premed schedulings

Colleges and Universities A-Z Massachusetts Institute of Technology
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<p><em>snort</em> I knew people who put that sort of time into the class and didn’t manage a <em>C</em>. And, like Chris, I knew people who breezed through it easily.</p>

<p>Like Chris, I advocate getting some sort of lab class done early. It really does expand the number of UROPs that you can get. There are profs that will take you on anyway - not that I managed to find those profs - but there are plenty that won’t seriously consider you without some sort of relevant intro lab class, and you’ll be more useful anyway.</p>

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<p>Thank you so much for the responses.</p>

<p>How long will it take one to learn Spanish @ MIT? i mean like starting literally from scratch. consider for a person not as brilliant as Chris. :)</p>

<p>I was looking at the Spanish Department website and saw that Spanish I is offered in IAP. Which IAP (Freshman or Sophomore) will it be good to take that class? will it be helpful though since it is crunch time? my take is to do Spanish I in Sophomore IAP and then Spanish II Sophomore Spring. Then continue on until Spanish IV or spanish conversation class.</p>

<p>What EC’s aside from UROP do you think will be important for Med School application. My understanding is that since the classes will be hardcore, and with the UROP and stuff, we won’t have much time to do EC’s. and so it would be crucial to pick a few that will stand out or something like that?</p>

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<p>Med schools like to see things like research, shadowing doctors and volunteering at hospitals, but you should do what you want to do. There’s time to do extracurriculars at MIT (almost everybody does at least one thing), but there’s not enough time to do everything all at once, so you have to be a little picky.</p>

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<p>There are a number of medicine-related ECs, including the American Medical Students Association premed chapter, the MIT chapter of the American Red Cross, MedLinks (the organization of students who serve as first aid/CPR providers in their dorms/FSILGs), and SEMS (the student-provided EMT/ambulance service). All of those except possibly the first have both premeds and non-premeds. However, I will note that all of them except possibly the first will not like you very much if your reason for being in them is solely to pad your resume.</p>

<p>There are also, of course, a large number of ECs that have nothing to do with medicine, and I would encourage you to do at least one of those. With such diverse offerings of ECs, you might as well expand your horizons a little. And med schools will not look down on you for having an EC that’s not medical.</p>

<p>Depending on your specific interests, there are other things you could do that might be career-relevant. For example, if you are interested in nuclear medicine, MIT trains students as operators for its nuclear reactor (and pays them to run it once they’re trained).</p>

<p>Language classes at MIT are extremely intensive. If you take a language class</p>

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<p>However many of semesters you’d want to take. If you’re taking up to Spanish 4, then it’ll take you two years, and so on and so forth. Plenty of people start from scratch here, but with Spanish just know that a bunch of your classmates will have had Spanish experience in high school and you may have to be working a bit harder to catch up (this is especially true when you get to level 3 or 4, when the amount of vocabulary you know start to matter - people who took Spanish in high school usually have a broader vocab base).</p>

<p>You can start scheduling your IAPs now but I’d advise to wait, since many opportunities can come up during IAP and you may decide to spend IAP elsewhere. (there’s a ton of MIT opportunities that come up during IAP too, like internships, externships, traveling…etc.) Bottom line - as long as you reserve however many semesters for however many language classes you’d like to take (5 semesters for 5 levels of Spanish, for example: 1-4 and conversation), you’ll be okay.</p>

<p>Yeah, language classes here are pretty intensive, but I actually would say Spanish is alright (well, compared to Japanese and Chinese - I have no basis of comparison for German and French). Just make sure to not think of the class as a blow-off class and you’ll be okay.</p>

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<p>It’s the old maxim: do what you love to do. There’s no standard formula of what you need to do to go to med school (probably with the exception of shadowing or some sort of volunteering/working in a medical setting - this is necessary just because it would be hard to defend your case of why you would want to be a doctor if you’ve never been in a hospital or a clinic or seen a doctor at work). But yeah, premeds here do all kinds of stuff - community service and volunteering aside, people participate in music, arts, student clubs, debate…pretty much anything that any other student will do at MIT. There’s no rule that says premeds need to have another set of activities. For example, one premed in 2012 here is actually working as a census taker this year, which I think is pretty cool : D</p>

