<p>Hi, I was wondering if anyone could help me out on this. I was thinking of majoring in chemistry as a pre-med student. So, that means I would usually take the most advanced class I could in my grade level, as opposed to the easier chemistry course for non-chemistry majors. But should I also take the most advanced course for Biology? In other words, do medical schools want to see kids take the hardest courses and get good grades (well obviously), or do they not care what level the classes are? Also, if I'm thinking of switching my major to English, and still take the requirements for pre-med. But will the bare requirements be enough for top medical schools? Do I still need to take advanced chemistry, biology, physics, and math courses as an english major to be competitive as a med school applicant? Sorry, if this was hard to understand...I'm really just clueless :(</p>
<p>I'd suggest that if you take more courses than required, that the important criterion is not advanced-ness but relevance. For example, some types of evolutionary phylogeny might be more advanced than basic physiology, but I'd recommend that you take physiology instead.</p>
<p>Generally speaking, schools place a relatively light emphasis on your courseload per se, from what I understand. But a couple extra courses certainly wouldn't hurt.</p>
<p>congratulations, as a chemistry major i believe you have made a fine pick :)
... english ;P ...</p>
<p>ok, as i understand from previous discussions, numbers matter more than what courses you take -- this means that you need to take courses in which you are most likely to receive an A</p>
<p>obviously you need to take courses that med schools require, which are very basic (lower division) -- but if you want to take anything on top of that, you have to pick something in which you're most likely to get A's to keep GPA high -- so if taking advanced courses (upper division) in biology will land you with a C, then you avoid them -- you avoid all tough courses that have most chance to lower your GPA</p>
<p>there are three reasons why you'd still want to take upper division courses in biology or chemistry -- first, as chemistry or biology major you'll be forced to take advanced courses in your field of study as requirement for your degree -- second, some courses will be related to subjects covered on MCAT so you might want to get a bit of a review by taking these -- third, have you looked at what classes you'll have to take as a medical school student? may be some of these classes overlap with what is offered in your college, so by taking upper division courses you can prepare yourself better for medical school -- and those are the only three reasons i believe -- otherwise you take whatever you can take AND keep high GPA meanwhile</p>
<p>this is because GPA and MCAT score directly correlate to success in medical school -- so content loses to numbers</p>
<p>so, as far as i understood from previous discussions, the level and titles of courses you take are much less important than your overall GPA, MCAT score, letters of rec, and involvement outside of school (volunteering, research, etc.) -- i do not think that people who sit on the admissions committees at med schools and review thousands of applications each year will know that your particular school offered this hard sequence or this easy sequence -- i eventually decided not to apply for med schools, i went into graduate school, but some graduate schools actually asked me to summarize the course content and give name of prof and textbook for the course -- this is because they have no idea from your transcript! -- outside of common courses that every school offers (like o-chem and physics lab) they don't know what it is that you took simply from course title -- was it easy or hard? did you pick the most challenging sequence available? was there a challenging sequence available in the first place? - they have no idea in most cases</p>
<p>also, people who major in humanities and social sciences tend to get higher MCAT scores -- studies show that they perform best of all other majors on verbal section and not as badly on other MCAT sections -- so in sum they do best -- this might not be causation, but only correlation -- in that people who are most confident in their abilities often choose to major in something else rather than physical or life sciences -- because they feel like it is in their ability to catch up with all other requirement and so they do -- but then again it might be causation -- in that their major forces them to practice writing and reading, while they learn about the same amount in lower division chemistry, physics, and biology courses as chem, bio, and physics majors do, so as to score not much worse on MCAT than them</p>
<p>Thank you both for those detailed answers! About research opportunities, wouldn't it be harder to obtain positions as an english major if you're not taking as advanced courses as some possible science majors? And I would assume you need recommendations from science professors for med school...in that light, applying to med school as an english major seems like extra work.</p>
<p>1.) Summer internships - yes, harder to obtain as a SS major, but not impossible. Higher-level courses do help.</p>
<p>2.) LORs: Yes, this is one of the big reasons to take more advanced and smaller courses. This is complicated, so bear with me:</p>
<p>a.) If your undergraduate school takes care of things, they have their own set of requirements, and you should ignore everything else I'm about to say and just check with your advising department. Their requirements "trump" med school requirements. In my case, I had to send in two science professors, one research advisor, and one professor which could have been non-science had I so chosen.</p>
<p>b.) Otherwise, each medical school has varying sets of LOR requirements. Some will want a major professor and two sciences; some will want a peer and two professors; some will want a research supervisor, an English professor, and a biology professor; etc. You must comply with the requirements that each school asks you for, meaning that all in all, you may well need several letters.</p>