<p>“Taking a summer class is less ideal” is an old time “CC wisdom” that was dated back to BRM/BDM days.</p>
<p>I do not want to argue about this one way or another here. But it appears to me that there is a tendency that there are more students who attend very top colleges (ivies, Stanford, JHU) take summer classes and it does not harm them much, if any at all. If this is true, it is as if the students from the very top colleges could be forgiven for such a small “sin” (taking summer classes) but the students from the “more average” colleges had better be more careful. This may lead us to question another long time “CC wisdom”: It does not matter which college you go to if your goal is to get into a med school (maybe even the top med school), not i-banking/consulting.</p>
<p>I think there are just multiple roads to the Rome!</p>
<p>Unless you are into splitting-hair business, that’s as close to verbatim as it gets.</p>
<p>The joy some of us get, in taking a common sense observation and projecting that as some tremendous insight, is really astounding. I bet no one here, as much as they try to project otherwise, has any more or less insight into how ADCOMs think. I clearly said that a lot of this conjecture. I also said that according to my son’s pre-health advisor (whom I trust more than anybody here to know this stuff), as long as you don’t take too many summer courses and as long as they are taken at a good school its OK. But who has got time to read a post carefully, when there is a fantastic and insightful observation to make, right? </p>
<p>That, a course taken as part of a regular semester load is safer than taking the same course over summer is common sense. Its obvious that, the poster has an exigency that is making him/her explore other options.</p>
<p>lol. You, just don’t get it , do you? One more try. </p>
<p>Our language is as nuanced as this process. Verbatim. Explicitly. Precise words used imprecisely by you. You said that med schools said it was “O.K.” to take biochem online. Mayo said biochem was the only online prerequisite they would “accept”. That is not “verbatim” . That is not “explicitly”. </p>
<p>It is not “O.K.” to take biochem online. Period. It may not kill every candidate at every school, but it is not “O . K .” Capische? </p>
<p>It’s not “hair splitting”. It’s understanding the process.</p>
<p>Having interviewed applicants and sat in on adcom meetings, discussions of 1st year class profiles with our school’s board of trustees, and the relationships i have with the dean of the graduate school, director of my mstp, and dean of med school admissions, I like to think I do know a little better than the average poster - at least when it comes to how my school handles things.</p>
<p>I agree with Kal that too many courses won’t kill you, but that still doesn’t mean they’re viewed the same, and unfortunately, med school admissions is very much a splitting hairs business.</p>
<p>As you kind of allude to, the OP has other circumstances to consider - so maybe it’s worth the hit (which could be anywhere from small to huge) to take a summer course, but all situations are different. This is the benefit of the advisor, the advisor knows the whole situation, we don’t.</p>
<p>So to the OP: is your application tanked if you take summer courses? Probably not. Is it viewed exactly the same as a class during the year? No.</p>
Common sense, but elegantly stated I still hold firm in my belief (and the advise my son got from his pre-health advisor) that summer courses, if done in moderation at your own school or a comparable one, will not be deal breakers. If anybody has first hand experiences or an insight into the decision making process (beyond common sense and conjecture), I am all ears. </p>
<p>From my son’s experiences through this cycle, I doubt if a biochemistry class ever becomes a deal-breaker for any application. A tremendous number applicants that got interview invites at one top school in the first couple of weeks don’t even get secondary apps at some schools. And I bet its more than whether a biochem class was taken in summer or not, at play with those applications. </p>
<p>The most amazing thing I found out about the application process is how seemingly random some of the decisions are. A lot depends on how a reviewer reads a given application. Reviewers are human beings with all their biases/lapses. An interviewer at Yale explained the process they use: each application gets 3 reads. If all of them say yes it gets an II. If one of them says no, it goes to the hold pile. All it takes is one guy/gal who has a different sense of what is “good” for you to get screwed. </p>
<p>
