<p>The data is indisputable that an american medical school, even a more selective medical school (top 40 in NIH funding per the above linked report), correlates with success obtaining a residency in a competitive specialty. Your FMG training may be adequate if you want to go into family practice or psychiatry but what if plastic or orthodpedic suregery becomes your career choice. You may not think that is an interest of yours now but you haven’t been exposed to the myriad of medical specialties and it is likely you will be turned onto something you are not imagining right now.</p>
<p>You have a lifetime to go to medical conferences and read journals. Those humanities courses you disdain as having no benefit to the practice of medicine will be irreplaceable later. Your ability to be empathetic with patients often relies on making connections exactly like the camera angle example you cited. Your patients will expect you to have clinical competence but you need to be more than technically trained as a physician to have personal and practice success. Quite the contrary to how you must feel, your single minded focus on getting out of college and into medical school, a carribean one no-less, suggests a lack of maturity on your part. Good luck with your decision.</p>
<p>Didn’t read every post, and it’s been a very long time, but I didn’t think my undergrad years were a waste. I had a BLAST…if I recall correctly. For me, it wou
D have been hard to tell as a freshman, but maybe you are a good enough student to back off a bit, and have more fun. Maybe not as much fun as I had, but some! And you may not believe it now, but you may wish you had a chance to study even MORE subjects when you are older. If i could do it over I would add anthropology, and don’t get me started about speaking better Spanish.</p>
<p>I was 21 when I went to med school. I know at least one student who was younger. I don’t understand the comment about them not accepting 20 year olds. Know way I would trade a shot at an American med school for a carribean one if I ever wanted to practice in the US.</p>
<p>I don’t know about other universities, but no premed here (doing ~3.3-ish or higher work) has a life. The courses are VERY demanding. Emory is a decently ranked school with pretty smart students. You’d be surprised to hear that the average grade in my Biology 141 (Cell Biology and Genetics) course is a 61.5 (there will be no curve–there never has been in previous years). Currently I’m pulling an A-, but that’s with little to no sleep and constant studying. </p>
<p>When I went home for Thanksgiving, I helped my friends who attend UT study for bio/chem and seriously went into my room and cried at the easiness of the courses in comparison…the exams were so basic. The average grade in the majority of my classes are rather low. Pretty much every course I’m in is a sink-float course. I know people who study every waking moment of the day and are horribly failing their science courses (who also received a 5 on the AP exam in the subject and have very prestigious research experiences–one girl already has 3 research articles published). </p>
<p>What makes me upset is that I chose Emory over UT/no-name university–where a 4.0 is extremely easy. I have a friend in his junior year who went to Georgia State for two years before coming here, had a 4.0, and he MIGHT pull off a 2.0-2.4 this semester with luck. It’s not that Emory is in anyway too difficult for me, it’s just so depressing that medical schools don’t care that I worked my butt off for the GPA I have, or that even though I received a B+/A- in a biology course (the top 2% of the class)–it’s still subpar to an A at UT (where half the class gets an A). So no, I don’t get to have much fun. I’m not as lucky as my UT friends who get to party every night. I’m lucky to get out and have fun on a Saturday. Today is one of the first days I’ve had off in months. This is one reason why I want I move on to medical school. I seriously don’t see it as a dramatic increase in rigor (I know many may disagree, but if I’m already studying this much–medical school can’t possibly be much more). </p>
<p>At this point I seriously just want to transfer to UT, get the 4.0, and enjoy my college life instead of being a study-holic like I am now. This isn’t my culture at all. I’m generally a very social/out-going person; in high school I rarely studied, but now everything is revolving around my coursework.</p>
<p>I went to Brown, was a 4 year varsity athlete, president of my fraternity, a bio/classics double major and still pulled a 3.67. I am not some super genius, and there were many other kids at Brown who still went out on a regular basis, did things other than school, got better grades, test scores, and admissions results than I did. Many of my peers in school now still had fun at ivy leagues, duke, Stanford, wash u etc with similar GPAs.</p>
<p>You may have the credits of a senior but you still have the academic mind set of a sophomore. The most important skill in college is time management and efficient learning, and these skills are even more important in med school.</p>
