Dirty Underhanded Premeds

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Cerberus

Cerberus

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heh made you look :)

There is a thread similar to this is the Allopathic forum that asks what are the shadiest things you've seen premeds do to get ahead. Thought it would be interesting to hear other "premeds suck" stories. Really the only thing i've seen at my school(s) are people stealing lab reports and tossing them (happened in genetics:mad: ) and people giving false info.
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engineering stories? i just totally hate it when the girls are especially friendly with the professor, am like waiting to talk about my homework, but noooooooooooooooo the football game is more important! :rolleyes:
 
Jerk in my OChem lab who kept trying to get ahead of everybody to use the equipment & computers. He had no conception of sharing. Well, it was sweet justice to see him one day totally screw up his samples after having been the first one in line earlier. He had to wait for all of us to finish before redoing his tests. Haha! :laugh:

But to balance it out, i'd have to mention that half of the folks in the class were great & shared notes, studied together, etc.
 
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-all of the lurkers who benefit from reading SDN but don't contribute anything until they post their FIRST thread which notifies everyone about their acceptance. in response, they receive a bunch of accolads/congrats from SDNers, but they don't ever post another comment on SDN again.
 
Originally posted by Yogi Bear
-all of the lurkers who benefit from reading SDN but don't contribute anything until they post their FIRST thread which notifies everyone about their acceptance. in response, they receive a bunch of accolads/congrats from SDNers, but they don't ever post another comment on SDN again.
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:laugh: :laugh: :laugh: i know, but then again maybe they dont have many people to congratulate them and they need to be happy or something, haha Yogi
 
this is just some weird thing that happenned last year in my orgo lab when i handed in my formal report. heres how it all went down. soooo, i got into lab and put my lab up front in the pile where everyone was turning in their work. nothing seemed weird, all the same normal people were in there. i didnt see anybody that i didnt recognize. BY ALL ACCOUNTS A COMPLETELY NORMAL DAY. so life went on normally for the next week until i got an email from the prof. that ran the lab that said he wanted to see me concerning my lab report. naturally, i got really nervous because this formal lab report was a major part of my grade. i went into his office the next day and he had my lab report on his desk. i sat down and he told me I had gone way off topic and he had never seen anything as repulsive as what i had turned in...blah blah blah. so, i sat there stunned wondering to myself how the hell i could make a lab report "REPULSIVE". I told him that I respected his opinion, but i follwed the ACS JOC guidelines and didnt think it was fair to call my work repulsive. THEN he open up my lab report and there is a GIANT, DETAILED PICTURE OF A PENIS on the first page. I said that I dont even know what to say, but you are right sir that is not in the JOC guidelines. He told me that this was not a funny matter and went on to lecture me about how disgusting pornography is. He went on talking and it became apparent that he actually thought that i had drawn a picture of a penis on my lab report. I tried to convince him that there would be no reason for me to draw a penis and that I didnt do it. THE GUY DID NOT BELIEVE ME and he wanted to give me a zero for the paper. so i had to go get my orgo lecture professor to talk to this guy and vouch for me that i didnt have an infatuation with drawing penis pictures. I was so pissed off at this *******. I ended up getting a B on the paper, but the guy never looked at me the same. I still have no clue who drew this on my paper. ANyways...this has to be the weirdest thing another premed has done in the history of the premed world.

CAPTBADASS
 
Originally posted by captbadass
I still have no clue who drew this on my paper. ANyways...this has to be the weirdest thing another premed has done in the history of the premed world.

CAPTBADASS
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Maybe it wasn't a premed then?

~AS1~
 
The worst I had was in first quarter gen chem freshman year when a huge percentage of people used info entered into their calculator for exams. I was close to the professor for this class (ended up that he wrote me a recommendation for med school later), so I told him about it (I know some people will argue with me on this one but it's plain wrong to do this), and he said he knows it goes on, but he doesn't know what to do about it, because it would be impossible to clear people's calculators or do spot checks w/3 lecture halls of students taking the exams. The next year he let people come into exams with a sheet full of info, albeit with a much more difficult exam- an exam that proves that you can apply and understand and relies less on memorization.
 
Haha the old calculator trick. I bet at least 90% of the people on these forums have used it at one time or another including myself.



Of course it would not be that big of an issue if everyone were held to the same standards and nobody could have the calculators. It wouldnt mess up the curve that way. At my old highschool the top 25 kids in class rank were probably 25 of the biggest cheaters. Actually I know this to be true for at least some of them. In college I have yet to cheat, but I am sure people in my classes have done it.
 
