Do you want to become a doctor? Here’s everything you need to know about how to become a doctor.
Table of Contents
Why do people want to become doctors
- Money:
The average doctor in the US makes $209.044 per year. Some doctors earn up to $2million+ per year while others earn less at around $150,000 per year. It’s no secret that doctors earn a lot but it shouldn’t be a sole motivating factor for you as an aspiring doctor because you may be very disappointed by reality.
Click here to read, “Are doctors rich? True cost of becoming a doctor”.
- Respect
There’s no doubt that doctors do receive a lot of respect for what they do. To some people, respect is a very important criterion when choosing a job so this makes becoming a doctor that much more attractive an option.
- Love of medicine and sciences
A lot of students who love life science and medicine (biology, chemistry, biochemistry, anatomy, medicine, etc) end up choosing medicine as a career path to pursue.
- Want to help people
Many premed students share the sentiment that they think becoming a doctor would allow them to help people and impact people’s lives in a tremendous way. As a doctor, you may find yourself saving people’s lives.
- To make parents proud
Unfortunately, many people do choose to become a doctor solely to make their parents proud. It’s not really what they want to do but because they don’t want to disappoint their parents, they go ahead with this career path.
Education requirements for a doctor
- High school diploma
To become a doctor, you must first get a high school diploma. With high grades, you may be able to get into a good university (which would help you get into a medical school) where you can get your bachelor’s degree.
- Bachelor’s degree
You’ll need to get a bachelor’s degree from an accredited university or college to apply for medical school. This means any random online degree won’t do. It has to be accredited. Ask your school to see if it’s accredited.
You’ll need to get certain credits from certain subjects in order to fulfill the application requirement for different medical schools. Different medical schools require different grades for different subjects.
Medical school would also look at your whole average grade to determine if they should let you study there.
- MD degree
Once you get into medical school, you’ll have to successfully pass the 4 years in order to get your MD degree. The first two years of medical school are mostly in-class lessons whereas the last two years of medical school have more in-person training components.
Once you graduate and get your MD degree, you’re now a doctor.
- Pass residency
Once you get your MD degree, it’s time to practice for several years in a process known as residency. You’ll want to get past residency to start working at a hospital as a fully trained doctor. You can also open your own practice if you want once you pass your residency.
Timeline to becoming a doctor
Highschool
- You’ll spend 4 years in high school
- You’ll try to obtain high grades
- You may try to participate in extracurricular activities to use as a portfolio for your college application
- You’ll have to research what university has the program you want to study
- Once you get accepted to a good college/university, you’ll want to maintain a certain grade they set for you. If you ever fall below that grade, your offer will be retracted
Univerisity
- You’ll spend 4–6+ years getting your undergraduate degree in any program of your choice
- You’ll try to participate in extracurricular activities where you can exbibit your leadership skills, communication skills, organizations skills, writing skills, etc
- You may also volunteer with RedCross or DoctorsWithoutBorder where you can travel to different countries to help people in need (a really good experience to list on your medical school application)
- You should also aim to get high grades (3.8+ GPA)
- It’s also good to have research experience at your university or nearby hospital. You may even publish some papers which would boost your chance significantly
- It’d be a good idea to volunteer in a hospital where you get to help people in person. It’ll help you decide whether this is actually what you want
- In the summer after the second year ended, you may want to take the MCAT. If the grade isn’t good, you can take the MCAT again the following year in the summer after the third year ended
- You’ll most likely start applying to medical school sometime in the third and fourth year
- If you’re lucky, you’d get accepted into a medical school before your senior year of undergrad ended
Medical school
- Medical school would typically take 4 years to finish
- In the first two years of medical school, you’ll mostly be at school learning, studying, and taking exams
- In the last two years of medical school, you’ll have to start going to the hospital for actual experience, there’ll still be lectures to attend and exams to take in the last two years however
- You’ll also apply to get matched into a residency program in your last year of medical school (if they chose you and you chose them, it’s a match)
Residency
- Residency would take roughly 3–7+ years to finish depending on the specialty you chose
- You’ll start your residency as a doctor yet not fully trained
- You’ll start earning money as a residency doctor but your income is most likely going to be between $50,000 — $70,000 per year while you may be asked to work 80+ hours per week. They don’t calculate your pay by hours.