<p>I wonder if this could be the root of your current issues? In my last two years in HS, I took 10 APs and was working till midnight many nights. But I did have time for all the standard social stuff plus many ECs (such as playing guitar/piano in several bands that performed throughout the year.) I was ready for the transition to college and actually found it to be a relief compared to my last year in high school. Maybe you just need to learn to focus your efforts more efficiently? I am currently doing several ECs, spending “three a days” in the piano practice room (must play 15 min. of memorized music, Bach, Rachmaninoff, before a Jury in two weeks) getting ready for a Physics final (third semester, optics, Relativity), plus chemistry, honors seminar, and two other classes, … I still have plenty of free time. :)</p>
<p>Well did 75% of your bio class have below a C? The course in itself is just very time consuming. It’s not the material per-se, it’s just how many things we have in addition–such as the three individual research projects that we have to complete, give a presentation for, and write a scientific paper over–which my professor grades very, very harshly. There’s a reason freshman are not generally allowed in the course–the ones that are usually drop. I don’t think everyone here has bad study habits. I’m not the only one who doesn’t have time for anything else but bio. That’s generally anyone with greater than a C- in the course.</p>
<p>plumazul, I remember reading somewhere that a long term commitment to some hobby like playing piano seriously could somehow boost academic performance. In one of Dr. Suzuki’s book, it is described that he trained one of his top students (who later became the concert master of an orchestra in Berlin, I think) in such a way that, given only one or two days, this student needs to polish a piece to a reasonable level and play at a radio station. He achieved that, because of the solid foundation he had built over the past, say, 15 years. (It was on violin rather than on piano though.) The purpose of that kind of “music” learning is even not for bringing up a good musician – this is not ots point (I think DS has a lot of troubles with this aspect of attitude.); the purpose is to bring up the student’ ability and characters which could be useful anywhere. Students can learn and master any other skill (i.e., does not have to be a music instrument) to achieve the same thing.</p>
<p>BaylorMed, If you can still do fine at where you are, stay put. Being forced to work hard could build your work ethics and even characters, which will help you when you are in medical school.</p>
<p>Many premed classes have to be “sink-or-swim.” They have to, especially at some premed “power houses/factories” (i.e., the school which has too many premeds.) Otherwise, medical schools will admit too many students from these power houses.</p>
Likely the same happens at some other (but not all) schools. DS once mentioned that a girl in his orgo class seems to never stop studying. Another student who was unwilling or unable to keep up posted at school’s newspaper rudely: Those who could succeed in the class do nothing but curl up in the library, sleep and eat *****.</p>
<p>Hmm…how about ECs? Several years ago, a successful premed from Berkeley posted that her ECs were weak in her first two years or so. (She got into a top medical school on the west coast, as I believe. And she did not choose an easy major, as many others do.)</p>
<p>Whining about the volume of work you’re doing as an undergrad isn’t going to get you anywhere. You can probably already tell that you haven’t gotten much sympathy from this crowd–which isn’t surprising, considering there’s always going to be someone out there who’s doing more work, who has more hours, who’s president of more clubs, who’s published more papers, who’s won more awards, etc, than you have. </p>
<p>Looks like you have 2 options: deal or adjust. If you choose to deal, put forth whatever effort you can muster to get the grades you can. If you choose to adjust (perhaps you’ll have to wait until next semester), figure out what’s your lowest priority or the most nagging/annoying (and not required) element of your schedule and eliminate it. I don’t think there’s merit to one approach or the other; rather, the fact of the matter is that if you don’t like how something’s going now, do something to change it.</p>
<p>And no, going to the Caribbean for med school is not the answer. If you’re in the top 2% of your courses at Emory, you’re pulling As when your classmates are averaging 60%, you almost certainly have the academic potential to end up at a US allopathic or osteopathic school. No sense in throwing away your potential because you’re sick of working hard at Emory.</p>
<p>Got news for ya kid…workload in undergrad doesn’t hold a candle to workload in med school. </p>
