<p>
</p>
<p>Pizzagirl, </p>
<p>Some of those very same activists attempted to do the same to elite public universities like the ones you named above as they did with CCNY/CUNY in 1969. </p>
<p>The difference was that in those states, there wasn’t the critical mass of flaky politicians or activist groups coalescing to the point they had a chance of succeeding.</p>
<p>As far as I know, the system in place in countries like India and China do not favor “late blooming”. Private medical schools in India are so expensive that big groups of kids today are traveling from India to China to go to their private med schools. OTOH, the public ones are cheaper but have an entrance where people keep repeating the test each year for 2-4 years with the hope that their scores improve for an automatic admission (same with engineering). So if people got in after repeated attempts, they have bloomed(?) while they may have completed 2-3 years of BS in a 3 year BS.</p>
<p>OTOH, unlike US, they ARE thinking from childhood what they want to be since the process makes it very hard for them to change their mind. Either they can get into medicine and engineering or they don’t but it is not a choice to make once they get to college.</p>
<p>One thing I do know is that those who specialize have lot more specimens to practice with and so they get really good at it. A good heart surgeon in India does 5-6 open heart surgeries a day, 6 days a week while someone in US might average 2 at the most from what I heard since it is not always needed while angioplasty gets very expensive in India or China compared to open heart. I have seen several hundred people in rural areas get cataract surgeries over a day or two with what the eye surgeons called camps, free of charge. I suspect that gives them a lot of practice.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Berkeley was not all that hard to get into back then (and most other UCs admitted most students at baseline UC eligibility which was something like a 3.3 HS GPA or slightly lower with a high enough SAT or ACT score). As the flagship, it had its really good students (like the math majors taking graduate level math courses as sophomores and juniors), but there were lots of not-so-great students (4 year graduation rate in the 1980s was only about 1/3). The CC->UC/CSU route was also easily available to students whose high school records did not allow for freshman entry to a four year school.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>At least Berkeley had some academic standards built into their admissions. From 1969-the early '80s…all that was needed in practice was possession of a NYC high school diploma or its equivalent. Later on, they tacked on a minimum official requirement of a 2.67 minimum HS GPA for 4 year-colleges. </p>
<p>However, that’s almost always waived in practice* and doesn’t mean much when it was possible to breeze through many mediocre NYC public high schools with a B or even straight As and then end up struggling even in the watered down remedial curriculum they provided. </p>
<p>This was a common problem with my old neighborhood’s crime-ridden zoned high school that was closed down a few years back because of many issues…including an abysmal graduation rate of 34%. </p>
<p>The last vestiges of open admission policies were ended in the late '90s when they mandated that all students requiring remediation are only allowed to register at the 2-year colleges while simultaneously…the 4 year colleges and the entire system to some extent raised their academic standards regarding admission. </p>
<ul>
<li>This was always waived for those attending NYC Specialized HS from what I’ve heard and seen with many classmates.</li>
</ul>
<p>“I am more cynical about American higher education than you are, so when I read about a university making a 6-year program a 7-year one, or of a college no longer giving credit for AP exams (a change Dartmouth made recently), I suspect that a major reason is to increase tuition revenue.”</p>
<p>That’s possible, too.</p>
<p>My colleague (who intends on being a physician and is a Canadian of Indian descent) apparently had his relative tell him: “Go to medical school here, residency here so you can work here and then go to India and work for a year or two. You’ll see everything.” Texaspg has an interesting point. </p>
<p>TBH, I do want to study other things so the whole jump into med school isn’t really my favorite idea but power to those who like it.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>In the UK (and commonwealth countries such as Australia), MOST of the students go into medicine more or less directly from HS. But it is pretty common for students to be admitted with other backgrounds, often with a degree in science. I know a guy who was an academic with PhD in geology, he went to medical school around age 40, motivated by the chance of making more money.</p>
<p>And Australia offers both undergraduate and graduate entry medical schools.</p>
<p>Dad<em>of</em>3–Even if a student majors in Art History for UG, they still have to take the required math, science and social science courses to get into medical school. I know several doctors that were English, Philosophy, etc. majors in UG, but they still took Biology, Chemistry, O-Chem, Physics, etc., etc.</p>
<p>I believe (even though I do not agree) that we are slow migrating to a path of shortening the length of college education and high school early ( specialization). Why? When economy is bad, costs are high and need is great as we have with doctors and some engineers it makes sense to just reduce the elective load in those tracks. But most of you are right. It requires more than intelligence to be a professional, it requires maturity and sometimes we will be missing great professionals by forcing them into a career too soon and have them quit or not giving the opportunity for late bloomers. With early specialization we kill the opportunities for people to crossover from one undergrad study to the next. It will make it almost impossible without redoing all undergrad ( if it will still exist). As the system gets compressed classes that are part of college curriculum are going to be part of HS curriculum. That is the realty we will face because that is the reality many others country lived a few years back.</p>
<p>My concern about a fast track program is in what kind of physician it produces. (Or maybe my concern is whether those programs attract a particular personality/intelligence type? As I re-read this post, I think maybe the word “concern” isn’t accurate. Maybe I’m just wondering.)</p>
<p>Bedside manner is important. Interpersonal skills are important. Emotional intelligence is important, maturity is important. Having seen something of the world in addition to the inside of a cadaver, a lab and a textbook is important.</p>
<p>Laser focus and high academic intelligence will only get a physician so far, if she plans on practicing in an area that requires any sort of patient contact.</p>
<p>The lack of physician “soft” skills are the ones that patients, nurses, administrators and clerical personel complain about. </p>
<p>I wonder if the physicians who complete compressed programs are attracted to non-patient care specialties. And I wonder if anyone has looked at their “soft” skills compared to older, more well rounded graduates. Are their soft skills comparable during their residencies? Any older physician who has worked with residents has seen the ones who look terrific on paper, but have terrible people skills. (Every resident has to rotate through a few patient care specialties like OB or Peds.)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>This is exactly the situation of most premed students in the US now.
