I introduced myself a little in a recent post, about being a 36-yo career changer who wants to be a doc and have a family too. I’ve got a BS in civil engineering from a lib arts school with a decent GPA, and an MS and PhD in environmental engineering with a great GPA. So I’m covered in terms of math and lib arts requirements, and had a semester of gen chem and a year of physics (albeit a while ago).
My dream medical school requires a year of biology and 2 years of chemistry, to include “college level chemistry and biology, biochemistry (recommended), molecular genetics (recommended), cell biology/cell physiology, although applicants are not required to take courses with these specific titles”. I’ve also reviewed the MSAR to see what other schools require, and there are similar reqs at other schools I’m interested in, although most of them are more specific about requiring organic.
So I’ve finished a year of gen chem. My plan is to take a a semester of cell/molecular bio, a semester of genetics, a year of orgo, and maybe an intro to biochem class. I think that should meet the reqs, and anything else I need for the MCAT, I will self-teach.
But I hear about other students taking full post-baccs with a lot of other classes, taking other bio classes like immunobiology or neuroscience, for example, or other chem classes. Is there a reason I should consider more classes? I do not expect to need a GPA boost, and I’m not sure why I would need to take anything beyond the med school requirements and what I need to prep for MCAT. Thoughts? Am I missing something?
More than the prereqs is not required, and plenty of people get accepted into medical school without more than the minimum. You don’t need 37 pieces of flair… There are schools now that actually don’t have hard and fast requirements. Whatever you need to learn to do well on the MCAT is what you should take, aside from the stuff the schools actually want you to take.
In all honesty, aside from it being a prereq, I haven’t used organic chemistry beyond knowing that there are didn’t ways the same molecule can “flip” (ie R vs S), and that knowledge really isn’t important unless you truly care about why 2 different medicines are slightly different (in my opinion). Classes like genetics and immunology would be helpful, but really only a basic understanding of them is necessary to help dampen the force of the fire hose when you get into medical school. Medical school will teach you pretty much everything they want you to know. Knowing some of it beforehand is helpful, but in all honesty, the undergrad level book knowledge will only carry you so far. Take them if you want to, but they aren’t necessary if you are a strong student that can catch onto the subject matter quickly (true statement for all of years 1 and 2 of med school). The only thing I wish I had known better was actually basic cell biology. If there is a medically-related biochemistry course, that may be worth taking. Foundational biochem is necessary for med biochem, but Step 1 is a lot more specific to biochemical problems leading to pathology vs memorizing the order of enzymes in the Kreb’s cycle.
I went to my dream school for my graduate program. It was great but, all the schools are great. Why is this school your dream school? In the end, you’ll be a doctor and where you go to school doesn’t matter much - unless you want to do research…
You don’t need more than the minimum to get in but it can certainly be helpful to have a little more in terms of easing into the medical school curriculum. But as kennymac has written “you don’t need 37 pieces of flair” to appeal to admission committees. And of course how you do on the MCAT will indicate your level of preparation/mastery of the science you need to know to handle a medical school curriculum.