I Want To Be A Psychiatrist. What Are The Steps For Me To Take To Get Into Medical School?
I want to go to medical school for psychiatry. I am in undergraduate now. What are the necessary steps to take to get into med-school? I want to focus more on the neurological side of psychiatry. Should I double major in psychiatry AND neuroscience (which is a sub-major in Psychology at Indiana University). Any help is greatly appreciated!
Posted in psychiatrist career
content rss
June 18th, 2010 at 8:16 pm
Major in whatever you find interesting. As long as you take the required prerequisites for the school you wish to attend, they won’t give a crap what you major in. Just make sure you do well in all of your classes, and make sure that you also take challenging classes (the major doesn’t count, but admissions boards will care if you take the easiest classes possible). You should also work or volunteer in a clinical setting, as well as try to shadow a physician. Medical schools want you to do this so that they know you’re not just after the idea of being a doctor. They want you to know what it’s like to actually have the job. Of course you have to take the MCAT and do fairly well. And the last aspect that medical schools look at is how well rounded your interests are. They like people who are curious and have interests outside of medicine. Play a sport, volunteer outside of a clinical setting, get a job, or do research. Whatever you pick, the key is that you have to excel.
June 18th, 2010 at 8:16 pm
take math and science courses even fi they are not required for your major, they will help on the MCAT
June 18th, 2010 at 8:16 pm
Actually, the neurological side of psychiatry is neurology, a stand-alone specialty. Looks like you are interested in how neurology is related to psychiatric conditions. That is to say, you feel that physical and chemical and electrical changes in the brain cause psychiatric conditions such as depression, schizophrenia, bi-polar disorder, and so on. So I would suggest that you skip psychiatry and go for a straight up neurology or neuroscience doctorate. You don’t have to be a medical doctor to get a doctorate in neuroscience, and that might be more efficient.
June 18th, 2010 at 8:16 pm
You would need to get a degree in medicine and register as a GP then later on you could specialise and go into psychiatry.
June 18th, 2010 at 8:16 pm
If you wish to enter the mental health field, it helps if you’re a little nuts.
June 18th, 2010 at 8:16 pm
While the probabilities that you still stay interested in Psychiatry during med school are pretty slim because you’ll get exposed to other fields that might interest you more, it’s nice to see someone genuinely interested in a field of medicine knowing it isn’t of the most paid specialties and where there’s so much need for psychiatrists.
I kind of like psychiatry, but I kind of feel that it seems to attract weird people (I did have one rather normal psychiatry teacher once, so not all of them are nutty). Neurology is also very fascinating, but at least in my university, it isn’t covered that much; at least not neuranatomy.
Neurology focuses more on physical diseases like paralysis, brain tumors, migraines, head trauma, brain damage from strokes or infarcts, etc… whereas Psyquiatry treats mental diseases as such. However, it’s true that both fields can bump into eachother. Like, someone that suffered from a head trauma becomes psychotic or his personality becomes different.
If both fields interest you so much after you finish med school, it might be possible to get a dual degree residency. However, for Neurology, you must first do a minimum amount of years of an internal medicine residency, which could mean more years of working long hours with relatively low pay.
US universities don’t specify which minor you pursue in Pre-med. You could get a major in lumberjacking just as long as you do certain courses (Biology, Chemistry, some calculus though I don’t see much of a point in that in medicine because you never use calculus in med school and english). Do something you like and think you can get a good enough GPA in.