pre-hater/pre-med hating professors

[fyi411]

have anyone dealt with these pre-med hatin professors 😡 . My Biology professor is like so uptight. Do yo know how many times i have to listen to him saying "there is more to life than medical school" or his favorate "don't worry you'r mom will still eat, you can become a PhD"
do any of you guys have to deal with these professors? 😕
Plus he tries to make the test extra hard because a most of the students are pre-health.

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[WhatUpDoc!]

Yeah, I feel you. I had a professor sippin some haterade at my school too. One of my friends tried to get a letter of recc from the biochemistry prof. and got turned down because she thought he'd make a better Ph.D than M.D. That broad was hatin somethin fierce 😀

 

[the12thmd]

Well, that guy doesn't sound too bad...

Sometimes professors give hard tests. Deal with it. All the students in the class are taking the same test and are graded equally. If health students were given a harder version of the test, THEN you could complain. 🙂

 

[carn311]

have anyone dealt with these pre-med hatin professors 😡 . My Biology professor is like so uptight. Do yo know how many times i have to listen to him saying "there is more to life than medical school" or his favorate "don't worry you'r mom will still eat, you can become a PhD"
do any of you guys have to deal with these professors? 😕
Plus he tries to make the test extra hard because a most of the students are pre-health.

My genetics professor was such a bitter and cruel human being. Total jerk. One lecture he came in all smiles, praising our questions, and us in general. I knew something was up...

My suspicions where confirmed at the end of class when he began his speech. I will give the gist of it:

My professor:
"I LOVE my job. Science is the BASIS of medicine. Why would you want to be a boring technician? That's all you'll be as a doctor...a technician. Why dont you people do work that is TRULY interesting and TRULY important."

A wide-eyed student asked with obvious admiration in his voice:
"What research do you do in your lab professor?"



His reply:
"I work with YEAST. Yeast is a FASCINATING ORGANISM!!! Why yeast will one day erradicate disease and..."

I fell asleep at this point. Sorry guys.

 

[hmm...]

i heard from another student that some prof said that he would "waste" his genius by not going into research

 

[NonTradMed]

I had a genetics professor who loved to hand back our exams, letting us know with glee that we can all beg for 'sympathy points' if we'd like and he may throw a few points back our way. He knew many of us were premeds and would fight tooth and nail for each point and he seemed to enjoy the power he had over us.

 

[novawildcat]

My gen chem prof. would make all his tests 100% math based problems because he loved to fail premeds and bio majors since he knew 75% of them suck at math.

 

[fyi411]

My gen chem prof. would make all his tests 100% math based problems because he loved to fail premeds and bio majors since he knew 75% of them suck at math.[/QUO
tru dat

 

[rcd]

. Nope. .

 

[jonathon]

Suck it up. So you meet a person that is a challenge. Big Deal!!!!!!!!!!!

Basic science research is the foundation for all of what takes place in medicine. Research is where the real knowledge is gained.

have anyone dealt with these pre-med hatin professors 😡 . My Biology professor is like so uptight. Do yo know how many times i have to listen to him saying "there is more to life than medical school" or his favorate "don't worry you'r mom will still eat, you can become a PhD"
do any of you guys have to deal with these professors? 😕
Plus he tries to make the test extra hard because a most of the students are pre-health.

 

[swpm]

have anyone dealt with these pre-med hatin professors 😡 . My Biology professor is like so uptight. Do yo know how many times i have to listen to him saying "there is more to life than medical school" or his favorate "don't worry you'r mom will still eat, you can become a PhD"
do any of you guys have to deal with these professors? 😕
Plus he tries to make the test extra hard because a most of the students are pre-health.

Consider the fact that all of them became professors in order to do research, and that many view teaching undergrads as a duty to be endured ... and it's hard to blame them. So many pre-meds are obsessive, obnoxious, hypercompetitive, socially inept, dysfunctional backstabbers with approximately zero interest in the class they're teaching. (Beyond the all-important grade, of course.)

That said, it shows a distinct lack of class for him to belittle any of his students' career aspirations.

Anyway, if he makes the test extra hard, then study extra hard. It'll be good practice for medical school. 😀

 

[fyi411]

Consider the fact that all of them became professors in order to do research, and that many view teaching undergrads as a duty to be endured ... and it's hard to blame them. So many pre-meds are obsessive, obnoxious, hypercompetitive, socially inept, dysfunctional backstabbers with approximately zero interest in the class they're teaching. (Beyond the all-important grade, of course.)

