High School background affecting college performance

Pre-Med & Medical School Pre-Med Topics
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<p>Hey mom2collegekids,</p>

<p>Thanks for your post. As posted above, he will be registered for one math and one science course (for math and science courses) next semester and will see how he does before moving further. </p>

<p>The thing with taking CC courses to transfer to his current university is that his current university will not accept most, if not any CC courses. </p>

<p>This is also why I claimed last year that he was a sophomore. He had about a little less than a year’s worth of college credit (that was split between his junior and senior years in high school) but later shockingly found that none of them transferred (policy by the university that I wished we would have researched before having him enroll at that U)!!! He will be sophomore standing at his university but credit wise, a junior if we include the courses taken in high school.</p>

<p>But I can see how it would be beneficial to take courses here in the summer (even if it would mean none will transfer) to continually build a better foundation.</p>

<p>He <em>was</em> a biology major but recently went “undeclared” at the end of this past year because of the grades he received in biology and science. He was discouraged this past summer but recently sparked interest in trying to fix the problems he had this past year. </p>

<p>With regard to majors, he has been doing some research on possible majors. Any suggestions of “easy majors” he could pursue? I am paying for his education in full and did mention the importance of making sure his major is marketable after graduation - in case med school does not fall through. I don’t mind paying for any major, just want to make sure he does something with it after graduation - whether it’s applying for graduate/professional school or getting a decent job to sustain himself. In general though, he does have the mindset to find a major that is “easy,” in hopes of raising that gpa.</p>

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<p>"but looking back I can see how his high school curriculum partly has something to do with a poor first year. "
-This is supported by my D. experience. Looking back (she is currently third year Med. Student), D. and we, parents, have concluded, that choosing HS with the most rigorous program in our area was more important than looking for UG from academic prospecitve. D. commented that she in fact was much better prepared for college than many pre-meds around her (although, she also had to make huge adjustements to a much higher academic level at college). As a result, she was offered a job as an SI for Gen. Chem. prof. without having AP Chem in HS. In this position, she ended up helping lots and lots of kids who had an AP Chem but did not have as good Gen. Chem. HS class as D. had at her tiny private HS (D’s HS class had 33 kids).
After saying that, make sure to seek help in any area that a student feels not very confident. There is help available at all levels, there are prof. office hours, SI sessions (D’s sessions sometime had 40 students and she was told by prof. that she has improved an average grade in class, sometime kids understant peer’s explanations better, they “speak the same language”?, kids just get together for informal group studies. You are paying for various help outside of lectures available to your student, might as well use it.
Do not go easier route (major). it will not work. No matter how rigorous your major, Med. School academics will be much much harder, one needs to be prepared to the rigor and time commitments that are required there.</p>

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<p>Psychology is popular for non-science premeds…plus it has a favorable female/male ratio. But perhaps the distractions won’t be a good thing. :D</p>

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<p>Normally I’d recommend secondary education, but med schools kinda frown on ed majors. And there are million bio teachers looking for jobs. Unless he is also certifiable in your state in other areas (esp in demand are math and physics), an ed degree is no longer a ticket to employment.</p>

<p>What is he good at? what does he like? </p>

<p>Right now the fields with best employment prospects are things like engineering, math, statistics, econ, computer science, information technology…none of which are good fits for your son because his math is behind the curve and he’ll have too much catch up to do in order to complete his major. Options in employable vocational fields like nursing, business and accounting are also frowned upon by med schools.</p>

<p>And you’re smart to insist on a Plan B. Med school admission is not something anyone can assume will happen. I made my kids both have a back-up plan. (For one kiddo it was Health Physics, for the other it was neural engineering.)</p>

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<p>Any suggestions of “easy majors” he could pursue</p>

<p>Easy is in the eye of the beholder. Someone who likes Psych, may find it easy, while someone who’s not interested may find it hard.</p>

<p>Sociology can be easy. English is hard, but may not be to someone naturally gifted in writing with strong background and likes literature. </p>

