<p>Hey guys, WUSTL is on my list of schools, however one thing I'm worried about...well, actually, two things is that I'm planning on being pre-med and I've heard it's a little cut-throat and that "everybody is pre-med."</p>
<p>I know that being pre-med in general is one of the most difficult routes one can take in college, but does WUSLT make it harder than most? Do they try to weed out pre-meds in the various chem, bio, and ochem classes?</p>
<p>Any advice/thoughts on the matter would be much appreciated.</p>
<p>About a quarter of students here are pre-med...if you do the math, that works out to about 1500, which is a ridiculous number. Because WashU has so many pre-meds, they make the pre-med classes (Biology I, II and III; General Chemistry; Organic Chemistry) very difficult so they can weed out the less motivated students from the pool, and they grade these classes on a curve. That being said, competition here gets pretty intense, not because the smartest kids want to duke it out for first in their class, but just to survive the pre-med track.</p>
<p>Still, if you survive pre-med here, your chances of being accepted to a medical school somewhere are very good, as long as you keep your grades up and you do well on the MCAT's (and WashU students typically do very well on the MCAT's because the pre-med curriculum is so deep). There are also excellent opportunities to find research here (especially at the medical school), and that can pay huge dividends on your med school apps and on your total learning experience.</p>
<p>Despite the difficulty of the classes, there are plenty of resources available here to help you...there are peer-led team learning groups which meet regularly to go over important topics and problems, and they're usually headed by someone who is very familiar with the subject matter. The Cornerstone Advanced Learning Center also provides tutors in pre-med subjects like chemistry, biology, physics and math, all for free.</p>
<p>The bottom line...pre-med is difficult here, but there are resources here to help you, but if you do well you have very good prospects for medical school. Hope this helps.</p>
<p>I'll chime in and agree with kbtennis. I have also heard about several classes / programs for shadowing and lectures (informational type) for pre-meds if you are not interested in the research side of things. The classes have set rotations for shadowing to get wide exposure. According to D the support is there for those who seek it. And yes the classes def. weed out the less-than-motivated. But, I have heard that about almost every other university as well.</p>
<p>I don't know...it seems like private liberal arts colleges such as Amherst are more about being rigorous and getting confused students some help than weeding out and grading on ridiculously hard curves, etc.</p>