What Will Your Path Look Like 5 Years After College?

Summary:

Medicine is a popular career path, but where you will be 5 years into it depends largely on the degree you hold: bachelor’s, master’s, or doctoral, and other variables you’ll need to consider.

Key Points:

• The journey to a career in medicine can be a long and arduous path, depending on your chosen degree path.
• Choosing a bachelor’s, master’s, or MD path.
• For an MD degree, your path will take you through required courses, such as math, biochemistry, and statistics, to name a few.
• If a master’s is your preferred path, there are lots of career options available, like nursing.
• Starting with pre-college online courses and teen medicine camps is a great place to begin.

Planning for a future in medicine is a valuable endeavor, particularly if you have a good idea of the path you want to pursue. But, before you can even begin to make a goals list, you need to consider a few critical variables, such as:

• Your degree level: bachelor’s, master’s, or doctoral (MD).
• Your preferred specialty: family practice, pediatrics, research, or nursing, for instance.
• Your salary target and a plan to achieve it.

If you’ve got all those figured out, you are way ahead of the pack, particularly if you are still in high school. However, this level of planning is not typical among young people who are still trying to find themselves, with questions such as, “What am I good at?” “Do I want a career where I can make a lot of money quickly, or will I be happier with something that I’m passionate about and let the money follow?”

Keep in mind, when it comes to where you’ll be 5 years after completing your degree, the answer lies within the field you pursue, the level of degree you attain, and the unexpected twists and turns life bestows on us. In the meantime, let’s look at some of the paths you may choose, and make sure to take a quick look at high school requirements for pre-med.

This article explores the paths you might take for a future in medicine, and where this could potentially land you 5 years after graduating. We'll look at the level of degree you’ll need to position yourself for the career you are aiming to achieve. We’ll explore pre-college, online courses for pre-med students, brought to you by top universities that partner with Prelum, Powered by Kaplan.

Your path to pre-med

As you may know, pre-med is a path, not a major. Rather, the most common majors for pre-med students are in the biological sciences, such as molecular biology, microbiology, and biochemistry. Students who pursue a degree in non-STEM fields, such as those in humanities and social sciences, are equally equipped to complete their pre-med requirements and draft compelling applications for medical school.

The standard pre-med requirements include:

• Biology: 2 semesters with lab
• Physics: 2 semesters with lab
• General or inorganic chemistry: 2 semesters with lab
• English: 2 semesters

Many medical schools have additional requirements such as:

• Math: 2 semesters of college-level math, such as calculus and/or statistics
• Biochemistry: 1 semester
• Statistics: 1 semester
• Psychology or sociology: 1 semester (recommended)
• Writing-intensive course: 1 semester (recommended)

Studying pre-med prepares you for the MCAT, the standardized test that assesses your knowledge of the material covered in pre-med and your readiness for medical school. Upon receiving your MD degree, you’ll need to apply for a residency in the field of your choice. 

Where will you be 5 years after receiving your MD Degree?

That depends entirely on the specialty you choose. According to Med School Insiders, shorter residency programs (3 years) are available in specialties such as internal medicine, pediatrics, and preventive medicine, among others. The longest residencies (6-7 years) include specialties such as neurosurgery, plastic surgery (6 years), and thoracic surgery (6-7 years). 

It’s important to recognize that residencies are salaried positions, but your full earning potential doesn’t begin until you’ve completed your internship and residency and become a licensed attending physician. To answer the question of where I will be 5 years after obtaining my MD, it varies depending on your chosen specialty.  Medical degrees can be an expensive journey, but ultimately worth the effort. If you’re eager to start while in high school, explore all the options that top schools offer in their pre-college online medical courses.

Your path to the future in medicine is not limited to a doctoral degree. 

Before you choose your path, think about all the careers healthcare has to offer; it’s not limited to physicians. You may want to pursue a career in nursing or biomedical engineering, for instance, in which case you’ll want to check out medical programs for high school students with the Georgetown University Pre-College Online Program. One relevant course is 

Nursing: Explore Advanced Practice Nursing. You’ll discover core skills critical to the profession, learn about all the varied nursing specialties, and identify skills needed for an advanced degree. For those interested in pursuing an MD degree, Georgetown also offers Medicine: An Inside Look at Treating Patients, as well as a course in surgery, Becoming a Surgeon: Skills, Specialties, and Diseases, which explores the skills, specialties, and diseases associated with the field.

You’ll also want to think about summer medical programs. Online courses in the Northwestern Pre-College Online Program include medical research, medicine, and physiology. You can take advantage of this leading university’s top pre-college online program, be taught by renowned faculty, and be guided by mentors who support your learning experience.

For those who want to explore the intersection between medicine and technology, the Case Western Reserve Pre-College Program offers Biomedical Engineering: An Introduction to Medicine’s Future. This course explores the future of AI in the practice of medicine. In it, you’ll learn how biomedical engineering solves some of the most complex medical problems, and see how engineering and design are advancing medicine. This is an area of healthcare that is compatible with a master’s degree. 

But what other careers in medicine are accessible with a master’s degree?

Your path to medicine with a master’s degree

According to Indeed.com, medical professions that accept master’s degrees include:

• Nursing supervisors
• Community health workers
• Marriage and family therapists
• Healthcare administrators
• Physical therapists
• Epidemiologists

Master’s degree holders are often those who majored in STEM fields and are working in healthcare or anticipate taking the MCAT to attend medical school one day.

Medical careers for bachelor’s degree holders

There is a whole array of medical careers you can pursue with a bachelor’s degree. These include becoming a respiratory therapist, pharmacy aide, and physician therapist technician, to name a few. If you lean toward pharmacology, you may want to consider the Harvard Medical School Pre-College HMX Program course titled Pharmacology: From Drug Discovery to Patient Care. In it, you’ll learn how drugs interact with the body, how they are designed and developed, and you’ll gain valuable knowledge that can prepare you for a career in the field.

Working with Prelum, Powered by Kaplan

Our mission is to expose high school students to college majors and future career paths through the many courses offered by Universities we work with. These include some of the top universities and colleges in the nation, names like Harvard Medical School, Dartmouth College, Georgetown University, the University of Notre Dame, Northwestern University, Rice University, William & Mary, and many more. Students 13 and older can choose from a vast array of online pre-college courses. The format is flexible, featuring dynamic video content and interactive tools that you can access anywhere, anytime, to fit your schedule. You’ll hear from faculty, gain support from mentors, and upon successfully delivering a Final Project, earn a Certificate of Completion that you can add to your college application. 

This was last reviewed by Ashley Simmons on 11/18/2025.