<p>Just from what I am reading in the Pre-med forums, pre-med at mit seems ridiculously hard/impossible. Any thoughts from current students or people who know about it?</p>
<p>Yeah...I know alot about the MIT premed program...and the issue is that MIT has little grade inflation that other top universities have. Thus, what you have happening is science majors etc are having a more difficult time getting really high grades in comparison to their top-college counterparts and thus they're GPAs are lower. And as much as some want to believe that medical schools some how "curve" or elevate the GPA for those in difficult grading schools where grade deflation runs rampant or where there is little to no grade inflation...that just isn't true. However, most at MIT get such a great education and do so well on the MCAT that many good/elite medical schools feel its a no brainer to admit them. Likewise, its not so much where you go to medical school that is important, but how you do when you get there and how you get matched into residency. So if you can get into MIT I would take the chance and go there b/c you'll get an elite education, better education maybe than anywhere else in America, and you'll still if you succeed at MIT have a chance at great medical school and from there its all what you make of it. If ultimate education is what you want then MIT is your place.</p>
<p>Get in first and then worry about the difficulty.</p>
<p>Haha, I sure hope not. I plan to do premed there. However, i hear that 90% of those who apply get into med school so it's definitely not impossible.</p>
<p>A better statistic would probably be # of frosh indicating they want to be premed and then # of them that get into med school when they graduate.</p>
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A better statistic would probably be # of frosh indicating they want to be premed and then # of them that get into med school when they graduate.
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Best I've heard, there's only about 25% attrition between coming in freshman year saying you want to be premed and actually applying to medical school -- about 100 vs. 75.</p>
<p>Realistically, premed does not seem like one of the harder things you can do at MIT. In past years, the MIT Careers Office has listed the GPA of the average applicant to med school from MIT, and it was around a 3.6(/4.0). That's much higher than the average GPA of an MIT senior (3.2). So on average, premeds are doing much better than the average MIT student GPA-wise.</p>
<p>Premed at MIT is hard. But everything at MIT is hard. Premed is no different.</p>
<p>I do think however that MIT has, in its faculty, a disproportionate number of people who believe being pre-med is selling oneself short (as opposed to wanting to do graduate school and research).</p>
<p>And the MIT curriculum is certainly not "geared" toward pre-meds, whereas Molecular and Cellular Biology at Harvard, to give one example, is rife with pre-med-(over)-friendliness.</p>
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I do think however that MIT has, in its faculty, a disproportionate number of people who believe being pre-med is selling oneself short (as opposed to wanting to do graduate school and research).
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<p>Based on my grand total of 5 days on campus thus far, I totally agree with this, but a bit on the student side as well. When I'd say I was course 7 and people asked if I was pre-med, the fact that I said no, I wanted to go into research instantly won me friends. So either I just happened to have met everyone who doesn't like premeds (including premeds themselves) and likes research instead, or there is at least a sizeable population who feels this way.</p>
<p>Just a thought. And considering I'm considering an MD/PhD, I guess I'm still a half pre-med maybe?</p>
<p>Academically, I don't think premeds have it particularly harder than any other student. It's a little harder for premeds to take the classes they need for the MCATs, since there is no single degree program that encompasses all of them (although a few come close), but I think the main difference is that there are fewer possible or "correct" paths into med school (as opposed to grad school/industry/elsewhere).</p>
<p>ducktape: M.D./Ph.D. programs are harder than premed. A better way to think of that is "premed and then some." ;)</p>
<p>And yes, I agree with those who are saying that some professors and students have a weirdly negative over-reaction to people saying they're premeds. But there's actually a lot of academic snobbery at MIT, which isn't just limited to premeds. Some people are stuck-up; it happens.</p>
<p>I think an even better way to think of it is "voluntary masochism."</p>
<p>But that's just me.</p>
<p>Pursuing an MD/PhD makes you all pre-med, unfortunately. Because a pre-med should be getting research experience anyway, the requirements of a pre-med wanting to get an MD/PhD aren't more than those of a pre-med just pursuing an MD.</p>
<p>Except for working harder in everything, perhaps. :p</p>
<p>And I warn you ahead of time that you might get a Course 7 advisor who starts off every meeting with his/her pre-med advisees with a "Have you switched out of pre-med yet?!" Like mine (but not to me)!</p>
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When I'd say I was course 7 and people asked if I was pre-med, the fact that I said no, I wanted to go into research instantly won me friends. So either I just happened to have met everyone who doesn't like premeds (including premeds themselves) and likes research instead, or there is at least a sizeable population who feels this way.
