A friend of mine who works in med school admissions posted this article. Interesting premise. I confess I did not realize classes like calc and organic chem were not necessarily used a lot in med school.
It makes some sense to me that you do want students with a breadth of knowledge and who are not study robots.
Doctor friends my age often seem to be Renaissance women and men. They have active interests in writing, art, acting etc on the side and pursued these interests during med school and undergrad. It sounds like today’s students don’t do anything but study from what I read here
The Mount Sinai FlexMed program (an extension of the previous HuMed and SciMed programs) drops only the year of organic chemistry from the traditional pre-med requirements (calculus is not required, but calculus is not always required for medical school admission). See https://icahn.mssm.edu/education/medical/admissions/flexmed/about . Students apply in their college sophomore year; if admitted, they must fulfill remaining requirements and maintain a pre-med-worthy 3.5 GPA or higher.
"They have active interests in writing, art, acting etc on the side and pursued these interests during med school and undergrad. It sounds like today’s students don’t do anything but study from what I read here "
-My D. graduated from Med. School 9 days ago (seems to be eternity already, she keeps very busy schedule, hard to follow, but we are trying!). Based strictly on her experience and experience of students in her Med. School class, it is true and not true depending on time. Well, when she needed to study for Step 1 of board exam, all she did was study - 14 hrs every day for about 7.5 weeks with few schedule days off (like maybe 3). This exam determines the entire future of the med. student. If one is planning to apply to a very selective residencies, they better get a high score on this exam or all their other efforts will go down the drain. Nope, D. could not do anything during this period, she could not afford (timewise) to go out to eat! She slept and she studied. There are other periods like 12 hrs shifts in a row, there are certain rules about it, but not every place can afford follow them, so, yes, they go on shift, which is longer than 12 hours as things have to be done before and after shift, and then they crush and get up and go to the next shift.
Outside of these busy periods of time, D. has participated in fundraiser performance along with other students, she played few songs on the keyboard. She took Medical Spanish (outside of Medical School), she tutor local HS’ers helping them with the college applications, she went abroad for few weeks with the group of other students and MDs to provide a medical assistance to a very poor region in mountains of Peru, she was selected for this trip because of her Medical Spanish. She also has tons of friends all over, so she was visiting when she could and she loves to visit us at home. Med. School has only one summer off, and most do not take it off. D. went to Peru, many others did research.
Going back to being pre-med, D. did a lot outside of academics as most pre-meds do, they are people with the very wide range of interests. She had 2 minors, graduated with one - Music Composition, she was on Sorority board, she was working as Supplemental Instructor to Chem. prof, she was volunteering, interning at Med. Research lab, all long term 3 years commitments, she was on a club sport team for one year, she went abroad to NZ and to another place after graduation, she prepared for the MCAT and took it during junior year, she went to Med. School interviews during senior year. She did NOT take a single summer class, she spent her summers with her friends back home.
I do not know much about Orgo being used or not at Med. School. D. mentioned that she used her favorite Gen. Chem in “kidney” studies and physics in “heart/lung” studies.
However, she mentioned that those who did not take care of personal growth during college years were at disadvantage in Med. School. It has nothing to do with academics, Orgo or whatever, it has to do with being around variety of people, not always being in intense crowd of academically focused bunch).
My med school son does not just read and study. He has an active social life, has lots of friends, is extremely funny, plays in two intramural sports, and is very personable. He works on cars, he cooks, and he worked as a waiter and bartender (can make some awesome drinks!). He’s not some robot.
While he wasn’t the typical bio or chem major, he was chemical engineering, so while that may not seem much different, the thinking and problem solving process is more complex.
I think english majors and their like have always been desirable for medical schools. The program cited is not really to encourage that. It’s to sidestep the barrier/hurdle/screen of the MCAT test. Not cool.
Not permitting the admitted students to take the MCAT is presumably to prevent the admitted students from using Mount Sinai as a safety as they apply to other medical schools.
@JustOneDad If you are trying to understand if these students are less accomplished than their peers, you are asking the wrong question. I would venture to guess that a group with a humanities background is more likely to produce psychiatrists for reasons unrelated to their academic readiness and/or potential.
Med school prereqs (and MCAT) don’t exist to prepare applicants for med school as much as they provide adcoms a starting point for an apples to apples comparison in determining if an applicant can handled a moderately difficult set of science courses (and future Step exams) . Since the first two years of med school are pretty much nothing but science courses, it’s probably a good thing to have some confidence that an applicant can cut it. Sadly in last reported cycle just over 20k+ of the 49K+ applicants started med school. There just isn’t enough room at the inns and so sadly some, perhaps many potentially qualified future MDs lose out.
In part, I work with med students and today they can lead relatively normal lives. (Medicine is not the only field with high expectations.) Med training today is more than knowing your science. In that respect, among those who seem to be best growing into their future roles, are those who can achieve balance. The first two years include more than science courses- a mentor relationship, patient interaction and/or role playing, info gathering towards decision-making, etc.
There has long been an interest in English (and some other) majors, because of the ability to deal with the intense reading and absorb. I can’t say they lean toward psychiatry any more than other specialties.
Looks like the number of psychiatry matches versus applicants is 66%. Neurology 76%. Ob/gyn 76%. Of course, there is some measure of self-selection and many filters. Plus some kids simply don’t qualify for the cut.
Humanities do not teach one to actually be comfortable around a great variety of people and to connect easily to any, homeless, prisoner, mentally ill included. One got to surround herself with the crowd that includes not only intense, academically focus, but people of a wide range of interests and wide range of intellectual levels / ability / values. No class teaches that, student has to seek experiences that would lead to such a personal growth. Some simply do not understand this aspect of college life. I disagree that any major (or for that matter any Grad. School background with exception to MS in Anatomy, who definitely know Anatomy the best) provides any advantages to Med. Students. English or whatever. My D. has been specifically a slower reader, with Verbal/Reading scores well below others in all standardized tests. she had no problem with the academics in Med. School. English major would be a disastor for her, she simply does not like reading novels. Well, writing is all different story, has always been one of her strongest. It has nothing to do with success at academics in Med. School. To succeed there, you need to work very hard, everybody does, English majors, Bio majors PhD from Harvard, lawyers, every single student in Med. School needs to work very hard to get to the finish line.
Watch the generalizations based on one med student, ok?
For heaven’s sake, all admits from all majors have been subject to admissions standards, including course requirements, performance expectations, and expected to have some level of understanding of people of various sorts and relevant experiences. None of them at a top med school are allowed to slide in just based on academics. Do you really think there are different standards for non- STEM premeds?
And there are thousands of med students, any given year, each with his/her own take. Plus many posters have kids in med school. One person’s experiences are not the only revelation to be heard.
Interesting that (in chart 2) the US applicants’ least preferred specialties include the lower paying ones (e.g. family and internal medicine). Perhaps due to them not being able to afford to go into the lower paying specialties due to high levels of medical school debt? Meanwhile, several of the surgery specialties appear to be the most popular among US applicants.
It would be interesting to compare Step 1 scores of those who entered medical school with science majors and those who entered as humanities majors. I know that the first course out of the gate when D started medical school was a very difficult biochem course. Without an extensive foundation, I don’t know how a student would do it.
As far as which specialties are most popular, yes, the debt no doubt has a lot to do with it. But also future doctors don’t want to go into specialties like family and internal medicine if more and more of that work is going to be done by NPs.
