<p>I had a biology teacher state that pre-med students have a misconception of what it is to be pre-med. According to him, although it won't help you in admissions per se, being a science major drastically helps you in med school since you are covering a years worth of material in two month throughout the duration of med school. </p>
<p>So i have a question targeted towards those in med school majoring in a non-science. Did you guys find it a disadvantage to not major in a science while in undergrad? Thanks.</p>
<p>I can't speak from experience, and it very much depends on the individual, but I think in general the first two years or so are generally slightly easier on those that are used to rigorous science courses, but the latter two years where students are interacting with patients might be a time when non-science majors can excel more easily. This is based on the premise that non-science majors might be more personable and outgoing instead of the type that sequesters themselves in their rooms all weekend to ace an exam the following week.</p>
<p>This is all very general, but it's largely irrelevant--do the best you can in a major that you enjoy. Most students that make it into medical school graduate unless they change their minds and drop out. Taking an upper level science courses against your will just to make medical school (maybe) a bit easier during your first two years isn't worth it.</p>
<p>I majored in science but also minored in music and philosophy and am now a second year med student writing about my experiences in med school and undergrad.</p>
<p>Taking upper level science courses helped me tremendously as it laid a foundation on which I could learn the material that's been presented to us at lightning pace, courses like Immunology and upper level physiology, which stressed many non-heavy-science major friends of mine.</p>
<p>With that said, I have many non-science major med student classmates, and they're doing perfectly fine. Granted, they probably had a little shock in the first semester, but they had taken the required pre-med courses and knew what it would be like, just not the volume. Over time we've all adjusted accordingly.</p>
<p>You don't have to be to be a science major to take upper level science courses that seem interesting and helpful, by the way.</p>
<p>I'm an Anthropology major, and am in the middle of a year of Biochem (the first semester was taught by the professor who does the medical school's Biochem class). There's nothing stopping you from taking higher level courses yourself, and since quite a few medical schools recommend Biochem, that's not a bad place to start.</p>
<p>I was a philosophy major in undergrad and my only science courses were the pre-med requisites. I am now starting the second semester of med school, and I've had no problems whatsoever. In fact, I did better than most of my science major classmates and honored all of my courses.</p>
<p>There really is no huge advantage in medical school to having been a science major in undergrad. Yes, there is a lot of volume, but everyone has to adjust to that. They did actually know what they were doing when they made the list of pre-reqs :) - those courses are truely the only ones you need as a background to med school courses.</p>
<p>Even biochem is not as useful as people make it out to be. We learn a different, more clinically-oriented biochemistry in med shcool. I never took it in undergrad, but my friends who were biochem majors have told me that its not very similar and their only advantage is that they will have an easier time of re-memorizing some of the pathways we have to know.</p>
<p>So really, if you have time or if its part of your major, there's certainly nothing wrong with taking lots of upper level science courses. But if you're taking them to get ahead in med school, dont bother. Your sanity and a higher stress level isn't worth it :)</p>
<p>I honestly can't fathom a way in which taking extra science courses would have made a bit of difference. One, I got a BS (one of the limited few Sociology majors from my school to ever graduate with a BS), so more than half of my classes were science or math already. If I remember correctly, to get my bio minor I had to take 2 extra bio courses that I wouldn't had taken otherwise as part of my premed requirements (my med school is one of the few that requires biochem and genetics though as part of their admissions criteria). To get the BS, I had take one additional science course beyond that, which was anatomy, which I would have taken anyways. I had plenty of semesters with two science courses plus lab and also several where I had 3 science courses.</p>
<p>Had I been a science major, I might have been forced to take maybe another 3-4 science classes...what is that really going to amount to? What lesson might I have learned?</p>
<p>That's where I see it. Pre-meds already take a lot of science and math, there's nothing inherent about science courses which make them more rigorous and lead to some sort of epiphany.</p>
<p>Honestly, I have pretty average to mediocre grades in med school. But it's definitely not because I was a sociology major. If I had just gone to a school where grades weren't based off of the class average and Z-scores, my grades would be very different...</p>
<p>Personally, I so many issues with the USNWR rankings that even on the research side, I don't think the rankings are worth the paper they're printed on. On the 'primary care' side of things, I think that having the single largest measure be how many students are going into Internal medicine, peds or general surgery misses the point when so many people are going to subspecialize at the end of that training (for example, I'm going into peds and so count as primary care grad, but I have absolutely zero intent to practice general peds, most likely pursuing a critical care fellowship). On the research rankings, I think that replacing "% of students going into primary care" with "NIH research funding" overlooks other funding sources and doesn't reflect the actual impact on students. The two markers used are simply easily found objective numbers trying to predict subjective student experiences and outcomes.</p>
<p>If you mean "top" school by the fact that I feel I'm well trained and ready to go on to residency and be an independent decision maker in the caring of patients, then yes, I go to a top school. But really, I think (and hope) that is a broadly applicable definition of "top" for US med schools.</p>