First of all, DON’T GIVE UP! I know it’s hard when you set your goals high and work for them but then something goes wrong, and you fail. It’s hard, but it’s not the end of the world. In my country in order to get into med school you have to get enough points in national finals when you’re finishing high school especially in math, science (either biology, chemistry, or physics), and English (I’m not a native English speaker, but we have to understand and use it fluently as 90% of textbooks and study materials are in English). You also got points from an average of grades in 3rd and 4th year of high school.
I was very scared I wouldn’t get in on my first try, so I made a plan on what I would do in that case:
Take the national finals again to get a better score – try to do better because this was what I really wanted. If an exam is what’s standing between you and your goal, take the damn exam again, you know you can do it, you’ve worked for it, and you know that you can succeed if you just put your mind to it and stay focused during that exam. Yes, you maybe do need to work a little harder and push just a little more, but I believe in you, you got this!
Apply to med schools in neighboring countries – it would be harder because of the language barrier but when you want something enough, nothing can stop you. I was thinking of going to our southern neighbor and I’ve already checked the programs so I was ready to go abroad, which thankfully, I didn’t need to, but I believe it wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing because I plan on going to Erasmus exchange, it just wasn’t what I wanted.
Stay in science – if both of my previous plans failed, I planned to go to colleges that would allow me to still be in touch with medicine, maybe just not in the way I first planned to. Some of my choices were laboratory biomedicine and microbiology but I also considered nursing school and biology since it was one of my favorite subjects in high school and I was very good at it. I knew that by going to these programs I could still find a way to work in medicine, maybe in some gene lab, microbiology lab, or something similar. I knew that this wouldn’t be such a downfall for me because before I’ve made a 100% decision for medicine I have considered working in a lab and doing some kind of research.
So by going to science programs you can still stay in touch with medicine, and they don’t have to particularly be the ones I’ve listed above, you can easily stay in the medical field by studying chemistry, physics, biology, etc. just not in a way you’ve maybe fist envisioned you would. Medicine is a very broad field and is connected to many other studies.
If your wishes are not so much doing research and more working with patients there are still numerous paths you can take such as physiotherapy, kinesiology, psychology ect. Again, it’s not going to be the same as if you were a doctor but if you are unable to get into med school and any of the things listed above interest you, I’d go for it.
I hope this was somewhat helpful and I wish you best of luck reaching your life goals!