Advisor says need 18 credit-load semester to look good...is this true?

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aynmar

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This just seems stupid to me. Being a nontrad student, who works and has a family, why is regular fulltime status (12-15 credit hours a semester with science and labs - I mean HELLO organic chemistry!) not enough? Especially to squeeze in some volunteer/shodowing work. Is this really true, or is my advisor a psycho. I just want to get good grades.....bogging myself done just seems like shooting myself in the foot.
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It's true that adcomms like to see you carry a heavy load and succeed, but that load need not all be academic. Part of the load may be work, or volunteering, studying for the MCAT, research, or family responsibilities.

So having a successful application means being very busy and still earning near-straight As to prove you have good time mangement skills. I believe your advisor is mistaken, having a bad day, or less familiar with advising nontrads.
 
aynmar said:
This just seems stupid to me. Being a nontrad student, who works and has a family, why is regular fulltime status (12-15 credit hours a semester with science and labs - I mean HELLO organic chemistry!) not enough? Especially to squeeze in some volunteer/shodowing work. Is this really true, or is my advisor a psycho. I just want to get good grades.....bogging myself done just seems like shooting myself in the foot.
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Don't take 18 credits. A lot of adcoms are ******ed and will prefer the student with the 6 credits per semester with As over the superstudent who risks a lower gpa by taking 5000 science classes in one semester.

Of course you're not going to have the same consistency in getting As with a lot of science classes in one semester over taking just a few.

At the end of the day, they'll say to you you must be ******ed and unqualified to practice medicine over the jerkwad who cruised through with 2 "hardcore" science community college classes, and had take home exams and nap time during lab.

So given this, play them by their own game and take easy classes on the side. You know the classes I'm talking about. Just classes to make you to look like you were really in class 18 hours a week and studying 50 hour a week for bull**** that doesn't interest you, but were really fluff. You're gonna have to do some research/reading on ratemyprofeessors/scooping to see what the culture/situation is your school as every school is unique, but talking to students helps A LOT. And get old exams AND HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENTS AND QUIZZES AND PAPER from students this semester and the past semester for classes that you will be taking in the future.

Always err towards the path of least resistance and you will enter medical school.

Remember, you can truly prove yourself now or you can really prove yourself in medical school and we all know that this is an unnecessary game. You go to Europe or Asia they don't make you go through the bull**** of a college degree, and they start you in medical school at the age of 17 after high school. And I've only heard good things of their doctors being BETTER than American medical students not to mention their residencies are more laid back with no crazy call schedules and 500 hour work weeks.

It's also a reason why the AMA is suddenly realizing that its greedy grip on the number of medical schools in America needs to be changed so that ugly kids like such can get a seat when they rejected from 28/30 medical schools they applied to.

motivator08fea74ed1b90d6ce7d2868cb0322f89250bba52.jpg


http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/15/education/15medschools.html

Also your premed advisor is stupid.
 
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Yep.

That's about the long and the short of it. And maybe a little bit of the F@ck You! of it.

But. The T's got your back on this one.

When in doubt. Trust no one without a mohawk. They just might be some dumb sheep in an adviser's clothing.
 
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As long as you're doing SOMETHING else during this time - and it sounds like you are, with volunteering, shadowing, etc - NO ONE WILL NOTICE. I think adcoms have better things to do than add up how many hours you're taking vs what else you're doing when you already have a college degree - at least this has been my experience, FWIW.

Grades matter much, much more.

Good luck to you-
 
aynmar said:
This just seems stupid to me. Being a nontrad student, who works and has a family, why is regular fulltime status (12-15 credit hours a semester with science and labs - I mean HELLO organic chemistry!) not enough? Especially to squeeze in some volunteer/shodowing work. Is this really true, or is my advisor a psycho. I just want to get good grades.....bogging myself done just seems like shooting myself in the foot.
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As you said, 12-15 hours per semester is a full load. It is not necessary to take more credits to "look good." If you are taking a full load of classes (and doing well in them), working, volunteering, shadowing, and seeing your family more than once per month, then academically, you will be able to manage fine in med school. Balancing all of those activities you mentioned while acing your classes would look pretty darn good to this adcom, at any rate.

Concerning your advisor, he is perhaps inexperienced with advising nontrad students like you. It may be a good idea to find someone else at your school who has a better understanding of your needs in terms of preparing for the application process.

Best of luck to you. :)
 
Nasrudin said:
Yep.

That's about the long and the short of it. And maybe a little bit of the F@ck You! of it.

But. The T's got your back on this one.

When in doubt. Trust no one without a mohawk. They just might be some dumb sheep in an adviser's clothing.
Click to expand...

I don't understand half of what you say sometimes, but for some reason, I like your posts. A lot.
 
No.
The advisor doesn't know what he/she is talking about.
It is a lot better to take fewer credits and do better (grade wise and learning wise) than to overload and not do as well. the adcom doesn't even have time to sit there and add up how many credits/semester you took...nor will they cut you slack if your grades suck.
 
QofQuimica said:
As you said, 12-15 hours per semester is a full load. It is not necessary to take more credits to "look good." If you are taking a full load of classes (and doing well in them), working, volunteering, shadowing, and seeing your family more than once per month, then academically, you will be able to manage fine in med school. Balancing all of those activities you mentioned while acing your classes would look pretty darn good to this adcom, at any rate.

Concerning your advisor, he is perhaps inexperienced with advising nontrad students like you. It may be a good idea to find someone else at your school who has a better understanding of your needs in terms of preparing for the application process.

