Med School Without all the Required Courses?

[rmsteinberg]

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I have a BA from the University of Chicago, and am about to complete my neuroscience PhD at the University of Texas at Austin. My undergraduate grades were alright (3.33), but what brought them down were chem classes and statistics. I also never took Physics because I tested out of the requirement, or second semester Organic Chemistry w/Lab because it was not required for my major. Are there any medical schools that might accept me if I get a great MCAT score, even if I never took all the required course work?

(Incidentally, my graduate school grades are 3.93, although I am given to understand that they don't mean a whole lot in med school applications.)

 

[jebus]

I think your best bet is to call/email schools in which you are interested and explain your situation to them - my understanding is that individual medical schools treat AP/IB/CLEP scores differently. A strong physical sciences score on the MCAT might bolster your case.
While you're in graduate school, can't you take a physics course at night or during the summer session? It doesn't have to be super hard calc-based physics, and it WILL help you prepare for the MCAT. (In my experience, night courses were a lot easier and filled with cute girls - if you are not into cute girls that is your problem, not mine.)

 

[relentless11]

I think most schools still require all courses to be completed, and testing out of a class usually doesn't fullfill the requirement. Really, even if a school is willing to "waive" your Physics score, as Jebus said they may want to see your ability on the MCAT, and having that years worth of physics is better than learning it all on your own or having a brief introduction from a prep course considering half of the physical sciences section is physics. In regards to OChem, there's not too much OChem on the MCAT these days, however med schools seem to want that lab component too.

The OP is correct that graduate GPA is less weighted, and thus the MCAT will be a major deciding factor given the less than average undergrad GPA in terms of MD schools. Therefore i'd prolly take physics and ochem, even if it means more time and/or money. As awesome as a PhD in any science is, it appears that your program might not have gone into a lot of detail pertaining to physics and ochem, so it will be a hard to get the med schools to overlook the missing pre-reqs despite performance in grad school.