<p>(Ex: as one aspect of my curriculum, we covered the volume of content I encountered across two semester-long undergraduate upper level biology courses at my school (physiology and developmental biology), in more depth than we hit in undergrad, in 6 weeks (that’s 30 weeks’ worth of undergrad material!). On top of that, there are 3 more aspects of the curriculum–and each of them shows up during our exam week, which is 35+ hours of testing)</p>
I think it is likely the same at DS’s med school. We have mentally prepared that he will likely have less and less time for us in the coming years (and it is well beyond the time for us to “cut the cord.”)</p>
<p>OP, Some CCers (I forgot whom, likely either BDM or NCG) posted in the past that, if a student came from a more competitive school, the pressure to stand out elsewhere (e.g., ECs) could be slightly less.</p>
<p>Also, sometimes a medical school recruits some students from a relatively lower ranked (non-flagship) UT or A&M in a rural/border area for a reason. If you are not what they look for, you will likely not be selected. (A real example, a student not from the two flagship state universities last years got into several top in-state and OOS medical schools which many from the flagship state universities (Austin and College Station) with a better credential failed to get in.</p>
<p>I was telling my S about this thread while driving him to the airport for an interview. He more or less chuckled and said that until you’ve been through Med school you have no idea how easy undergrad really is, and that outside of being an undergrad engineering major, the work required for ANY undergrad major isn’t even close to what you’ll get in Med school and each year gets harder and more taxing.</p>
<p>OP, as I recall when you were deciding on an undergrad school many advised you to go to UT to save money for med school. You, on the other hand didn’t think it was a prestigious enough destination for you. Frankly, I never understood how you felt that Emory-Oxford was more prestigious than UT but that’s another story. As I and others told you at that time, UT prepares its students well for Med school. There are a great number of UT grads in my S’s Med school class and they are all doing well, getting great residency interview invitations etc. </p>
<p>I agree with kristin, whining about you undergrad workload won’t get you anywhere but I will go one step beyond. If you are having trouble balancing your undergrad work load you’re going to drown if you should get into Med school.</p>
<p>I do feel the pain for the OP on the class average of 60 with no curving. Some professors like to challenge students. However, if less than 2% of the 140 Emory students gets A’s, this is an unreasonable course. Pre-meds are competing in a number of areas including research and EC’s. If they spend too much time on raising GPA, they are not likely to take care of other EC’s. I hope that other higher level courses in OP’s department are not like that. </p>
<p>Emory’s low admission rate to medical schools has been discussed a few times on this forum. The advice of Emory vs. UT state UG was a good one. This may be one of the reasons Emory’s premeds had the low admission rate. Once in a medical school, you get a sense of fairness since everyone has to work hard. Also, you got peace in your mind since almost everyone passes the board examination in the end per this forum. </p>
<p>The lesson learned here is that potential premeds should look into the grade inflation/deflation trend of the pre-med curriculum before deciding where to go. If it is a tough one, you better make sure that you can be among the top 5% of the UG you are going to.</p>
<p>The low acceptance rate for Emory seems to have to do with the relatively low MCAT scores of its applicants when controlled for GPA. This implies that Emory either has horrible courses or that the courses are not as difficult as OP implies (which is probably the case). Everyone seems to think their school is the toughest one. I’ve seen tons of whiners from BU, Cornell, WashU, UChicago, Swarthmore, and now Emory apparently. The difficulty has nothing to do with your school. Emory is no more difficult than Cornell or Johns Hopkins or any other peer institution. This is the reality of premed. It’s a hard career path.</p>
<p>“I do feel the pain for the OP on the class average of 60 with no curving.”
-Everybody has some classes like that. Fortunately, others are not like that. You just need to work harder, study for each test harder. D. studied for each Orgo test for about 30 hours. she would go over material in her head walking from one class to another. You do not need to have 60% on your test even if it is average in your class. Still strive for “A”, less than 2% or whatever is not your concern. Control what you can - your own commitment, profs being hard or even having 3 of them at the same time in clss (D’s Intro Bio was designed as weed out killer with 3 profs each teaching his specialty). If you still get your “A”, then you will get somewhat closer to how to do it in Med. School, although it is much harder at Med. School with much more work.</p>