Anatomy

[f-series]

Hey all,

I will be entering med school next year, and was wondering what you guys thought about taking anatomy before starting. I am a senior at an undergraduate college with one semester left, and can take the second half of human antomy and physiology if I wanted to. I have not initiallly signed up for it since I wanted to enjoy my last semester, but am worried that those who have taken anatomy will be at a great advantage. What are your thoughts? Anatomy 2nd semester, or wait till med school? Will it make a big difference in my med school class to take anatomy?

Thanks

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[Dookter]

Hey all,

I will be entering med school next year, and was wondering what you guys thought about taking anatomy before starting. I am a senior at an undergraduate college with one semester left, and can take the second half of human antomy and physiology if I wanted to. I have not initiallly signed up for it since I wanted to enjoy my last semester, but am worried that those who have taken anatomy will be at a great advantage. What are your thoughts? Anatomy 2nd semester, or wait till med school? Will it make a big difference in my med school class to take anatomy?

Thanks

I say go for it. I wish I had taken it before.

 

[Quix]

It wouldn't hurt; I think you'll be inundated with new information once you start, but at least the terms will be familiar and you'll have a general idea of the material. I'm actually thinking about doing something similar with biochem (this will be my biggest hurdle) and A&P.

 

[Pemulis]

Anatomy is a tough subject mainly because the volume of information is so great. From that point of view, seeing it for the second time around during your med school course instead of the first could be really helpful.

That said, most students (at least at my school) haven't taken it before, and just about everybody is passing without too much trouble. If you think you'd enjoy it, by all means go ahead and take it. But if it's going to put a major damper on your final semester of college, I say go drink beer instead. Trust me, you'll have plenty of time to learn anatomy later.

 

[fatman41]

Anatomy is completely worthless as far as the practice of medicine and more importantly for USMLE step I, which if you have started reading about determines which residency you can enter. There are 350 questions on this test, 10-15 of which are anatomy. These questions consist of a CT scan pointing at a spleen saying essentially "what is this". You would get this question right simply by looking at an anatomy atlas, and without going through the whole disseciton ordeal. You would be much better off taking a history class or something interesting instead of anatomy since you will never have a chance to do so again. If you're worried about your application, what I did on my med school application was say I was going to take all these hard classes in the last semester (histo, neuro, etc), then I dropped them all when I was accepted in December. I replaced them with scuba diving and golf. I would recommend you do something similar, then party your it up last semester, b/c you'll wish you had when you're in the big leagues next year.

 

[Dookter]

Anatomy is completely worthless as far as the practice of medicine and more importantly for USMLE step I, which if you have started reading about determines which residency you can enter. There are 350 questions on this test, 10-15 of which are anatomy. These questions consist of a CT scan pointing at a spleen saying essentially "what is this". You would get this question right simply by looking at an anatomy atlas, and without going through the whole disseciton ordeal. You would be much better off taking a history class or something interesting instead of anatomy since you will never have a chance to do so again. If you're worried about your application, what I did on my med school application was say I was going to take all these hard classes in the last semester (histo, neuro, etc), then I dropped them all when I was accepted in December. I replaced them with scuba diving and golf. I would recommend you do something similar, then party your it up last semester, b/c you'll wish you had when you're in the big leagues next year.

I said you should take anatomy. It WOULD make life easier. However, I also have to second this post. Why? B/c med school can be the most monotonous, boring thing to do at times. I swear sometimes it is the LEAST intellectually stimulating experience. My numero uno regret from college is not taking more history classes/social science classes. Now I am stuck memorizing stuff all day. I read a fascinating article the other day in TIME magazine and was amazed when I realized I had not actually used my brain for anything other than a floppy disk since I graduated from college!

 

[Law2Doc]

Hey all,

I will be entering med school next year, and was wondering what you guys thought about taking anatomy before starting. I am a senior at an undergraduate college with one semester left, and can take the second half of human antomy and physiology if I wanted to. I have not initiallly signed up for it since I wanted to enjoy my last semester, but am worried that those who have taken anatomy will be at a great advantage. What are your thoughts? Anatomy 2nd semester, or wait till med school? Will it make a big difference in my med school class to take anatomy?

Thanks

Wait till med school. No point doing this course twice unless you fail it.

 

[pagemmapants]

If you come to Duke, don't take anatomy in UG. Seriously. I learned more in my UG anatomy class than I have in ours (and we're 2/3 done). I don't know whether it would be helpful or not in schools with full-length anatomy courses, but honestly I wish I'd have taken some physiology. My mol/dev bio background didn't teach me to deal with systems bigger than one cell, nor the human animal post-birth, so all this "what happens to pressure here when this arm is chopped off or the person steps on a rattlesnake" type stuff.

 

[sacallaco]

enjoy your last semester of college! dont take any of those classes! if youre a good student youll do fine in med school

 

[f-series]

thanks everyone for all your replies. They're really helpful. I will probably just drink beer for this last semester.