The average grade on our Genetics exams was about a 13. However, there was this one guy that was consistently making 98's and 99's. He just ruined our curve. Come to find out, he got caught with his Palm Pilot during the final. He had downloaded all of the class notes and things from the text into his Documents to Go folder! He had been doing this all along and sat in the back of the room so the professor just thought that he had a calculator!

I heard that he got into medical school, but now he is really struggling.
 
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Originally posted by Samoa
Dang! That's worse than mere chance!
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This guy was a total jerk. Everyone said to wait until the next semester to take the class with another professor, but I was an idiot and took it with this guy.

He would respond to questions with a very sarcastic answer and when he came into the room with graded exams, we would all get lectures on just how stupid we as a class were.

About half of the class dropped out and most of those who remained flunked out. Our final paper was the fly lab and it was worth something like 20% of our grade. My paper was in the bottom of the pile that he had stashed on his desk. As I was digging through them, I saw a lot of very low grades. One lady was cussing him out about failing the class and another girl had thrown her book against her locker and was crying. This class was just unreal.

I passed it, which I guess was an accomplishment, but it sure brought down my GPA!
 
PluckyDuk8,

You told your Proff that people were entering info into their calculator?? You are SUCH a high school nerd!!!

I'm sorry that you weren't confortable enough in your abilities that you had to go tell on other classmates to make the grade!!

You tattle tail !!
 
I think it was the right thing to do as long as you didn't give specific names. Be honest, but don't rat other people out...
 
Yes, I didn't rat anyone specific out. When there was a huge amount of people cheating it really does affect the rest of the class. I only brought this up at the END of the quarter when this prof was looking for feedback about the class. Again, we knew each other so he was looking for and appreciated my opinion. That's pretty sweet in a huge lecture hall class.
 
Originally posted by Yogi Bear
-all of the lurkers who benefit from reading SDN but don't contribute anything until they post their FIRST thread which notifies everyone about their acceptance. in response, they receive a bunch of accolads/congrats from SDNers, but they don't ever post another comment on SDN again.
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seriously... i truly have to second that... i'm not applying till nextcycle, but i've noticed so many "I GOT IN!!!!" posts by people who have a post count: 1. i mean its awesome that they got in and stuff, but alot of times i wonder if they really think we would care, since we don't even know them from their posting history. i feel much happier for the people whose posts i have read over a period of time and kinda kept up w/ their app process, esp for reapplicants, then for random people that show up to announce their acceptance, post it on the list, and are only heard from again if they receive another acceptance! its all good though... i ain't mad at ya!
 
OMG! All these stories are so horrible, but things like these happen all the time! :eek:

There are quite a few people in my class who used to be friendly with me. I emphasize, used to be. 2 of them are overachievers, the ones who set the curves for orgo exams, people like that. Last year, they started talking about this other guy who they thought was really cut-throat; he wouldn't give any help to anybody on any subject, and was always vague when it came to talking about his extracurricular activities. It was a huge rumor, and I got scared about my friends becoming separatist to try to isolate the "competition" in my classes. They convinced me that they would never do anything like that. Anywayz, as soon as this application cycle began, They suddenly become antisocial, running from class back to their rooms to "read"--or, rather, work on their med school applications. It only got worse--I got 5 interviews, and they got none. And I haven't even heard a "hi" from them since. And these are people who only applied to top 20 schools and now they look down on me for considering going to USUHS. They want me to give them notes for classes they've missed, but they won't even smile when I try to be nice to them. +pissed+
 
Originally posted by Yogi Bear
-all of the lurkers who benefit from reading SDN but don't contribute anything until they post their FIRST thread which notifies everyone about their acceptance. in response, they receive a bunch of accolads/congrats from SDNers, but they don't ever post another comment on SDN again.
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hell yeah. 2nd only to the same type of people except their first post is "i know i sound arrogant but i'm so fortunate blah blah blah... anyway, help me choose: Harvard or Hopkins?"
 
Just for my own edification, for everyone that has talked about their experiences with cheating / shady premeds, were all of these classes curbed or not? Although cheating in and of itself is morally wrong, I think you could argue that cheating in a curbed class is even worse because you are helping your grade at the expense of everyone else's through your actions, something not true in a class that has no curve.

TH
 
you know, the funny thing is, I don't think this behavior is unique to just 'pre-meds'. You find this kind of cut-throat behavior in the "real-world" as well (read: corporate culture). Sometimes you don't know if you should get angry at these people, or feel bad for them.
 