Best of luck to you. :)
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The trick here is that people like QofQuimica and Nasrudin are better advisers to you than your official one...the former is a "real" ADCOM with a great perspective and the latter is what we all hope to face someday (those of us who aren't full of crap, at least).

Anyway, take your pre-med adviser with a grain of salt. True, it's better to take on as much as you can handle, as long as you can do it well. Med school is not necessarily academically tough in terms of straight intellect, but you'll have to master more material in a few short months than you did in two years of more "in depth" undergrad classes.

Proving that you can juggle fifteen things at once might be more valuable than a 4.0 in every semester, with a few hours of volunteering and EC's sprinkled in. For traditional undergrads, that means that they may need 18 credits and a load of "real" EC's and a 3.7 GPA, but for a non-trad with family responsibilities, the expectations are different. If you're taking classes full-time and volunteering while raising a family, nobody expects you to take 18 credits. In fact, taking a heavy course load with everything else you're doing only makes you more attractive if you're the super-human who still manages to ace those classes. Given your situation, I'd think 12-15 (at most) while your family is still SPEAKING to you is at least as good as 18 credits for the kid who manages to go out with friends every weekend!
 
Course load is one of the great urban legends of med school admissions.

If you have to work, it is reasonable to take fewer credits.

What might look bogus is the kid who doesn't work outside of school AND takes 7 years to graduate.

But even then, make As and nobody is going to give your course load much thought.

I graduated on time, and I don't think I ever took more than 15 or 16 hours a semester, but I always took enough to maintain full time status (it mattered for finaid, etc). I never attended summer school, either. And I was a full time student, did not work...
 
I did it, but only because I could afford the time to get 4.0, it was after a decade off of school (all pre-reqs 10+yo, upper level science), and I did it to proove I could hack it in the future and that my 3.4 GPA from undergrad was due to working FT back then. 1 semester, and it helped, but unless you really need proof and can get the A's.... it isn't necessary.
 
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I think a lot of advisors have a hard time with the "non-trad" part. Our paths are a little different and I think it throws some of them off. I think most schools who understand the non-trad lifestyle will see that you work, have a family, go to school and STILL kept your grades up. That is the equivalent to 18 credit hours for a trad student.
 
I'll let you know first hand in 6 months...I've averaged 22 credits over the past 4 semesters while holding my full-time job. I did this to get my butt into med school a year earlier and not to "look good".

Personally I'm not holding my breath that they'll even notice.
 
i took 19 to 20 credits in undergrad and made straight As. i think i already proved myself then. i'm only taking 13 credits now cuz i work full time plus i volunteer and i'm involved in church. i know someone who took 18 credits, did research plus they had a family (single parent) and it got their GPA down to a 2.8. i say take what you can handle.
 
Only take the number of credits that will allow you to get straight A's.
If this is 18 good for you. If it's 8, no one will care.

While showing a heavy course load is nice, it doesn't really matter.
You need to make the first cut for them to even care.
 
aynmar said:
This just seems stupid to me. Being a nontrad student, who works and has a family, why is regular fulltime status (12-15 credit hours a semester with science and labs - I mean HELLO organic chemistry!) not enough? Especially to squeeze in some volunteer/shodowing work. Is this really true, or is my advisor a psycho. I just want to get good grades.....bogging myself done just seems like shooting myself in the foot.
Click to expand...

If you have a job, family and other obligations, it is not necessary to overload yourself with the idea that you have something to "prove". You need to take only as many hours as you can do with excellent performance. Your overall grades count and not the number of hours. I have seen too many people load up with hours only to either drop hours or perform at a mediocre level.

When you get to medical school, you won't be working (you will be living off loans) and you will be taking a full load. Until then, take what you can handle with excellent results. If asked in an interview, you can explain that you were working and had a family to take care of. That will end all questions about your courseload. Poor grades are never better than less of a workload with good grades.
 
Love it. Thank you, thank you. I think this is my favorite forum board ever.
 
Initially, I was worried about this as well. But I never took more than 9 credits per semester. I already had a bachelor's degree and went back for the some prerequisites and a few advanced courses. I also worked part-time and volunteered. I couldn't have taken more classes early on even I wanted to because there aren't many options when you still have to take Bio 101.

I did well during my post-bacc and on the MCAT. I think at the end of the day that's what the adcoms focused on. I didn't get a single interviewer who asked me about my course load. I was busy in other ways. Good luck.
 
Mister T said:
Don't take 18 credits. A lot of adcoms are ******ed and will prefer the student with the 6 credits per semester with As over the superstudent who risks a lower gpa by taking 5000 science classes in one semester.
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Yeah, guys like me who went back and just needed the pre-reqs since I already had a degree. I basically took a couple of classes a semester.

There was no way in hell I was going to pay for an extra 9 credit hours a semester just because ADCOMs might not deem my schedule "rigorous" enough.

In fact, I think the fact that ADCOMs recognize that a lot of non-trads are just knocking out their requirements is makes them distinctly not ******ed.

The nice thing about being a non-trad is that it's not a "one size fits all world".

To the OP; better to do well with 12-15 hours than mediocre with 18. I think you got bad advice. In order to avoid pissing off your advisor, I'd play the "I need time with my family" card.
 
Course load does matter but not as much as doing well. I got ****ty advice so I never took under 16 hours and now my gpa is a 3.4. I also didn't withdrawl a class I should have.
 
pre-med advisor fail.
 
There were several semesters that my husband completed an insane number of credit hours, and it was brought up at a couple different interviews. So I think having a heavy course load can definitely impress them.
 
While a heavy course load could be a small tidbit in an interview, taking fewer than 18 credits every semester will absolutely not hurt you.
 
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