Perhaps it remains as a pre-med requirement specifically for weeding purposes. The number of spaces in US medical schools and residencies is so limited relative to student interest that admissions selection for medical school must be extremely selective. Weeding out many of the pre-meds with organic chemistry serves a useful (to medical schools) purpose in reducing the application load.
I agree with that (#60), at least as a possibility.
My med school faculty friends tend to be pretty unhappy with the quality of their medical students, however. In general, they would like (depending on the specific person) to see students with (a) more interpersonal skills, (b) more service orientation, and © more genuine interest in science, and fewer students whose core skills are getting As in introductory science courses and overall GPA management, by any means necessary.
I don’t think they are opposed to weed-out mechanisms, but they believe that the existing weed-out mechanisms (including the Organic Chemistry requirement) are not optimal for screening future physicians.
That’s neither here nor there as far as the OP and her son are concerned. Right now, and for the foreseeable future, passing Organic Chemistry – passing it comfortably, most likely – is a requirement for medical school admission. If you can’t do it, you can’t be a doctor.
Tell him to follow his dreams. If his passion was strong no class would destroy him
My not premed kid took organic within the last year, worked hard at it, wrote study review guides for herself, had study groups, and enjoyed the experience and considered going on to Orgo 2 just for fun. It was not taught as a weed out course and the students were all pulling for each other to do well. Mastery of the material was emphasized.
I wonder if the difference is that it was at a women’s college.
[QUOTE=""]
My med school faculty friends tend to be pretty unhappy with the quality of their medical students, <<<
[/QUOTE]
What? Really? Why? What is the quality of their med students?
This has me scratching my head since there are now, more than ever, a huge surplus of applicants! Over half get no acceptances at all. And when you figure that there’s some self-selection going on in the beginning, with most weaker premeds having changed career paths, the applicant pool is simply amazing! (those weak ones who persist dont’ get accepted anyway. )
Med schools can only interview about 10% of their applicants because they get sooooo many apps for the 75-200 seats that they have.
There should be very few students who slip thru where the faculty would be unhappy with.
What are their complaints?? Is this a public or private med school?
@JHS
@mom2collegekids “What? Really? Why? What is the quality of their med students?”
I think the problem is that med schools put so much weight on having a high gpa. Then when they interview all these high gpa students, they don’t it that the kid’s main focus has been on managing their gpa to deliver the gpa the school expects. They also don’t like it that many of the students who get that gpa by being holed up in there rooms endlessly pouring over their books with a very limited social life, don’t alway have the best interpersonal skills. Finally, the process punishes any student who is has enough curiosity to stop and really consider scientific questions deeply and thoughtfully. It is set up for students to be able to respond correctly to questions, not to demonstrate true understand or insight. There is no time to do that, and also learn the volume of material to be memorized well enough to get that A. Consequently, many medical doctors can tell you how something happens in the body, but would not have a clear understanding of how it came to be that way. It is sort of like the repairman who knows how do fix the air conditioner, but not why it is designed the way it is or how it got that way.
Everything is a tradeoff.
[QUOTE=""]
They also don't like it that many of the students who get that gpa by being holed up in there rooms endlessly pouring over their books with a very limited social life, don't alway have the best interpersonal skills. <<<
[/QUOTE]
I disagree. Premeds who spent their undergrad years holed up in their rooms studying and doing little else, do not even get interviews, much less acceptances.
And the main purpose of the interview is to test the applicants “people skills,” mental stability, and personality.
There are just too many very qualified applicants these days for med schools to have to resort to social wallflowers and narrowed-interest bookworms.
Med schools look for students who have a varied background…artistic, musical, athletic, volunteering.
Success at an interview is significantly affected by sales skills and ability. However, the best at sales are not necessarily the most upstanding or otherwise the best at the characteristics that are really wanted.
The interview is just one piece of the puzzle.
The student’s medically related ECs, research, and LORs tell more of the story, along with their app, their personal statement, and their answers on the supplemental app.
Students who’ve been invited to interview have already been deemed qualified for acceptance. The interview just helps with final down selection.
I suspect that the best doctors are wallflowers and bookworms. I don’t want an extroverted sportsman cutting up my brain or whatever.
Imo, Mom2ck has it right. But once the kids hit the actual med school experience, this new context, some are less comfortable with the more interpersonal expectations of doctoring. They’re no longer volunteers or shadows or researching. There can be a real difference with kids who have a lot of patient experience/responsibility. Admissions knows that. But it’s hard to perfectly filter for.
I would suggest retaking it and doing well - then he has a success story to tell at admissions. This may involve some extra work - pre-studying, tutoring, going to every office hour, looking for additional problem sets, getting an upper class mentor who may have tips and tricks. His grade will be averaged into the cumulative GPA, but such is life. This doesn’t have to be the end unless he wants to be.
