Off the top of my head I can't remember any schools recommending that you take anatomy as a pre-med, and I can remember several schools that strongly suggest you don't. In my own med school anatomy class, previous exposure to anatomy and dissection appeared to correlate exactly not-at-all with performance. In my lab group, one of my partners actually had been a lab TA for an undergrad anatomy course, and I, knowing absolutely jack-sh1t about anatomy going into it, smoked him grade-wise. This is anecdotal, sure, but I've heard tons of similar anecdotes. IMO the only class that every pre-med should take is biochemistry, and even that may only be of modest value in medical school. I say all of this knowing it will fall on deaf ears, as the majority of pre-meds would knife their grandma if they thought it might somehow, somehow give them a 0.001% advantage. This is why most pre-meds turn out as sort of cookie-cutter biobots (to steal a phrase from a fellow SDNer), because rather than developing personal interests and taking classes in art or whatever the hell they want to, they spend enormous amounts of time and energy attempting to achieve that mythical Advantage, directing all their efforts, all their mindpower, toward Medical School, despite constant advice from all corners that such efforts are misguided at best and dehumanizing at worst. As an example, towens5, who as far as I can tell hasn't started medical school yet, recently posted asking where he/she can get ahold of instructional videos for Step One. Step One, which is years in his/her future. This is the same mentality that is suggesting you take anatomy as a pre-med, so keep that in mind. I'm not trying to single out towens5, who is probably perfectly pleasant and worth sharing a beer with; rather, this is a mindset that is so prevalent in pre-medical education it's disturbing. That's my rant for the day.
