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<p>lol yikes! f=dp/dt. </p>
<p>I still don’t think that it is condescending. Someone who specializes in a subject will be held to higher standards in that subject. This isn’t something that just happens to premeds. Physics majors don’t get the whole story in mathematics. Engineering students don’t get the whole story in physics, etc . . .</p>
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<p>Having a supportive environment can go a long way to help students learn well. Actually, I think this is one of the reasons why the introductory premed classes are not easy. At almost any school, the premed classes tend to be huge (I think 100-300 students per class is huge here.) It is definitely not a very supportive environment. In one year, I heard that an introductory life-science class at Harvard has over 600 students (before they decided to break it up into more classes/tracks.) </p>
<p>Actually, some people claim that it is better to dodge this kind of huge premed class if you can (and still satisfy the medical school pre-preqs.) But this may be easier said than done, especially when some medical schools insist that the applicants should have taken INTRODUCTORY science courses.</p>
<p>It was not meant for condescension. What I meant was to truly understand newtonian mechanics (not even lagrangian, just old plain newtonian), you have to bash with very difficult problems, like the ones that are on the book posted. And in fact, dP/dt= F is almost everything there is to newtonian mechanics, but the problems are what makes the class worth taking or not.</p>
<p>At MIT at least, the honors sequence is reputed to be much better taught, have a lot more cooperation, and still, it is MUCH, MUCH more difficult than the regular path.</p>
<p>Sorry for the typo. Just corrected.</p>
<p>My point was to say that even when different majors have different difficulty, the way med school treats GPA etc… discourages you to REALLY learn the material when it’s outside of your major (unless you are fortunate enough to go to duke, where apparently the 40’s sequence is so much more awesome compared to the 50’s sequence).</p>
<p>I mean, how would you guys react if top colleges treats all HS GPA’s equally, regardless of difficulty?</p>
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<p>I don’t think it matters. You don’t need to know physics well to be successful at practicing medicine. I’d be really surprised if studying physics instead of, say, economics does a better job of preparing you for medical school.</p>
<p>First, even physics majors don’t have a complete understanding of Newtonian physics after one year of it. Second, the difficulty of any given problem isn’t what makes a college course difficult. A course, if well-supported in a collaborative environment, can be easier despite more intellectually rigorous competition.</p>
<p>Most importantly, nobody has suggested that all GPAs are considered equally. You can see that all majors have equivalent admissions percentages into medical school. So if science majors have lower GPAs and (as we see) lower MCAT scores than English majors, admissions committees apparently do compensate for this phenomenon during the admissions process.</p>
<p>The subject/material itself is not important. However, its difficulty is, and the ability of the student to handle difficult courses is.</p>
<p>“First, even physics majors don’t have a complete understanding of Newtonian physics”</p>
<p>Of course it’s all relative, but people who finish 8.012 at MIT better have a very, very thorough understanding of newtonian mechanics (otherwise, they wouldn’t have passed). I think you meant classical mechanics. If so, no, physics majors don’t get the whole picture of classical mechanics by junior year usually. By classical mechanics, I mean analytical mechanics, which uses scalar quantities and generalized coordinates instead of Newtonian mechanics, which uses vectors and mostly cartesian coordinates.</p>
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Not if the courses are difficult in ways that medical students don’t need. Intellectually rigorous physics depends heavily on mathematic principles that medical students need. In fact, intellectual-shortcut physics relies much more on regurgitation – and, bluntly, that’s the skill that people need to get through medical school.</p>
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<p>: ) I’m glad we agree.</p>
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<p>I know this is only anecdotal. I happen to know two persons. One of them is extremely good at physics/math, and the other one is not. But the one who is extremely good at physics/math struggled through medical school. And the one who is not so good (but still has a reasonable level of skills) at physics/math fared much better because her regurgitation skill happens to be much better.</p>
<p>“her regurgitation skill happens to be much better”</p>
<p>That’s funny, because anyone I know with strong math skills “regurgitated” better than most other “regurgitaters” (respectable ones, mind you) I encounter.</p>
<p>^ That is why I said it is anecdotal. I do not know many doctors. Also, I personally do not have any first-hand experience with the life of a typical premed. I think I have learned more about what the life of a premed student is like from this site (and sometimes SDN) than from the only premed that I know, my child, who really do not talk much with us about the academic sde of his premed life, mostly because we as parents purposely avoid talking about this topic – We do not want to be nagging parents :-)</p>
<p>Sometimes, I feel that a strong math/physics student can not handle some other “more messy” subject (e.g., biology, ecology) well is not because he can not do it; more likely, his tolerance for a subject that is not as beautiful as physics is lower. In other words, he may feel frustrated when too many things can not be explained in a very “neat” and strutured way. But not all subjects are as “beautiful” and well developed as physics, unfortunately.</p>
<p>On the other hand, just because physics is so well developed, some physicist like George Gammow once expressed an opinion that many physicists feel frustrated that they can not have so many breakthroughs any more, like those modern physics pioneers could during the early 20th cencury.</p>
