You are absolutely correct. That has been discussed here before…but someone above was implying that on-line course through their home school might not be designated as on-line. Therein lies the ethical rub for me. Of course, I am honest to fault…brutally honest…gets me in trouble frequently.
“I am honest to fault…brutally honest…gets me in trouble frequently.”
With a name like Kelley…well let’s just say brutal honesty is an Irish thing. It has gotten me in trouble also.
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Some med schools specifically prohibit on-line/correspondence credit for the pre-reqs others do not. So, while your mother school may not list the course as “on-line” or “correspondence”, in my humble opinion, it is being deceitful to not acknowledge this or to carry on the facade of the course being an in-house version.
Ok, but the AMCAS application does not have a place for listing whether courses were online or not. Nor is the AMCAS form designed to accomodate the slighest amount of non-standard input. It barely holds up as a completely standardized application to begin with! It is filled with redundancies, ambiguities, and inconsistent instructions, the staff barely know what they’re doing, and there is no room for unsolicited commentary. Don’t even try to go down that road or your app won’t be processed til january. Secondary apps don’t ask about online coursework either, and admissions offices are all but closed off to correspondence from the outside, ie applicants. Those applications might as well be locked up in the Tower of London for all the transparency and personal input this process allows. Who knows what bureaucratic limbo you’d wind up in if you volunteered the info that “I took a course online”?? Also I cannot imagine this question coming up in interviews. And if it did, it would be in the form of an ambush, which isn’t fair. So… while I agree with the gist of what you’ve just said, how on earth can the well-intentioned applicant get such a subtle point across? I have found that is hard enough in this process just to emphasize the basics, like my name and undergraduate school!
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In the future, I suspect that attitudes will change as more & more major, real universities begin offering academically rigorous on-line course. However, to date, “correspondence” still carries the stigma of easy ‘A’ or blow off credit. That is something, if at all possible, tobe avoided.
Are you suggesting… gasp!.. that medicine changes with the times?? Hee hee! I beg to differ. If anything I expect to see schools crack down on this loophole as soon as they really catch on to it.
In all other respects, I’d say your post is right on!
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Some med schools specifically prohibit on-line/correspondence credit for the pre-reqs others do not. So, while your mother school may not list the course as “on-line” or “correspondence”, in my humble opinion, it is being deceitful to not acknowledge this or to carry on the facade of the course being an in-house version.
How is it not an in-house version? Just because you don’t physically go to a classroom every other day for lecture does not mean it’s not an in-house class. It’s not a correspondance/independent study course that I was discussing. This particular course is primarily for students of this university, but is available for other students as well, and you still physically go to a lab and classroom for exams (unless you’re not from this university in which case you are proctored for exams). It just uses modern technology as the lecture format instead.
I’m not talking about not being honest here. However, if your school does not consider a class to be correspondence/independent study why would adcoms have an issue with it??? And as I understand it there is not a separate category for online courses on the application/secondary materials anyway.
Besides I wasn’t suggesting taking this course as a way to get around those schools that absolutely prohibit any correspondence/independent study classes anyway. I was suggesting a way to avoid the stigma associated with online courses for those that do accept some online courses but prefer not to see them. But the fact remains that I’m not talking about a run-of-the-mill correspondence/independent study course anyway. I’m talking about a class that doesn’t use a physical classroom (other than for exams) and is more rigorous than the class that does use the physical classroom. You actually need a higher grade in the prereqs to register for this class than you do for the other versions of it.
–Jessica, UCCS
Hmmmmm.