That said, it shows a distinct lack of class for him to belittle any of his students' career aspirations.

Anyway, if he makes the test extra hard, then study extra hard. It'll be good practice for medical school. 😀

good advice, i'll take it 🙂

 

[Delo_Ohm]

I can share a similarly infuriating experience with my physics prof.

He had run into some difficult students, and without going into too much detail, he got the short end of the stick in this scenario. At any rate, later that week he told us he'd never write another LOR. I was understandable upset seeing as I had taken his class solely under the instruction that he wrote amazing letters. I went to talk to him saying that I had wanted to ask and so on. Eventually he said he would write me a letter, but that I should come back in later, closer to the time I would like it. A few weeks ago when I went in, he told me that he had again changed his mind. I asked why he had told me that he would write one for me if he now would not and his reply was, "I just have to be fair now" Observe the irony and b.s. coming from that statement. I just left and didn’t say anything more.

Best part, I am a non-sci major and don’t really have anyone else to ask... Looks like I might have to send out some muffin baskets or something???

 

[LADoc00]

I had a hater prof, biochem guy. He used to claim "MDs were 2nd class intellects with 1st class egos." He went out his way to fail premeds, basically you knew from other people never to say you were a premed. Personally, I lied and said I was a history major taking the class for fun (I can BS well).

Then he came into class one day, haggered and sickly looking. He said he had been at the hospital where his son had been taken after an MVA, barely alive when he arrived, the surgeon had worked his azz off all night to save him when he found out it was the son of his old biochem teacher. When he told the story, he broke down uncontrollably crying, there wasnt a dry eye in the room..never seen anything like that.

 

[austinap]

Are you guys serious? Everyone is getting the same tests and same work from these professors. Who cares that they're hard? I'm actually glad, our undergrad schools are getting pretty soft, we should have more tough professors. Though it's a shame that grades do determine so much, I don't think that we should have all easy professors just so we can get the good grades.

No matter how much you guys complain, and I do understand that some undergrads are tougher than others, and that the difficulty does vary from professor to professor, there's still the issue of comparing our education to that of other countries. We're pretty weak. We may have more college grads than most european countries, but the education isn't the same. Ask anybody that's either gone to school in europe, or professors that have taught in europe. (Note: a lot of this is probably due to the neccessity of remedial coursework in the first few years of college due to our ridiculous highschool system) I wouldn't complain too much about having tough courses. Learn something from it.

I personally hate it when people go into a course thinking "how does this apply to medicine??" Don't people learn out of curiosity anymore? Are that many people just taking classes to get the degree so they can go on to get another degree? If that's really the case, I find it incredibly sad.

In response to the prof who refused to write a letter to a med-school, I don't find anything wrong with that. A letter is supposed to be about why the professor in question feels you should be a doctor, and how you've shown the capability for it. At least the prof was straightforward enough to tell you, rather than writing a sub-par letter.

 

[Slide]

Consider the fact that all of them became professors in order to do research, and that many view teaching undergrads as a duty to be endured ... and it's hard to blame them. So many pre-meds are obsessive, obnoxious, hypercompetitive, socially inept, dysfunctional backstabbers with approximately zero interest in the class they're teaching. (Beyond the all-important grade, of course.)

That said, it shows a distinct lack of class for him to belittle any of his students' career aspirations.

Anyway, if he makes the test extra hard, then study extra hard. It'll be good practice for medical school. 😀

Deal with the professor. Premeds are so whiny and irritable, one bad letter grade and they're sent flying across the border. I have a few premed friends that always talk about the MCAT, getting into med school, etc. I enjoy talking about it sometimes, but when it's 100% of the conversation, I leave. Even as a pre-med, I hate pre-meds. God, they're gonna look back one day at college and say, "Wow my life sucked."

 

[PariPari]

sometimes i'm a pre-med hating pre-med b/c we can upon occasion act like a bunch of entitled pricks.....but yeah profs who do it outta jealousy or frustration (imagine having to teach something you loved to ppl who only cared if they got an A) suck, but so do lots of other ppl in the world

 

[HelenaP]

I personally hate it when people go into a course thinking "how does this apply to medicine??" Don't people learn out of curiosity anymore? Are that many people just taking classes to get the degree so they can go on to get another degree? If that's really the case, I find it incredibly sad.

