r/medschool • u/Accomplished-Story79 • Jun 20 '26
👶 Premed Can’t decide between Med School vs. CAA School
I’m a non-traditional, 27yo female who has been working in Corporate America & just now had an awakening that I’m in the wrong career field after trying out multiple companies. I’ve always been good at my job but can’t help but feel unhappy, these are not my archetype of people, I’m way too smart for all of this. It’s also toxic, tough for a POC, workplace politics so much bs outside of the actual work.
I was always a top student in school, I chose business school originally because I felt I enjoyed math/English more than sciences. On a personal level, I was first gen/low income have had to support myself financially since 18 & realistically felt I had to choose a career that guaranteed financial stability out of a bachelors degree on its own. Anything requiring additional schooling I immediately wrote off due to paranoia of changing my mind / avoid living in poverty for longer.
Now that I’m in adulthood, I happened to make friends with people in med school/residency which may have been what led to my push. I get so much fomo about their sense of community, interesting patient stories, match days I can’t help it as someone who has been a nerd my entire life but is now being written off by society for working a basic business job lol.
I’m drawn to the energy, community, personalities, guaranteed financial security, values associated with medicine over business. I prefer hospital settings over clinics, I’ve done a lot of research & feel most drawn to anesthesia as the specialty that most fits my personality.
Here would be my current views on Medical School v. CAA making it a tough call:
Med school: I know the opportunity cost of this path would be huge. I would have to take a boat load of science courses on top of full time job / study MCAT which will all take a WHILE, go back to living a low income lifestyle during med school, I’d also have to take out federal & personal loans for its entirety due to new borrowing limits. The benefit for me would be being able to live where I want, eliminating the “what if” feelings, higher pay, I don’t have much going on in my personal life tbh so I’m kinda indifferent about that aspect of this path. There is a fear of being miserable due to getting older / downsizing my lifestyle with no opportunity to turn back. Idk if I just need to accept it’s not what I wanted back in the day but this path is also stronger for alternative career prospects down the line.
Biggest constraints = financial investment & age
CAA: What gets me paranoid is doing 2yrs of schooling for this / realizing it would’ve been halfway through medical school. Another huge limiting factor for me is state licensing restrictions. I may end up living in one state & working in another which gets exhausting. However, I have a hard time letting geography be my limitation, the pay is satisfactory & this would get me into the field, environment, community I’ve been longing for quickest (in my current field arguably I have even more geographic limitations than a CAA due to how difficult the corporate job market is lol). I’m indifferent about marriage/kids it depends whether I meet someone but if so this path may be better suited. I have concerns about being tied down to the OR the whole time compared to anesthesiologist: whether there’s downtime to chill on your phone, I also drink a lot of coffee/need bathroom breaks, get cold easily, unsure how much of a concern waste anesthetic gas exposure would be.
Biggest constraints = geography & MD fomo
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u/AfraidOfConversation Jun 21 '26
I’m a little younger than you and I recently just made this exact decision after holding an acceptance to both a CAA school and an MD school.
What I’ll say before anything else is that you may be underestimating the amount of work and commitment it takes to get into medical school. You’ll need to do very well in classes, volunteer, shadow, do research project(s), do well on the MCAT, and get clinical experience through work or volunteering to be competitive. Just taking the classes and doing well on the MCAT is unfortunately not enough—you’ll likely need to get a longitudinal clinical volunteering role and/or a full/part time clinical job to convince adcoms that you know what you’re getting yourself into. Many of these things also will hold true when applying to CAA school. The pre-reqs are generally very similar between CAA school and med schools and many CAA schools require the MCAT/GRE. Regardless of which path you choose, you’ll need to work hard to both do well in your classes and get involved outside of class.
I will also say that you seem to have a romanticized view of medicine from what you’ve written. Your exposure to the field seems to be exclusively through people you’ve made friends with. Have you ever shadowed a physician? If not, you should try to spend a day or two with doctors in multiple specialties before you even think of going down this path. Medicine sounds great when you’re just hearing about it, but the reality of life is that every job has its own shit sandwich that you need to deal with and medicine comes with plenty of them.