<p>History can be easy if you have a memory for dates and interest. </p>

<p>Probably Sociology is the easiest.</p>

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<p>Choosing 'easy" will backfire big time, choose the one that you like, which may or may not be “easier”. Got to develop brain stamina for the Med. School. “Easy” will not do it. Taking 6 hours end of block tests, sitting thru 8 hours Step 1 require lots of it.</p>

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<p>Thank you everyone for your response.</p>

<p>Psychology and Sociology are on his list of majors he plans to look into. He shows high interest in psychology but did not like the “hundreds” of terms he had to know in his intro psy class - is it very similar in upper division courses? Sociology is trailing by very close, he claims the terms he had to remember gave him a clue as to what the definition of the word meant so he gives a slight preference to sociology over psychology. He doesn’t really show an interest in teaching so I’m not sure if he’d be open to that option.</p>

<p>He likes hands on activities and has a “serious” mindset - my parents often describe him as having almost a business-like mindset. Ironically, he has no interest in business. He likes things straightforward and structured to an extent (he’s not a huge fan of abstract concepts/ideas).</p>

<p>He chose biology as a major because of his partial interest in animals and thought it would give a wider perspective compared to zoology and animal science. Zoology and animal science are also on his list but will have to look into how difficult the core classes are in those majors. After reading the required core courses of each major, he’d choose animal science over zoology because it deals with domesticated animals over wild animals and their environment. </p>

<p>He also had history on his “so-so” list after taking two history courses this past year but after reading the course descriptions for upper level courses, he only took interest in a handful of upper level courses. A friend of mine (and a teacher at his high school) often claimed history is something along the lines of either knowing it or don’t (nothing in between). I think she means that it’s going to be easy for someone who can recall dates and times in history but S. interest in history is not to that extent.</p>

<p>He’s also considered economics (slight interest) offered through arts and sciences college (versus the “business college”) for its practicality but don’t know how practical the degree offered at his college is offered through the arts and sciences college. The degree is a B.A. and requires very little math.</p>

<p>English was also on his list but crossed it off after speaking to a few English majors. </p>

<p>Political science is also on his list, with an interest in politics, but after reading upper level courses, he felt it wasn’t narrow enough for him and was not along the lines of his interest. He often jokes, if there was an undergraduate degree in law - he would pursue that major.</p>

<p>He’s also had a few majors on his list that would lead to a job after graduating but put these majors on the list purely for that reason (a little to no interest). We’re aware that these require a ton of work and math so they are low/almost off on the list. These include: MIS, Info & Comp Sci., Comp Sci, accounting, and nursing (probably the only one he has interest in but is a “vocational major” - to our understanding, and requires a ton of work. A lot of nurses we’ve spoken to claimed that nursing was a calling from the very beginning.)</p>

<p>Any input on any of the majors mentioned above?</p>

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<p>“MIS, Info & Comp Sci., Comp Sci”
-Yes, ton of work and NO math though, no memory requirement whatsoever, very very interesting, but not for everybody. Yes, you will spend hours, days, weeks debugging you programs, it will “bug” you if you cannot get it done, but if it does, then it is a sign of a true IT professional, the one who feel the “game”, got to win this stupid machine…
Accounting - got to love this one, for most it is extremely boring and require ton and ton of memory.</p>

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<p>Most animal science programs are geared toward pre-vet or agricultural careers. He may have a difficult time convincing med schools that he’s interested in human medicine with an animal science major.</p>

<p>~~~</p>

<p>Your son sounds like he really doesn’t have any strong interests, and perhaps isn’t sure where his abilities lie.</p>

<p>The academic support center at his college will offer aptitude testing that might help him hone in on potential careers.</p>

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<p>Exactly. Me and the kids couldn’t gag our way through ed coursework. :)</p>

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<p>hundreds of terms you have to know sounds exactly like med school</p>

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<p>Thanks again for all your posts.</p>