Curiosity can't be dictated by a list of pre-reqs. I find the vast majority of my classes to be fascinating, but there are some things, such as organic chemistry, that just don't mean anything to me. I mean, I did all right in the course because I had to, but I just don't care which electrons are going where or what's going on with the stereochemistry of whatever. I don't need to know to practice medicine, and I don't want to know. I don't think that's a character flaw.

 

[Rafa]

I personally hate it when people go into a course thinking "how does this apply to medicine??" Don't people learn out of curiosity anymore?

The system is set up so those who spend the least time studying for things unrelated to doing well on the MCAT generally perform the best on the MCAT. If you want people to learn for the sake of learning, tell AMCAS to stop making med school admissions as dependent on high GPAs and standardized test scores as they currently are. Until then, the people who zone out on non GPA-boosting/MCAT-raising material in class and study their butts off for everything else will continue to be the primary students who get to pursue medicine.

 

[lsumedgirl]

Yeah, I feel you. I had a professor sippin some haterade at my school too. One of my friends tried to get a letter of recc from the biochemistry prof. and got turned down because she thought he'd make a better Ph.D than M.D. That broad was hatin somethin fierce 😀

I asked my biochem professor for an LOR. He knew how hard I worked, and I got a really high B... an 89! When I asked him for the letter, I was told no. I "only got a B in the class," and I was "only in the lower portion of the top quarter of the class." I was 8th (I think) in a class of almost 40!

I think it's b/c I'm non-traditional. He told me it would be very interesting to see "how things play out with you being a history major trying to go to med school." I imagine things will play out like a lot of med students and drs I know... successfully!!! I've met English majors, music majors, philosophy majors, and many more that have made it. You just have to be a science geek, too! 😉

So I'm familiar with the nay-sayers. I have one thing to say - BITTER!!! Stop hatin'! 🙂

 

[Oculus Sinistra]

have anyone dealt with these pre-med hatin professors 😡 . My Biology professor is like so uptight. Do yo know how many times i have to listen to him saying "there is more to life than medical school" or his favorate "don't worry you'r mom will still eat, you can become a PhD" do any of you guys have to deal with these professors? 😕
Plus he tries to make the test extra hard because a most of the students are pre-health.

Everyone has to deal with these professors at some point. They just don't like the floods of premeds who come in thinking they are god's gift to academia and they deserve glowing LORs simply for being alive.

 

[seadizzle]

I asked my biochem professor for an LOR. He knew how hard I worked, and I got a really high B... an 89! When I asked him for the letter, I was told no. I "only got a B in the class," and I was "only in the lower portion of the top quarter of the class." I was 8th (I think) in a class of almost 40!

I'm not sure what the issue is here. You'd want a rec letter that said you were barely in the top quarter of the class?

Sounds like he did you a favor by being honest - that his letter of recommendation would not be that strong.

 

[chintu]

I think Rafa made an excellent point. The system is designed such that premeds really don't have the "luxury" to take challenging courses and explore their curiosities to expand their minds because what medschools in the end are going to see is the grade in the course and not consider the fact that someone made a C+ in some Advanced Photonics course because they wanted to learn something exciting. Not to mention all the BS extracurriculars and clinical things that they have to do takes up so much time that it hardly leaves anytime to take extra courses and not afford to do well in them. I learned this the hardway in my freshman year when I ended up doing poorly in advanced differential eq. that I just took for the sake of it. I think I understand where the profs are coming from but I also understand the premed perspective. I think its the students that finely balance curiosity with grades and impress profs with their intention to learn that make fine candidates for medschool.

 

[seadizzle]

My gen chem prof. would make all his tests 100% math based problems because he loved to fail premeds and bio majors since he knew 75% of them suck at math.

Sounds a bit paranoid. What, there was some quadratic equations on the acid base reactions?

And intro chemistry is not required to be only a premed course. It is supposed to provide the basis for a major in chemistry. Majors in chemistry, suprise, have to do a lot of math.

I don't think 3/4 of premeds suck at math.

 

[HelenaP]

Chintu - I agree, but maybe they're just trying to prepare us for reality. Doctors are frequently paid (and sued) based entirely on paperwork, irregardless of the quality of care acually being provided. People who can't jump through stupid bureaucratic hoops are not going to like it in modern medicine.