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<p>As an alum who was a non-premed life science major, I can tell you what's almost certainly (having seen similar conversations a million times myself) going on there. :) They're not selling the career goal of medicine short. They just have a negative mental image of premeds. There's this "stereotypical premed" personality type that many premeds do conform to, that the rest of MIT (and the non-premed life science majors and non-stereotypical premeds most of all) absolutely <em>loathes</em>. MIT student culture places a huge emphasis on collaboration over competition and refraining from grade grubbing.</p>
<p>We can argue all day (and I remember that people did, last time this topic came up) whether it's more of a good or a bad thing for premeds to act this way, and whether it's justified for other students to loathe their actions when they do. But the fact is that the loathing is there. The way you avoid it, as a premed, is by not acting like the stereotypical premed.</p>
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A better statistic would probably be # of frosh indicating they want to be premed and then # of them that get into med school when they graduate.
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</p>
<p>I understand what you're getting at, but there's no way to separate the people who actually came in wanting to be doctors and were deterred from it, from the people who came in as premeds because they were pressured, pigeonholed, hadn't seriously thought it over, or had no idea what they wanted to do and decided that being a doctor was a socially acceptable answer, and eventually stopped being premeds. I was one of the latter category.</p>
<p>To answer the original question, the vast majority of MIT premeds get into med school. And there are a lot of student activities that might interest an aspiring doctor, like Student Emergency Medical Services (the student EMT corps), and AMSA.</p>
<p>
Overheard student in 7.03 (Genetics): "I'm three points away from an A on this test. What the hell! I'm going to go yell at [the professor] after class. [Freaking ticked]."
My friend to me: "Wow. Guess who's probably pre-med?"</p>
<p>
I don't have any actual numbers on this, but based on the MIT premeds I knew, a lot of them went the MD/PhD route. I suspect that MIT sends many more students to MD/PhD programs than other schools do.</p>
<p>
One of the technicians in my lab (who plans to go to medical school) commented the other day at lunch that he might "pick up a PhD" along with his MD, because if you're already going to be in school, you "might as well." Needless to say, my eyes almost rolled out of my head. Word to the wise: this is not the way to think about a PhD in the life sciences.</p>
<p>And ducktape, I support you going into research, obviously. :D Let me know if you have any questions or need any advice.</p>
<p>It's all part of the same hierarchy of snobbery and the best you could do is to let it not affect too much the decisions you make. It's no more justifiable for biologists to resent pre-meds than it is for chemists and physicists to feel like they're better than biologists. Everyone works hard for the best grades they can get, and pre-meds are no different.</p>
<p>I don't think anyone loathes pre-meds just because they're pre-meds and not physicists or [insert self's major here], I think people loathe them (as a group, not any one individual) because the vast majority of them care about grades more than learning.</p>
<p>Excellent example of what I'm talking about: <a href="http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_9957224?nclick_check=1%5B/url%5D">http://www.mercurynews.com/ci_9957224?nclick_check=1</a></p>
<p>(My post is about pre-meds in general and not specifically pre-meds at MIT. Sorry bout sidetracking there.)</p>
<p>mollie, I'm going to take a rain check on the advice and question answering- but I will definitely be taking you up on the offer in the reasonably near-ish future.</p>
<p>I actually ended up with the MD/PhD thing the total opposite way of your technician. I've always (read: for like, 6 years, which is a third of my lifetime) wanted to go the research route. And then last summer I met an MD/PhD, thought he was totally awesome, and tucked it in the back of my brain. And then I went to a Pediatric tumor board meeting with some people from my lab the other day at our friendly neighboring hospital and got totally hooked on the idea again. I mean, being in lab you sometimes forget that you're not just doing research because you're curious- somewhere down the line, your research will directly impact the life of someone you may never meet. And I think it's cool to be able to still do research with that clinical perspective as well.</p>
<p>Whoa, total unexpected rant on ducktape's life goals.</p>
<p>Sorry to the OP for largely contributing to your thread's drifting off topic. Stopping now.</p>
<p>Well, let's see. Going into research your job is to learn, so of course as an undergrad "learning" becomes a pure and noble objective, thus your statement "but they care about grades more than learning" is supposed to show some kind of flaw in character from your perspective only. But the end goal of a pre-med is simply to be a doctor, to help people by putting to use a very specific kind of training. And, yeah, to get there, they have to place more emphasis on grades than the average student, but blame the system for demanding that, don't blame the pre-meds. Just as some researchers hate to be asked the annoying question of "why? what's it good for?", I can only imagine the "loathed" pre-meds being frustrated at constantly having to answer to the depth-of-understanding purists during their undergraduate years.</p>
