Anatomy..should I take lab?

[jmcunnin]

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I bought the ADEA guide, and most schools seem to only recommend Anatomy but not require it. The guide says no lab is required. Would anyone recommend taking the lab? Will it be helpful?

 

[Macabalony]

I bought the ADEA guide, and most schools seem to only recommend Anatomy but not require it. The guide says no lab is required. Would anyone recommend taking the lab? Will it be helpful?

Take the lab. I have found that when a school says recommend course, it might as well be required.

 

[THS]

If you do dissections, yes it will be helpful in developing hand skills and paying attention to the delicate structures in the body, even if it's just a cat.

 

[wjc]

I would highly recommend a lab if you have the opportunity. Finding and identifying anatomical structures on a cadaver is a little tricky, much more so that from diagrams and pictures from an anatomy text. The experience will be good for you. I took a lecture and lab the same semester and found it pretty manageable course load wise.

 

[jmcunnin]

Thanks for the responses guys. The Anatomy my school offers is only a 1000 level human anatomy. With that being said, is your opinion still the same? Still take the lab?

I'm at 11 hours at the moment and need to push it to full time. I can either take the Anatomy lab which will put me at 12 hours.. or take Microbiology which will put me at 14 hours. Other classes I am taking:

Bio lecture
Bio lab
Chem lecture
Chem lab
Anatomy lecture

 

[jmcunnin]

For the record, I have never taken anatomy (nor do I plan to) and I have been invited to interview at 7 out of the 9 schools I applied to. I feel pretty good about most of those. If you decide not to take anatomy, your DAT scores and GPA will matter even more than normal (I imagine). I got a 22 AA and a 22 TS fyi.

I don't necessarily agree with the statement above that says "when a school says recommend course, it might as well be required." I think that if you have the room in your schedule, you should take the recommended classes (it might be a good idea to take Microbiology though, since you'll have more credit hours, and schools like to see that). I also think you'll be grateful you took them once you're in dental school. I'm also guessing that different schools have different opinions about how important recommended courses are.

Good luck.

Thank you for your suggestions. This Anatomy lecture has a good teacher so I'm hoping it will just be a good way to boost my GPA a bit. I'm hesitant about Microbiology because the teacher has very bad reviews. I may just suck it up and give it a shot though. I think she is the only teacher that teaches it unfortunately.