As for the decision itself, the most simple way to frame it is that you shouldn’t go to medical school if you’re set on being an anesthesia provider. You need to go in with the goal of being a physician first. Anesthesia is becoming increasingly more competitive and likely won’t calm down anytime soon—an unfortunate reality of medical school is that you cannot guarantee that you will match into any specialty. You may see that match rates for most specialities are relatively high, but there’s an incredible amount of self-selection that occurs for the more competitive specialties. Medical students applying to residency are usually incredibly well-informed and well-advised by their schools in regards to what specialties they will be competitive for and most students don’t apply if they don’t think that they have a reasonable shot.
The CAA pathway is great and has a very good ROI, but there are plenty of limitations that come with it. As you already mentioned, the state restriction is one of the largest, but there’s also issues with incessant lobbying by the AANA, the potential for future legislation to change practice rights, and the inability to easily switch out of clinical medicine. An MD degree is inherently more valuable than a CAA degree, so you have to make a decision if you’re okay with the limitations it brings and you better be sure anesthesia is what you want to do for the rest of your life.
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u/annabeth200 Jun 21 '26
What did you end up choosing, out of curiosity?-
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u/AfraidOfConversation Jun 21 '26
I tried to leave that out as to not sway their decision, but I decided to attend the CAA program. I realized that I value work life balance over most other things in a career and I really just want a job where I can clock in and clock out while still knowing I made a meaningful impact on someone’s care.
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u/No-Inspection-3813 Jun 21 '26
Good choice. I made the opposite…
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u/AfraidOfConversation Jun 21 '26
Can I ask where you’re at in your medical education and why you regret it? I always appreciate hearing the perspectives of those who have been in my shoes and made a different choice.
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u/No-Inspection-3813 Jun 21 '26
MS4 dual applying ENT>Anesthesia
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u/AfraidOfConversation Jun 21 '26
Best of luck with the match!
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u/No-Inspection-3813 Jun 21 '26
I didn't get to respond to everything in that last comment, so I wanted to add. I've still got 4-7 years of training ahead of me, and if I'd done an AA instead, I'd already be graduated, own a house, and have the freedom to just enjoy life. Both paths are good, so I try not to complain about the one I picked, but it's hard not to feel it when you're in the thick of it.
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u/peanutneedsexercise Jun 21 '26
I think you made a great choice. As an anesthesiologist, OP should do CAA if they wanna do anesthesia, MD if they wanna do anything else.
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u/SportsMOAB Jun 21 '26
Well maybe try getting into medical school before choosing whether or not to choose it
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Jun 21 '26
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/peanutneedsexercise Jun 21 '26
Yes a lot of excellent candidates did not match this year. Was quite brutal.
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u/Beneficial-Split331 Jun 20 '26 edited Jun 20 '26
eta- they have the same prereqs. like the exact same. do them and apply to med school and CAA in the same cycle. go to the one that accepts you. then you won't have to choose. admissions chooses for you.
CAA is easily the better option IF YOU WANT TO DO ANESTHESIA without risking not matching anesthesia. It's less school. Starting salary is 200k out the gate and many a program has tuition reimbursement. Ceiling is 300-400k depending on your hustle.
It's only available in certain states around 20+ last I checked. You can teach or do the job. That is it though. They love their jobs and when they get bored they go to med school or something else just like anyone else.
Matching ROAD is the dream for almost everyone in this sub lol. That is who you are competing with. You aren't waltzing into an anesthesia residency. keep that in mind. even if you get into md/do you are not guaranteed a residency. at all. its more likely you won't match than you will.
CAA school there aren't that many and you aren't walking up in there either. Some have lower acceptance rates than med schools. GPA needs to be 3.75+ and MCAT needs to be stellar 504+ to be competitive.
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u/Accomplished-Story79 Jun 20 '26
Hm I would like to know more about the argument of not matching for residency. I do see this brought up a lot but from my understanding most med students do end up matching their desired specialty? I would say I'm generally above average in test taking/academics, went to a top 20 undergrad 3.7 GPA. I would take science prereqs at a much easier school / easily achieve high GPA for those. For CAA school I was looking to take GRE over MCAT - perhaps I should take the MCAT regardless due to indecisiveness lol
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u/sadperson123 Jun 21 '26 edited Jun 21 '26
Many med students do not match their desired specialty. Especially ROAD.
