<p>Hi, I just joined college confidential, so i don’t really know how it works.
In Brazil we don’t have to take pre-med. We just take the entrance exams (kinda like the SAT’s, but harder) and, in the case of medschools, we have to go through 6 years of college. We don’t need six years because we have to learn the subjects pre-med students take. We actually take all of those “pre” subjects (regarding all subjects) in highschool as part of our basic curricullum. I don’t really know why the difference in years taken.
I’m in my 4th year in medschool here and I can say that IT’S WORTH IT. Whoever wants to get into medscholl should go all the way through pre med. Not because of money or stability, but to really make a difference and save lives (I’m not saying other majors don’t make a difference, you guys get what I say).</p>
<p>By the way, just as to get some things clear:
I’m not saying, by any means, that myself or anyone is superior or inferior, I’m only stating differences that are facts, such as methods of evaluation regarding college admissions in my country;
Each college has a different entrance exam, and they are more difficult than the SAT’s because the grades we achieve here in Brazil throughout highschool are of no importance to any university here. Therefore, they have to evaluate us through a harsher exam (and only by that we are evaluated - that sucks).
I can only state these facts because I have friends and acquaintances that took the SAT’s, got admitted into American universities (such as the MIT) and stated that, although most universities in the US are better than in Brazil (due to financial and historycal reasons), it is much harder to get accepted into college here (all of the ones that got admited into MIT failed to get into medschool here, eventhough they had prepared themselves to get into medschool and not MIT, they just applied for it because they were curious).
I appologise in advance to anyone that feels offended by my message, it is not my intention to offend anyone or, aparently, show off. I also appologise for my English, it must be very poor, since I only learned the language from age 4 to grade 8. : /</p>
<p>@whistleblower
Yes that was the logic behind the increase.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, when you have a good thing, other people catch on (think of all the knockoffs of name brands).
Yes that would be the case when only a few schools do it. But if rampant grade inflation occurs at more than a handful of schools, GPA becomes an irrelevant indicator of academic strength and legal literacy.</p>
<p>I am tentatively pre-law. Mostly because my parents and my grandfather are all lawyers; I don’t know that I’ll go into law, but I have a strong background in it and know that I’d probably be pretty good at it.</p>
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<p>This is usually symptomatic of going to a bad law school and/or doing poorly in law school. It’s not at all typical of legal careers. Although things are particularly bad for law school grads right now.</p>
<p>I’m planning to stick with pre-med all through college, then again though, I’m not going to college until next month. But in my opinion, people shouldn’t be doctors because of the pay-check you bring home, you should be a doctor because you love the career and want to help people.</p>
<p>Alot of high school students and early college goers have the idea that they want to go into medicine until the actual hard work of studying hours on hours to get a high GPA hits them. Do not be a lawyer, we have too many liars… I mean lawyers. We need more quantitative majors like engineers and mathematical. Doctors actually do not make much money, unless you become a specialist, which requires you to be at the top of your class. This means unless you are really motivated you will be stuck as a typical Kaiser doctor… one with a low gpa and barely made it through medical school (yes kaiser accepts doctors who were fired for malpractice and ones who graduated with low gpas since they can pay them less). You can make alot more money in numerous other fields…it all depends on how well you are at it and a little luck.</p>
<p>40% of last years’ freshman at my university considered themselves "premed’ upon enrolling.
FORTY PERCENT.</p>
<p>Sweet Jesus, can’t people come up with something original outside doctor/ lawyer? I understand it’s a stable and known path, but you only get one shot at life to do what you want to do.</p>
<p>I don’t think its hard to get a high GPA if you are really gunning for one. If you are really motivated to get into med school, you can get in - the problem is, there is a TON of time and TON of hellacious work to be done there - sleepless nights and grueling hours. I think when people research the idea thoroughly they are not as gung-ho about it.</p>
This is quite true. But one must have** a room of one’s own and decent salaries **if he aspires to be somebody.
Lawyer and Doctor are two occupations that, up to now, earn the most. You could say that being this or that kind of scientist or this or that professor earns a lot, but that’s different-it means being confined in the academic world. and being confined in the academic world-spending all day long dealing with colleagues and worrying about teaching burdens-is the worst ‘crime’ ever. One must get away from the academic world once in a while, if not forever. </p>
<p>Have some reflections then you’ll see that a lot of celebrities in history are lawyers/doctors:
Francis Bacon was a lawyer himself,
Lew Wallace a lawyer,
Pierre Fermat a lawyer,
Oliver Wendell Holmes(the author) a doctor,
and many many more. </p>
<p>To study the law doesn’t mean that one must love the field; it’s simply a trade, a means to ‘scrounge’ money.</p>
<p>Anyway, I think if anyone wants to pursue his/her interests without sacrificing a good salary, say 150k+ per year, he/she has quite limited paths to choose-law related, medicine related, or perhaps politics.</p>
<p>At orientation, we had a special session for premed students. Granted, we are all going to be freshmen this fall, but in my orientation of 300 students, about 200 of them showed up for the premed talk… TWO HUNDRED. People were standing in the lecture hall we were having the session in! There are almost 6000 freshmen in my class… now if 200/300 from every orientation session declares premed… I wonder how many will drop out soon!</p>
<p>Our chem classes, which are prereqs for bio classes, are considered the weeding out classes. Like someone said earlier, half the students get a C or below. I feel like some people who were there are set on a career, and some have stories on why they want to be an ER doctor or something. But most people I saw there seemed like they were there to tell people they were premed students, because ‘it sounded cool and intense and I sound smarter’. Go ahead, kill your GPA if you don’t really want to be a pre-med student. I’ll gladly thank you for the curve.</p>
<p>Many premed students who do want to be doctors and are there for all the right reasons do really terribly. O-chem is nothing like being a doctor, or so they say. </p>
<p>When I took o-chem, it was the premed students who boosted us chem majors’ grades–regardless of “right” intentions. </p>
<p>I switched majors before taking p-chem (which most premeds avoid), so I don’t know if premeds were really a drag on the curve or if this was simply my limited experience.</p>
<p>But let me tell you that, from my experience, the serious students (and thus the real “competition” if you want to view it this way) are the ChemE and Chem majors. Probably because they came into o-chem wanting to learn o-chem rather than wanting to get into med school. </p>
<p>Obviously there’s some overlap between chem majors and premed students, but there’s way more biology premeds than chem premeds here in Madison.</p>