Originally posted by The Hulk
Just for my own edification, for everyone that has talked about their experiences with cheating / shady premeds, were all of these classes curbed or not? Although cheating in and of itself is morally wrong, I think you could argue that cheating in a curbed class is even worse because you are helping your grade at the expense of everyone else's through your actions, something not true in a class that has no curve.

TH
Click to expand...

It has happened to me in both curved and non-curved classes.
 
The worst I've come across, so far, is the case of the Biochem misfits. Just some random people who impersonated the TAs on the Biochem website, right before a big assignment, and consequently, screwed a lot of people up, but royally. A lot of students looked on that site for help and ended up getting screwed....

The stupid thing is it even happens in English courses. I have one course where the prof reccomended some books...so these girls took them all out and didn't return them until after the big essay was due...despite all the late charges they incured. Guess as long as they vould screw other people, it was worth the money.

A friend of mine told me that some guy in her orgo lab got caught tampering with other peoples experiments....I think he failed the course, in the end.
 
this girl i know got her mcat ticket stolen the night before the mcat :(
 
Yeah, I sincerely believe the saying,
"what goes around comes around."

I think those cheaters develop a bad reputation in those classes, and because of that, isolate themselves off, and when they really need help, they won't get it... sucks to be them!
 
Curved classes...very frustrating.

On a side note- thank goodness my orgo lab instructors didn't dock us for percent yield, I don't think ppl would sabotage each other's experiments, but those things almost never worked! And at least once a quarter there would be some major spill of half your product in the middle of the experiment! Stupid vacuum filtration always seemed to do me in. :)
 
I don't know whether this is funny or just plain sad. In orgo lab, we used to synthesize our product, show the TA for a mark based on yield and product appearance, and then dumped it into a waste container. There were always people huddled around the waste container trying to collect other people's product waste in order to increase their "yield"....it looked like beggars trying to find food in a dumpster.:laugh:
 
Originally posted by BrainDrain
I don't know whether this is funny or just plain sad. In orgo lab, we used to synthesize our product, show the TA for a mark based on yield and product appearance, and then dumped it into a waste container. There were always people huddled around the waste container trying to collect other people's product waste in order to increase their "yield"....it looked like beggars trying to find food in a dumpster.:laugh:
Click to expand...

:eek: Now that's sad.
 
hey braindrain-that's pretty funny--- i could never have gotten away with it... i think i managed to get the correct product only once! the other times, if the product was suppose to be blue or white, i'd have something that came out red or yellow... so i guess no one wanted that! one of the guys that shared my lab bench would just laugh and would try to predict what mistake i'd do before the expt started.... ahhh. mrs. bronskill...

oh yeah, and maybe lurkers just don't feel like they have anything to say... i mean, i read the posts, but most aren't applicable...or i have no idea about some of the schools, yadayadayada..
 
I agree with traveller...

I read the posts a lot and I've contributed some every now and then, but it seems as though most posts have to do with getting into top tier schools, of which I only applied to one or two. So most of the time I don't really relate to everyone else's strife...

Nothing wrong with top tier schools, but not all of the people who frequent this site are people who applied to the Ivys.

Good luck to all! Hope you can have a happy holiday season and actually forget about all this med school admissions drama and remember the joy of the season (be it Jesus, family, nature, whatever tickles your fancy).

:)
 
Originally posted by BrainDrain
I don't know whether this is funny or just plain sad. In orgo lab, we used to synthesize our product, show the TA for a mark based on yield and product appearance, and then dumped it into a waste container. There were always people huddled around the waste container trying to collect other people's product waste in order to increase their "yield"....it looked like beggars trying to find food in a dumpster.:laugh:
Click to expand...


:laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

But seriously, we had this idiot lab instructor for orgo, and he would make the percent yield something like 30% of the grade on the lab report.... It was ridiculous because sometimes these things just don't work the way they're supposed to, but the real educational value comes from the fact that you're doing and understanding the chemistry behind the experiment....
So we tried to talk to this guy, as a class, asked him to help us learn the stuff better, not be so anal about 5% yield.... He refused...
So....as a class, we started practicing this method out of protest.... In the lab reports, we would just make up a percent yield that we knew we needed.... and then do the math backwards.... People would do this before the lab, so they would know what they need to write into their notebooks before turning in the carbons... Of course, unless this guy was to obsereve each and every one of us doing all the weighing etc, there was no way for him to verify any of it....
So, basically, his attitude made this class into a big fu**ing joke, and all of us into cheaters.... The ironic thing was that we all suddenly started getting better grades. Bizzare.
However, at the end of the year, we all wrote our evaluations, and told him what we've been doing, and why, and how stupid his attitude was.... Anyway, the professor saw those, and the lab instructor got into trouble, and had to change his policy :D
Here's to teamwork....:clap:

Serge
 
Originally posted by surge
[BHowever, at the end of the year, we all wrote our evaluations, and told him what we've been doing, and why, and how stupid his attitude was.... Anyway, the professor saw those, and the lab instructor got into trouble, and had to change his policy :D
Here's to teamwork....:clap: [/B]
Click to expand...
Strong work. I like this tactic!
 
