<p>After graduating from college I plan on going to medical school, I plan on either majoring in biochemistry, biophysics, or molecular biology (defenitely not premed) or double majoring in 2 of the 3. Which is best for medical school preparation? If MIT offers this as a major how does its program compare to other schools? I'm open to all opinions.</p>
<p>I think a sizeable number of MIT students go to Harvard Med school (perhaps more than harvard students? don't quote me on this but I've heard this from at least 3 different places). In terms of non pre-med, you can do course 7 at MIT which is biology and focus on any one of what you said, whether it be biochem, molecular bio, or biophysics. </p>
<p>In terms of the major, it's very hardcore and one of the top biology programs in the country. I've seen introductory bio psets (which I placed out of b/c I'm doing EECS), and they're certainly not a walk in the park.</p>
<p>If you want to see the bio courses, they're here <a href="http://student.mit.edu/@6684875.31844/catalog/m7a.html%5B/url%5D">http://student.mit.edu/@6684875.31844/catalog/m7a.html</a></p>
<p>I would caution anybody who wants to go to medical school after MIT. Reference some of my old posts here or in the old CC site. Basically, med-school admissions are extremely grade-oriented, and those students who come from difficult schools, which MIT is perhaps the most prominent example, tend to have difficulty in gaining admission. If you want to get into med-school, you have to have top grades, and it is much more difficult to get top grades at MIT than at most other schools. </p>
<p>Some people will argue that med-school adcoms will compensate you for attending a tough school. The line of thinking goes that I a 3.5/4 from MIT is "just as good" in the eyes of the med-school adcom as a 4/4 from a no-name school. There seems to be strikingly little evidence that this compensation exists, and in fact much evidence to the contrary. </p>
<p>Consider the premed admissions statistics for MIT grads. 74% of all MIT graduates who applied to med-school in 2004 got admitted. Hence, conversely, 26% of all MIT graduates who applied to med-school got rejected from every single med-school they applied to. Yep, every single one. Furthermore, look at the GPA's of those MIT graduates who did get admitted. The average was a 3.7/4 (MIT's 5-point scale is converted by AMCAS to a standard 4-point scale), which is about the same as graduates from other schools who got into med-school. Contrast that with the statistics of Princeton premeds. Princeton premeds get into med-school at a rate of almost 90% (higher than MIT's), and with an average GPA of 3.6/4 (lower than MIT's) Yet, I think we'd all agree that the academic quality of the student body at Princeton and at MIT is roughly equivalent, and that Princeton tends to give out easier grades than MIT does. So if med-schools were really compensating students for attending tougher schools, then that fact should show up in the statistics, with admitted MIT students coming up with average GPA's that are conspicuously lower than others. That is not happening. Hence, there seems to be no evidence of grade-compensation.</p>
<p><a href="http://web.princeton.edu/sites/hpa/2004.pdf%5B/url%5D">http://web.princeton.edu/sites/hpa/2004.pdf</a></p>
<p>The unfortunate upshot of all this is that it seems that if you are dead-set on being a doctor, then MIT may not be the best place for you to go. I know that's controversial, and I know that might upset some people, but the reality is that you want to go to a place that will make you look good to the med-school adcoms, which means a place where you will get very very good grades, and MIT may not be the best place for that. MIT is a great place to prepare you to be an engineer, or to get you into a PhD program, or to get a job in consulting or I-banking, or a wide range of other things. But it seems that MIT is not the best place to get you into med-school. It's sad but true - med-school adcoms place a tremendously high priority on top grades, and don't care very much about how difficult it is for you to get them. If you are one of those super-geniuses who can come into MIT knowing you can get top grades without breaking a sweat, then more power to you. But if you are one of those people who isn't a super-genius, well,....</p>
<p>Wow!!! Thanx Sakky for your wonderful insight. I could not have asked for better advice. Thank you so much!!!</p>