The fact is, statistics show that most people are in their mid-30s when they become doctors. The time taken to complete a residency program should be a secondary consideration. Ultimately, when you’re deciding how to choose a medical specialty, you should primarily focus on your areas of interest, skills, and proficiency.

There’s no point taking on an excessively burdensome accelerated undergrad timeline if you’re going to burn out before you even start med school. There’s a reason why medical education and training takes so long – it’s to adequately prepare you to practice medicine independently. While it can be motivating to have a clear goal with specific deadlines, remember that becoming a doctor “quickly” should never be your primary motivation throughout this process. The following table shows the key steps involved in becoming a doctor and what you can do at each stage to speed up the process. To follow the fastest route to becoming a doctor, you need to make some specific choices from an early age. The path to becoming a doctor includes some key steps that everyone has to complete. What is the Fastest Way to Become a Doctor? Next, I’ll explain what steps you need to take for the most direct path to practicing medicine. So now you know why it’s not easy becoming a doctor before 30. And obviously, there’s not much room for gap years if you’re aiming to become a doctor before 30. If you want to become an independent doctor faster, you may want to choose family medicine residency, internal medicine residency, or one of the other shorter residencies.īONUS: Academic background – An additional factor could be your age at the time of starting your undergrad – for example, you could be 16 or 17 in your freshman year of college if you skipped a grade in school (likely to happen amongst the kind of academically proficient students who seek out a medical career), which could enable you to receive your medical license before the age of 30. So, consider how long is residency before you choose a medical specialty. Internal medicine or pediatrics require only 3 years of residency while neurological surgery requires 6 to 7 years. Consider length of residency: Choice of residency is a big factor in how long it takes to become a doctor.While these programs cut down on how many years medical school is, you should also be prepared for a more rigorous and fast-paced curriculum. It’s true! There are 3-year medical schools, such as the Cumming School of Medicine at the University of Calgary or the McMaster Medical School. Choose a medical school that is less than 4 years long.Such programs are typically extremely competitive and hard to get admission to. A few rare programs even offer a 6-year timeline for their combined undergrad degree and medical school. If you are completely certain about your ambitions, you may want to consider BS/MD programs, which sometimes offer an accelerated timeline, allowing students to complete their undergrad in 3 years instead of 4. Once you choose a Bachelor’s program, you will have to stick to it – any delay in graduation or change in your undergrad career could set you back. Choose the right undergrad programs: You’ll also have to make all the right choices in terms of undergrad studies, medical school programs, and residencies.Plan early: You’ll have to know your medical ambitions and start preparing for them in high school, so you can get ahead on coursework and extracurricular requirements.Let’s examine what you can do to become a doctor before the age of 30. It’s possible, but extremely challenging. This is the average age – but can you actually shorten this timeline and become a doctor BEFORE the age of 30?

If we assume that the average premed student is around 18 years old when they start their undergrad degree, and assuming a 12-year timeline, they’ll be just 30 when they begin professional, independent practice. Looking to fast-track your medical career? Check out this video:īased on the brief timeline we sketched above, the average time to become a physician is 12 years, assuming that your chosen residency is 4 years. Now, let’s see if it’s possible to shorten this timeline. That is between 10 and 14 years to become a licensed doctor.

After all this, you need to take a licensing exam for the state or province where you want to practice medicine. After graduating, you match to a residency via ERAS (in the US) or CaRMS (in Canada), where you spend somewhere between three to seven years as a resident, depending on your specialty. In summary, if you want to become a doctor in the US, you must first complete a four-year undergraduate program, then attend medical school for four years. So, How Long Does it Take to Become a Doctor?

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