Med school not wanting science classes?

[chrisski]

I was reading the admission site for one of the school I am applying to and noticed this note:

Grades or credits from subjects offered in the medical curriculum will not be accepted toward fulfilling the required 90 credit hours of undergraduate work or the science requirements. Courses in human anatomy, histology, human physiology, medical bacteriology, microbiology, medical biochemistry, medical genetics, and medical pharmacology fall within this category.


Now some of these are obvious, but I am a little suprised classes like micro and physiology are in this list. The medical school won't even count them towards credit. I think it infers they don't want you to take them at all, which I don't think makes a ton of sense. Do you guys agree with my assumption. Assuming this is my school of choice, do you recommend I drop my micro and physiology from my fall class schedule? I would need to replace them with some non-science class I guess (which I already have plenty of as a non-science major). Thanks!

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[Ursa]

I was reading the admission site for one of the school I am applying to and noticed this note:

Grades or credits from subjects offered in the medical curriculum will not be accepted toward fulfilling the required 90 credit hours of undergraduate work or the science requirements. Courses in human anatomy, histology, human physiology, medical bacteriology, microbiology, medical biochemistry, medical genetics, and medical pharmacology fall within this category.


Now some of these are obvious, but I am a little suprised classes like micro and physiology are in this list. The medical school won't even count them towards credit. I think it infers they don't want you to take them at all, which I don't think makes a ton of sense. Do you guys agree with my assumption. Assuming this is my school of choice, do you recommend I drop my micro and physiology from my fall class schedule? I would need to replace them with some non-science class I guess (which I already have plenty of as a non-science major). Thanks!

Maybe they want to encourage people to be more well-rounded and not be science zombies. Possibly discourage people from getting accepted to med school and dropping out of undergrad.

 

[gravitywave]

call them to be sure, but this almost certainly just means that they won't count actual medical school courses towards your 90 hour requirement. they aren't talking about undergrad level stuff, in other words you actually need to do an undergrad degree. it's probably directed for the most part at internationals.

 

[shaggy alfresco]

Yea, I'm guessing it's directed towards more international students. And also, they want more well rounded people I'm guessing.

If you don't have to take them - don't, unless you're really interested (or you want Physiology for the MCAT - this is useful). I would probably take two semesters of intro bio (required), biochem (required at some, recommended at some others), genetics (recommended by some) and physio (for MCAT) at the most, as a non science major.

 

[young2sj]

Grades or credits from subjects offered in the medical curriculum will not be accepted toward fulfilling the required 90 credit hours of undergraduate work or the science requirements.

Like what Ursa said, they don't want the "minimum 90" to be nothing but medicine related science classes. It's easy to take 30 3-credit hour science classes and apply with a 4.0 sgpa, but you know nothing about geography or even basic calculus. They want a well rounded individual. but i agree, it is odd.

Maybe they have a "maximum" of the number of science classes? Like maybe they will allow 15-30 credit hours of science and the rest be composed of other subjects.

 

[chrisski]

Since they are referencing undergrad students (and since the school excepts 0 internationals) I highly doubt it is applied in that sense. Micro just seems like an odd exclusion to me. Why are immunology and cell bio not excluded. Just seems weird. I might take micro anyways, as it is interesting and relatively straightforward. If they wanted well rounded they would ask for that, or even excluded all upper level bio courses. This fails to do that. hmmm...

 

[Astarael]

I agree that the wording of that statement is a bit ambiguous, but I think that it would be difficult to actually run into problems with this list. The only classes that you would really take as an undergrad are physiology and microbiology (maybe anatomy) which gives you maybe 8-12 credit hours. Considering most degrees are ~120 hours, and they only require you to have 90, you'd still be a long way away from this rule causing you trouble.

 

[gravitywave]

Since they are referencing undergrad students (and since the school excepts 0 internationals) I highly doubt it is applied in that sense. Micro just seems like an odd exclusion to me. Why are immunology and cell bio not excluded. Just seems weird. I might take micro anyways, as it is interesting and relatively straightforward. If they wanted well rounded they would ask for that, or even excluded all upper level bio courses. This fails to do that. hmmm...

it's IU, isn't it? the same page makes it clear that they will consider international apps with a green card, and my copy of the MSAR indicates that they matriculated 6 internationals for the class of 2012.

correct me if i'm wrong. but if it worries you enough to influence your course selection for next year, i really think you should call them, instead of asking random voices on the internet (like mine!)