Most of them think about med school before college. When in college, they try hard to volunteer, keep GPA, prepare for MCAT. They have little time to discover in college. And many of them get stuck with a biology degree when they are not admitted to a med school.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>It’s even harder to explore when you have only 2 years of undergrad and still have to work in all the med school prereqs. Granted you don’t have to worry about the acceptance, but with 2 years undergrad you plain simply don’t have time to take anything beyond your med school prereqs and a handful of other things. At least a traditional 4 year student has the time and space to take classes in different areas.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Maybe not at programs you know of, but at the others my friends attended, there was still the possibility one may not continue onto med school if they didn’t fulfill academic requirements such as maintaining a minimum cumulative GPA of 3.3 or higher. Slipping below that or failed to fulfill other stipulated program requirements does give the program the option to drop such students from the program which means they’ll only end up with a BS after 4 years. </p>
<p>Only thing they didn’t have to worry about was having the MCAT count for anything as they only took it for statistical purposes.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Except that pre-meds’ need to manage their GPAs deters them from intellectually exploring courses which are not “easy A” courses.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I have wondered why medical schools and law schools do not try to adjust the GPAs of their applicants to account for different grading standards by department or even professor. I would want to know for each course the applicant took what the average grade was for the course. If a student had a GPA of 3.5 in courses where the average grade was 3.0 (a B), that may be more impressive than a GPA of 3.6 in courses where that was the average grade.</p>
<p>Considering the number of people who get MD degrees and then do something else (or at least spend a big chunk of their time not practicing), it’s not such a huge problem if they commit to med school as a high school senior. An increasing number of people use it like an undergraduate major.</p>
<p>There is a massive cultural difference in the way most countries treat 18 year olds compared to the US. They are considered adults. I have never heard any non-American worrying about things like the personal growth of their adult child and their opportunity to study random classes for fun. Alien concept and should already have been addressed in high school.</p>
<p>^I agree in part, cupcake, although in many European countries adult children live longer with their parents than even in the U.S. </p>
<p>On the other hand, I think this discussion fails to address the elephant in the room: Most industrialized nations outside the U.S. have a public health system (or highly regulated private one) with universal coverage, more government involvement in the medical education strategy, and certain expectations of their health professionals whose training is subsidized. They are willing to pay to train doctors for a social benefit–they are not concerned with young people taking time to “find themselves”. This has its pros and cons, and mainly depends on where you stand personally as to whether it’s a benefit or not. </p>
<p>I can tell you, I totally appreciate the public health care safety net that exists in my country of residence (as it makes private insurance much cheaper). And I believe the great trade-off is between a) students that pay outrageous amounts of money to become doctors and who therefore go on to earn salaries in the top 5 or 2% (U.S.), and b) those that become doctors because they’ve always wanted to and seek a nice middle class salary for their effort. Doesn’t mean the former is smarter, just maybe more ambitious as a whole. Still, I am very comfortable with the training that doctors receive here and personally believe the U.S. system is more dysfunctional.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I don’t want socialized medicine, but if we could make it cheaper and less time-consuming to become a doctor in the U.S., without sacrificing quality, more people would become doctors, physicians’ salaries would fall a bit, and health care would be cheaper.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Would it be correct to assume that you will refuse to use Medicare when you turn 65?</p>