more then a 10 minute drive from my house, meaning I could attend there and still live at home and work for my first year. They also have a large psychiatric center here in Tulsa, which makes me assume it would be a good idea to attend there for this occupation. But, I don't know if they have any dual Bachelor/MD programs that I have heard about. I've been told that these let me get my bachelor's and MD in six years as opposed to eight.
2) In my Junior and Senior year in HS I will be taking Tech classes for medicine. But what kind of classes do I need to take for psychiatry?
3) How much to interns in residency's get paid? And better yet, what is the best way to pay for myself through these years of education and training? My GPA is a 3.8, and I was told that if I can get it to a 4 or above, I will be a shoe-in for large scholarships.
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Don't even think that you can take HS classes that are going to help you with a medical speciality. The whole point of med school is teaching you those things. The best thing you can do now is look at the undergrad requirements for admission and pick your courses with those in mind. Also, take some easy courses if you can to boost your GPA.
Have you gone to the OU Medicine and OU HSC websites yet?
Grid: Are you sure about that? Tech is no high school. It's something you can take during high school hours your junior and senior year that lets me leave school for three-four hours and go to Tulsa Community College. Then the rest of the day is at my regular High School where I take my fundamentals.
T-Nation blog
I know there are people around who are up on the finer points of the difference between the two, but it might be worth looking into.
in fact, in some cases, it may hurt you as bio majors are a dime a dozen and would be much more difficult for you to stand out
Most med schools actually trip over each other for humanities majors who have proven that they can do well in the sciences
what that means ultimately is that you should keep an eye on the medical school prerequisite requirements (ie 1 year bio, 1 year organic chemistry, 1 year inorganic etc etc) and make sure you do really well in them and do a major thats relatively rigorous (ie a hard science or a non froo froo humanity or props if you feel you can handle engineering) and do well in that. Don't think that just because medicine is what you want to do, you need to be a bio major or whatever. Also I would honestly advise against an accelerated BS/MD program unless you absolutely know without a shadow of a doubt that you want to be a physician. Enjoy your undergrad years and get that BS under your belt and consider med school after. You're young, there is no rush and really if you change your mind about this at least you have a BS with solid subject on it as opposed to most schools who give you some crap degree in their accelerated program thats called something like "integrated sciences"(because the MD is what will matter anyway in the so they don't bother with that) or something like that which pretty much any employer will challenge if you decide that medicine is not for you after the fact.
Really, just finish high school for now, take some AP classes to help getting your undergrad degree easier, then get whatever undergrad degree interests you/will give you the best shot at med school admission, then apply to med school (with all the appropriate standardized tests in between of course SAT>MCAT>USMLE Step 1, 2, 3)
Don't worry about those psych or med tech classes. The way you demonstrate interests in medicine isn't through specialized classes. Really med schools don't give a crap as long as their prereqs are satisfied at a high enough level (ie As) and your cum GPA is competitive. The way they look for interest in medicine is through your extracurriculars like volunteering, medical research, etc. so definitely get involved.
Also, most interns get paid like shit, basically enough to live and eat, some programs allow you to moonlight (ie take other jobs) but don't expect to as you probably won't have the time anyway.
There are 6 and 7 year dual degree programs, but only a few across the country. If you can get into one go for it as it will save you the cost and stress of applying to medical school. You can always drop out after the first two years and finish your BS in a number of different majors if you change your mind, but you a guaranteed acceptance to medical school. Most med schools will not take any classes from a community college so the Tech thing isn't really helping you in terms of medical school, maybe your undergrad institution will like the classes? Getting some clinical volunteering and/or research experience will be more useful than any AP or community college class. I don't care how close to OU you live, you should apply to more than one medical school when it comes to that time.
Interns, residents and fellows get paid according to a standard scale with small variations for cost of living and such. It isn't legal to moonlight as an intern, you can only do that after you pass step 3 and are fully licensed (usually pgy2, but most programs don't have enough time until pgy3). Most people take out a lot of loans to get through medical school. You have to be both talented and lucky to get scholarships as everyone in medical school is talented. Undergrad you can probably find more scholarships, but you may have to look around at a wider variety of schools to see who will give you the best package deal. Some schools have programs where you promise to serve in an underserved area for 5-10 years and you get to go to school for free, but you are locking yourself into primary care and serving in an underserved area. The military also pays people to go to college and medical school but then you have to go through a military residency program so that alters the competitveness of some residencies (but there are also a few that are only available in the military like aerospace medicine).
Go find a library with a book called Iserson's guide to getting into residency, despite the name it lays out the entire medical education process and is worth reading at your stage of the game but not buying as the info about individual programs will change by the time you are applying for residencies.
I think it's the other way round.
This is incorrect. A psychiatrist is an MD. Psychologists can be Masters, PhD, or PsyD (officially a licensed psychologist should be a PhD or PsyD, but a lot of places will refer to Masters level clinicians as psychologists as well).
be familiar with them and their "mannerisms." I like the organic chem and math suggestions. Be well rounded, volunteering, sports, etc. running even like track or field, or long distance running.
Ceres is correct. We're also apparently giving advice on a three year old questions if the date stamp on the original post is correct. :bz
ceres with the trickery
HAH. Deleting spam doesn't drop the threads anymore. Lovely. Sorry, guys.