Yes, I get it. You, on the other hand, can’t seem to help yourself from dancing around the nuances. You can climb down now from your high horse of nuances, because we are all just as good if not better at understanding these nuances. Your original post asked me to show you a school that said it was ok to take biochem online and I showed, did I not? I did not say that there are schools that consider an online course as an exact equivalent to a class room course, did I? I see another lecture on how I don’t understand the nuances of language coming. ;)</p>
<p>Also, I am glad the hundreds are SDNs who take UC Berkeley online biochem class and successfully get into medical schools didn’t listen to your “it is not O.K. to take biochem online. Period” stuff.</p>
<p>I would guess the OP may have long gone from this thread and leave us (mostly CC parents who have kids on this medicine track) “premed parenting hormone raging” about all these hard-to-confirm “CC wisdom.”</p>
<p>When I mentioned this heated discussion to my wife who has never and will never visit either CC or SDN, her comment is amusing to me: How come it would often take the parents who have kids having been through the premed/med school process a much longer time to cool down on any topic related to premed?</p>
<p>My wild guess is that we may tend to commit more of our energy to our premed kids than the parents whose kids choose other career paths which require only BS/BA or at most a short stint on MS. Whether we parents could actually help or not is totally another issue: It could help but it could not - it could even hurt in some situation if the family dynamics do not favor parent’s involvement.</p>
<p>After all, more debt/time/labor/sleep-starvation in the long grueling training is needed for anyone to pursue this medicine career path and it keeps all of us nervous and sometimes more up-tight about it.</p>
<p>BTW, I notice that the parents who send their kids to big name colleges could be affected by the similar syndrome. Or the parents whose kids have got a free ride in some prestigious honor programs. Heck, a private music teacher DS had many years ago still has very sweet memory about her ivy league education (not even including the UG years there)!30+ years later!</p>
You are probably onto something here. With the way I have been involved with my son’s admission process, I probably will suffer from a huge withdrawal syndrome, when its all done. One thing is for sure, I won’t linger around on CC dishing out my washed out knowledge to unsuspecting pre-meds.</p>
<p>Story about taking classes at a lower level school… I still remember what an MIT alum and parent told me about being a premed at MIT. He said if D was interested in premed, it might be better to go elsewhere. His reasoning - his son had to repeat orgo at Harvard because he flunked it at MIT and survived with a B at H (son was senior with a couple of admissions in Texas and Louisiana med schools).</p>
<p>Pre Recs during the summer are very acceptable if you have a good reason. If you have a good reason it is looked at no differently as one done during the normal time period, I know several Harvard, Stanford Med School grads who did and have voted to accept many who did.</p>
<p>Good reasons (= no stigmata) are :
late decision to go into medicine
I wanted to do summer abroad and could only do if I took organic chem in the summer
I needed to get it out of the way so I could take other classes needed for my major.</p>
<p>ps. I have also been on multiple med school admit committees and have many friends who are</p>
<p>Wow, guys. A bit more washed up knowledge here. </p>
<p>I think IWBB and Princess Dad are correct and that could be taken to correlate with other comments, but the point is, "Yes, sometimes there is a very valid reason to take a non regular term class. OK, fine. BUT, there is NOT always a reason that it is OK. Don’t do it unless there is a very strong reason which can be made obvious without sounding like making an excuse. </p>
<p>A real risk would to have a generic post online saying that it is fine to take online or summer courses, something that any old applicant might take as true. Most applications can handle a bump or two, but with MCAT, GPA, LORs, ECs, etc., MOST applicants would be better off not taking a summer class, UNLESS as PDad says, they can show a valid reason so they don’t give the impression they are looking at easier options.</p>
<p>If your kid has had an unusually productive application cycle, it may be difficult to understand the situation for other average applicants. If you are not from CA it may be difficult to realize how difficult it is to gain entry there. So much of the process is an unknown and it is never good to be neurotic (SDN?!), but it is smart to be careful and not dilute the strength of your application unless there is any weakness.</p>
I still hold firm in my belief (and the advise my son got from his pre-health advisor) that summer courses, if done in moderation at your own school or a comparable one, will not be deal breakers. If anybody has first hand experiences or an insight into the decision making process (beyond common sense and conjecture), I am all ears. </p>