Originally posted by captbadass
this is just some weird thing that happenned last year in my orgo lab when i handed in my formal report. heres how it all went down. soooo, i got into lab and put my lab up front in the pile where everyone was turning in their work. nothing seemed weird, all the same normal people were in there. i didnt see anybody that i didnt recognize. BY ALL ACCOUNTS A COMPLETELY NORMAL DAY. so life went on normally for the next week until i got an email from the prof. that ran the lab that said he wanted to see me concerning my lab report. naturally, i got really nervous because this formal lab report was a major part of my grade. i went into his office the next day and he had my lab report on his desk. i sat down and he told me I had gone way off topic and he had never seen anything as repulsive as what i had turned in...blah blah blah. so, i sat there stunned wondering to myself how the hell i could make a lab report "REPULSIVE". I told him that I respected his opinion, but i follwed the ACS JOC guidelines and didnt think it was fair to call my work repulsive. THEN he open up my lab report and there is a GIANT, DETAILED PICTURE OF A PENIS on the first page. I said that I dont even know what to say, but you are right sir that is not in the JOC guidelines. He told me that this was not a funny matter and went on to lecture me about how disgusting pornography is. He went on talking and it became apparent that he actually thought that i had drawn a picture of a penis on my lab report. I tried to convince him that there would be no reason for me to draw a penis and that I didnt do it. THE GUY DID NOT BELIEVE ME and he wanted to give me a zero for the paper. so i had to go get my orgo lecture professor to talk to this guy and vouch for me that i didnt have an infatuation with drawing penis pictures. I was so pissed off at this *******. I ended up getting a B on the paper, but the guy never looked at me the same. I still have no clue who drew this on my paper. ANyways...this has to be the weirdest thing another premed has done in the history of the premed world.

CAPTBADASS
Click to expand...
:laugh: :laugh:

Hahaha--that made me laugh so hard. That's incredible.
 
traveller and horseadish, sorry to single u out, but i think what is meant by the lurkers are those people that register and post with the only intention of posting their acceptance. sure they deserved and all but i think people on this forum would be more inclined to congratulate a poster that they know.

and u might think most people here apply to only ivys but thats not necessarily true, becuase am sure like any other person, everyone wants to brag about getting into an ivy league school or something, and maybe thats why its mentioned more often.

good luck and happy holidays too. :)
 
I think I will re-post what is perhaps a more accurate assessment...

A lot of the threads started on here deal with a specific school, Ivy or not. Thus, for those of us who haven't applied there and don't know anything about it, there is little reason to contribute to the discussion...

My post is not meant to be critical-- I'm all for people applying to Ivys and sharing their stories with one another. And I certainly hope that these stories aren't meant to just be bragging boards, which I don't think they are for the most part. There are much better people to brag to than hundreds of complete strangers! :)

I do believe the Ivys and top tier schools get talked about much more frequently on these sites though. That doesn't mean I wish it would stop... just a reason some would be less likely to post. And for the record, I did apply to a few top tier schools, so I hope nobody thinks I'm just a jealous jerk who wants all the posting to stop! :)

I'm actually disappointed I found this site at the tail end of my application process. I would have loved to read the posts before I went on all my interviews and heard back... sigh...
 
all this cut-throat stuff is so sad (not like I don't see it everyday either!) Med is so competative that people feel they have to act like this, but then you have to wonder about the kind of morals Dr.s will end up having, 'you don't REALLY need that kidney removed, but my doing the procedure would really help my bank account out!'

Anyways, I think its the worst when you'll help people with their assigments and answer their questions about the lectures, etc, but the ONE TIME you need help they suddenly dont know the answer (but later when they get their lab report back you know they really did!!!!)

:mad:
 
horseradish, i hear ya ;) and petrap, u are sooooo right. these girls used to come to my room everyday till like 3 am to ask me to explain homeworks to them, of course it was 3am and i wasnt in the mood to explain anything so they just copied my answers, well now this semester we are not taking the same classes, but lo and behold anytime i see them, they just pretend like they dont know me, oh well , once bitten , twice shy :)
 
aww, immediate spring, i know, people are just brutal sometimes
 
Hey Thanks Horseradish--u echoed my sentiments :)

immediatespring--yeah, that sucks bigtime that those classmates were such leeches... probably better that you don't have classes with them anymore!
 
