Biochem is different in med school than undergrad?

[dank204]

My med school friend said that her bio chem classes are nothing like her undergrad biochem classes. She says it's different and that you can do well in med school bio chem even if you had no exposure to it as an undergrad.

Can you verify this?

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[IHeartNerds]

This is correct. Biochem in med school is kind of like biochemistry for non-majors, if such a course even existed. Seriously watered down.

 

[gravitywave]

my experience so far is that's true, yes. although i did have an undergraduate biochem course, which is helping (sorta). the UG course was heavier on the actual chemistry, so far in medical school the emphasis has been on organ system function/clinical ramifications.

 

[exptherainbow]

I agree with the other posters, but I do think that taking biochem in undergrad is still a pretty good idea. You will be just fine in medical school biochem without out, but some of the overlap between the two was pretty helpful for me.

 

[swamprat]

I took graduate level biochem and biochem in medical school and by far medical school biochem sucked a lot more the class was huge, so much info to know and boring as hell.

 

[mmmcdowe]

Med school biochem tends to focus a lot more on the stuff that can go wrong.

 

[elmnt61]

This is music to my ears!

 

[dank204]

I took graduate level biochem and biochem in medical school and by far medical school biochem sucked a lot more the class was huge, so much info to know and boring as hell.

you realize you are in the minority.

 

[Lil Mick]

Ours was pretty poorly taught. Instead of concentrating on the chemistry, we memorized a bunch of metabolic diseases without learning the pathways they affected (had to teach ourselves the pathways)...

 

[swamprat]

you realize you are in the minority.

So should that affect my opinion, what the majority think? You wanted honest opinions.. thats my opinion, along with most of the people in my class who dropped to their knees and updated their facebook status's thanking gd tht the class was over. Sorry its not what you wanted to hear buddy

 

[getdown]

I agree with Doxy, biochem in med school is boring as hell and tends to be poorly taught. Obviously it's going to focus more on diseases... we are going to be treating patients. But the main gripe about biochem med school classes is that they don't teach the RELEVANT information, at least not at my school. It was all about the minute details of the Krebs cycle and all the other stupid cycles not really about the diseases. They were kinda thrown in there as a FYI. You gotta relearn it from scratch when studying for the boards which kinda sucks.

 

[Jolie South]

I liked med school biochem a lot better than undergrad biochem and thought it was easier.

You will be briefly taught pathways and how problems at various steps relate to clinical disease.

Undergrad was more focused on the chemistry, drawing structures, learning pKas, and other useless knowledge. I honestly think that if you had any good bio in undergrad where you learned glycolysis, TCA cycle, etc you will be more than fine.

 

[DrVanNostran]

Biochem in med school is easier than undergrad biochem IMO. Med schools seem to just test you on literally everything, either you know it or you don't.

 

[Myuu]

I felt like med school biochem was easier, but that may be due to the exposure in the undergrad class. Then again, Lippincott makes everything better.

(Fyi, I fixed the typo in your topic--if you want me to change it back, let me know)

 

[DarknightX]

Med school biochem is a lot easier....you don't need to know structures or draw them out, and like others have said, the focus is more on things that can go wrong.

Disagree strongly with the poster who said it was harder than graduate level biochem. It might be at his school, but that is definitely outside the norm.

 

[URHere]

Keep in mind that different schools teach biochem differently.

At my school, biochem is a prerequisite for admission and because of this basic enzyme pathways and mechanisms are NEVER taught (even in a watered-down fashion). Instead, diseases, and alternate pathways are taught, but it is hard to understand them if you don't already know the basics.

So, for students with a solid biochem background, I would say that medical school biochem is generally fairly simple. For those who are lacking in that area, it can be much harder to fill in the gaps.

 

[boaz]

I took a year of biochem in undergrad and finished my med school biochem; so here's my take:
Undergrad was much more reductionist and focused more on mechanisms and structure. Basically biochemistry from the chemistry perspective. Classic example: hydrogen tunneling.
In med school it was more focused on metabolic pathways and how that relates to the function of the cell/organism as a whole. Basically biochemistry from the biology perspective. Classic example: nitty-gritty detail of the TCA cycle and how it relates to inputs/outputs of the other pathways. Most people find it annoying but since I'm a biochem nerd I enjoyed it 😉 .

 

[vickpick]

duh?

 

[dank204]

Med school biochem is a lot easier....you don't need to know structures or draw them out, and like others have said, the focus is more on things that can go wrong.

Disagree strongly with the poster who said it was harder than graduate level biochem. It might be at his school, but that is definitely outside the norm.

Thank you for clarifying this. Yeah, I don't know what's up with the other poster saying it was harder. Maybe it's not his school, maybe it's just him?

 

[link2swim06]

I think med biochem is alot harder. This is because I do better on the critical thinking questions that I got in undergrad biochem.

Now biochem is 110% memorization. ZERO thinking needed, if you could memorize a phone book you would get a perfect.

So if you can aimlessly memorize 99.9% useless info to clinical practice then you will do great at med biochem.

 

[StudyingFool]

a good biochem undergrad background is much harder than medical biochemistry. Most people that though biochem was tough in my med school had never had it, or were neurotic hyper perfectionists. I got bs in BC and learned way more in undergrad upperlevels.

 

[rxlea]

pharm school biochem was biochem on steroids. we had to learn the pathways and how drugs affected them...like methotrexate, leucovorin and the folic acid cycle... etc etc You guys are lucky in that regard but I think I would hate having to deal with your A&P. We get pathophysiology mixed in with each of our classes (like with Infectious Disease or Immunology) but I can't imagine what you med students have to do for cadaver lab. That's just not for me.

