Best Undergradudate Courses To Take

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Led Zep

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Hey Guys,

Just thought a thread about different courses which you have found valuable to take would be good. I'm leaving out pre-reqs...

I'll start:

Biochem
Anatomy
Cell Biology
Genetics
Medical Microbiology
Physiology
Histology

Food Microbiology
Developmental Biology
Immunology
Epidemiology
Calculus
Cancer Biology
Medical Parisitology
Molecular Biology

What else can you guys think of?
 
What do you mean by "best"? Some people define best by what courses they find interesting, or easy, or applicable to med school.
 
Mithril said:
What do you mean by "best"? Some people define best by what courses they find interesting, or easy, or applicable to med school.
Click to expand...

Any context really, make a note perhaps? Did you find it useful in preparation for med school, were the concepts interesting or valuable in your overall education.... Anything really
 
In terms of being applicable in medical school, it really depends on the caliber of the undergraduate class and the chance that it actually coincides with what is emphasized in the medical school version.

For me, histology was the most useful class hands down. Then probably biochem.
 
What about calc landed it on the list?
 
For me, neuroscience was hands-down the best in terms of interesting subject matter.

In terms of which one helped with medical school, probably biochemistry.
 
Led Zep said:
Hey Guys,

Just thought a thread about different courses which you have found valuable to take would be good. I'm leaving out pre-reqs...

I'll start:

Biochem
Anatomy
Cell Biology
Genetics
Medical Microbiology
Physiology
Histology

Food Microbiology
Developmental Biology
Immunology
Epidemiology
Calculus
Cancer Biology
Medical Parisitology
Molecular Biology

What else can you guys think of?
Click to expand...

I find that taking too many courses in undergrad that you will necessarily be taking again in medical school is a complete waste of the whole college academic experience. Unless your major requires some of those courses, consider taking some art classes, a language, film, philosophy or whatever else you are interested in. It will make you stand out from the crowd of boring premeds and you will be intellectually richer. Just my opinion.
 
Most fun I had were taking graduate school courses in undergrad with the first year grad students =) Their classes and exams obviously focus a lot less on memorization but rather on applicative approach to knowledge. Reading papers is always fun!

Courses that I loved in undergrad:
Signal transduction in eukaroytic systems
Virology
 
BrainBuff said:
I find that taking too many courses in undergrad that you will necessarily be taking again in medical school is a complete waste of the whole college academic experience. Unless your major requires some of those courses, consider taking some art classes, a language, film, philosophy or whatever else you are interested in. It will make you stand out from the crowd of boring premeds and you will be intellectually richer. Just my opinion.
Click to expand...

I completely agree with this. A particularly fun one is stage combat, if your school offers it. I took all four of the classes my school offered and ended up TAing my senior year. SO much fun!

I also think the science course that will help you the most in regards to the MCAT, aside from the prereqs, is physiology. I wouldn't shoot for any of these classes in hopes of getting a leg up in regards to medical school, though. The depth at which these courses are covered in undergrad doesn't even come close to the material in medical school (or so I've heard).
 
These weren't on your list, but in terms of actually being useful in life here are a few:

Expository writing: you'll probably have to write something well sometime in your life.

Conflict mediation: you'll probably have to deal with interpersonal conflict or dysfunctional social situations a few times too.

From your list:

Calc: required by most college physics courses, some stats course, some med schools.

Epidemiology / biostatistics: will help you look at data better and appreciate the difficulty of good study designs.

The caveat is that all these courses should be taught well. If another course on your list is known as having a stellar prof. then you might want to consider taking it.
 
gravitywave said:
well, for starters a bunch of schools require it, which is more than can be said for any of the others
Click to expand...
Still, though it's required for a lot of physics courses and others, its completely useless for doctors, as you've said before. Just another weed out course...which is nice I guess if you can do well in it.
 
I think one of the best classes I took was the Philosophy of Space and Time. It made you think in different ways about how the world works and what things could be possible. And just entertaining to see clips of various movies in class.

Ethics, of course. And most any philosophy class, because philosophy rocks.

Ancient Greek was fun!

Oh and some art classes, might as well be creative and get some skill in discussing things other than science. 🙂 Tickle the other side of your brain!
 
Don't waste your time taking non-pre-req classes if they don't really interest you. Have fun in college and worry about med school classes when you get there.
 
gettheleadout said:
Still, though it's required for a lot of physics courses and others, its completely useless for doctors, as you've said before. Just another weed out course...which is nice I guess if you can do well in it.
Click to expand...

i know. that was a cynical thing to say. i'm going to blame that one on timing (post-midnight, post-anatomy-marathon)

what i was trying to impart was that calc I is the best option out of all of them because it gives you options (applying to the handful of schools that require it). if the OP defines "valuable to take" as "gosh, now that i'm in med school i wish i had taken XX undergrad course, it would have made this med school stuff so much easier!" - well... they're all a waste of time.

i'm very pleased to see the prevailing sentiment on this thread is one that encourages breadth, and intellectual exploration. usually these threads bog down into pissing matches over whether Cell Bio or Physio is the best course to take for MCAT prep 🙄
 
Ha! You think this is funny. Calculus will kill me. I am still having trouble with math....and you throw calc in this....🙁
 
ok...then
 
Last edited:
mmmcdowe said:
History of Medicine
Philosophy of Medicine
Bioethics
History of Science
Philosophy of Death.
Click to expand...

😍👍

To add:
Disease in History
Justice in Health care
Concepts of the Body (class is generally separated pre-1600, post-1600 or something around there)
Moral issues of Life and Death

I love me some philosophy!
 
From what I've heard...

Good= Genetics, BIOCHEM (really emphasized!!!!!), and maybe Phys or Cell Bio purely for the MCAT

Worthless= Anatomy
 
There's virtually no anatomy tested on the MCAT, but there there was a lot of physio on mine (which seems to be pretty common). Anatomy may help in regards to first year of medical school, only because you may already know some terminology that you don't have to learn for the first time in addition to all the other information and names you're expected to commit to memory, but I won't start medical school until (hopefully) next year, so that's speculation my part.
 
Of that entire list I'd say maybe biochem and histology would have enhanced/did enhance my first two years of med school.

Everything else I'd say you'd be able to easily pick up as you go along in med school. The other topics in the first part of your list are really hammered in and repeated frequently so any prep is rather moot.

The bottom part of your list is just a bunch of low-yield topics anyway. You won't have more than a couple lectures over all of those topics per class so you may as well not waste a semester prepping for them.

At my school they expected us to have had a biochem class so they started the material at a more advanced level than everything else.

Histo I just suck at so that would have been nice to have had in UG.
 
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