<p>Obviously premed courses are necessary for you to get admitted into medical school and are needed for your MCAT, but do you actually apply any of the knowledge from your premed courses to your medical school courses? Do they give you a solid background for hardcore medical school classes?</p>
<p>Physics -- a little.
Organic chemistry -- basically none.
General biology -- depends on what the undergrad course covers; varies considerably.
Genetics -- lots.
Biochemistry -- lots.
Physiology -- quite a bit.
English -- depends on what English you took, but sometimes quite a bit for communication and such.
Microbiology -- some.</p>
<p>Genetics yes.</p>
<p>Biochem yes and no. I had to know a lot more steps for my undergrad biochem course than I did for med school. There was a lot more nutrition/fatty acid synthesis/purine & pyrimidine synthesis in med school.</p>
<p>Organic - basically only the most basic concepts of hydrophilicity/lipophilicity
Gen bio - no
Physics - helped a lot especially with cardio physiology (circuits and electric currents)
gen chem - actually had to do some concentration calculations a couple of weeks ago...but ehh.</p>
<p>My sociology classes actually helped me more than my english classes. There's a lot of epidemiology and biostats that show up on Step 1 and having a social science statistics background really helped. Also my understanding of "society" has helped my ability communication skills - I tend to think about things differently than many of my peers.</p>
<p>Generally not. Genetics and biochem you'll have to take in med school so taking them as an undergrad might be useful but those courses aren't actually required by that many medical schools. The idea is that you'll prove your intelligence/hard work through your premed courses/MCAT and that should provide sufficient evidence you'll be able to handle the medical school courseload.</p>
<p>hmm...I was really distracted when I wrote that last sentence...that makes no sense at all.</p>
<p>how would neuroscience courses help?</p>
<p>You'll be taking neuroscience in medical school.</p>
<p>so its a good thing that i am taking it, right?</p>
<p>... it's not a bad one.</p>
<p>Depends...I have a friend who was a Neuroscience major at UCLA who said it was of absolutely no help during our neuro core. She said her coursework didn't cover much about the pathways or the functional areas of the brain which is what our med school stuff focused on (ie determining locations of lesions based on functional deficits as well as going the other way and predicting functional deficits based on location of a lesion).</p>
<p>Is a neuroscience major hard?</p>
<p>Varies from person to person and school to school.</p>