 

[seadizzle]

I think Rafa made an excellent point. The system is designed such that premeds really don't have the "luxury" to take challenging courses and explore their curiosities to expand their minds because what medschools in the end are going to see is the grade in the course and not consider the fact that someone made a C+ in some Advanced Photonics course because they wanted to learn something exciting. Not to mention all the BS extracurriculars and clinical things that they have to do takes up so much time that it hardly leaves anytime to take extra courses and not afford to do well in them. I learned this the hardway in my freshman year when I ended up doing poorly in advanced differential eq. that I just took for the sake of it. I think I understand where the profs are coming from but I also understand the premed perspective. I think its the students that finely balance curiosity with grades and impress profs with their intention to learn that make fine candidates for medschool.

It's unfortunate the way it turns out. Med schools end up preferring a couple 4.0 in intro astro classes than a 3.0 in pchem III and partial differential equations. It's pretty stupid.

Especially if you know you want to be a doctor from the beginning of college, you feel like you are kept from taking "risky" classes because they could damage your gpa.

 

[pnasty]

have anyone dealt with these pre-med hatin professors 😡 . My Biology professor is like so uptight. Do yo know how many times i have to listen to him saying "there is more to life than medical school" or his favorate "don't worry you'r mom will still eat, you can become a PhD"
do any of you guys have to deal with these professors? 😕
Plus he tries to make the test extra hard because a most of the students are pre-health.

i had an orgo professor who has said before that he doesnt like pre-meds because they just take his class as a requirement and not because they are interested...i didnt really believe this at first

then he scheduled an orgo midterm the day before the april MCAT, and when I asked if he would postpone it until Monday, he said no......then a week and a half later a female student went up to him and said "I dont feel like I will be prepared for this test, can I take it on Monday instead." And he said yes! I wanted to make a fuss over it, but then the part of me that just loves to get screwed over made me complacent

 

[45408]

In response to the prof who refused to write a letter to a med-school, I don't find anything wrong with that. A letter is supposed to be about why the professor in question feels you should be a doctor, and how you've shown the capability for it. At least the prof was straightforward enough to tell you, rather than writing a sub-par letter.

Actually, I think it's part of a professor's job to write LORs. If they do research, they almost certainly have graduate students, and they probably wouldn't think of meeting a grad student applicant without first reading some LORs. It would be hypocritical to expect LORs from students without being willing to write them as well. It's part of the system. No, they don't get paid to write them, but it's how it all works.

 

[Shredder]

PhD are all just jealous of docs

 

[MossPoh]

You'll meet people like that in every field.....I don't hangout with pre-law, pre-med just because I like to get away from worries every now and then...when I'm with SOME of people (note the some) all I hear is out their B in orgo II will destroy their life and so on... I like hanging around with my accounting friends because they just don't care about anything.lol I've met professors that hate and professors that respect. My German Applied Linguistics prof said somethign along the lines of "I defintley should've done something like medicine. I love linguistics but damn I am tired of writing paper after paper after paper just to try and maintain a job, or find a new one."...he is 35 and trying to get a job to move out of the equivalent of dorms for grad students...I have nothing for respect for MOST research guys..because God bless anyone that can handle that stuff day in and day out......I cringe at the thought of just entering a lab or writing research papers about some obscure detail that you have a hardtime understanding how more than 3 people on the face of the planet would WANT to read....but in the long run it does good. The profs/phds chip away and aid in making medicine/life better, and the doctors apply it to the profs and the population when they need it. It is a nice little circle. There will be haters in every field you are in....best advice is to just suck it up and move on.

 

[novawildcat]

Sounds a bit paranoid. What, there was some quadratic equations on the acid base reactions?

And intro chemistry is not required to be only a premed course. It is supposed to provide the basis for a major in chemistry. Majors in chemistry, suprise, have to do a lot of math.

I don't think 3/4 of premeds suck at math.

Yeah he put on solving quadratics which a lot of premeds couldn't do. we also learned kinetics in terms of using simple calculus. he would put on his exams derive the first integrated rate laws etc. But this probably wasn't really surprising since he was by training a Physical chemist. Your right 3/4 of premeds probably don't suck at math, it is probably more like 80%. i was a gen chem TA, and you know who the worst offenders were for data analysis? Premeds and bio majors. i couldn't count the number of times that they would simply connect the dots for a bunch of data points when they were supposed to fit a best fit line through them--this was even after I already talked about fitting regression lines to data for 15 minutes in class.

 

[AggieJohn]

I had a hater prof, biochem guy. He used to claim "MDs were 2nd class intellects with 1st class egos." He went out his way to fail premeds, basically you knew from other people never to say you were a premed. Personally, I lied and said I was a history major taking the class for fun (I can BS well).

