Biochem in undergrad vs med school

[AAB5]

Hi All,

How does your undergrad biochem compare to your biochem in medical school? Did you find that taking it in undergrad really helped? How much time does your curriculum spend on biochem?

I'm just curious. I'm taking it right now and I want to know which part I should really remember or what parts I'm going to be seeing again.

Thanks!

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[swamprat]

Its a completely different focus undergrad vs med school. It def helps to take it but just study for the class your in regardless you'll hafta study for med school biochem.

 

[Barcu]

It definitely helped for me. And I pretty much saw everything again in med school that I saw in ugrad (except we did it in a fraction of the time and needed to know more detail).

Actually remembering biochem can be a big help.

 

[Frank Nutter]

If biochem were fecal material, undergrad would be a faint whiff from the bathroom down the hall, and med school would be tub girl.

Hope that helps.

 

[Bacchus]

If biochem were fecal material, undergrad would be a faint whiff from the bathroom down the hall, and med school would be tub girl.

Hope that helps.

Despite the amount of disgusting in this post, I have to agree. I was a biochemistry major and I recognized most everything.

However, the amount of detail supercedes undergrad and the amount of time spent is far less. Plus, undergraduate biochem has a completely different focus than medical school's version of biochem.

The only part of our cell science course I didn't have to focus as much time on was immunology. I took an immunology course in undergrad. I don't know what that means, but just throwing it out there.

 

[Abi123]

The only part of our cell science course I didn't have to focus as much time on was immunology. I took an immunology course in undergrad. I don't know what that means, but just throwing it out there.

Thread hijack alert!

I heard people have had a similar experience with undergraduate genetics. Anyone agree/disagree?

End of thread hijack!

 

[ccmonopolies]

Hi All,

How does your undergrad biochem compare to your biochem in medical school? Did you find that taking it in undergrad really helped? How much time does your curriculum spend on biochem?

I'm just curious. I'm taking it right now and I want to know which part I should really remember or what parts I'm going to be seeing again.

Thanks!

The carbs, amino acids, lipids, DNA, fundamental materials will be covered again. Know those well. You will go into even greater details in med school. Also know your vitamins well.

 

[Isoprop]

Biochem major sitting next to me yesterday in lecture: wow, the prof went over a week's worth of biochemistry lectures from college in an hour.

 

[KKat]

The carbs, amino acids, lipids, DNA, fundamental materials will be covered again. Know those well. You will go into even greater details in med school. Also know your vitamins well.

At my school, covered again means independent study i.e. more to go over while still trying to go over what you learned in class. Having biochem has really helped me in this regard because I pretty much know the basics so all I have to do is brush up a little. That being said the people who have not had biochem before are probably struggling.

I had biochem in undergrad and did well; however, med school biochem has a different focus than undergrad and I have to study for it. Plus it goes a lot faster. What might have taken you a while to go over in undergrad takes a lecture in medical school.

 

[Slack3r]

All those pathways you glossed over in undergrad? Guess who gets to memorize all the enzymes in those pathways! MS1s!

If biochem were fecal material, undergrad would be a faint whiff from the bathroom down the hall, and med school would be tub girl.

Hope that helps.

This is almost poetic.

 

[2050vlsb]

We just finished the first block of biochem, and it was much more intense than undergrad biochem, both in regards to the amount of material/detail you were responsible for, and the amount of time you had to go over it. A lot of the regulation and more minor pathways are all relevant now, and to make sure they're keeping it relevant, there's a lot more clinical correlations, e.g. glycogen storage disorders, atherosclerosis etc.

I think an undergrad biochemistry class will be most useful in developing a familiarity with the subject, but unless you take it right before you start med school, I think it'd be pretty hard to remember a lot of the specifics.

 

[freeski]

Biochem major sitting next to me yesterday in lecture: wow, the prof went over a week's worth of biochemistry lectures from college in an hour.

^^This.

Definitely take biochemistry, particularly because it is often the first class in medical school and you are still floundering around trying to figure out how to study effectively. Having at least some background in biochemistry will help you ease into the flow of medical school. About 2/3 of the class took biochem in undergrad, and the third that did not is struggling (as far as I can tell). I actually took an online medical biochemistry course before starting medical school and it has proved to be a very helpful (UNE online medical biochemistry), and did well on our first exam. We're already past most of the material covered in that course, but I had about 6 weeks in the beginning of school to improve my study skills before moving on to topics I am less familiar with. You will thank yourself later.

 

[AAB5]

Thanks everyone for the advice!

