g3pro said:
Wanna know a little secret? It's not harder at NU than it is at any other major school. You're getting the same education as everyone else. The difficulty which individuals at NU are describing is most likely a defense mechanism in response to the tuition at NU. The real difficulty, if you will, is being able to pay for med school after paying $30,000+ for the same education you would get at a public school!
i would have to disagree with this to some extent.
the trick to doing well as a premed at northwestern is to do as well as possible in your manageable classes like calc and physics and gen chem. bio and orgo are quite difficult and intense here, the bio sequence especially is tough because of the curve and the distribution of grades, much more difficult than i've experienced at ivy league schools like penn and harvard. its partly because northwestern doesn't encourage people to take a 100 level bio sequence. the bio at northwestern starts at 200 level, but its even more intense than any of the 300 and 400 level classes i took there.
in fact, while i was at northwestern, i knew of at least 30-50 pre-meds each year who either skipped out on the 200 level bio sequence or had to drop it for whatever reason only to take in the summer, most of the people i knew took bio at harvard over the summer. all of those people always came back with A's or A-'s, while many of us struggled day and night to get B-'s.
its tough also because of the pace and duration of these sequences for all the prereq subjects because we're talking about 3 quarters, so orgo and bio 3 times each, even though our quarter is really only 2 weeks shorter than a normal semester. on top of that, the slightly shortened schedule makes the exam schedule pretty intense as well, from the second week on, you'll pretty much have at least 3 exams a week every week. oh and also labs, in all of our prereq science classes, you take labs concurrently. so you have orgo, bio, and physics lab every week (3-5 hours of lab and a prep lecutre) for an entire 3 quarters, an entire year. most schools do a single separate lab class. so add at least 15 hours of labs to your schedule every week all year, if you're premed.
from a content perspective, to be honest at northwestern, the bio and orgo sequences essentially cover in the first 2 quarters pretty much everything that gets covered at normal semester schools in 2 semesters. the 3rd semesters of bio and orgo go into a lot more depth. i know this from personally taking classes and comparing curriculums between northwestern, penn, harvard, and columbia.
but like i said, mostly its the duration of these classes, the scheduling of exams coupled with long labs all year that makes premed at NU tough. bio and orgo are a little extra tough, but check it out, if you can manage to do well in calc, physics and gen chem, as long as you do average in orgo and bio, and then do well in some easier upper level bio classes, you're set, you'll be well above average and also well prepared for the mcats.
