Exactly how helpful have your premed societies been?

[Wackie]

There's a premed club at my school. Alpha something something.

They have doctors come and speak to them, and all sorts of goodies. I think it'd be good info. I don't know if it's worth putting up with a club.

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[DancerDoc]

There's a premed club at my school. Alpha something something.

They have doctors come and speak to them, and all sorts of goodies. I think it'd be good info. I don't know if it's worth putting up with a club.

I'm in the premedical honors society at my university, and personally it was a waste of the membership fee. *However* that's probably because I'm always too busy to go to any of the event things they have. So if you have the time to be involved in the club, then go for it. If not, then save your money- I thought it might help as resume padder, but it's really only relevant if you hold some sort of position in the club. So it all depends on what you can make of it!

 

[coralfangs]

the one i help has over a thousand members, all student-run, no membership fees (we get funding from the school for some reason),
free mock-mcats, mock-dat, mock-interviews (with helps from the med school), etc
discounts for those prep courses,
school fairs
free study materials, etc

 

[goodoldalky]

There's a premed club at my school. Alpha something something.

They have doctors come and speak to them, and all sorts of goodies. I think it'd be good info. I don't know if it's worth putting up with a club.

It's probably Alpha Epsilon Delta. I've liked it at my school, but I can't speak for everyone. I say give it a try and see what you think.

 

[Dr Durden]

If you can describe your school's chapter as "full of goodies," certainly look into it as others have suggested. However, don't expect joining or even leading said club to be that much of a resume enhancer. Just think about it, a pre-med in a pre-med society, wow, that will be such a rarity in the applicant pool.

 

[AggieJohn]

I think it would be worth joining. A lot of the pre med organizations will be heavily involved in community service and have plenty of opportunities for medical experience. You can become involved in things that are considered important for admission and at the same time get to know a group of people and possibly make some friends.

 

[AggieJohn]

But yeah, if you don't plan on doing anything with them, then it is a waste of your money and not worthy of putting on your application.

 

[coralfangs]

If you can describe your school's chapter as "full of goodies," certainly look into it as others have suggested. However, don't expect joining or even leading said club to be that much of a resume enhancer. Just think about it, a pre-med in a pre-med society, wow, that will be such a rarity in the applicant pool.

join only if u can get discount or freebies haha
that's why i joined

 

[Dr Durden]

join only if u can get discount or freebies haha
that's why i joined

That was about the only thing my school's club had going for it too. Was just a bunch of premeds patting each other on the back and saying how great they all were. Basically, a less anonymous and much less amusing SDN

 

[wolfram241]

I stay away from mine... I hate people knowing what I want to do.

 

[63768]

the premed society at rice was only useful for the free smoothies after orgo tests for all members. everything else was superficial and wholly unnecessary.

 

[mvenus929]

We have both the traditional pre-med society and the honors. The non-honors one basically just has a bunch of doctors and admissions counselors come in from various schools. I was really glad that I went to the few meetings I did go to this year, just because I would be completely lost about the admission process without it (applying to more than four schools... why?? as an example). I don't know if the honors society is anything special, but I'll probably go for it just cause I'll want the honors cord

 

[kevster2001]

duke's premed advisor actually blocked the creation of a premed society

 

[durfen]

There's a premed club at my school. Alpha something something.

They have doctors come and speak to them, and all sorts of goodies. I think it'd be good info. I don't know if it's worth putting up with a club.

What premed society?

 

[Dr. Pepper]

duke's premed advisor actually blocked the creation of a premed society

Now that's a good advisor.

Seriously, there is no real purpose to a pre-med society other than adding a trite EC or trying to hold a position in the club and proclaim yourself the informal king of the pre-meds.

Pretty much everything they teach you can be learned on SDN anyway.

However, if they are giving out goodies, might as well go for it.
-Dr. P.

 

[63768]

Pretty much everything they teach you can be learned on SDN anyway.

However, if they are giving out goodies, might as well go for it.
-Dr. P.

agreed. in actuality, they teach you about 10% of what can be learned on SDN. i would have reapplied with the same zero knowledge i had going in the first time had i not discovered SDN.

 

[coralfangs]

do all schools in the states have premed advisors or committee?
we don't have any at university of toronto (it's in canada)
that's the reason we are allowed to have a premed club

i still don't understand why we can't have a committee or advisor though....
half the students here wanna go into med anyway

 

[Jon Davis]

I stay away from mine... I hate people knowing what I want to do.

I hear you. The pre-med society at my school was totally self-serving. I stayed away too.

 

[baylormed]

I hear you. The pre-med society at my school was totally self-serving. I stayed away too.

Yeah, I stayed as far away as possible from the ones in my school. The people in them are your typicall gunner, selfish, obnoxious pre-meds. I couldn't possibly put up with these people for meetings or for anything else. From my experience, they were insufferable.
They pat each other on the back during meetings saying "oh, how great we are! how smart we are!" yet they are all waiting for the moment when someone will fail so they have one less person to compete with and can feel better about themselves.
As for the perks, in my school you didn't have to join any of the pre-med societies in order to get the free mcat practice. As for the smoothies, I can make those myself.
So, in you case, I would just join another club, something you are interested in, like international politics, or religion, or service or philosophy or whatever. STAY AWAY FROM OBNOXIOUS PRE-MEDS.

 

[BuckerPark]

As helpful as a skim milk is to the lactose intolerant.

 

[Oculus Sinistra]

It really varies by the school and thus, by the people who are running it. A pre-med society should, at the very least:

1) Create a social atmosphere for premeds to discuss issues pretaining to medical school and admissions
2) Provide community service and shadowing experiences
3) Bring in doctors to speak about the field, what to expect from real world medicine versus tv medicine, their views of the future, answer questions, etc
4) Educate freshmen/new premeds in regards to what they are going to undergo, what requirements they'll need to do, etc
5) Offer some sort of MCAT prep or general science tutoring

The problem is that most premed clubs just have people who are lazy as hell filling up positions and not doing anything to contribute to the goal of the club. They just want the title for their resume. They don't even want to show up at meetings half the time. So the content of the meetings goes downhill and with it, the club's reputation and chance at success.

Perhaps it is to be expected.

Anyway, you can attend meetings as a member, but don't expect your membership status to get you into medical school.

 

[DropkickMurphy]

duke's premed advisor actually blocked the creation of a premed society

The one at Indiana State is simply the premed advisor's fan club. She blocked formation of a seperate entity (basically a social club) for those who didn't feel the need to kiss her ass at frequent random times.

 

[DrPhysician]

meh, the one at my school doesn't do much...

I've found it to be unuseful because the info they gave was already common knowledge...

 

[xanthomondo]

The only thing really i got out of my pre med club was a lot of free pizza

 

[SitraAchra]

My pre-med society gave me a list of people to avoid while taking classes and chosing extracurriculars.

In other words...it was worthless.