What undergraduate courses are needed to get into med school???????

To get into medical school, your undergraduate major can really be anything as long as you take the right prerequisites, but the majors most supporting your career goals would be Chemistry, Biology, or Pre-Medical. Really, though, all you must do is take the pre-medical curriculum. That means you will be taking basic chemistry, organic chemistry, physics, biology, anatomy, medical terminology, and calculus.

If you want to be a pediatrician or a respiratory therapist, you must go through medical school to get your basic M.D. after you have received your undergraduate degree. Then, you will go into training to become a respiratory therapist or pediatrician. This is called residency. You must go through residency training for 4-6 years, and then you will become a specialized doctor.

Firstly, Pediatrics and Respiratory Therapy are NOT Majors. They are a specialties in medicine that doctors choose after completing medical school – a period commonly referred to as the residency program.

Basically, after high school, you need to complete your Undergraduate education (Bachelor’s degree) in whatever Major you have chosen. Many people recommend getting a B.S. or B.A. with a strong emphasis on basic sciences, such as biology, chemistry, and physics; but it’s not unheard of for a Music Major to go on to becoming a doctor as long as s/he has completed the science/math courses required for entry into Medical School and taken+passed the MCAT. There is no B.S. or B.A. in Pediatrics or Respiratory Therapy, but if these are your primary interests, you may want to consider a Major in Child Development, Physiology, or Biology. Figuring out what to major in will predetermine many of the courses you need to take in the university.

When you have gotten your Bachelor’s, you can go on to Medical School to get your Doctorate in Medicine (MD degree). Then, with your MD, you can apply for a residency program where you can specialize in Pediatrics and/or Respiratory Therapy. Good luck if you can find a residency program that will let you do both. You can probably combine them and specialize in Pediatric Respiratory Medicine.

Read this for more information and to get a idea of the timeline to become a doctor: http://www.ama-assn.org/ama/pub/category/14365.html

Your first focus is to get into College to start a good one at that to increase your chances to get into Med School. Your undergraduate generally should focus in the biology science area. As you go through you will have to take the MCATS which is essentially the SAT’s of Med School but harder. After that you will apply to med school. First thing make sure you apply to instate and out of state med schools. Generally Med Schools want people to move around and don’t take as many students that are currently from the area. Also taking a year off inbetween finishing Undergrad and going to med school is a good idea as you will not see much free time for the next 7-8 years upon entering med school. When you get into med school its like doing undergrad again you learn about the different fields of medicine in which you can learn your specialty. A few year into med school you will do rotations where you get a first hand feel for all the different specialties. As you are about to graduate and become an official doctor you get to go through match day. You rank schools and schools rank you and whatever matches in the rankings is where you will end up. So since you want to be a Pediatrician your rankings will be directed at Childrens Hospitals. If you really want to know what med schools are looking for in their students especially the good ones try to get an informational interview or just call up the school in someone and ask what they want from someone who is applying to med school. You need grades and you have to be able to do an actually interview so make sure you work on your interpersonal skills. There’s a lot of variables but my suggestion is to ask different med schools what they are looking for and try to go above and beyond that.

I will be starting a respiratory therapy program next month. It is a 2 year program. If you are in med school, your specific specialty cannot be respiratory therapy, which is not a post-graduate option. If you are interested in specializing in the respiratory system, you will choose to be a Pulmonologist at the end, not a respiratory therapist. That’s a different profession.

Get a catalog from any major medical school. You will definitely want a good grounding in chemistry, as well as some mathematics and physics.

Take as much math and science in high school as you can. That will give you an advantage as you take lots of science courses in college, Biology, physiology, kinesiology……..chemistry……

Latin would be helpful with the medical terminology if your school offers it.