Educational Requirements and Licensing
The high school classes you should take are Biology, Chemistry, Sociology, Anatomy, Calculus, Physics, Math, Science, Algebra, College Preparatory, Geometry, Health Science Technology, Humanities, Physiology, Pyschology, Statistics, Trigonometry, Foreign Languages, and English.You go to an undergraduate school for 4 years and then you can apply to medical school. To get in to medical school you have to take MCAT, a standardized exam. Your admission is based off of your grades in college, MCAT score, and interview. Then you go to medical school for 4 years. In your last year of medical school, you decide what kind of doctor you want to be and apply for that residency. To become a pediatrician, you apply to a pediatrics residency and receive a 3 year intense training in a children's hospital. Towards the end, you decide if you want to be a general pediatrician or if you want to specialize in a particular field within pediatrics (allergy/immunology, cardiology, GI, pulmonary, adolescent medicine, ambulatory pediatrics, child development, community pediatrics, critical care, etc.) During medical school and residency, you have to take and pass several board exams to move onto the next step of training. After pediatrics residency, you have to pass your Pediatrics Board which makes you a board certified pediatrician. If you decide to specialize within pediatrics then you have to take another board exam for that particular specialty. Most pediatric specialty training are another 3 years. As a pediatric specialist, the entire process from college until the end takes 14 years (11 years if you decide to be a general pediatrician).