Harvard Med Goes Online Only for Fall 2020

https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2020/5/14/harvard-medical-school-coronavirus-online-fall/

I guess one might as well attend community college…

Not sure how you dissect a cadaver online…seems like a real lost opportunity and overly cautious/premature decision.

@chillout2020

There have been virtual cadaver labs for several years now. Virtual cadaver labs are in use at a number of med schools already.

To clarify the title of this thread, Harvard Med is not going online only. Harvard Medical School’s first year students are having fall online, but:

https://hms.harvard.edu/coronavirus/coronavirus-communications

Harvard has only one year of classes during medical school. So they have lost half of that to have in person interactions of any kind. Should people be paying 30k tuition for this?

I wonder how many will defer their year 1 to 2021.

@texaspg

Per a current Harvard fall 2020 matriculant on SDN, Harvard is not allowing M1s to defer unless they have some truly exceptional life circumstance. Not wanting online classes is not an acceptable reason to be granted a deferment.

The M1 curriculum is being re-structured and cadaver lab has be pushed back until spring.

Interestingly, UMass SOM has announced it will open for on-campus, in-person classes this fall, though at least some of the class content will be done through on-line delivery.

@WayOutWestMom I can see Harvard expecting a bunch of people asking to defer!

I saw a news item on a business channel where students and parents were discussing the value of paying 25k-30k per semester for tuition at elite schools (not specific to medicine) only to take online classes. They were planning to skip or defer an year. Based on how medical school works, the best opportunity people have to make friends depends on the first year. Once they start rotations, they will not make any new friends if they are not part of the rotation or those they bonded with during classes. Having only one semester of classes eliminates getting to know many of your classmates.

It’s Harvard MED! I can’t see too may students turning down that offer due to a semester of online classes.

It is a bit late to turn down since people had to pick a school on May 1st. Since it is Harvard, they probably didnt keep any waitlists either!

The thing that bothers me most is that there are people out there bending over backwards to volunteer and exposing themselves and here is a premier medical institution saying it is so nice you want to do medicine but we are too scared to take the risk to allow you to attend school in person.

You can’t go to medical school at a community college…?