<p>I'm registering for my freshman-year college classes and would like to at least have the opportunity of taking the "old MCAT." I won't be taking calc-based physics; I took AP Physics B in high school but I won't be using my AP credit even if I pass (I don't have the scores yet). I also have no background in Biology since I took standard Biology freshman year of high school (bad advice given by a sibling). I've heard you don't need Calc on the MCAT and since I don't need it for the physics either I plan on taking it after the MCAT, is that ok? I think my schedule will go like this:</p>
<p>Fresh - Fall
Bio I
Chem Fundamentals I</p>
<p>Fresh - Spring
Bio II
Chem Fundamentals II</p>
<p>Soph - Fall
Physics I
Orgo I</p>
<p>Soph - Spring
Physics II
Orgo II</p>
<p>Soph - Summer
Biochem/Study for MCAT</p>
<p>September of Junior year (2014)
MCAT</p>
<p>Ideally, I would have taken Physics freshman year and Bio sophomore year but I changed majors and only the awful Physics teacher is available now.</p>
<p>Do not plan on taking the current MCAT–yet-- if you will be applying to medicla school in 2016 or later. AAMC and all US medical schools are considering requiring all applicants for 2016 or later to take the new 2015 MCAT. A binding policy decision will be issued in July 2012.</p>
<p>You have to be kidding me. That completely ruins my entire schedule, especially since they don’t decide until July and all classes will be filled by then. Would it be possible for me to apply to medical schools in 2015? That would be the spring semester of my Junior year and the fall semester of my Senior year.</p>
<p>Except in very rare cases, you will have present a final transcript showing you have earned your baccalaurate degree before you can matriculate to med school. You cannot apply for med school admission for fall 2015 if you won’t graduate from undergrad in May-June 2015 or earlier. You simply won’t be considered.</p>
<p>And applying for 2015 admission means submitting your application in summer 2014.</p>
<p>I wouldn’t be surprised if there is some way to finagle it but there is zero chance that that option is better than reevaluating things next month</p>
<p>There are no questions on the current MCAT that require a knowledge of Calculus and that will almost certainly be the case with the new MCAT as well. Calculus is not used in medical school. Even though I received a BS in Astronomy and Astrophysics and had taken many courses in Calculus, as a student at a U.S. allopathic medical school and as an intern in Internal Medicine and a resident in Nuclear Medicine I never needed Math beyond the high school Algebra level. In fact if I had used somehow found a way to slip some Calculus into my patient notes it just would have angered the attending physicians, none of whome, including those in the Department of Nuclear Medicine, had any understanding of Calculus.</p>
<p>The reason that some medical schools now require it is not to prepare you for anything you will encounter as an MD but to instead add an additional layer of weeder courses for premeds to fight through.</p>
<p>Besides acting as an additional weeder, a knowledge of Calc 1 is helpful when taking stats in med school. D1 reports that her classmates who didn’t have Calc had a terrible time passing the MS1 stats class. A number of her fellow students ended up having to retake it this summer.</p>
<p>I agree that there’s not any calculations for 99.9% of practicing physicians that will use calculus - though I would have guessed Nuclear Medicine might have been one field that did use it, along with RadOnc and some portions of radiology since physics is such an important part of that field and its boards. That said, there is some implicit understanding of the concept of “area under the curve” that is useful in a number of different situations. I frequently use the concept when explaining basic vent management strategies to med students and it can be helpful in understanding dosages and frequencies of medications. Is it absolutely critical to understanding those things? No, and it’s probably only the physiology geek in me that sees things in that light. (And for the record, I’m a decade out from my last calculus class…and I only got an A in Calc 1 because I had gotten a strong C in it during HS. At this point, I wouldn’t know where to begin if you put a calc problem set in front of me, so it’s not like I have a high level competency of calc).</p>
<p>But back on topic, OP, the safest choice for you will be to take the 2015 version of the MCAT. That’ll be the one you can be assured will be accepted by every school going forward. While as a freshman you can’t imagine not going straight through uninterrupted to med school, but other things might get in the way of that plan in the coming years. You never know what sort of opportunities you might find (research you want to pursue for a masters), what sort of stumbles you could have (bad grades happen to everyone), and what sort of passions will ignite (you may want to do the Peace Corps or Teach For America first) that would push med school back a couple years. With MCAT scores only being good for 3 years, taking it too early might force you to retake the “new” MCAT anyways, but the big risk is that schools will just refuse to accept the new MCAT so as to make comparisons between applicants apples to apples.</p>
…Wouldn’t that be a very compelling reason not to take the new MCAT? </p>
<p>Regardless, it seems I’ll have to take the new one anyway. I just wanted to avoid being the first class to take the new MCAT for obvious reasons. Thanks for all the input.</p>
<p>How common is it to have a stats class in MS? I’ve been going over the curriculum at several MSs as I prepare my application list for next spring and I’ve never seen a stats course. Is it just a part of a larger module?</p>
<p>At D1’s school, it was a separate module that ran concurrently with her medical coursework. (The school uses PBL and a system approach.) Just like ethics class does. If you look at the curriculum, neither ethics nor stats appear on the curricular timeline. Nevertheless, they do indeed take both. Ethics is year-long class that meets twice a week. Stats was 6 weeks and met daily.</p>
<p>We didn’t have a specific stats class, but covered stats during one of our “blocks” (2mos) when we spent a lot of time talking about research, research methods, journal articles, study designs, interpreting studies, etc.</p>
<p>All med schools will have some component of stats during the first 2 years. A variety of biostats will show up on each step of the USMLE and most specialty board exam. And of course, some times those things do matter when treating patients.</p>
<p>@ Bigredmed, there are very complicated calculations using high level Mathematics and Physics in Radiation Oncology and Nuclear Medicine but they are all done by medical physicists with degrees in Physics, not clinicians with MDs.</p>