<p>I would say his strongest interest lies with animal science and nursing so it’s not that he doesn’t have strong interests, it’s just that it is a bit confusing for him when he is told to avoid some majors because medical schools frown upon majors that interests him the most. This has led him to become more open minded and put a more majors that have a combination of “so-so” with regard to interest but still practical. How strongly does a college major influence medical school admissions?</p>

<p>He’s met with the academic support center and has taken a few tests to match personality with possible alternative careers and majors and it did help a little. It was still broad in a sense but he’s narrowed down his potential majors list quite a bit from doing these tests.</p>

<p>I can’t disagree with the “hundreds of terms” comment by i<em>wanna</em>be_Brown. But as I said in the same post, he felt that a lot of the terminology made no sense to its actual meaning and combining a ton of them - it made it a bit boring for him. He claims sociology had a ton of terms too but it was way easier for him to “catch on” by breaking up words to make him remember the meaning. I have no strong knowledge in medical related terms and psychology but did take medical terminology back in the day and can say I do understand what he means by breaking up the words/terms to define meaning and applying this to remember the definition of each term.</p>

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<p><a href=“http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/internships-careers-employment/1121619-university-graduate-career-surveys-5.html#post15975553[/url]”>http://talk.collegeconfidential.com/internships-careers-employment/1121619-university-graduate-career-surveys-5.html#post15975553&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>However, those majors which do well in the career surveys tend to be math heavy (e.g. math, statistics, engineering, computer science). Biology tends to do poorly. Social studies majors tend to do a bit better in the career surveys than biology.</p>

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<p>In regard to a lots of new vocabulary…this is the major major side of what is learned in Med. School. D. has mentioned that specifically the beginning of the Neuro /Psych block was basically learning of the “new language” because of anormous amount of the new vocabulary.<br>
Anyway, after she was done with all pre-clinicals and was preparing for the Step 1, she still was up to learning more and more of new terminology that many times did not make any sense whatsoever, just got to memorize it, boring or not or whatever feeling you have about it was irrelevant.<br>
One more time, CS is NOT math heavy at all. But I can see the point that engineers / CS people do poorly with Bio. Being in IT myself for over 30 years (and in EE for many years before), I can tell one thing, there is NO memory required for either, you got to be able to analyze, “figure out”, “de-bug”, and you are better off if you “attack” each problem (or new design) as a brand new that you have never dealt with.<br>
Medicine is very very memory oriented, I would be out in first couple weeks, foir sure, I hav lost the little memory that I had, relying heavily on analytical skills, and, yes, math was my easy and favorite subject and while I did not remember any of it, I was able to help my D. (the top math student in her private HS) all thru HS. I can “figure out” math, while I am totally incapable of remembering anything.</p>

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<p>Agree that medicine is very memory oriented.</p>

<p>When DS was studying for STEP-1 from some prep book (I do not know which one), he once mentioned that EVERY sentence in that book is important.</p>

<p>Regarding the difficulties of learning science in general, I heard that although a person can pick up readings by himself, he needs a good teacher to teach him in science. At many high schools, there are not many good science teachers so the students mostly learn math as a preparation for science only.</p>

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<p>it was this book: [First</a> Aid for the USMLE Step 1 2013 (First Aid USMLE): Tao Le, Vikas Bhushan: 9780071802321: Amazon.com: Books](<a href=“http://www.amazon.com/First-Aid-USMLE-Step-2013/dp/0071802320]First”>http://www.amazon.com/First-Aid-USMLE-Step-2013/dp/0071802320)</p>

<p>Looks like he’s not an author on this edition but 2012 and the previous years had Jeffrey Hofmann, Brown '08, as one of the authors, nbd.</p>

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<p>“learning science in general”
-I would say from my experience, learning of the Gen. Chem. / Physics and Orgo / Bio would require completely different abilities. There are lucky people (like my D.) who possess both. Not me, I can easily “figure out” math based Chem / Physics. forget Orgo / Bio.
For Step 1, D. had a high stack of books, I have no idea what and how she was using each of them. BTW. she has already sould some of her Step 1, including un-used portion of on-line help and bought one for Step 2. Time flies…</p>