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[quote=Anonymous][quote=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.  
[/quote]

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 [i]kuru[/i] 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.[/quote]

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