Worst College Advice you have heard, that you know is untrue
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Anonymous
#3 is not necessary. If you're lazy, yes get a counselor. |
Anonymous
Harold Varmus, Nobel Prize Winner in Medicine and former Director of NIH, holds an undergraduate degree in English Literature. |
Anonymous
And Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerberg didn't graduate from college; that doesn't mean not graduating from college is a good idea for the vast majority of the population. I hate when people try to make dumb points. |
Anonymous
Did you go to medical school? Just curious, not a challenge. The basic sciences are building blocks for medical school, but much of what you learn in medical school is context-specific. I am a practicing physician and have taught at medical school> Some things we have to undo and teach again, not to mention that much of what you learn in medical school is stored and forgotten. However, I knew a music studies major who went on to become an otolaryngologist/ENT and does research on noise perception. I majored in one of the humanities subjects, and further work in that area is 25% of my appointment. When I was an undergraduate, I also took extra courses in topics like anatomy, but those were through the school of nursing. They helped a little, especially with terminology, but not as much as you might think. I have never actually seen a "pre-med major" at a university. Most who identify as "pre-med" are majoring in Biology or Chemistry, or other science fields. Knowing more in detail about something like inorganic chemistry at upper levels doesn't necessarily tell you "as much about the field as possible" -- at least, not necessarily more than history or philosophy of science. Medicine is, at its heart, a ringside seat on humanity, and one which comes with the director's bullhorn. You need to know about people and what it means to be human (frail, passionate, loving, afraid, broken, angry, all of it). That doesn't mean you need to know about these things instead of pharmacology, but in addition to it. SOme people have more on-the-job training in the "art" side of it than others, and academic exposure to the arts and humanities can lessen that part of the training needed, later. |
Anonymous
| PS: But prerequisites are ideed required. Do well in prereqs, score well on MCAT, write well in essay, and interview well. And on top of that, bring along your advanced metallurgy, or research into fruit fly ear equivalence, or your Homer dissertation, or your thesis on poetry and prose of the medical profession. |
Anonymous
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The prerequisites often get you through a minor in that subject. It's a shorter step to finish the major when you are already a good way there.
Majoring in a nontraditional subject means taking all of the required science subjects as well as an almost-from-bottom-up full set of courses in a different subject that is not required for admission to medical school. It takes extra steps, more time, and a broader range of interests. |
Anonymous
This. If you want to do that, go for it. But can add logistical challenges. |
Anonymous
Gasp! I certainly don't want my doctor to have that. There's certainly only one way to skin a cat and only one trajectory to any end goal. |
Anonymous
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A degree from a top school will guarantee a successful career.
A degree from a mediocre school will mean limited career success. I see proof that these are myths every day in the real world, but yet they persist. |
Anonymous
PP you quoted. Just so you know, I was being frank, not dismissive. I was a philosophy major and went to a combined MD/PhD program. Don't regret it, and never have, but that path has its own challenges. It was the right path for me. |
Anonymous
No, I'm not a physician and that has never been my calling. I do know that the basic, common prerequisites to get into med school are science and even math heavy subjects. You can certainly major in Art Appreciation AND take Gen Chem/Physics/Bio but if it were me, personally, I would want to load up on courses more directly related to medicine. I do see how a major like music studies would give an otolaryngologist/ENT a particularly keen understanding of their specialty. That's a really good point. But you need to be able to get through those prerequisite science courses and they are tough courses....not that med school is a cake walk. |
Anonymous
Not that pp but I think you made your point beautifully. It is the completely divergent paths of the subject matters that makes majoring in a subject like Philosophy an unlikely pairing with med school prerequisites. Yes, it can be done but it is a road less taken. |
Anonymous
There are many, many, many kids in NoVA who are in the top 10%, have taken 10 APs, and have ACT around 34. Anybody who says "it's practically impossible to get in to UVA from NoVA" is doing a disservice to those kids. I would hate to think one of those kids didn't apply because they listened to that nonsense. |
Anonymous
^ 38% in-state acceptance rate so somebody's getting in. (two kids in my neighborhood alone, one had a 4.1 and 33 ACT). |
Anonymous
Thanks for the response. I was curious because it surprised me how much of the detail information was new in medical school. For example, you had to have physics and know how to calculate the center of mass of a group of objects on my MCAT, but that was not something I ever used -- or even saw again. I liked math and chemistry, and I went beyond the prerequisites to get minors in both, but those additional courses weren't actually relevant to med school studies. Don't get me wrong -- there is a skill to taking hard science courses, and the basic terminology is important. So is learning how to get through a ton of rote memorization of dry facts and take tests with one specific answer. But there's a point at which you have drilled enough on that, and adding on more details in upper level hard science courses (vector calculus, vibrational spectroscopy, etc) isn't going to help you more than knowing about prion diseases from having done a thesis paper on the impact of kuru in New Guinea (as per a history major med school friend of mine), or the development of William Harvey's theory of circulation (a paper I wrote for a philosophy of science course). I don't think we are in that much disagreement.  I do think you'd be surprised at how much traditionally non-medical fields have to add to the medical school preparation, and -- like many of us who did majoring level hard science courses -- you'd probably be disgruntled about how much of that study didn't come up again.
It's always an individual choice. Young people who want to get into medical school need to be aware of the hard limits and the flexibility in approach around them. Every choice comes with pros and cons. |