<p>I’m an international student and I have applied for the premed course in Brandeis university. I’m having difficulties in deciding where to attend as I have Davidson, Macalester, and Baylor at hand. </p>
<p>At the moment Davidson and Brandeis are more appealing in terms of high quality education. I have surfed through almost all the premed topics in this Brandeis forum, and have found that many MANY premed students are having serious difficulties… to the extent that they are unhappy. I am accustomed to work load… so I believe that I will be able to get through it successfully but is the education rewarding? Are the professors willing to help? How is the counseling for med schools? Are they encouraging? The answers to these questions are crucial for me since I want to be studying in an environment where I belong… I NEED to be attached to the school’s community. </p>
<p>Anyway hope many of you will give me feedback on this topic!</p>
<p>I read over all the posts pertaining to premed also. It seems like there aren't that many people answering questions, and the ones that do have rather scathing remarks. :/</p>
<p>Brandeis does not have a pre-med "major," but many pre-meds may complete the Health: Science, Society, and Policy major in addition to the usual suspects like biology.</p>
<p>Brandeis' pre-med program is a weeder program; aka, it's hard as hell on purpose, so the ones that actually make it through are considered the absolute best. That's why they boast about having "twice the national average getting into their top choice med schools!"</p>
<p>Believe me, I went to school with a lot of pre-med students (freshman year) who ended up ditching pre-med for theater, English, History, or some other major.</p>
<p>Agree with Spike, though I'd put it differently. The pre-med program at Brandeis, like those of most schools, isn't a "weeder" by design. While most kids who put themselves through the ordeal of Orgo are aspiring doctors, the prof has no way to distinguish them from others who might want to be research chemists in industry.</p>
<p>Cold, hard reality is that the natural sciences at the college level, at least at any self-respecting college, are hard, much harder than any science that most of us encounter in HS. For a lot of people, that represents the first reality check since their third grade teacher patted them on the head and told them that they were good in science and that medicine was in their future.</p>
<p>If you have what it takes, Brandeis will do an excellent job preparing you in the sciences. It won't coddle you, though.</p>
<p>However, I still haven't heard any answers for the following questions:</p>
<p>"Are the professors willing to help? How is the counseling for med schools? Are they encouraging?" </p>
<p>Also, there is one more thing I want to ask. I've been reading discouraging things about the dorms and the quality of life in Brandeis. I think I read something that said Brandeis is in the rankings of "Dorms that are like Dungeons." I would like know more about this and the campus, since I would like to study in a place where my motivation can be built up from the surroundings... comfort and aesthetic values of colleges are important in my opinion.</p>
<p>I'm a first year student, who while not pre med, had a roommate this year who was pre-med. My roommate has really been struggling a lot with her classes, but from what I gather it's doable if you keep a few things in mind:
- be very honest with yourself about your willingness to work hard to keep up. It's a lot of work, especially the labs, pre-labs etc. Ask yourself how good you would be at managing your time and keeping up with the reading and the problems, so that you can avoid cramming for tests the whole night before and still get some sleep.
- Don't take Organic Chemistry your first year! When you do take it, be sure you have a group of people you can study with. My roommate had some issues this year with finding people who were willing to help her and I think finds it a very competetive environemnt.
- Especially when you are taking Organic Chemistry, you should be very careful about being involved in too many extra-curricular activities.<br>
- Ask yourself how difficult you find science and how interested you are in it. The more you are actually personally fascinated in learning about atoms, electrons etc, the more pleasant an experience it willl be for you.
- As for advising, from what I've observed a lot of it is luck. From what I understood, there are lot of incoming students who indicate interest in pre-med. so they didn't seem to have enough real pre-med adivisors. My roommate's assigned advisor was not a professor, but a general councelor/advisor through the residence life department. He is not unhelpful, but mainly directs her to others in the pre-med department. There are I believe weekly tutoring sessions, but because my roommate got very behind very fast due to some of the issues I mentioned above, she did not find them that helpful and has often ended up studying organic chemistry by herself, often taking over 5 hours to understand 3 or 4 pages. . Either now or especially once you enroll at Brandeis, I would contact the pre-med advisor, Kate F u kawa-Connelly, see e-mail address here:
<a href="http://www.brandeis.edu/as/prehealth/%5C%5B/url%5D">http://www.brandeis.edu/as/prehealth/\</a>. I do know that other pre-med students I know had professors as advisors as advisors who helped map out their classes. My roommate herself went to speak with her Organic Chemistry professor this semester and found him friendly, accessible and mostly helpful. There is also a pre-health society at Brandeis which organizes info about different career options (eg. Vet, Dental tracks) and social activities.
- In general it seems to be the case that grading is far stricter in the sciences than in social sciences/humanities. </p>
<p>I think the bottom line is that it's not impossible, but it depends strongly on your work ethic, your priorities, your wililngness and ability to seek out help. Especially once you're doing organic chemistry, you should be sure that you know you have people who can help you, you should try to avoid getting through the pre-med track on your own. Those students I know who took General Chemistry this year are defintely managing at the moment. I also knew another girl who came in thinking she would be a chemistry major, but decided after 2 or 3 weeks to concentrate in humanities/social sciences instead.</p>
<p>Professors at Brandeis are largely accessible and helpful. There is also a health professions guidance office.</p>
<p>If you're looking for inspiration from physical surroundings, may I suggest Oxford where, at one time or another, some of the dorms actually served as dungeons. In the U.S. Yale bears the closest resemblance.</p>
<p>The greatest source of "comfort" should come from the people you live with as opposed to bricks and mortar. I'd also look for motivation to come more from the classroom than the dorm. By those criteria, Brandeis measures up well.</p>
<p>Pre-med advising at Brandeis isn't much different in structure than it is at other schools that don't have a formal pre-med major. The "advisors" devote most of their time to juniors and seniors, with less going to sophomores, and precious little to freshmen. That may sound terrifying, but consider that the only major decision that a propective pre-med has to make during the initial years is when to take Orgo. If you're considering taking it as a freshman, then the best person to ask is Prof. Snider, who teaches it in the Fall. He is both accessible and helpful.</p>
<p>If you start with Gen Chem, then your course track is pretty well set and is outlined on the Pre-Health website. </p>
<p>If your question is whether you should be pre-med, you'll get your answer from your inner-self or from Orgo (if not sooner).</p>
<p>Median class size is 17. Some upper level seminars have as little as 4. Intro classes can have as many as 150 or more. Languages are 18 and as are Freshman Writing Seminars (USEMS).</p>
<p>Depends on the student and the course of study followed (medical school requirements will account for less than half of the courses you'll need to take to get a degree). Most profs don't have a target number of As they give out. It is certainly possible to achieve a high GPA, but it requires a lot of hard work.</p>
<p>BTW, medical school admissions committees do have a sense of grading differences among schools and also the quality of preparation students receive.</p>
<p>So I read from this post that pre-med at brandeis is very hard, and students that are pre-med get a low GPA that affects their chances of admission to med school. Now is that true? I don't know how different organic chemistry is at brandeis than Smith College. I took organic my first year and got an A for the first semaster of it...so would it be harder at brandeis?</p>