philosophy, yay or nay

[Davejj40]

Im preparing for the MCAT next year, and I was wondering what all you guys who are and have taken the MCAT think about taking a philosophy class to prepare for the verbal section. I'll be doing the garden variety preps for the test, but would it be useful to take this class? I mean its not going to cost me anything financially since I have a 19 unit limit, but it will amount to some lost time from other classes and personal activities. Time is pretty damn valuable at this stage for me considering I work 30 hours a week at lab researching and attend school full time on top of volunteering yada yada yada............

so yay or nay to the philosophy class? useful for mcat or not?

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[Anastasis]

Im preparing for the MCAT next year, and I was wondering what all you guys who are and have taken the MCAT think about taking a philosophy class to prepare for the verbal section. I'll be doing the garden variety preps for the test, but would it be useful to take this class? I mean its not going to cost me anything financially since I have a 19 unit limit, but it will amount to some lost time from other classes and personal activities. Time is pretty damn valuable at this stage for me considering I work 30 hours a week at lab researching and attend school full time on top of volunteering yada yada yada............

so yay or nay to the philosophy class? useful for mcat or not?

Best prep I had for the verbal section. But if you're worried about time, it tends to be a writing intensive class (or it can be) so check that out first.

 

[ADeadLois]

Im preparing for the MCAT next year, and I was wondering what all you guys who are and have taken the MCAT think about taking a philosophy class to prepare for the verbal section. I'll be doing the garden variety preps for the test, but would it be useful to take this class? I mean its not going to cost me anything financially since I have a 19 unit limit, but it will amount to some lost time from other classes and personal activities. Time is pretty damn valuable at this stage for me considering I work 30 hours a week at lab researching and attend school full time on top of volunteering yada yada yada............

so yay or nay to the philosophy class? useful for mcat or not?

I would say any humanities would be helpful, not necessarily Philosophy. There are statistics that non-science majors tend to do better on the MCAT than science majors. This is probably due to the critical reading emphasized in humanities, a crucial skill for the MCAT.

 

[Davejj40]

worddddd its yay

 

[dr.kicia]

i totally agree with the previous SDNers. Any humanities course is great. I have been taking a lot of art history classes and i can see already that my verbal is much better...i highly recomend taking any philosophy or humanities class.

 

[Summer Sweet]

I'm leaning more towards other humanities-type classes. I'm not the biggest fan of philosophy, probably because it's so abstract, but it depends. I took a philosophy of gender or whatever kind of class, and it was fun because the instructor picked interesting readings. But something on ancient philosphers and stuff would bore me beyond sleep.

 

[quadmanturbo]

take ethics class part of the philosophy area..............helps u with MCAT and medical school interviews I guess............when they ask if you should kill a child.......lol

 

[Davejj40]

take ethics class part of the philosophy area..............helps u with MCAT and medical school interviews I guess............when they ask if you should kill a child.......lol

hahaha...watch they really ask that

 

[Nikki2002]

philosophy classes would be great prep for verbal!! I took one honors intro course and a bioethics course---the bioethics courses are awesome b/c they are relevant and the reading will really help you on the mcat.

 

[EBI831]

i'm gonnna say no especially ifyou are taking an intro to philosophy which you prob will if just taking your first class. chances are the limited stuff you cover won't show up on the test. same with most humanities classes. now if you take humanities classes/phil classes/any class really that deal for the most part with reading and interpreting or criticism then this would be a great help. otherwise you're probably just as prepared taking any class b/c anthropology(social science) especially neanderthals and all that jazz has an equally likely chanceof showing up as plato.

 

[Davejj40]

i'm gonnna say no especially ifyou are taking an intro to philosophy which you prob will if just taking your first class. chances are the limited stuff you cover won't show up on the test. same with most humanities classes. now if you take humanities classes/phil classes/any class really that deal for the most part with reading and interpreting or criticism then this would be a great help. otherwise you're probably just as prepared taking any class b/c anthropology(social science) especially neanderthals and all that jazz has an equally likely chanceof showing up as plato.

This class is purely for MCAT help, it has no effect for GEs since they're all complete. Im just worried if I take a class like this it may be totally irrelevant to the MCAT, which equals a waste of time. Im in the works of Publishing two papers at UCSF where I do my research, these papers will be huge for med school, but they require a **** load of time (but i get paid, so its my job/research =D). Also with a workload of a full time student and research/job it would be nice to know that if I do take this class it will benefit me.

holla back at me

 

[Davejj40]

actually if theres any other class any of you guys can think of that could benefit someone on the verbal section of theMCAT please share. Humanties, philosphy, pot making whatever...

 

[dr.kicia]

actually if theres any other class any of you guys can think of that could benefit someone on the verbal section of theMCAT please share. Humanties, philosphy, pot making whatever...

i recomend "theories in art history"...it sounds innocent but you will READ a lot and a lot of it will be like The Economist, plus you will need to interpret and look for the main idea, talk about what you read etc...and most of all understand what the reading is talking about.
But in general i find any art history class to be very helpful. Not only for the reading part but if you will have to memorize 300 slides with dates, names, and main info,and then recognize unknown to you piece of art work and associate it with the right artist(just by looking at the characteristics of the style), memorizing stuff for MCAT will seem easy. It's a great visual warm up which helps in memorizing stuff faster...just my $0.02