Hi @AMJ2021 . My daughter is a rising Junior at Brown and is premed, so I asked her about your questions. I’m also going to hook in @Meddy, who’s daughter is a rising Junior at Amherst, although not a premed, but maybe she can help you with some questions.
My D’s first response was, “There’s no way she is going to have enough time to take all the classes she wants. She will end up with zero free classes. Find out if Amherst has minors, because maybe she should minor in linguistics at Amherst”
So let me break this down for you. At Brown, as you know there are no core requirements, except 1 writing requirement that can be satisfied by some of the classes you would be taking anyway if you were to concentrate in linguistics. The sticking point is that you only take 4 classes a semester. If you want to go the premed route, you will have to take the following courses (or AP out of them) while you are in the US: 4 chem classes, 2 physics classes, 2 math classes, and 2 biologies with labs. If you will be a biophysics concentrator, you will have to take additional bio and physics classes, but for med school application purposes you can take those additional bio/physics classes abroad if you want as long as those additional classes aren’t pre-requisites or co-requisites required for your concentration.
My D said that, regardless of where you go to college, if you are premed and if you don’t want to take a gap year between college and med school (which is STRONGLY recommended), then the only time for you to go abroad other than summers is Junior Fall. That’s because you will need to take the MCAT Junior Spring, and then you will have interviews (hopefully) Senior Fall and Spring so you’d want to be in the US for that.
With regard to Brown in particular, she said that the best way of taking the premed classes is to have taken AP Chemistry in HS and get a 4 or a 5. That would enable you to skip the first Chem class in the sequence, then you’d take Chem 330 (Equilibrium, Rate & Structure) Freshman Fall (this is only offered in the Fall), Chem 350 (Orgo I) Freshman Spring, Chem 360 (Orgo 2) Sophmore Fall, and Bio 280 (biochem) Sophmore Spring.
I mentioned that my D is a premed, but her major is not in the sciences. She feels that she is not really able to take advantage of Brown’s Open Curriculum, because by the time she takes the premed classes and the classes needed for her major, she just doesn’t have very many open classes left. If her concentration were in the sciences, she feels like she would have a much better opportunity to take advantage of the Open Curriculum. As it is, she can’t imagine doing premed, a non-science concentration AND another concentration, as then every class she would take would be a required class.
As a parent, I wish my D had just chosen her existing concentration and didn’t take premed classes, and instead did a one or two year post-bacc program to get in all the premed requirements. On her behalf, I regret that she wasn’t able to take full advantage of the Open Curriculum, which is such an incredible advantage to Brown and Amherst. It lets you try out different classes and see what you like and what you don’t like. It can open whole new avenues to you, and who knows, you might decide you’d rather be a lawyer or a business consultant rather than a doctor. Just my 2 cents.
One other thing that I didn’t really talk about is that you CAN study abroad in the summers and that it’s during the study abroad programs that you could try out all new types of courses. But if you go that route, and you really want to stay on the premed track without taking a gap year, you will have to make sure you get in all of your doctor shadowing, clinical volunteering and non-clinical volunteering during the school year. So you’ll really have to keep your eye on the ball.