 

[Suncrusher]

If biochem were fecal material, undergrad would be a faint whiff from the bathroom down the hall, and med school would be tub girl.

Hope that helps.

I just almost navigated to that site on my school-issued laptop before realizing what it was, so thanks for that...

 

[planktonelement]

I also took biochem during undergrad. I'm experiencing just the opposite of what many of the other med students here are saying. My undergrad biochem was slower paced, as you'd expect, but the amount of detail and understanding required back then was far greater than what I'm seeing right now as an MSI. A big part of it was that the profs were gearing the class towards people who were looking to get PhDs in biochem. So yes, taking undergrad biochem has helped a ton because everything is pretty familiar and covered at a much more superficial level.

 

[classydingo]

I also took biochem during undergrad. I'm experiencing just the opposite of what many of the other med students here are saying. My undergrad biochem was slower paced, as you'd expect, but the amount of detail and understanding required back then was far greater than what I'm seeing right now as an MSI. A big part of it was that the profs were gearing the class towards people who were looking to get PhDs in biochem. So yes, taking undergrad biochem has helped a ton because everything is pretty familiar and covered at a much more superficial level.

I second this. My undergrad biochem involved a ton of memorizing structures and the chemical mechanisms of the reaction in various cycles. MS1 biochem was basically just knowing the names of the molecules in the most important cycles, their enzymes and co factors, and what you would expect to see clinically if something was wrong with each reaction. I would say MS1 was a lot more in depth medically and undergrad was a lot more in depth chemically.

 

[deleted248403]

Biochem major sitting next to me yesterday in lecture: wow, the prof went over a week's worth of biochemistry lectures from college in an hour.

More support for that statement.

We pretty much covered my entire biochem degree in the first block of biochem

 

[LoveandHate]

Biochem major sitting next to me yesterday in lecture: wow, the prof went over a week's worth of biochemistry lectures from college in an hour.

This is pretty much how medical school compares to undergrad in every subject. Sometimes it's more than a week's worth of undergrad material

 

[2012mdc]

I also took biochem during undergrad. I'm experiencing just the opposite of what many of the other med students here are saying. My undergrad biochem was slower paced, as you'd expect, but the amount of detail and understanding required back then was far greater than what I'm seeing right now as an MSI. A big part of it was that the profs were gearing the class towards people who were looking to get PhDs in biochem. So yes, taking undergrad biochem has helped a ton because everything is pretty familiar and covered at a much more superficial level.

I had a similar experience. I found biochem in med school easier. In undergrad we had open book exams that really tested your understanding. It was hell, one of the hardest classes I took in UG

 

[anbuitachi]

biochem in med school is not hard. it's just much faster. a week of med biochem is like a semester of undergrad biochem. Biochem in undergrad definitely helped me. I took autotutorial biochem where they assign us readings and problems. Basically it was just reading Leninger's biochem textbook...

 

[normtheniner]

Undergrad biochem definitely helps.

The difference between the two is that in undergrad biochem you're focusing on generalized biochemical principals. This can be really helpful in medical when you're talking about concepts like enzyme kinetics or thermodynamics. In my undergrad biochem class we spent like a week or two doing enzyme kinetics. In medical school we spent like one lecture. Before this freaks you out, realize that what we talked about in the med school lecture was more of the overview of kinetics (they taught enough to understand why things like why its important that the Km of glucokinase is much higher that hexokinase). In undergrad biochem we were doing complex calculations and using graph paper to graph out rate vs. substrate concentration.

To sum what I just said up most of the things you cover in undergrad biochem aren't really specific to just humans, but are commons traits most living organisms share.

In Medical biochemistry, you're focusing on the biochemical pathways that occur in specifically humans -- plus all the common errors/deficiencies you may encounter in practice. It moves significantly quicker, but its definitely do-able if you put keep up with the lecture (I'm a lecture behind right now so I'll know what I'll be doing tomorrow). Its way more conceptual than anatomy, which, at least in my opinion, makes it more enjoyable.

 

[Dr Love]

Basically everything in undergrad biochem/mol bio will be covered over 2-4 weeks of med school. But those few weeks will be super chill if you already know the material.

 

[FIREitUP]

Biochem is super lame, whether you're in medical school or in undergrad. You memorize the most worthless **** that you regurgitate and subsequently (happily) forget (read: kreb's cycle, glycolysis, electron transport chain, B oxidation cycle, etc.). That being said, undergrad biochem really helps acquiant you with the general concepts and having memorized the useless garbage once already helps you memorize it faster the second time.

