I want to major in one of the sciences. When I say advising, I am asking for your opinion holistically-- from freshman advising to med school preparation. Thanks.
The faculty are your friend. Talk pre-health mentoring advice with huge chunks of salt…
What do you mean, “huge chunks of salt”?
Sometimes ignore them when it comes to things like course selection and stuff. They are okay at advising about things outside of that (like putting together applications, reviewing progress, and summer opps) but when it comes to that, they tend toward this one size fits all mode of advising that almost plays it too safe to the point where people can fall behind making progress toward their degree and taking courses that prep for the MCAT. And in cases of well-prepared students (like with more than one STEM AP credit), they can end up kind of “stunting” their progress by making them go on average tracks (retaking courses for which they had credit when they could have avoided it and just have completed the next one in sequence and/or telling these people to not double up despite their HS transcript and AP scores suggesting they can handle it and the NBB dept and biology dept. recommending it for majors as not taking biology will delay entry into intermediate and advanced courses). In the case of one person I know of, they flat out misadvised them in terms of their math AP credit making them waste a semester. They apparently also screwed up biology (they forgot to tell the person that they needed to take the 141 lab with the course) with this person. The only thing they get remotely right in a one size fits all fashion is chemistry where they don’t advise that people take freshman ochem unless they plan to major in chemistry (however, even in that case, it isn’t that horrible to take a class like analytical chemistry w/lab or organometallic w/lab to compensate). They are just poor at advising the exceptional cases, especially the good ones.
@bernie12 Does Emory require aspiring premeds to seek a composite letter of recommendation from the premed advising office or otherwise prescreen its applicants to medical school?
Yes…And they apparently have things like holistic reviews and stuff leading up to it.