You may be curious about becoming a physician (DO or MD) and this is a great place to start! Today I’m going to be answering the following questions:
What can I do with an MD?, How long is the MD program?, and How Do I get into medical school MD programs?
If you find yourself interested in learning more about the path, I recommend you check out my other articles about being a premed student and where I compare MD to DO, MD/PHD, and PHD.
So you may be here because you are set on becoming a physician. Maybe you just want to learn more about what an MD degree is and are considering it as a future career. Here’s the info you need to know about it before you start!
What can I do with an MD?
Well, an MD is a professional medical degree that is earned after receiving a bachelor’s degree of some kind. The degree alone signifies that you have gone through the rigors of an undergraduate degree and 4 years of in depth medical training in the diagnosis and treatment of disease. These folks are called doctors, Dr., MD’s, or physicians. However, this degree alone will not allow you to fully practice medicine on patients. If you desire to take care of patients in a clinic, you must follow this education with a residency program which is essentially a minimum of 3 years of high work hours training and learning. If you can make it through all of this, you will be a full, practicing physician who can work in the hospital, in various clinics around the country depending on specialty, and even start your own business (called a practice). Want to know the specialties with the least years of schooling/residency? Check it out here.
How long is the MD program?
The standard MD program lasts 4 years. Before this though, you must complete a bachelor’s degree with the necessary premedical prerequisite classes (see here). The 4 year breakdown can vary by school but the vast majority of them follow like so:
The first 2 years are learning anatomy and physiology, usually going by organ system. For example, you learn everything there is to know about the anatomy, diseases, drug treatments, and signs and symptoms of the cardiac system. Then you progress to brain/central nervous system, kidneys etc. The next 2 years are considered your clerkship years. Here, you do rotations among various specialties and areas of medicine. An example is you would spend 8 weeks working and learning under full physicians in family medicine. Then internal medicine, neurology, psychiatry, and more!
There are a few exceptions to this curriculum standard most notably seen at major research institutions such as Duke University School of Medicine. They have a built in research year. Your first year will be learning all of the organ systems and basic science. They then spend their second year in clinical clerkship rotations and their third year pursuing a “scholarly interest area”. Their final year consists of more rotations and some that they can schedule of their choice. This was put in place mainly so that their physicians were more competitive for residency applications which tend to highly value research and publications. (Learn what residencies want here)
How Do I get into medical school MD programs?
Well, there is no one answer to this. However, there are some general rules that I would consider bare minimum to be considered.
You must have a bachelor’s degree which is about 4 years long. This can be in literally anything, but it is usually easiest to choose one in the sciences since you’ll be taking many prerequisites.
Each medical school has prerequisite courses that you must take in order to be “qualified” and considered for admission. Usually, these can be found on the school’s individual website or made easier, on AAMC’s MSAR tool which costs $28, but is hugely helpful. Your school might even have a discount code! Mine was $10. Briefly, these pre med prerequisite classes are 1 year of organic chemistry, 1 year of physics, 1 year of biology, a semester of calculus, a semester of statistics, 1 year of general chemistry, 1 semester of biochemistry, and a couple of social science classes. Generally, you want to end this with a GPA around 3.7 to 4.0, although it is possible to have slightly lower.
Next, you must take the Medical College Admissions Test, MCAT for short. It’s a 7 and a half hour exam administered at an official testing center. It tests on Biological and Biochemical Foundations of Living Systems; Chemical and Physical Foundations of Biological Systems; Psychological, Social, and Biological Foundations of Behavior; and Critical Analysis and Reasoning Skills. Most of this is covered in your prerequisite classes, but it requires intense studying and practice usually up to a year ahead of when you take it. It is scored from 472 to 528 with the 50th percentile being around a 500. The average matriculant to medical school sits at 512, the 83rd percentile. This is easily the most important part of the admissions system and will determine if a school will even look at you. It is CRUCIAL that you nail this exam and score at least 2 points below or anything higher than the median score for the matriculated students of your goal school.
Along with these you’ll need a very impressive line of extracurriculars including research, leadership, community service, and more. I encourage you to read the write ups I’ve done on each of these very closely if this is something you feel you might pursue.