Has anyone looked into how med schools might consider the fact that everyone is taking their Intro science/lab courses online this fall and possibly next spring as well? Should a student hold off on taking lab courses until classes will definitely be in person? I’ve seen posts on Facebook that say some med schools will take this semester grades since all schools went to online teaching. However, another person said he contacted three medical schools and they won’t accept any online course grades that are taken in the fall. Do all incoming freshman need to hold off on Bio and Chem until students are back on campus full-time? Is everyone thinking of just enrolling in lecture courses that are not required pre-med courses? Do you think med schools will reconsider their policies if most schools continue online teaching of lab courses in the fall?
I’m sure medical schools are making contingency plans right now.
However, I think that all medical schools are taking a wait-and-see approach to see if most colleges will re-open for in-person classes in the fall or spring of the upcoming academic year.
(I know that the Cal States have said they will online for fall term, but most colleges have not yet announced a decision.)
I think it’s quite possible some colleges will resume in-person classes and others will not. Or that colleges will offer hybrid instruction for lab-based classes where lectures are video-broadcast over the net, but labs will be in-person at a reduce lab capacity. (Med schools already record lectures and make lecture attendance optional so this wouldn’t be a stretch. However, all labs must be done in person since there simply aren’t any good online alternatives.)
I think that any applicant who has online classes for key pre-reqs will be at a significant disadvantage 4 or 5 years from now when there will be applicants who have actual in-person coursework on their transcripts. This is because of the necessity for hands-on lab experience and the possibility for cheating on at-home online exams until some sort of secure proctoring system has been worked out. (The security issue is why there will never be an online MCAT.) Also there is an inherent unfairness to accepting online coursework since it disadvantages students from lower resource backgrounds and from rural areas where internet access may be expensive and/or unavailable or of limited availability.
One other disadvantage for online classwork is the real difficulty of “connecting” w/ the instructor in order to establish a more personal relationship that will lead to strong LORs down the line. How can a professor evaluate the intellectual inquisitiveness of a student or their empathy for others if they never hold a real face-to-face conversation or engage in a Q&A during class or office hours? Virtual communication really isn’t conducive to those things.
Things may be perceived differently by med schools if online coursework becomes the norm a year from this fall. (IOW, if in-person classes don’t resume by fall 2021.)
If I had to recommend what to do to my own child, right now I’d recommend they play it safe and schedule only GEs for the fall semester and save any lab-based classes until there is better a idea of what the long term outlook for the resumption of in-person classes looks like.