Career trouble... Please help

N5soulkishin

hello everyone. i'm torn between becoming a doctor or a lawyer. the thing is is that i love mathematics and science but i also love English and writing and just being a lawyer seems exciting; but so does being a doctor. please can any of you contribute to this please




thanks for all your help
-N5soulkishin

fss

It doesn't sound like you really understand what's involved with either career path, honestly.

daveyinaz

Maybe if you told us your age and what you think each choice entails as far as schooling, then we might be able to contribute more.

EricVT

How far along are you in your studies? Have you started college yet? If you haven't already then maybe you should meet and speak with some practicing doctors and lawyers to get a better understanding of their professions and what they actually do on a daily basis.

H2Bro

It sounds like you should try to study science, mainly chemistry and physics. If you study these you will leave the door open to later choose between doctor and lawyer. Medical schools require lots of chemistry and biology, but so do law schools that in a few years will be looking for patent lawyers to understand all the new bio-tech patents and regulations. Law schools accept a huge diversity of applicant backgrounds. Everything from music, to nursing, to chemistry, math, art history, etc. Med schools are much more picky, they tend to choose biology, biochemistry, anatomy, chemistry, and other medical oriented backgrounds.

It is good that you enjoy english and are good at it. This will help you a whole lot in university in all sorts of ways. But don't study it as your major - this might make it more difficult/impossible to be a doctor. Plus, english, philosophy, and social sciences are all things very enjoyable and feasible to learn on one's own. Studying science at most schools will still allow you to take several courses in literature and humanities.

chill_factor

the #1 way to become a doctor is take the easiest major possible while taking premed classes on the side. if you fail the MCAT take the LSAT to become a lawyer.

here's the thing. medical schools do not care what major you have. they care about 3 things: 1. GPA 2. MCAT 3. experience and other soft factors.

do not take any physical science, they will reduce your GPA. do not take any hard classes, they will reduce your GPA. if you want to go to medical school your #1 goal should be maintaining a 4.0 GPA.

H2Bro

If this turns out to be true I will have to make sure never to mention it to all my friends who worked their butts off in honors organic chem to get into that top med school.

Some students respond to challenges and perform better than otherwise. I had this exact experience - going from easy courses / not caring / poor marks to substantially more difficult courses which demanded more engagement and, as a result, I became a better student and got better marks.

chill_factor

you still have to take the minimum medical school prereqs: 1 year of general and organic chemistry, physics, and basic biology.

other than that you can be an English major. the good part about that is, you don't have to take the UPPER DIVISION classes that will be much harder than Ochem. Ochem is actually quite easy. The hard part is the GPA dropping classes (for the majority, who are not good at math) like advanced inorganic and quantum.

nickyrtr

From what I have heard, law school is a risky career move, at least in the United States. Law schools are graduating more people than there are jobs for new lawyers, so you could end up un(or under-)employed with a mountain of student loan debt.

Medical school, on the other hand, is still a pretty good bet, financially speaking. There, the problem is getting accepted to medical school, but if you don't get accepted, at least you haven't wasted time and money and can move on with your life.

Choppy

The trouble with this advice is predicting what's easy. In Canada there's a major national magazine called Maclean's that comes out with university rankings every year. I don't know if they still do it, but when it was relevant fo me they published on course for each year that was known as the easiest course to get an A in. One year I took it.

The professor, of course read the magazine as well and that year decided that she didn't want a reputation for the one instructing the bird course and modified the cours accordingly.

And then there are those pesky letters of reference. Most professors can see the kids who play the marks game pretty easily and end up writing comments along the lines of 'does fairly well with a less-than-challenging workload' - at least if med school reference letters are anything like grad school reference letters.

Of course people who play the game this way still get in. But if you gamble and lose, you risk losing big time.

ParticleGrl

My sisters all became doctors (looking at their career vs mine is probably why I regret my physics phd so much), and all went to top medical schools. None of them followed this advice. They took the highest level courses possible (organic chem for chem majors instead of organic chem for premeds, physics for physics majors instead of physics for premeds, etc). Their gpas where in the > 3.5 range, but not by much.

Each of them crushed the MCAT (score > 40), however, probably due to the depth of knowledge their more rigorous courses instilled.

Of course, your mileage may vary.

chill_factor

that requires hard work though. in terms of minimum effort for maximum gain at the lowest risk, i think my strategy works great (it did for several of my friends). i don't like anything bio so i didn't go that route.

gravenewworld

This is the brutal truth. Med Schools don't care at all what you major in as long as you have a high GPA and ace the MCAT/interviews. Law Schools don't care either.

Roadmap

If you like mathematics then this is the best opportunity select the law field,because mathematics is very good for developing new concept and understanding the things in very good way.So i suggest to you choose the field of Law.