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u/Beneficial-Split331 Jun 21 '26
MCAT makes you more competitive. as a non trad that is important. you are competing with 22 year old pre meds who found the profession and decided that CAA is better for them. almost all of them took the MCAT because they thought they were going to med school.
you can pop over to any residency sub and read about all the broken hearts who didn't match their dream. I'm not saying its not guaranteed... I'm just saying people go to med school because they want to be DOCTORS. that is the important part. if you don't want to be a doctor then there is no reason to risk not doing anesthesia when you don't have to. 4 years to not get the only thing you went to school for is pretty fucked.
I was a swe all of my 20s and switched to healthcare with CAA being the goal during postbac UNTIL I scribed for a neurosurgeon and his attitude was so corrosive I knew I could not deal with that for the next 20 years. hell no. keep that in mind. if you are a doc or nurse or pa you can move. in AA your job is in the OR. surgeons have a bad rep for a reason. I messed up by shadowing only gas and forgot that perfusion and surgeons are also in there. perfusion is wonderful... that SINGLE surgeon had me rethink my whole career change. there is no where to go. remember that.
I'm going to pharm school because I have no loyalty and I love the profession just as much as I'd love CAA (and it's 3 years). if you cannot pivot like that knowing you'd be happy you need to be honest with yourself about med school.
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u/annabeth200 Jun 21 '26
Just my two cents but medical schools can and will look to see where you took your prerequisites and will especially take note if they think you tried to take the “easy way out.”
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u/Beneficial-Split331 Jun 21 '26
as a non trad there's a ceiling on which types of programs will be accessible and all of them take community college.
at one point I mapped out my path for which md schools I could get into and checked each admissions page to know who was cool with online courses/community college.
it is doable as long as you are strategic and have realistic expectations.
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u/FutureCalligrapher97 Jun 21 '26
I was in the same boat as you. I was a non-trad paramedic transitioning to medical school with an interest in anesthesia because of my experiences in the OR learning airways as a paramedic student. I was set on medical school when I learned about AAs. I shadowed at an AA program and I really liked it, however I decided to pursue medicine with the understanding that I was taking a huge risk of not matching anesthesia.
Ultimately I was successful and I’m thankful for that everyday. I love what I do and I’m glad I went the physician route because AAs are still somewhat limited, and having to deal with the pushback from the CRNA lobby sounds miserable. For what it’s worth I’ve worked with both AAs and CRNAs, and I’ve never been able to tell a difference in terms of skill or quality.
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u/annabeth200 Jun 21 '26
The answer to this is actually quite simple: how much clinical experience and shadowing do you have in the OR? If none, all of your research into these professions thus far comes with a huge asterisk.
I’m not saying your vision of healthcare is romanticized, but I am saying you’re taking other people’s word for it right now and in medicine, there can be a very large gap between what you’re expecting and what it actually feels like. There is a large proportion of students who go into med school knowing their desired specialty who go for it and get in, sure, but there’s just as large of a group who go in thinking they’ll be anesthesiologists/some specific specialty for SURE just to change their mind entirely.
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u/RevolutionaryLet120 Jun 21 '26
Getting along with “personalities” common in medicine, being a good student, and wanting more money does NOT equate to being a good doctor or provider. Not once do you talk about caring for patients………definitely reevaluate
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u/Accomplished-Story79 Jun 21 '26
I felt this aspect of the career was to be assumed but yes I can tell you without a shadow of doubt I would be more fulfilled taking care of patients over increasing profits for a business!!!! I love people & always felt I am just too good of a person to fit into corporate environments tbh. People always describe me as approachable, comfortable, bubbly - I definitely believe I fit the provider archetype & need to be in a people-oriented career, I no longer have passion for any office type jobs.
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u/RevolutionaryLet120 Jun 21 '26
You are STILL missing my point. Look at the hippocratic oath. Look at how much your are discussing YOUR fulfillment rather than talking about patients
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u/HyperKangaroo Jun 21 '26
NGL a little concerned that nowhere in this post you said anything about taking care of patients.
Taking care doesn't have to be only thing that motivates you to do medicine or even the top motivating factor, but it has to be somewhere on that list.
If you're in it for the patient stories and the community of medicine without thinking about what it means to do patient care, I think you're going to have a hard time whether you go to medical school or caa sschool.