 

[487806]

Sorry to bump the old thread, as I didn't want to create one with similar question.

I didn't take undergrad biochem yet, but I heard this course includes carbohydrate, lipid, amino acid and nucleic acid metabolism. Would this cover much material in med school biochem? Also, is med school biochem more clinically focused and on disorders? Sorry to ask a stupid question. Just interested.

 

[Bangersandmash]

Sorry to bump the old thread, as I didn't want to create one with similar question.

I didn't take undergrad biochem yet, but I heard this course includes carbohydrate, lipid, amino acid and nucleic acid metabolism. Would this cover much material in med school biochem? Also, is med school biochem more clinically focused and on disorders? Sorry to ask a stupid question. Just interested.

If you actually read the thread, you would have answered your question...

 

[487806]

Undergrad biochem definitely helps.

The difference between the two is that in undergrad biochem you're focusing on generalized biochemical principals. This can be really helpful in medical when you're talking about concepts like enzyme kinetics or thermodynamics. In my undergrad biochem class we spent like a week or two doing enzyme kinetics. In medical school we spent like one lecture. Before this freaks you out, realize that what we talked about in the med school lecture was more of the overview of kinetics (they taught enough to understand why things like why its important that the Km of glucokinase is much higher that hexokinase). In undergrad biochem we were doing complex calculations and using graph paper to graph out rate vs. substrate concentration.

To sum what I just said up most of the things you cover in undergrad biochem aren't really specific to just humans, but are commons traits most living organisms share.

In Medical biochemistry, you're focusing on the biochemical pathways that occur in specifically humans -- plus all the common errors/deficiencies you may encounter in practice. It moves significantly quicker, but its definitely do-able if you put keep up with the lecture (I'm a lecture behind right now so I'll know what I'll be doing tomorrow). Its way more conceptual than anatomy, which, at least in my opinion, makes it more enjoyable.

Whoops, missed this post which answered my question. Sorry about that.

 

[username456789]

To perhaps allay some people's fears, I never took any biochem in undergrad, but honored biochem in med school. That said. I think part of my success was due to my initial fear of doing poorly since I had had no biochem and most students had a good bit of it coming in.

We had biochem right after gross anatomy, and after getting wrecked by that course, a lot of bio and biochem majors in my class were heard to exclaim "finally, I can start to shine at the head of the class!" only to score straight C's. False sense of security and all.

 

[FIREitUP]

Wow I don't even remember posting that really negative post above. After taking biochem and starting second year I have to say there are lots of aspects of it that are a big waste (as is most of first year), but these concepts do come back and learning them does provide some sort of basis for having a greater depth of knowledge of pathology. Overall I have to say there are definitely worse things than biochem, haha.

 

[Freddie Mercury]

I went to a big research based undergrad. Biochem consisted of having to memorize everything about glycolysis, TCA cycle, ETC... including things like where hydrogens go and all the structures of the different substrates. In medical school biochem, there was much more material overall, but its far more surface level and conceptual than undergrad. I didn't need to know most of the structures, hell I didn't even memorize all the steps of the aforementioned pathways... all I did was understand the regulation of the key steps and how, say, PFK2 activity would change if the person's glucose was low and the mechanism by which this occurred. I'm definitely liking this material a lot more than in undergrad.

 

[JABWS]

About a week ago, we went over glycolysis and the ETC in the last twenty minutes of a one hour lecture. That's medical biochemistry for you.

 

[Rumalum]

Hi All,

How does your undergrad biochem compare to your biochem in medical school? Did you find that taking it in undergrad really helped? How much time does your curriculum spend on biochem?

I'm just curious. I'm taking it right now and I want to know which part I should really remember or what parts I'm going to be seeing again.

Thanks!

My biochem in undergrad was the exact same as my medical school course I'm in right now. I mean the exact same, down to the same figures and examples. In fact, my undergrad teacher made far superior powerpoints, and I study of those instead of the pieces of **** my med school lectureres throw together. The only difference is that my med school course went way more in depth with diabetes and hypercholesterolemia because you know, fat people

 

[urbanclassic]

Well if you actually pay attention and not cram in UG Biochem I'm sure it'd help. Didn't help for me though, because I was a crammer in UG. It's like I'm seeing everything for the first time! I mean, I recognized names, but it's almost like saying I recognized that a word is spanish... I have no idea what is means or what it connects to... maybe I'm exaggerating a bit, but yeah study the right way! No point taking a class *for* med school and not remembering enough for it to be valuable.