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June 29, 2004
A: FROM MENTOR SUZAN SONG
IN IL
This is a really common question :) The bottom line is: do
what you like, and
don't live a life trying to please others - whether it be
parents, med
admissions, friends, etc. If you love Biology but think med
admissions prefers
non-science majors, do Biology. If you love History, but think
you need to
major in Biology for med school, you're also making the wrong
choice.
I just finished med school, and was on the med admissions
committee. Yes, it's
good to have well rounded students - but you don't want an
entire class of non-
science majors. We also want a well-rounded class: some that
are science, some
that are non-science.
Well-rounded is ambiguous anyhow. You can major in Biochemistry
and really
excel in the sciences. Does this mean you aren't well rounded?
Not if your
outside interests include being a rock climber and loving
celebrity trivia.
The reason for being well-rounded is because medical school
is intense. It's a
strange experience, and is 4 years of science/medicine. So
you WILL NEED some
kind of reprieve - you need an outlet. That's where outside
interests come in.
The person I most worry about is someone who has worried so
much about getting
INTO medical school that they haven't thought about who they
are as a person.
Then come med school, they don't "know themselves"
and have an extremely
difficult time, since now no one cares if you do this or that
- it's all about
you learning for the sake of learning.
I don't want to sound harsh at all, but I want others to learn
from my
mistakes - I endured 3 years of research during undergrad,
just bc I thought it
was what med school wanted. I hated my lab, and spent more
time there being
bored, when I could have been out ...say... rock climbing
:) Turns out that
the research hurt me in the end: I interviewed w/a nobel prize
winner who asked
about my research publication. Since I couldn't talk about
it with passion (as
I had no passion for research) he could tell right away why
I did the research,
and was NOT impressed.
So. Again. Follow what you like. Focus on YOURSELF. Put as
much time into
getting to know yourself as you do on how to get into med/grad
school. You are
definitely worth the time and energy. The strongest applicant
is one that truly
knows herself... and we can tell that right away. It's why
we want mature
students (the average age for my in-coming class was 26 years
old). We want
people that can handle the stress - you can handle it well
by knowing yourself
well. Hope this wasn't too floofy. Please feel free to contact
me whenever.
*********************
June 28, 2004
A: FROM MENTOR JOAN LUSK IN
RI
I wonder if you're quoting _me_ on the value of majoring in
unusual
subjects; I've been known to say as much. The bottom line
is that
you should major in something you love. If that is biology
or
another traditional "premed" science, fine. But
if you love a
subject in the arts - literature, history, music, whatever
- you can
major in that and still take all the premed courses as electives.
There are only about 10 required courses in a premed curriculum,
out
of 30 to 40 in four years of college. Your major would also
take up
10 to 15 courses - but there's room for totally separate,
non-overlapping major and premed courses and _still_ some
totally
unconnected electives.
An interest in medicine often does include an interest in
the
biological sciences (thank goodness!), and the majority of
pre-meds
do major in those. The 'gamesmanship' angle to a different
major is
this: imagine you're on the med school admission committee
reading
your 500th application from a bio major who's done well, done
all the
right things... can you distinguish her from the last 499
and the
500+ still to be read? You can't help remember better the
application from the musician or art historian who also completed
the
premed curriculum and well enought on the MCAT's. I don't
think the
MCAT's are more sophisticated than the basic pre-med curriculum
itself. But you can't deliberately choose your major just
to be
different - it won't work, you won't succeed in it, unless
you have a
passion for that subject. And at the same time, you need to
convince
admission committees that you do want to dedicate your life
to
medicine.
The reason I wonder if my own words about the music major
are coming
back to me is that many years ago, in a conversation with
our Dean
for advising premeds, I learned that 100% of the music majors
(all
two of them) who had applied to medical school had been accepted,
while the acceptance rate among the hundreds of bio majors
was
significantly less than 100%. Clearly the sample size was
too small
to justify drawing conclusions - but as you may have noticed,
I like
to make jokes with just a grain of truth to work with. But
I do get
tired of students whining that the demands of the pre-med
curriculum
prevent them from studying anything else. That's not true.
May you love whatever you do in life, in college and beyond.
********************
A: FROM MENTOR RACHEL HUTTER
IN FL (contributed by a friend of Rachel's who is a doctor
and entered medical school with a degree in biomedical engineering.)
The [medical school admissions staff members] do like you
to be well rounded, but that does not mean you have to major
in something non-medical. If you major in something like music,
you would have to take a lot of electives, or even extra classes
in sciences to be ready for the MCATs and more importantly
medical school. The well-rounded thing I think focuses more
on that you have other interests besides medicine and biology.
They want people who are well-rounded and have people and
social skills not just people who excel in the science class
room. I think it is important you do things other than school
-- volunteer, play music, play sports, have hobbies. This
shows that you do well in school, but are also balanced.
I majored in biochemistry, but also did well in other classes
-- philosophy, theology, english. I also spent a lot of time
volunteering, participating in clubs, playing intramurals.
In my medical school class the people without a science background
definitely had a harder time in some classes like biochemistry
or pharmocology because they had to learn the basics as well
as the more advanced information.
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