How Long Will It Take to Become a Doctor? An Overview 

You should prepare to invest at least 11 to 12 years of hard work before having a secure, rewarding, and lucrative career. 

Choosing this career requires a lot of time, effort, and discipline. Doing well in school, attending all the right classes in college, and acing the MCAT are a few of the many things you must do.

Perhaps you chose to become a doctor at a very early stage in life, or maybe you decided quite later while studying or working in a completely different field. These two situations require two different routes: the traditional route and the non-traditional route. Let’s talk a little bit more about these two routes:

Suppose you are someone who decided to enter medical school just after you finished your undergraduate program; you are a traditional medical school applicant and can take the conventional route to become a doctor. 

Since you have made this decision beforehand, you know the requirements. You will know what courses to take throughout your college. In such cases, you should apply to med school either in the spring or summer before your senior year. This way, you can start your medical college right after your graduation. 

However, if you want to take some time off between college and medical school, that’s understandable. Many students tend to take one or more gap years to prepare for the MCAT or gain experience. 

Taking a gap year has become so common that it is now considered one of the traditional routes. Thus, whether you take a gap year or proceed to medical school directly after college, you will follow the traditional route. 

On the other hand, if you decide to take a few gap years before attending medical school, you fall under the non-traditional student category. For you, it might take more time to become a doctor. Various students follow this route before actually becoming a doctor. 

Students who fall under this category are students who initially did not think of attending medical school. These students may not have completed the medical school requirements during undergraduate school. People who realize later that they want to pursue a medical career might need to devote extra time to fulfill all the prerequisites. 

Another example of people who might have to go through the non-traditional route are people who haven’t been in college for some years now and are working. They could be working either in the medical field or in an area entirely unrelated to medicine. These people have decided to attend medical school instead of continuing their current career path. These people are called career changers. 

The main question that arises here is this: How long does it take to become a doctor if you follow a non-traditional route? There is no straightforward answer to this, but you will need to put in extra time and effort since it could be an entirely new field for you.