I want to take human Anatomy and physiology during summer because I heard that they are useful subjects on MCAT. but I realized that I don’t really need them as my pre-med requirements. So I decided to audit them and learn the material without worrying for grade. I am curious about the way that medical school looks at audit classes. Do they really hate it or is it fine to have an audit class on my transcript. my college will report audit classes as AU on my transcript.
Thank you in advance.
I suspect med schools will care little, if any, about this audit class on your transcript. I also suspect that what you get from this class will be of little, if any, use to you for MCAT. Biochem yes, anatomy and physiology, no.
Some Medical Schools actually require Anatomy as part of their pre-req. I would say, to have all options available to you, take it in the regular school year or check requirements of the specific medical schools that possibly will end up on your list. One thing is for sure, that this is probably the only pre-med class that was actually helpful in Medical school. Anatomy is pretty much a very very hard new vocabulary and it is a good idea to take it at college. Well, I can only refer to my D’s comments, who said that not having Anatomy at college made it harder for some of her medical school classmates. She also had an opinion that not many of her college classes helped her much in medical school. So, Anatomy was an exception so to speak. The only other exception was college Spanish, which was also surprisingly very helpful. However, neither Spanish, not Anatomy will make any difference in your acceptance to medical schools unless Anatomy is a pre-req, well, Spanish is never a pre-req, just nice to have it, opens more opportunities in medical school.
As of 2011-2012, only Ohio State required anatomy. Ole miss, USC (south carolina), and Utah “strongly recommended” it (which, frankly, means it’s required).
http://www.swarthmore.edu/Documents/slife/pre_med/Advanced_Science_Requirements.pdf
Given that those are all state schools, if you’re not a resident of Ohio, Mississippi, South Carolina, or Utah you probably won’t apply to them anyway (because your chances of admission at those schools will be so tiny on top of a very expensive tuition if you do get in). If you are, then you need to take the class, not audit. Hopefully your school has resources like Swarthmore (and hopefully more up to date, I have no idea if schools have changed with the new MCAT) so you don’t have to individually go to med school websites and check requirements one by one.
I agree that the class I took called “comparative biology of the vertebrates” (which didn’t specifically cover human anatomy much but you know, evolution means a lot of structures are conserved) helped a lot in anatomy class; however in contrast to above it was certainly not the only helpful undergrad course I took. I would also say that my undergrad coursework helped in medical school as essentially nothing in first year was completely brand new to me. If I recall, Miami’s D was a zoology major whereas I was a general biology major so I can easily see how her coursework would have been less helpful in medical school than mine.
The courses I’m referencing beyond the comp bio course above are
Intro to neuroscience
a class on the 5 senses
cell bio
intro to biochem
intro to genetics
intro to physiology
exercise physiology
intro to endocrinology
intro to immunology
innate immunology
A class on parasites
a class on vaccine design
“Ohio State required anatomy.” - and it happened to be on my D’s list. They added this requirement AFTER she has applied. So, she had to reshuffle completely her registration for the first semester senior year and drop one of her minors. Ironically, while OSU acceptance came in first, jsut couple hours after the midnight of the whatever that day when they are letting them know, D. turned OSU down for the other medical school. But as I said, she mentioned, that taking college Anatomy was a great plus, while many other college classes did not have a similar impact except for Spanish. D. did not take most classes in the list above, while she took many more in neuroscience as it was one of her minors as she was simply interested in it. This interest was gone at the medical school though. She had a decent MCAT score, so I would say that her Zoology major was enough preparation for her.
^As soon as I saw Ohio State I knew that must have been why you thought of it. Crazy that they can change the requirements on someone after they’ve applied.
I don’t believe you can list audit class on the AAMC class list when you apply and someone has to pay real close attention to your transcript for them to notice that you audited a class.