 

[boaz]

pharm school biochem was biochem on steroids. we had to learn the pathways and how drugs affected them...like methotrexate, leucovorin and the folic acid cycle... etc etc You guys are lucky in that regard but I think I would hate having to deal with your A&P. We get pathophysiology mixed in with each of our classes (like with Infectious Disease or Immunology) but I can't imagine what you med students have to do for cadaver lab. That's just not for me.

Sounds exactly like what we had!

 

[Ilovewater]

pharm school biochem was biochem on steroids. we had to learn the pathways and how drugs affected them...like methotrexate, leucovorin and the folic acid cycle... etc etc You guys are lucky in that regard but I think I would hate having to deal with your A&P. We get pathophysiology mixed in with each of our classes (like with Infectious Disease or Immunology) but I can't imagine what you med students have to do for cadaver lab. That's just not for me.

Pretty much what was in our class. For every pathway, we had to learn the diseases and the drugs that affect it. Our biochem director loves diseases and drugs, so we got a lot of that. It's definitely better than memorizing structures in undergrad.

 

[rxlea]

We had to memorize structures and reactions too 🙁

 

[crazycooljoel]

Is it supposed to be for refresher purposes?

 

[ClueBooM]

For the medical students that said it was easier in med school than undergrad, do you think it's easier because you already had previous exposure to biochem in undergrad?

What about other students that didn't take biochem as undergrad, is it easy for you too?

 

[Jolie South]

For the medical students that said it was easier in med school than undergrad, do you think it's easier because you already had previous exposure to biochem in undergrad?

What about other students that didn't take biochem as undergrad, is it easy for you too?

No, as I mentioned above, it's totally different. Any "expertise" I gained from drawing structures and memorizing enzyme kinetics in undergrad was totally useless.

 

[DrYoda]

For the medical students that said it was easier in med school than undergrad, do you think it's easier because you already had previous exposure to biochem in undergrad?

No. While I did take one biochem class in undergrad, I didn't remember much of it. I just think the class itself wasn't very hard.

 

[NickNaylor]

my experience so far is that's true, yes. although i did have an undergraduate biochem course, which is helping (sorta). the UG course was heavier on the actual chemistry, so far in medical school the emphasis has been on organ system function/clinical ramifications.

This makes me incredibly happy. I'm currently suffering through the second semester of biochem (as a biochem major), and I absolutely hate this class. I've never disliked a class so much.

 

[BOOYA18]

the popular opinion here is interesting... at one of my interviews the interviewer literally told me that since i didnt take biochem in undergrad, its somewhat concerning, and that she highly reccommends i take some sort of course before i matriculate anywhere... i got into that school, but its interesting that people here are saying its 1)somewhat easy, 2) biochem in undergrad is kinda useless in that regard

 

[Helen Wheels]

This makes me incredibly happy. I'm currently suffering through the second semester of biochem (as a biochem major), and I absolutely hate this class. I've never disliked a class so much.

This makes me happy, too. I thought the undergrad biochem class I took a couple years ago was pretty hard (it was the one semester version). I studied like crazy but still ended up with a B-. 🙁

 

[LEUNIT]

This makes me happy, too. I thought the undergrad biochem class I took a couple years ago was pretty hard (it was the one semester version). I studied like crazy but still ended up with a B-. 🙁

I took the one-semester version and got an A. I didn't think it was too bad (pure memorization + multiple-choice), but apparently, a lot of my friends in the same class almost failed.

: "What'd you get in Biochem, dude?"
Me: "Uh.. I did all right, man."

 

[NickNaylor]

I took the one-semester version and got an A. I didn't think it was too bad (pure memorization + multiple-choice), but apparently, a lot of my friends in the same class almost failed.

: "What'd you get in Biochem, dude?"
Me: "Uh.. I did all right, man."

That's exactly why I don't like it. My professor right now is absolutely horrible, so there is little explanation of anything, and the tests are nothing more than a measure of how much random **** you can spew out on a test. I wouldn't mind the memorization so much if it actually applied to something rather than memorizing how wide the central pore of X protein is.

 

[Helen Wheels]

I took the one-semester version and got an A. I didn't think it was too bad (pure memorization + multiple-choice), but apparently, a lot of my friends in the same class almost failed.

: "What'd you get in Biochem, dude?"
Me: "Uh.. I did all right, man."

It was definitely not just memorization at the school I was at. In fact, having taken the MCAT before this class I felt like every biochem test was like the MCAT. The questions were very much like the MCAT and there were so many pages that you did not have much time per question. On days that we got a test back, there were a LOT of unhappy faces gathered around outside talking in groups.

By the way, a tip for future MCAT takers. Take biochem before the MCAT. Many people say you don't need it for the MCAT but there were biochem questions on both MCATs I took. They were really simple but because I didn't have biochem I didn't realize that.

 

[Dr McSexy]

At my undergrad uni we had two seperate biochem courses.

Biochem for chemistry majors, which a two semester course total and then Basic Biochemistry which is for mostly biology majors.

I took the latter. Thus far, my Medical biochem has exactly the same as undergrad. Then again, my undergrad professor knew that it was mostly pre-medical students taking the class, so he taught it that way. He even used lippincotts as the textbook and added to it where he saw fit (since lippincotts is really just a review book).

 

[LEUNIT]

I wouldn't mind the memorization so much if it actually applied to something rather than memorizing how wide the central pore of X protein is.

Yeah, I agree, but isn't that how the first two years of med school are going to work? ..not that I would know.

It was definitely not just memorization at the school I was at. In fact, having taken the MCAT before this class I felt like every biochem test was like the MCAT. The questions were very much like the MCAT and there were so many pages that you did not have much time per question.

I have an easier time memorizing than applying, especially on exams. I like hammering out answers and skipping the ones I don't know. Application questions really confirm your knowledge of the material though.