<p>Do med schools prefer if an applicant is consistent in taking many years of non-science classes, like music and foreign language?</p>
<p>Versus taking unconnected non-science classes? I doubt they look that closely at your schedule.</p>
<p>As for do they prefer that you take non-science courses rather than science courses… I think they want to see a strong aptitude in science as well as non-scientific interests.</p>
<p>im not sure what you mean by unconnected non-science classes. i meant to say is do med schools like it when students take lots of non-science classes and keep taking these classes for many years?</p>
<p>I don’t understand the question, which I would have interpreted the same way McD did.</p>
<p>Med schools don’t care about minors. It might be good if you can become near fluent in a foreign language (especially Spanish), but out side of that I can’t see any real benefit. Health care related courses in economics, business, polysci, history, etc. might help you talk about stuff in an interview though.</p>
<p>then there’s no point in taking classes like orchestra or foreign languages other than spanish?</p>
<p>Well, there’s personal interest, fulfillment, etc. You also shouldn’t go through college only taking science courses. Any foreign language is good, but Spanish has the characteristic of being useful when practicing in the US (well, almost as useful as English). However, I wouldn’t say that taking orcehstra or foreign language (even Spanish) will help you get into any med school.</p>
<p>ok so med schools definitely want to see that you have other interests by taking classes other than science ones right?</p>
<p>All people have other interests, some of them outside of classroom. Just do what you like to do, enjoy yourself instead of fitting your activities into Med. School application. You are a human being, not machine, everybody understands it.</p>
<p>Some time ago, on this forum, there were some heated discussions on the topic of whether a premed student should be lopsided toward sciences.</p>
<p>One camp of people believe that unless a premed is heavily lopsided to sciences or even hopeless on any non-science classes, s/he had better be a non-science major, or at least take as many hardcore (i.e., not those “easy” ones) non-science classes as s/he can.</p>
<p>The other camp complain that the medical school adcoms these days may pay too much attention to the “intellectual gentleman” quality of premed students.</p>
<p>My own opinion? I believe that the best scenario is that a premed student is good at both sciences and non-sciences. That is, his/her science aptitude should be stronger than (or at least not weaker than) a student who is going to a top graduate program, and his/her non-science aptitude should be so strong that s/he even stands out among those hardcore non-science majors.</p>
<p>Of course, this is not an easy task. To excel at any single field, it is often the case that the student has been building his/her interests/knowledge/skills in that field or a closely related field (either a science one or a non-science one) many years, usually well before s/he enters the college. An example is that, at many colleges, you many find out that some students are extremely good at a foreign language. If you are in a class with these students, it is then very difficult to compete with these students that may be well ahead of you in this particular field.</p>
<p>In other word, the adcoms prefer those students who stand out at least in one field, and it is even better that they stand out on more than one fields – This is because it is much more difficult to achieve excellence in more than one fields. (e.g., to publish a paper on some prestigious Economics journal in one field as well as publish one in some totally unrelated field.)</p>
<p>^^ thanks for the post</p>