<p>That aside, a large number of premeds here are Medlinks or work for MIT-EMS (the ambulance service we have here) and find medically-related internships during the summers, but this is just for your own reference and you shouldn’t structure your activities just based on what other premeds do. You only have four years at MIT, and it would be a waste if all you see MIT as is the stepping stone between you and med school. </p>

<p>There’s so much more here.</p>

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<p>Quick note: 7.05 is only offered in the spring, not the fall. 5.07 is the one offered in the fall. I’m taking 7.05 right now, and it’s honestly one of my favorite classes at MIT so far (with 5.13 and 9.14 being the other two). The professor is awesome. I learned why some Asians get Asian glow, and last lecture, he just had somebody (think it was either someone in his lab or a TA) draw his blood… twice, right there in the middle of the lecture hall. It was surreal, but insane, he got a round of applause at the end for that, hah.</p>

<p>As for other premed classes, just some general advice:
5.12: work hard for this one, the difference between a B+ and an A- is minuscule, and you’ll be kicking yourself later if you end up with that B+ (which gets turned into a B on your official transcript, while the A- gets turned into an A) If this is your first introduction to orgo, talk to people who’ve taken it already and know the “tricks” behind it. It beats sitting at a desk and agonizing over why something just doesn’t make sense.</p>

<p>5.13: If Mo is the professor still teaching it, the class is, in my opinion, so much more understandable and actually more interesting/doable than 5.12. His tests are very fair, and grading works that if you get past the baseline he sets, you get that grade, none of that curving business that depends on how the rest of your classmates are doing.</p>

<p>I honestly loving being premed at MIT. I’m not sure if I could say the same if I were at another university.</p>

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<p>Thanks for the responses everyone! </p>

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From [Course</a> 7: Biology](<a href=“IAP/Spring 2024 Course 7: Biology”>IAP/Spring 2024 Course 7: Biology), it said that 7.03 is both semester and 7.05 is spring-only. Is the website out of date? </p>

<p>How do you guys prepare for MCAT? i believe the classes will give you the best prep ever but I was just wondering. how about prep classes? how long in average do we have to prepare for the test?</p>

<p>Is there any HASS class in particular that will prepare for the verbal and writing portion of MCAT?</p>

<p>the difference between 7.05 and 5.07 is just that the former one is bio-based with the latter chem-based? which one is a better prep for MCAT?</p>

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<p>Fall == 5.07 == run by the chemistry department, 7.05 == spring == run by the biology department. You may take either for Course 7. I don’t know much about the MCAT, unfortunately :P</p>

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<p>Oh you’re right about 7.05. Apologies. A few nights without sleep had messed up my mind.</p>

<p>In either case, you should take 7.05. Like Sylverwing said, it’s my favorite Bio required class.</p>

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<pre><code> a typical MIT example of being hosed?
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<p>How do you guys prepare for MCAT? i believe the classes will give you the best prep ever but I was just wondering. how about prep classes? how long in average do we have to prepare for the test?</p>

<p>Is there any HASS class in particular that will prepare for the verbal and writing portion of MCAT?</p>

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<p>For the premed-interested people on this thread, you should read the MIT AMSA premed guide:</p>

<p><a href=“http://web.mit.edu/amsa/www/04guide.pdf[/url]”>http://web.mit.edu/amsa/www/04guide.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

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<p>You should schedule 2 months to prepare for the MCAT if you’ll be working an internship on the side, or 1 month if you’re going to be focused and studying 6-8 hours a day.</p>

<p>I took the Kaplan program but I think it was a waste of money, although it does help you stay on task if you have problems with that because they have a very detailed schedule. So I don’t know, it’s up to you.</p>

<p>As far as MCAT verbal goes, I doubt there’s a HASS that directly contributes to the improvement of the verbal section. In any case, I think MCAT verbal is the hardest section to prep for because there’s very little you can do about it in a short amount of time. You just have to be consistently reading all the time and all the reading will eventually build up to better comprehension on the verbal section. </p>

<p>I skimmed through the premed guide and it is still pretty accurate considering how dated it is. So yeah, but don’t stress out about this process too much, seriously. Things will fall into place as you go through MIT, and we all end up at a med school : ) (the premed office just updated their stats and the undergrad premed acceptance rate to at least one med school is up to 94% and people get into 3.5 schools on average! - this is very good stats, you can compare to stats at HYPS)</p>

