High school is when the healthcare career path starts to take tangible shape. Your child is choosing courses, joining clubs, exploring volunteering opportunities, preparing for standardized tests, and beginning to think about college. The decisions they make in these four years genuinely affect their options later, which means the stakes feel higher for both of you. But “higher stakes” does not mean “parent takes over.” Your role in high school is to guide, inform, and support while progressively transferring decision-making to your child. The student who arrives at college having made their own informed choices is far better prepared than one who followed a parent-designed blueprint.
Coursework: What Matters and What Does Not
If your child is interested in healthcare, the most important high school courses are biology, chemistry, physics, and math through at least pre-calculus or calculus. These courses prepare them for the pre-med prerequisites they will encounter in college. If your school offers Advanced Placement (AP®) or International Baccalaureate (IB) science courses, these provide college-level exposure and can strengthen a college application. However, AP® courses are only valuable if your child is ready for them. A B in AP® Chemistry is more useful than an A in regular chemistry, but a C in AP® Chemistry because your child was not ready is worse than both. Let your child’s readiness and interest drive course selection, not a checklist you found on the internet.
English courses matter too. Medical school requires strong writing skills (personal statements, research papers), and the MCAT® includes a reading comprehension section (CARS) that tests analytical reading at a college level. Students who read widely, write frequently, and develop critical thinking through humanities courses have a meaningful advantage on the MCAT® and in their applications. Do not sacrifice English and humanities to overload on science courses. See our coursework planning page and AP® and IB courses guide.
Extracurriculars: Depth Over Breadth
Unlike middle school, where breadth was the goal, high school is where depth starts to matter. Colleges and eventually professional schools want to see sustained commitment to a few activities rather than superficial involvement in many. Encourage your child to identify 2 to 4 activities they genuinely care about and invest deeply in them over multiple years. This might include a sport, a performing art, a service organization, a research project, a part-time job, or a healthcare-related activity like HOSA®, hospital volunteering, or EMT certification.
Clinical exposure (volunteering in a hospital, shadowing a physician, working as a certified nursing assistant) is valuable but should not dominate your child’s high school experience. A student who spent 200 hours volunteering at a hospital and also played in the orchestra, led a community service project, and worked a part-time job tells a more interesting story than a student who accumulated 500 hospital hours but did nothing else. Medical schools want well-rounded human beings, not single-minded pre-med machines. See our extracurriculars page and clinical experience page.
Your Role: Guide, Do Not Direct
The hardest part of parenting a high schooler is learning when to step back. Your child needs to make their own decisions, including some imperfect ones, because the ability to evaluate options, make choices, and live with consequences is a skill they will need every day as a healthcare professional. Here is where to draw the line.
Do help with: Providing information and resources (like this website). Discussing options and asking thoughtful questions. Connecting your child with professionals they can shadow or talk to. Ensuring they have access to academic support if they are struggling. Managing logistics (driving to volunteer sites, paying application fees, scheduling campus visits). Listening when they are stressed, frustrated, or uncertain.
Do not help with: Making their decisions for them. Writing or heavily editing their application essays (guidance is fine; ghostwriting is not). Choosing their college major, extracurriculars, or career path. Contacting their teachers, coaches, or admissions officers on their behalf (unless there is a safety or legal concern). Comparing them to other students, publicly or privately.
College Planning
When it comes time to choose a college, your child does not need to attend a prestigious university to get into medical school. Medical schools accept students from state universities, community colleges (who transfer), small liberal arts colleges, and large research universities. What matters is that your child performs well academically at whatever institution they attend, completes the required prerequisite courses, and engages meaningfully in clinical, research, and service experiences. A student with a 3.7 GPA and strong MCAT® score from a state university has an excellent chance of acceptance. A student with a 3.2 GPA from an elite university does not have an advantage over them. See our choosing a pre-med college page and college application guide.
Cost is a legitimate factor. If your child will need to take on significant student loan debt for undergraduate education and then additional debt for medical school, choosing an affordable undergraduate institution is a smart financial decision. Medical school debt alone typically exceeds $200,000. Adding $100,000+ in undergraduate debt on top of that can create a financial burden that constrains career choices for decades. See our paying for medical school guide and cost comparison page.
Mental Health and Balance
High school students pursuing healthcare careers are often high achievers who put enormous pressure on themselves. Watch for signs of excessive stress: sleep disruption, withdrawal from friends and activities, irritability, loss of interest in things they used to enjoy, perfectionism that leads to paralysis, and physical symptoms like headaches or stomachaches without a medical cause. If you notice these signs, take them seriously. Academic success means nothing if it comes at the cost of your child’s mental health.
Create space in your home for honest conversations about stress, failure, and uncertainty. Let your child know that changing their mind about a career is not a failure. Let them know that a bad grade on one test does not define their future. Let them know that you love them regardless of what career they choose or what college they attend. These messages matter more than any SAT® prep course. See our supporting mental health page and student wellness page.
For the full high school student experience, see our high school section. For the next stage, see Supporting Your College Student.
Standardized Testing: The SAT® and ACT® are college admissions tests, not pre-med requirements. Strong scores can help with college admissions and merit-based scholarships, which indirectly support the pre-med path by opening doors to affordable schools with good science programs. Prepare for these tests appropriately without obsessing over them. Many colleges have become test-optional, and your child can succeed in pre-med at any accredited four-year institution. See our SAT® and ACT® preparation page.
Summer Opportunities: High school summers are valuable for building clinical exposure, research experience, or community service hours. Some students work as hospital volunteers, participate in medical summer programs at universities, shadow physicians, or complete EMT certification. Others use summers for jobs, travel, family responsibilities, or recovery from a demanding academic year. All of these uses of summer are legitimate. The student who spent a summer working at a grocery store and another at a hospital has life experience and perspective that an applicant with three consecutive clinical summers may lack. Balance is the theme, not optimization.
References
Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC). “AAMC Facts.” AAMC, 2025. https://www.aamc.org/data-reports. Accessed March 2026.
American Psychological Association. “Stress in America: Generation Z.” APA, 2018. https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/stress. Accessed March 2026.