How important is Micro for Medschool??

[lumanyika]

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My husband and I are both aspiring med school students. Recently the discussion of the importance of micro has become a minor debate.

My stance is that due to the prevelance of microbe- related illnesses, ie pneumonia, only slackers refuse to take microbiology as early as possible.

His stance is that it's a good class to take, however,like embryology it only offers a good foundation. Because you will still have to take Micro-related classes in the second year of medschool.

Any advise will be greatly appreciated.

 

[nezlab99]

The way I see it, you'll get all the micro you need in med school. My undergrad years are my last chance to fulfill interests that are outside of medicine. If you are especially interested in it though, go for it. Slacker or not, I don't think that taking micro as an undergrad will have any impact on microbial illnesses. 🙄

 

[Tone2002]

I heard any classes that you take in undergrad, that you will take again in medschool makes its a little easier.

I took Microbiology and now I'm taking Clinical Microbiology. Of course I find it interesting somewhat.

 

[moo]

Whatever you take in undergrad will probably be covered in a few weeks in med school. If you are truly interested in micro, then take it. I'm not so I'm going to save it for med school. And you don't need micro to do well on the MCAT.

 

[Daredevil]

Most med schools just require one advanced bio course (ie genetics, biochem, microbio), so it's up to you whether you want to take it.

 

[tonem]

Outside of the standard AMCAS premed courses, having seen basic sciences once before definitely makes it less stressful when you see it in medical school. But it isn't required at a vast majority of schools. The previous poster was right about medschool covering a full semester of undergrad basic science material in just a few weeks. The only other advantage is that some schools let you test out of subjects you've taken in undergrad.

 

[NE_Cornhusker1]

I would disagree that micro won't help you on the MCAT.I had form BM in august and micro was key to doing well (I got a 12). Things that are touched on in a general cell biology or intro. genetics class are throughly covered in micro. Things like anaerobic respiration, prions, cell based cloning (plasmids, cosmids, phagemids, etc)as well as microbe morphology were all on my MCAT.

That's just my opinion, I could be wrong.