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<p>Seriously, I would advice getting over with your HASS- CIH (communication intensive) in the fall, because:

  • CIH’s are a pain in the butt, well it depends, but still writing essays and stuff takes time
  • You have less control over your grade. If you study hard for pset classes, you’ll do decently. CIH’s on the other hand, depend also on the taste of your instructor.
  • grading for CIH’s, i believe may be harsher than it seems. At least for me, I feel I have a much greater control over my science/math grades here.
  • Finally, you might be able to get sophomore standing by doing your CIH 1st semester, hence, you’ll be able to accomodate extra credits in the spring.</p>

<p>-Note: this also comes from a disgruntled frosh who’s not exactly a big fan of papers.</p>

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<p>which CIH is known to be the easiest? lol</p>

<p>I know we should not choose a class by its difficulty or such but just wondering…</p>

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<p>does it matter to med schools that i take the easiest courses possible?
for example, i have a 5 on the bc calc ap and i’m relatively good at math, so should i use that ap score to take 18.01A instead of 18.01 or should i just take the easier course so that i don’t have to work as hard…?
if it wasn’t for med schools’ emphasis on gpa, i would definitely take the harder one but…</p>

<p>any suggestions??</p>

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<p>If you have a 5 on BC, you should skip 18.01 and go straight into 18.02, unless you feel as though you haven’t actually learned single-variable calculus.</p>

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<p>but do you think med schools will care if i just retake single-variable calculus just to get an easy A?
i know i shouldn’t be choosing classes just to get good grades… but i really need a high gpa</p>

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<p>Uh, I think doing 18.01 again here will be a source of frustration, actually. 18.01 here IMO is harder than AP versions of calc, and I’m glad I don’t have to go through single variable again here. >90% of premeds probably used their AP credit to pass out of 18.01, so you’re fine.</p>

<p>Honestly speaking, you guys shouldn’t get into this premed grade-grubbing mindset already, because you’ll soon discover that it doesn’t really work that way here. If you are going to just come here trying to identify classes where you can get easy As in (even when “i know i shouldn’t”), you should go to some other college instead where you can get a 4.0 GPA without too much effort and be a good premed. That sounds harsh, but it is true.</p>

<p>MIT is rigorous enough that there is no “easy path” through the school. There are paths that are hard, and there are other ways that are harder. Theoretically one can just take a bunch of filler classes and go through this college and get a degree and go to med school, but I feel like you’re really missing out on the essence of a lot of what this school has to offer. If you’re going to repeat 18.01 to get an extra A, why don’t you take some other class where you can actually learn some new material? MIT has a wealth of 20+ departments that offer cool and exciting classes, and you’ll be doing yourself a disservice and frankly, even to those who wanted in their dreams to come to this school but couldn’t. A 4.0 GPA coupled with a good MCAT score anywhere gets you to med school, and if MIT is purely just going to be a stepping stone for you between you and med school, then why come here at all? Just go to some other college where your prospects of a 4.0 is probably a lot brighter than at MIT anyway.</p>

<p><<end rant=“”>></end></p>

<p>Anyways, all I wanted to say is that you should come here and actually take some classes and figure out what your level is at. I strongly, strongly, do not think most premeds will have a problem with their GPA as long as they put a good-faith effort into their classes. And if you still do, chances are it might have been the same if you had gone anywhere else, albeit only just a bit better. MIT has a wealth of opportunities for you to explore; don’t squander it just by a blind vision to get into med school.</p>

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<p>Great post Chris!</p>

<p>Thanks!</p>

<p>just another quick question, if you take MCAT in the sophomore summer before junior year, and take a year off after MIT, could you still use the MCAT scores when you apply for med school?</p>

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<p>sorry if i infuriated you :frowning: this is probably why some people hate premeds. i just cant help thinking that if i take classes im interested in disregarding their level of difficulty, i’m just going to end up with a shamefully low gpa and never get into med school. sorry about that!</p>

<p>anyways, is 5.60 extremely difficult? if i take it sophomore fall along with 7.02, will that be manageable?
and also, what are some courses offered in both fall and spring that are noticeably better taught in one or the other semester? like you mentioned 7.03 is better taught in the spring. any others?</p>

<p>THANKS!</p>