Medical Malpractice Attorneys and Lawyers

Lawyer considering medical school?

I was a liberal arts major with poor grades. I did well on my LSAT and graduated from a good law school at the top of my class. If I take the necessary science courses (and do well), is it realistic for me to be able to get accepted to a decent medical school?

Public Comments

1. Yes, it is very realistic. It depends on how comfortable you will be with the age that you are when you go to residency and the amount of debt you will build up. My fiance is a former archtect who applied and is in med school now. There is a growing trend of older applicants to med school. I think the average age of first years is more 24-25 instead of 22 , right out of college. Take your science classes at a decent community college and defintely have to get A's. You should probably also get something higher than a 28 on the MCAT. You should also emphasize your law school grades and you'll have to have a very convincing essay and interview on why you DON't want to be a lawyer and WHY you want to practice medicine. Good Luck!
2. I'd expect them to be hardasses and care very much about your undergraduate grades and not about your law school grades. They're always looking for well rounded people, though, and there may be a couple of places which will care about how you did in law school. Are you having trouble finding a job? Is that why you're interested in becoming a doctor?
3. Absolutely.
4. It is certainly possible, assuming you do well in the prereqs and score high on the MCAT. I wouldn't be overly concerned about poor undergrad grades. Some people just take a bit longer to kick into gear. What admission committees look for is the capacity to master the massive amounts of information presented in medical school, the committment and the compassion to help others. Of course, grades and scores are only a part of getting accepted. Those are the objective factors. The subjective factors can make or break you getting accepted. I have known people with mediocre objective factors get accepted and have seen people with absolutely top knotch objective factors get turned down. Too many people want to come into medicine for all the wrong reasons--money, prestige, ego, family insistance, etc. These types usually get declined after the interview phase. If you don't have any experience volunteering in a health care environment, your application is going to be viewed with skepticism. As evidenced by many of the people posting questions here, too many people view the volunteer aspect as simply a "course requirement". That's not the attitude that admission committees like to see. That's why the whiz kid with everything perfect doesn't get accepted while the person who has always wanted to be a physician and has been involved, in some capacity, in health care for years but whose objective factors aren't as good does get accepted. I don't mean to dissuade you, but rather to alert you to how you to are going to be assessed. To borrow a phrase--there's nothing wrong with coming to the party late, just be prepared to explain what took you so long.