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Wholeheartedly agree. I took both honors general chemistry and honors organic chemistry at my school (instead of the non-honors counterparts where all the pre-meds were concentrated). In both classes the material was much more difficult, intellectually speaking, than in the non-honors courses. I was consistently surprised by how easy the exams were in those classes compared to mine. Despite this, the average grades in my honors classes were much higher. I think this was a combination of several factors, most of which BDM covered in this thread:
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<p>It is for those reasons, precisely, that traditional “premed” classes are so much more difficult than other classes. They are nearly all introductory classes with large numbers of students (many of whom are only taking it to fulfill a gen ed or preprofessional requirement) and harsh grading. Intro bio, general chem, intro physics; essentially, all introductory classes. BDM’s reasoning is that there is no other track or major, besides premed, that is required to take so many of these types of classes. His reasoning is correct.</p>
<p>It’s why classes like intro bio, in which the material is very easy, have such low exam averages. It’s not because the material is difficult.</p>
<p>OK , so a good strategy for a pre-med is to be a sort of stealth pre-med for the first two years. Deceive the Physics, Biology, and Chemistry depatments into thinking you are a real or potential major in their field, then switch to remedial basketweavng after requirements are met.</p>
<p>Again, examples like remedial basketweaving are automatically rejected. And there’s no need to deceive schools; most “major-designations” are a suggestion, not a hard/fast rule. I didn’t have to lie to anybody to get into physics for physics majors; I was open about my status as a pre-med and they were perfectly happy to have me. And there were no such classes in the chemistry and biology departments.</p>
<p>Foghorn Leghorn; “That’ a joke son, I say that’s a joke”. (Booming raspy voice.)</p>
<p>There is a chance that the physics department at many schools may be indeed more friendly than the departments like bio or chem.</p>
<p>At one time, my child was toying with the idea of being a physics major. I would guess that the friendliness of the professors/students there has something to do with this (and one of his close friends is a physics major.) I remember that he once mentioned that he actually likes his physics professor, and had never missed any physics class. He has never mentioned anything about any of his bio professors…And ironically, he is a bio major now. (And he hates intro bio in freshman year.)</p>
<p>The bio department needs to deal with an army of bio majors. The chem department is even worse: It has to teach so many students each year but in the end, there are relatively few students who major in it. But I heard that if you really become a chemistry (or physics) major, they treat you very nice. Well…I exaggerate it a little bit, as there are always some nice professors in every department. But I think the number of majors in each department may influence your “experience.”</p>
<p>I learned that, in recent years, unlike the bio or biochemistry or chemistry department, the number of physics majors at his school has actually been increased, after some coordinated efforts from the physics department to attract more majors to their department. I also think that the population of non-science major premeds have been slowly increased in recent years.</p>
<p>I think the “friendliness” may have to do with the numbers.</p>
<p>I graduated with Chemistry and Biology from Stanford. There were 10 chem majors of which 4 were premed. There were several hundred bio majors of which 75% were premed. The Chem Chair had all of the chem majors at his house weekly in our senior year. Severl Bio faculty did for those students who stood out in their courses or came and worked with them in the evening for better understanding.
The point is in the “numbers” per degree, not the degree perse, I believe.</p>
<p>Inorganic Chem tradionally was a Senior Class taught by the senior profs - usually done at a restauant, lab or “bar”. Everyone got an A. Our senior year, the powers that be decided to make it a premed required course. We - of course - were scarred as we did not want to have compete with the redhots for grades. The Profs fixed that by convincing the rest of the class that it would not be fair for them to have to compete with us so we had a separate test and grading score and we all got As. </p>
<p>But, it did not matter if you were premed or not. It did matter that you were part of a small “club”. For the Bio profs or English profs that invited one over, it was because you showed an interest in the subject. </p>
<p>I got invited to dinner with Paul Berg, Arther Kornburg, Linus Pauling and others (all Nobel laureats) and invited to San Fran for special conferences with them as did some of my friends. I believe that is still true today. I now have students over for dinner who are “students” and not just “cramming for the A”.</p>
<p>BlueDevil.
One thing which I think makes premed harder is the redhot competition for the grade. I don’t think that push to “do better than Bob” is true in other subjects. It is more learn the subject</p>
<p>Well, since the topic of this forum has changed, I guess I’ll ask a question that pertains to the new subject. Does the particular sequence of pre med science courses even matter at all? If so, what do you all recommend should be the proper sequence of science courses to prepare for med school/MCAT? (For example, should I take intro bio, intro chemistry, or both my freshman year?)</p>
<p>Highschoolgrad09: Just a suggestion here: maybe you should mention when you plan to take MCAT so that others may give you suggestions according to your time line.</p>
<p>Unlike many CCers here, I am not an expert here so read my post below with a grain of salt.</p>
<p>It is very typical for a premed to take gen. chem. and bio in freshman year, and orgo and physics in sophomore year, especially if you are a science major. Some may postpone physics to the junior year because you may also need to fit in calculus somewhere in the first two years.</p>
<p>Well, although I now know this may be a typical sequence (I did not know it a few years back), my child did not follow this sequence exactly. Especially for the bio courses, he ends up taking a few bio courses in the reverse order: cell bio and genetics and a bunch of bio electives first, and then the second half of the intro bio (which he reluctantly takes just because his department insists that he take it.) Weird.</p>