<p>This subject comes up ever other week, but the perception of MIT as a particularly tough place for premeds just doesn't withstand a reality check. 90% of those serious enough to get premed advising get into medical school on their first try. Not too shabby. And most get into the very top medical schools. MIT also has a great joint program with Harvard Medical School (HST) and undergrads can take classes in that program as well. </p>
<p>As Mollie indicated few premeds at MIT are weeded out along the way because they find the premed route too hard. Let's be serious! No MIT student is going to be struggling with the basic pre-med requirements of calc, physics, chem or bio. Worried about taking two science classes per semester? Not really! Every MIT students takes at least 3 science classes per semester on average. The MIT core curriculum is actually pretty convenient for premeds. In most cases, you get all the requirements out of the way by the end of sophomore year and can take the MCATs before junior year. With Pass/NR first semester, exploratory subjects, UROP for credit, there are plenty of ways to manage a decent GPA without any grade grubbing. Since MIT has no ranking or latin honors, few curved classes, students don't compete against each other for grades. </p>
<p>So what can get a premed in trouble at MIT? </p>
<p>One is taking on too heavy a schedule. MIT students tend to relish a challenge and most vastly exceed the minimum number of units to graduate. Since there are no easy classes at MIT, you can easily run of hours in the day before you even notice. It will be harder to have a decent GPA if you are constantly struggling to keep up with the workload. </p>
<p>Some engineering majors also have few electives making scheduling trickier. Most premeds are in Course 5 (Chem), 7 (bio) or 9 (neuroscience) and increasingly Course 20 (Biological engineering). From the latest statistics, around 75% of premeds at MIT are female, possibly because they are overrepresented in these departments.</p>
<p>Another problem could be lack of planning. Ideally you should have your premed advising set by spring semester sophomore year. Deciding that medical school sounds like a good idea at the end of junior year is asking for trouble. </p>
<p>It is not surprising that a number of MIT students choose the MD/PhD route keeping a foot in both the research and the clinical worlds. But there also a lot of pure clinical careers that can greatly benefit from the strong science background that an MIT education offers. Radiology, neurology, cardiology, anesthesiology, surgery are all increasingly technical specialities. Our D is a premed and just completed her freshman year in Course 9. Her advisor is a Harvard Med prof. and runs a large imaging lab. She volunteers at Mass General where she has met a number of physicians who graduated from MIT. Most claimed that their MIT education helped them to rapidly absorb new knowledge along the way in medical school and beyond. After all drinking from the firehose is standard MIT fare!</p>
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This subject comes up ever other week, but the perception of MIT as a particularly tough place for premeds just doesn't withstand a reality check.
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<p>Actually, I think it does withstand that reality check, as long as we are careful about defining what we're talking about. I've said it before and I'll say it again, MIT (unfortunately) has a conspicuously lower rate of success of getting students into med school than do its peers (i.e. HYPS). </p>
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90% of those serious enough to get premed advising get into medical school on their first try.
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<p>Yet that's not relevant to the story, because at the end of the day, only about 77% of MIT students who apply to med school will get into one, compared to Harvard's roughly 90%. Now, sure, some of those MIT applicants probably aren't "serious" (the way you define it as being those who didn't get premed advising). But so what? Surely some of those Harvard applicants weren't "serious" either. Hence, it's a wash. Yet at the end of the day, something has to explain the discrepancy in admissions rates. </p>
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No MIT student is going to be struggling with the basic pre-med requirements of calc, physics, chem or bio.
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<p>Well, I don't think that too many students at any of HYPSM should be struggling with the basic premed requirements. </p>
<p>Yet not to put her on the spot (and I apologize to her in advance), but molliebatmit has freely admitted that she didn't get straight A's in all of her basic MIT science courses that would have comprised the premed core. In fact, I think she may have even said she once got a C. She has also freely admitted that she probably would have gotten better grades had she gone to another school.</p>
<p>The real problem, which I have identified numerous times, is that the med-school admissions process is simply too numbers-focused, and that tends to screw over those who go to tough schools like MIT. Even a super-genius like molliebatmit has freely admitted that she didn't get the world's greatest grades. That doesn't really hurt you if you're going to a PhD program like she did. But it unfortunately does hurt you when you're trying to get into med school.</p>