- You’ll still have exams to study for and tests to take during residency
- Once you’re done a residency, you’ll be a fully trained doctor and get paid a fully trained doctor’s salary. You may be hired by a hospital or you can open your own hospital.
How many years does it take to become a doctor?
If you start counting from the point of college, it’d take you 11+ years to become a fully trained doctor.
If you start counting from the point of high school, it’d take you 15+ years to become a fully trained doctor.
What grade do you need to become a doctor?
The average GPA of an accepted medical school student is 3.9.
There’s also a cutoff mark you need to hit. Different medical schools have different cutoff marks. Some medical schools’ cutoff is 3.8 while others are as low as 3.5.
Making the cutoff mark doesn’t necessarily guarantee that you’ll get accepted as many schools only truly consider students with a GPA of 3.88 or above.
You should try to aim for a 4.0 for sure but if you don’t have a high grade, you can always make it up with extraordinary extracurricular activities.
Many people do get accepted into medical school because they have extraordinary extracurricular accomplishments despite not having the best grades. For example, they may be:
- Olympic champions
- Volunteered for months to years in a different country helping to build a school for impoverished kids in Africa and South America
- Published numerous impactful research papers
- Have amazing letters of recommendation from certain well-known physicians
- Excellent MCAT score
What degree do you need to become a doctor?
You can use any degree to apply to medical school and you’d get accepted. In fact, you don’t even need a degree in science. You can be an art major and still get accepted into medical school.
You just need to make sure you have the subjects they require in order to apply.
This may mean staying extra years in undergrad to finish your degree because you need to take some life science courses for medical school on top of the course requirement for your art degree.
What subjects do you need to get into medical school?
Different medical schools ask for grades from different subjects but these ones are common:
- Biology
- Chemistry
- Physics
- Psychology
- Microbiology
- Pharmacology
- Anatomy
- Biochemistry
What is the MCAT
The MCAT is the entrance exam you need to take in order to apply to medical school. If you have an MCAT score of 510+ it’s considered good.
FAQ
- Can you retake the MCAT?
Yes, you can retake the MCAT. If your MCAT score isn’t good, you can retake it to make it better. However, you can only retake the MCAT 3 times a year and 4 times within a 2 years span. You also can’t take the MCAT more than 7 times in a lifetime. If you don’t show up to take the exam that also counts as a chance lost.
- Are Caribbean Medical schools good?
Caribbean medical schools may be considered for those who can’t get into the US medical schools or the Canadian medical schools. Caribbean medical schools typically ask for lower grades and accept students with lower GPAs or MCAT scores.
Caribbean medical schools also have a pricier tuition fee and you’d have to move to the Caribbean islands in order to complete your studies.
You’ll have to try and match into a residency program in the US in order for your medical school degree to mean something. Caribbean medical schools have a lower probability of being matched into a residency program.
With all that said, if you really want to become a doctor and your grades aren’t high, Caribbean medical schools are something to consider
- What is match day?
Matchday is the day on which schools may host a ceremony and all the 4th year medical school students would open up their envelop and find out where they are going for residency.
Each person would be asked to rank which hospital they want to do their residency at and the hospital would also be asked to rank who they want to accept into their residency program. The answers get feed into the computer and the algorithm determines the best match.
Unfortunately, some people don’t get a match on match day.
- What happens if you don’t get matched into a residency?
If you don’t get matched into a residency program, you can try again next year. During that time, you can volunteer at different hospitals to increase your experience.
- When is the best time to have kids for those who want to become doctors?
There’s really no right time to have kids if you want to become a doctor. You’d be a hell of busy in medical school, in residency, and even beyond.
Some people have kids in their third or fourth year of medical school where they have some time off between hospital shadowing. Some people may also have kids during residency.
It’d be a different story if your spouse is also a doctor themselves. It would for sure be quite a bit hectic in terms of the scheduling.
Final thought
I hope I have answered most of the questions you have in regards to becoming a doctor.
Becoming a doctor is not an easy feat as you can see but if this is what you really want to do, then go ahead and do it!
Good luck!
Click here to read the true financial cost of becoming a doctor. You absolutely must know this if you want to become a doctor.