Originally posted by lola
this girl i know got her mcat ticket stolen the night before the mcat :(
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:mad: Damn. That's the worst thing I've ever heard.

People like this need to be beaten long and hard. I guess I've been lucky, almost everyone I knew in college was really cool so we never had to deal with all this cut throat bull****.
 
stinks cuz the premeds that get the highest grades are the ones who cheat! This guy who sat in front of me in physics my sophomore year cheated during a test even though he really had no reason to! he already had a freaakin' 98 average or something in that class. I think a lot of people spotted him cheating, but nobody said a thing :( I regret being so cowardly useless and not reporting this incident to my professor.
 
...how many of you are (or have been at some point) diry underhanded permeds yourselves? i know i have done some shameless kissing up to get my LORs written in a timely fashion...
 
I really hate when people are competitive. I figure, when I apply to med school, no one's going to ask for the gpa of the girl sitting next to me in sophomore-year physics, you know? So, there's this one girl in my Orgo 2 class who I simply cannot stand! I did really well on the first test and the prof congratulated me in front of several other students, including this girl. She then proceeded to ask me a few day slater what my grade was. When, I told her, she responded, "Well, lots of us did better than that. Why did he congratulate you?" I was kind of taken aback, but I just shrugged and walked away. For the rest of the semester after that, she always asks my grades and if I did my homework. She peers over my shoulder in lab and says things like, "I have a yellow product; why is your's white?" After our second test, which I failed, she kept trying to get my grade. First she asked how I did and I said, fine, just not as good as I had hoped. Then, she asked my score. I said that I didn't know w/the curve. Then, she explained the curve and asked again. Finally, I just said that with the curve I had a C (which is true), and she left me alone. I was getting so steamed! I so clearly didn't want to tell her. Later that week, we both had a test in our physics class. She cornered me in the library the day before the test and asked me to help her study. Being the nice person that I am (even though I had my own studying to do), I agreed to meet her back in the library a few hours later after my lab. I went ot tof my way to go back to the library that night around 7 and she never showed up! The next morning, I confronted her and she just shrugged it off, saying that she felt sick and went home, but she never offered an apology. I promise if she asks me about my grades one more time, I will go off on her!!!
 
i cheated on an ochem test once :( my friend kept on bugging me during the test to give her the answer to one of the questions. in order to shut her up i ended up giving in. i felt sorta bad about it at the time, but oh well. what's done is done i guess. i doubt her receiving the answer affected her grade, but i just hope it didn't affect someone elses. it probably did though.

the girl i knew who got her ticket stolen went to yale. several people got them stolen on the same night. this happened 6 or 7 years ago, and i can't remember if they got to take the test or what.

hardly anyone where i went to school was super competitive. i think it's hard to be when you are friends with half the class!
 
I had to chime in on this one . . .

When I was an undergrad, there was a guy, very nice, who never came to organic chemistry class, but made 90+ on all of the tests; the next highest grade would be upper 50's (low 60's on rare occasions). Four of us formed a study group for the final and asked him to join. He told us that he had been accepted to his program, could fail the test, and still get a B out of the class, so he could care less about the final. On the way out, he confided to me and another person that he cheated! He would get to class early the day of the test and write his "notes" in pencil (light enough so no one else could see, but dark enough so he could see) on the armrest of his chair. On the day of the final, he showed up and I watched him. Sure enough, he cheated.

During my next to last semester of undergrad, there were 3 girls who always made 90+ on the immunology tests. When I inquired about their study habits for the course, they said that they did not study; they knew the material from molecular biology and biochemistry (I had not had either at that point). They told this story to several people. Shortly before the end of the semester, I found out that our professor was a recent retiree from the dental school and used the same immunology tests he gave to his dental students. They knew people who had him in dental school and got the tests (and answers) from them (he used the same tests). By the way, they did study.

Some people . . . .
 
Originally posted by lola
the girl i knew who got her ticket stolen went to yale. several people got them stolen on the same night. this happened 6 or 7 years ago, and i can't remember if they got to take the test or what.

hardly anyone where i went to school was super competitive. i think it's hard to be when you are friends with half the class!
Click to expand...

That just makes me angry. People like that need to get their a$$es beat. But yeah lola, like you I went to a school that wasn't competitive at all. It was awesome, and I had a great time. It was so easy being friends with everyone and we all shared information and helped each other out. Ahhh, Duquense. :love:
 
gotta love those duke premeds. oh wait, no you dont.
 
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