Jason Wang

When Jason Wang wakes up in Geelong, Australia and attends classes in his first year of medical school, he’s a world away from his previous life as a civil engineer in Canada. “I had my path laid out for me and never thought about different careers or going to universities abroad,” he recalls. Once the idea of pivoting to a career in medicine took root, it took a few years before he was ready to commit to the change—and then he was all in. Penn’s Pre-Health Programs prepared Jason with the necessary coursework, research experience, and support to apply to medical schools all over the world. “Going down to the States to study was a really big change for me. After that, I found myself open to other life changes,” he notes.

Although Jason had a strong science background, the Core Studies track provided him with the biology and biochemical education he needed for medical school. As an international student, Jason took a full course load each term—apart from one semester when he returned to Canada for the birth of his second child. He also took advantage of as many extracurriculars as he could. “Coming into Penn, I had zero research experience. I needed a more complete resume, not just an upgraded GPA,” says Jason. “A huge upside of Penn is that there are so many different opportunities for volunteering and research. I thought it made sense to just jump into everything.” Jason worked in a biomedical research lab studying metabolism in his first semester, then joined the Academic Associates program, which exposed him to a variety of clinical research studies. “It was the most active clinical experience I had ever had,” he reflects. “I’d shadowed doctors before, but you’re very passive in those experiences. Academic Associates talk to patients one-on-one about enrolling in clinical studies. I enjoyed that experience—it let me know how I would feel when interacting with patients, and confirmed that medicine is the right path for me.” Jason also got to know the principal investigators of different research studies, which led to a paid research job with a faculty member who became Jason’s mentor. “We’re working on a paper together right now. When it gets published, that will be my first ever publication,” he adds.

At Penn, Jason found a community of aspiring health professionals—many of whom were, like him, changing careers or balancing family life with professional and academic pursuits. “When I first came in, I was worried I would be the only 30+ student within the cohort. But then I started meeting and connecting with students that were around my age or older,” he says. “It was an awesome cohort. I found the environment to be very cooperative.” Jason also participated in Affecting Social Justice in Medicine (ASJM), a student-led group that facilitates educational resources and discussions about social determinants of health outcomes; for example, the group launched an award-winning course on health disparities in 2022, and recruited incoming Pre-Health students like Jason to carry the torch. “Because of my interest in geriatric medicine, I dove into developing a module on aging,” he says. “Now that I’m in med school, I find that all that research has come into play in my courses on public health and indigenous health.”

As his time in the program came to a close, Jason looked into medical schools in Canada, Ireland, the United States, the Caribbean, and Australia. Medical school application cycles follow a different schedule in different countries, and he began to receive interviews and acceptances from Australian schools before secondary applications were due for US institutions. “I think I had a strong application for US medical schools because I came to Penn and because of my recommendation letters from all my Pre-Health Programs advisors,” says Jason. “But I looked at the offers that I had, and obviously had a long discussion with my family, and then we made the decision to come to Australia.”

Australia’s Deakin University turns out to be a good fit for Jason in several different respects. In Australia, medical training takes place over a longer period of time than in the States; perhaps as a result, Jason finds the culture more relaxed and less competitive than he anticipated. “We have these problem-based learning sessions where you're in a group of eight to 10 students, and you work through a case scenario together to try to figure out what’s going on with the patient,” he says. “That's been a very cool experience for me. And my engineering background really helped with that learning style: Working on multi-disciplinary design projects, all those soft skills that you develop talking to clients and working collaboratively with design teams, all that has come into play.” And balancing work and family time with Penn coursework turns out to have been good preparation for Jason’s current schedule, since he has continued to work as a contractor for his former employer. “They say med school is like drinking from a firehose. With everything else going on in my life, it’s kind of like a waterfall,” he laughs. “But classes are going well. In many ways, the coursework at Penn was more rigorous than what I’m doing now, although maybe that’s because the first semester is more of an overview of all the different systems.”

“I had a few options, and I'm really glad I chose this one in particular,” concludes Jason, “because of the 170 students in Deakin’s program, 30 of those students are parents. And a lot of them are career changers like myself.” While his wife and children in Canada prepare to join him in Geelong, Jason continues his Pre-Health tradition of conserving time and energy for a video call every day. “Being very consistent and present during those chats helped me stay in touch with my family,” he says. “I would definitely not be able to go down this path if I didn’t have a very good support network at home. But this situation gives me a lot of motivation to do well and get as much out of these opportunities as I can.”