Should i pick pre-med or nursing?

I am a smart straight A student starting college with an AP course and 3.75 GPA in high school for college credit classes. I did excellent in biology,and physics. In chemistry I did fairly well, the easiest part was organic chemistry. I do fairly well in math, but science is easier. I was accepted into a fairly competitve college and did well on the SAT's. I would really like to be a doctor. I am aware it is a lot of hard work and how well you did high school is rather unrelevant. I only listed it because I can't think of anything else to convey my level of intellegence and work ethic. This has been a dream of mine for a long time (for the actual job, not the paycheck), but recently I've been discouraged by many people I know. Most of them say it will be miserable, too difficult, and not worth it. I've been told that life would not get better after med school. Also I've been told many times it is far more worthwhile to become a nurse. Is it more worthwhile to become a nurse?

If you have the determination to become a doctor, then you should definitely go through with it, it's a very rewarding experience.
The only drawback is that you may be into your 30's before you're a full-out doctor, whereas you can achieve a nursing degree much sooner.
It's really up to you and how far you're willing to go. You can't let anyone discourage you from your dreams.
It's your life, not their's, and you're the one that has to live it.
Do what will make you happiest. Nothing else matters.

Definitely a doctor. You will regret not becoming one. Don't let others discourage you. If you change your mind you can always change from pre-med to nursing easily, but not the other way around very easily. Go for your dreams.

I dont mean to put you down but in high school I had a 4.2 GPA (from AP courses), passed every AP test with a 4 or better (physics, biology, chem, calculus). I was accepted to UCLA on scholarhsip etc...

Long story short, I thought I was a shoe-in for medical school/pre-med track. But, as you already know, high school is irrelevant when it comes to how well you will do in college and that reality hit me pretty hard. I studied very hard and never did as well as I wanted to. My suggestion to you is, declare yourself as pre-med, but make sure you have a back up!!! If you are set on pursuing a degree in the health care industry, there are a number of possibilites which are related but not necessarily hand's on patient care (i.e. biotech, biomedical engineering, pharmaceuticals...)

You sound like a very intelligent person...BEST OF LUCK!!

First I would recommend you do some time thinking about why you want to be a doctor. Ask yourself if you would like to be a doctor if they made only what a nurse makes or less. If this is the case I would say your a great candidate for medical school. If you want to be a doctor, but are a little scared of changing your mind, there is an easy compromise. Most medical schools do not require any certain degree (none that I know of actually). So you need

2 Biologies
2 Physics
2 Gen Chemistries
2 Organic Chemistries
futhermore a few classes are recommended (Genetics for example)
BioChem may also be required (think it depends on the school)

So simply find a major you are interested in that has all or most of those requirements. Something you think you would enjoy that has as many of those as possible (I picked a 4 year X-ray tech degree, which ended up needing 6 classes and some labs). This way when you graduate you will have a great career ahead of you, and you can go take the MCAT. If you do well, and you think you still want to be a doctor, go ahead, you have nothing to loose. Not to mention, you have a great job that you will enjoy to work in if you don't get accepted the first year. With your background in science it sounds like there should be a few to choose from.

I personally would stay away from pure science degrees (biology degree, physics degree) but this is only because this back-up is for if you DON'T want to go to school anymore after college. Any of these jobs are limited with what you can do with a bachelor of science. Clinical Lab Science I believe has all these classes required, and alot of degrees have most of them. Not to mention alot of degrees you normally wouldn't think of have enough science elective slots that you can make it without loosing credit hours.

If you don't prepare properly (as I didn't) it will end up costing you a year or two while you get your requirements. If you prepare properly you can jump straight in.

All and all my point is this. Don't base your college degree choice on your aspirations of going to medical school. If you want to go and prepare, the oppurtunity will be waiting for you in 4 years. Also, don't just listen to people on yahoo answers. I would think you college will have a med-school advisor. This is a great person to be in contact with. Tell him what you think, its his job to give advice to people in your situation.

You can do both. Nursing can always be a back-up plan if medicine doesn't work out.

Apply to a 4-year college that offers a 4-year BS degree in nursing. You'll graduate with a BSN degree and qualifies you to be a RN after you pass the licensing exams. You can complete the pre-med curriculum with your freshman and sophomore year as you'll be busy with the nursing curriculum and clinical placements in junior and senior years. Always contact the college's pre-med adviser and work out a curriculum. Ideally, you'll need the letter of evaluation from your college's pre-med committee to apply to medical school.

If you want to take a break from studying after 4 years of college, your BSN and RN credentials can fetch you good money with flexible working hours. With your letter of evaluation on file with the college's pre-med committee, your college transcript (with pre-med prereq completed, good GPA) and good MCAT scores, you can still apply to medical schools.

Alternatively, you can proceed with a MS degree in nursing to become a nurse practitioner or nurse anesthetist. Both earn big bucks (not as much as a MD) but with less responsibilities and better working hours.

I'm a doctor so I've been through it. First thing you should do is shadow some doctors preferably in different specialties so you can get an idea of whether or not you want to do that for the rest of your life. Usually once you become a doctor there's no career changing due to the commitment you've made (student loans, education, training, etc).

Being a doctor can vary greatly depending on which specialty you go into. For example, dermatology is vastly different from surgery which is vastly different than radiology. Some medical specialties are very difficult and competitive to get into and you probably won't know exactly what you want to go into until you're in med school.

Life will not get better after med school. It will get worse, usually much worse. It's called residency. 3-5 years of high stress, long hours, little sleep and low salary. Then you may or may not do a fellowship.

Medicine is not as lucrative as it used to be. Most doctors finish med school/residency with 100-200K or more in student loans and will be paying usually thousands of dollars a month for 10-15 years to pay this back. To add insult to injury, most doctors income is steadily decreasing as costs go up and reimbursement either stays the same or decreases.

Being a nurse is a pretty good job if you're cut out for it. School is way shorter and easier. Pay is pretty good for the amount of hours they work. There are many different areas of nursing to go into that don't require any extra school other than on the job training. Most nurses don't stay in the same area of nursing their whole career, many change from ICU to floor nurse to OR nurse to home health nurse to, etc. You get the picture. There are also opportunities to do additional education and become CRNA or NP. It's very difficult for doctors to change from one specialty to another, they have to go back and do residency over again. If you're highly intelligent you may not like nursing because you'll constantly be taking orders from doctors and you may not find it challenging enough.