I am a medical student and have had no trouble throughout school despite poor grades in organic chemistry (C+/B-). I will say I had trouble getting in, so he needs to be mindful of his grades and not overloading his curriculum. Some other tricks were to take summer classes so that you’re taking one class at a time (this is an extra cost though). If he wants to continue, please be supportive. Many people struggle through the (sometimes) inane pre-med curriculum.
Wishing him luck.
<<< @sorghum
I suspect that the best doctors are wallflowers and bookworms. I don’t want an extroverted sportsman cutting up my brain or whatever.
[QUOTE=""]
[/QUOTE]
I would suspect that some of the better research physicians (academic medicine) may be wallflowers or bookworms.
I do NOT think that some of best “patient-care” physicians are wallflowers/bookworms. And I don’t think that that socially-inept doctors are the best for direct patient care.
I don’t think any of our children who in med school or residencies are “bookworms” or “wallflowers” but I suspect that all are/will be excellent physicians. I know that my athletic, witty, and fun-loving son will be an excellent physician.
For patient care, I think a LOT of medical care involves interacting with the patient. For providers with poor to non-existent social skills, they can miss important cues that the patient may not verbalize or can cut off the patient when the patient is trying to convey something vital to their healthcare. I agree that researchers don’t need quite the same level of social skills as clinicians. My favorite providers have excellent social skills and are also very respected by their peers.
I used to teach organic chemistry. There are parts of the course that are somewhat useless to medicine (the synthesis part, where one must come up with a way to create a particular molecule from precursors), But considering that, minus the 65% water and the 5(?)% calcium of bones, the rest of our body is made up of organic compounds, I would say it is pretty important to understand their behavior and how the different classes of molecules interact with one another. Most pharmaceuticals are organic compounds. Organic chemistry is the basis for biochemistry. So even though most physicians have long ago forgotten what a Diels-Alder reaction is, they may still be applying the foundation of organic chemistry in their practice indirectly.
I’m with you all on the social skills! It is ultimately a people-oriented job.
The complaints I have heard fall generally into the following related categories (often different complaints from different people, of course):
- No real sense of mission. Even when they sincerely want to help people, they have little or no practical experience doing that, and often do not sustain their efforts when they try. And many are almost exclusively focused on economic rewards.
- Limited empathy with people who are not like them.
- Grade-grubbing. Focus on doing well on the test to the exclusion of learning and growing. Difficulty hearing criticism and learning from it. (Obviously, this is a common inter-generational complaint in many fields.)
- Little or no real interest in actual science and scientific inquiry.
- Great at memorization, not nearly as great at understanding and manipulating concepts.
With the high cost of medical school and the resulting $300,000 in student loan debt a new MD graduate can have, it can be hard for a medical student or physician not to consider the economic aspects of going into medicine.
That seems to be selected for by the high GPA and MCAT standards required even to be considered for medical school admission.
Organic chemistry and biology are widely reputed to be heavy on memorization over other thinking aspects. If that is the case, then making them a required and important part of pre-med preparation selects for students who are best as those things.
Of course, some pre-meds can earn high GPAs without grade grubbing, and have strong other thinking skills beyond memorization, as well as good social skills and other desired aspects. But could it be that the medical school selection criteria unintentionally select for grade grubbers and rote memorization too much, so that the pool that gets to the final stage of the process does not have the other desired aspects in sufficient abundance that medical school faculty desire to see?
Then there is also the cost of medical school, which can force new MD graduates to chase the money afterwards to pay off their debt.
“But could it be that the medical school selection criteria unintentionally select for grade grubbers and rote memorization too much, so that the pool that gets to the final stage of the process does not have the other desired aspects in sufficient abundance that medical school faculty desire to see?”
Yes. Also, by the time kids have completed even the Med School APPLICATION process, in their and their families minds they have already invested so much time and effort into the process (endless undergrad studying for GPA and MCAT, hundreds and hundreds of hours of unpaid work, etc…) that they feel like they can’t turn back. They’ve checked all the boxes, and want to get in.
The medical school faculty from whom I have heard the complaints I listed before (a) understand that they are complaining about medical school admissions standards, notwithstanding that most of them have at one point or another sat on their institutions’ admissions committees, (b) understand the importance of medical school cost as well, and © do not include the people I know who teach at Harvard or Penn (or in fact any comparable medical school). (Some may have similar complaints, but I have never heard them complain. One person, now retired, who was very influential at his institution for a long time, I know to have been satisfied by the quality of students there.) The people from whom I distilled those criticisms teach or have taught at a variety of private medical schools in my region and three public medical schools in different states.
It is a bit of a leap from wallflower-bookworm to socially inept.
The extrovert may be too busy enjoying himself talking to be actually listening or thinking, I have had this sort of experience more than once.
Again, for complex surgery, give me a bookworm any day.