Is pre-med that tough at WashU?

I didn’t know about the difficulty when I applied, I just recently found out through these forums. But, how hard can it possibly be?? What makes it hard? I heard there’s grade deflation, but the highest score you can get on a test is 100, so my logic is that if I get close to that as much as possible, I’ll be fine. Unless, of course, they make the tests ridiculously harder than other schools.

^bump

A doctor that graduated from WashU told me that he studied and majored in French and then went on to med school. That’s a brilliant way to keep your GPA up. You just have to take a few premed courses to apply to med school. The point is you don’t have to major in Biology, Chemistry or any science. Definitely choose a major that you are exceptional at. (Your thick ice!) :slight_smile:

That being said, dont choose a humanities major because you think it will be easy (contrary to popular belief it isnt as easy as everyone thinks). Choose a major you are interested in.

@Toplel Is it okay if I’m on the Pre-Med track and major in Biology and minor in Philosophy or should I just major in Philosophy while still being on the Pre-Med track.

Premed is very hard no matter which school you go to. A lot of introductory science courses like bio and chem are weed out classes. By the end of freshman year a huge percentage of those thinking they wanted to be premed either change their minds or realize that they can’t make it. So choose a major that you will enjoy and definitely have a back up plan. Of the kids that actually make it to apply to med school only 40% get in. And you need more then just a few classes for premed. They recently changed the requirement adding a lot more classes like biochem, stats, psyc,sociology

There’s no such thing as a “premed” major. “Premed” just refers to students who aspire to go to med school. Premed students can be ANY major.

Not sure what “tests” you are referring to. The MCAT is an externally administered exam like the SAT.

@GMTplus7 I never mentioned premed as a major.
By tests, I am mostly referring to the premed courses (the sciences). For example, possibly the tests are structured with considerably more difficulty than say, my state school UW.

With the miscommunication out of the way, are you able to answer the question?

http://mdadmissions.wustl.edu/how-to-apply/requirements/

You need to meet a minimum of these requirements to apply to medical school. What you study out side of that is upto you.

“They recently changed the requirement adding a lot more classes like biochem, stats, psyc,sociology”

Is this true??

MCAT2015 requires you to know Psychology, Sociology, Biochemistry. The colleges themselves have not increased the required classes yet because they are waiting for those who took the old MCAT to be out of the system in terms of applicants before making those as required. So expect 2020 applicants to be definitely be requiring these classes.

@DAVE437 does biology of philosophy interest you more? Choose the one you will be most happy with studying. However, if you are Premed, it might just be more convenient to double major in both bio and philosophy.

GPAs in the humanities are much higher than grades in the sciences while those studying science, as a group, have higher scores and high school grades than did their humanities major peers.

@lostaccount where are you getting this generalized info: “while those studying science, as a group, have higher scores and high school grades than did their humanities major peers”.