Hello everyone,
I’ve been doing some research in pre-med courses and happen to ran into this program called Integrated Science Program at Southern California University of Health Science. The program allow you to complete one of your pre-med course in a month in which class start from 8:30-6:30pm Saturday and Sunday. This seem to be a very attractive program for nontraditional students who wish to work and complete their pre-med courses over the weekend, however, I cannot seem to find any testimony from student who successfully aced the program and got accepted to medical school. Anyone have any knowledge or experience with this type of program?
@drzoidburg wrote:
…This seem to be a very attractive program for nontraditional students who wish to work and complete their pre-med courses over the weekend, however, I cannot seem to find any testimony from student who successfully aced the program and got accepted to medical school…
You are on the right track. This is why I decided not to go with the program. I’m not dropping a couple grand per course if there are no testimonials or success stories. Better the local community college than an unknown program.
A few things come to mind.
First, what do the course numbers look like? This might sound weird, but if, for instance, your chemistry courses still start with “CHEM” or “CHM” it might look better than “ISP2020” or something “strange” like that.
Also, you could always contact the program and ask them for:
- previous graduates
- a list of medical schools which have accepted them as prereqs
If there's a medical school associated with the institution offering this program, I'd check with them to see if they'd accept it.
If not, maybe contact the admissions office of a state school in your state and ask them for their opinion of said program.
A few other thoughts.
Schools tend to be very “conservative” when it comes to the prereqs. Might be better to not rock the boat on this and stick with the 4-year universities or established community colleges.
Not all science classes are equal. For instance, is a biology class for allied health or is it biology for life science majors? Most college clearly differentiate the two.
Lastly, consider your ability to perform. Compressing something like orgo 1 into 1 month is going to be a challenge. Doubly so because you need everything you learn in orgo 1 in orgo 2.
Big note from the second point above. Schools may not even count classes that are meant for an allied health or another specific health program. I know for sure some schools won’t count basic sciences that aren’t taught by the specific department, ie BIO100 vs NURS110 or whatever. Can’t remember which schools I saw like that, but there are some.
The courses are named as Bio, CHEM, ORG and PHYS. Anywho, thank you for the response this seem to be too risky to be spending thousands of dollar on.
Southern California University of Health Science is chiefly a chiropractic college, if I am not mistaken.
An acquaintance of mine used courses at ISP in Whittier to get her science prerequisites for optometry school. She went with ISP after getting marginal science grades at Long Beach State University. That acquaintance is now an optometry student at Marshall B. Ketchum University, formerly known as Southern California College of Optometry.