Then he came into class one day, haggered and sickly looking. He said he had been at the hospital where his son had been taken after an MVA, barely alive when he arrived, the surgeon had worked his azz off all night to save him when he found out it was the son of his old biochem teacher. When he told the story, he broke down uncontrollably crying, there wasnt a dry eye in the room..never seen anything like that.

Wow.

 

[swpm]

The system is set up so those who spend the least time studying for things unrelated to doing well on the MCAT generally perform the best on the MCAT.

I know this probably isn't what you want to hear, but there's a reason med schools put so much emphasis on gpa and MCAT scores: they are by far the most reliable predictors of performance in medical school and USMLE pass rates.

Medical schools invest an enormous amount of time and money in their students. They know that students who didn't smoke their relatively easy, slow-paced undergrad courses are going to struggle during the preclinical years.

If you want people to learn for the sake of learning, tell AMCAS to stop making med school admissions as dependent on high GPAs and standardized test scores as they currently are. Until then, the people who zone out on non GPA-boosting/MCAT-raising material in class and study their butts off for everything else will continue to be the primary students who get to pursue medicine.

If you think spending a lot of time learning stuff irrelevant to your chosen career path will end when you get to medical school, heh, stand by for a shock. 🙂 It's usually about the 2nd year of residency training after med school that most people finally get to start learning their chosen field full time.

Most universities give students the option to take classes on a pass/fail basis, specifically to permit the kind of risk-free exploration and "learning for the sake of learning" you're talking about. Medical schools don't look down on opting to take a class here and there pass/fail, so long as there aren't a lot of them.

Actually, I think it's part of a professor's job to write LORs.

Of course it is - it's part of their job to write honest LORs. And a letter that says words to the effect of ...

This slightly above average student earned a B in my introductory, lower-division science class. I've never spoken to him for more than 45 seconds at a time. I don't see any reason why he wouldn't make a good doctor. He didn't have any tattoos that would scare pediatric patients.

... isn't going to impress any adcom.

Just because a professor declines to write a LOR for you doesn't mean he's being lazy, or a jerk. It often just means he doesn't want to hurt your application and waste his time writing a weak letter.

 

[LifetimeDoc]

I was a Pre-Med hating TA while and undergraduate and graduate student in Chemistry. Teaching pre-meds can be annoying when they come up to you to grovel for points that they didn't deserve, such as not studying for a quiz, doing poorly, then demanding points because they have to get an A to get into medical school.

Now that I am a pre-med, I can sympathize. Your GPA and MCAT scores "get you in the door" to actually fill out the "real" application to medical school (secondaries) and to get the ever-important interview. Without a good GPA or MCAT (or correct skin color, racial background, economic background), you are a t a distinct dis-advantage. Now, I don't totally agree that GPA or MCAT scores should be used in this way, but there are so many qualified candidates and so few slots. What, 33% of applicants to medical school actually get in somewhere?

 

[45408]

Just because a professor declines to write a LOR for you doesn't mean he's being lazy, or a jerk. It often just means he doesn't want to hurt your application and waste his time writing a weak letter.

While there are some stupid students who would ask a prof to write them a letter even if they were that bad, that's not usually the case.

 

[austinap]

Actually, I think it's part of a professor's job to write LORs. If they do research, they almost certainly have graduate students, and they probably wouldn't think of meeting a grad student applicant without first reading some LORs. It would be hypocritical to expect LORs from students without being willing to write them as well. It's part of the system. No, they don't get paid to write them, but it's how it all works.

Sure, they should probably write letters, and it is part of their unwritten job description, but there's nothing that says that they have to write all good letters or be dishonest about students. If they truely feel that they think you'd be a much better PhD candidate than MD, they're not in the wrong to tell you that or write it in your letter. I'd prefer the former.

 

[Sarg's kid]

have anyone dealt with these pre-med hatin professors 😡 . My Biology professor is like so uptight. Do yo know how many times i have to listen to him saying "there is more to life than medical school" or his favorate "don't worry you'r mom will still eat, you can become a PhD"
do any of you guys have to deal with these professors? 😕
Plus he tries to make the test extra hard because a most of the students are pre-health.

My orgo teacher started the class by saying, "I was premed. I didn't get in to medical school. This is a weed out course, and this will be the reason that some of you do not get into medical school either."

Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach, teach Orgo. 😀

 

[swpm]

While there are some stupid students who would ask a prof to write them a letter even if they were that bad, that's not usually the case.

Well, I'm not talking about "bad" students asking for LORs. I'm talking about "average" students or "pretty good" students asking for LORs and feeling dejected or wronged because the professor declines. The problem isn't the professor - it's the student.

The poster in question here ended up turning in an average performance (roughly 75% percentile amongst a random group of undergrads). He'd had minimal if any contact with the professor. He'd have wound up with a generic, unhelpful letter that would not impress any admissions committee.

Good LORs come from professors who write honestly about "excellent" students whom they know well.

Good LORs are hard to get because they require non-trivial, positive interaction with the author plus stellar performance in some objectively measured area. This is why adcoms require LORs in the first place: to help weed out the applicants who can't somehow (in 2-3 years) ace a class and get a solid LOR from someone who actually knows them. It's tough, especially at big schools with large classes and lots of pre-med hopefuls clamoring for letters. That's the point.

MCAT & gpa open the door; LORs and interviews get you through.

 

[fyi411]

i had an orgo professor who has said before that he doesnt like pre-meds because they just take his class as a requirement and not because they are interested...i didnt really believe this at first

then he scheduled an orgo midterm the day before the april MCAT, and when I asked if he would postpone it until Monday, he said no......then a week and a half later a female student went up to him and said "I dont feel like I will be prepared for this test, can I take it on Monday instead." And he said yes! I wanted to make a fuss over it, but then the part of me that just loves to get screwed over made me complacent

sorry about that
so did you do well on his test?

 

[lsumedgirl]

I'm not sure what the issue is here. You'd want a rec letter that said you were barely in the top quarter of the class?

Sounds like he did you a favor by being honest - that his letter of recommendation would not be that strong.

Well, in the end, I'm glad he didn't write the letter. Better to get no letter at all, than a mediocre one. I just thought his reasoning was dumb. And guess this is why... he was SO supportive of me, and my goal of med school... until he learned that I was a history major. Once I told him that, he said, "Well then what are you doing wanting to go to med school?"

Oh well, I had a lot of other supportive professors, and even those the undergrad is in history... I'm a science dork at heart! 😍

And it made for a great interview! I even made it to the wait list... But it just wasn't in the cards that year. (Considering that Katrina was a big factor in my state... I feel bad complaining. A lot of people lost their lives, their homes, everything... so having to wait one more year isn't too big of a deal in the grand scheme of things.)

But for the record, I was pretty happy with my 89 in biochem! Not too shabby, for the way the course was taught.

 

[Duchess742]

some ways of dealing with research-oriented profs are better than others. for one thing, they certainly don't like students who go to class (or even worse, who don't go to class), take the tests, do well, and then ask for a rec. what do ppl expect? seriously, it's like, 'blah blah got an A in cell biology, so that clearly means he/she will be fantastic at dealing with patients and surviving all the rigors of med school.' yeah, no!

i dunno if this will help anyone who still has time to do this, but i have a few suggestions for dealing w/ profs who don't like premeds:

1. like someone said earlier, take a genuine interest in the course for the sake of learning the material itself. if you actually like the stuff, it'll be obvious to the prof, whether you end up doing well or not.

2. if you have some sort of a legit problem in the class, address it early and ask for the prof's help. they love helping you out, and the earlier the better! if you do badly on one test, go to the prof with an 'i'd really like to know how i can learn the material more effectively in the future' approach, and not a combative-about-the-grade stance.

3. go to office hours often and be prepared when you do, so you can sound like you've really been working on the stuff.

4. invite the prof to something outside of class where he/she can see you from a different academic angle (key word: academic...don't do anything sketchy!). i knew that i wanted my cell neurobiology prof to write me a rec, so i invited him to a research presentation i gave so he could get to know me by my dedication to and passion for the work i do.

you've also got to understand where the profs are coming from. they probably didn't always hate premeds...but hundreds of grade complaints over the years will turn even the best of them into haters. my cool cell neuro dude told me that tons of ppl have come up to him AFTER the final grades came out, complaining that they had never gotten C's before and expecting him to change their grades for that reason (not to mention, it's one of the hardest classes at my school and a C isn't entirely bad). so i guess a lot of the premed stereotypes are true. i know some profs probably are in fact inherently evil people, but ~99% of them were made that way by incessant bitching. so give your mean profs a bit of a break! 😉

 

[Em1]

The poster in question here ended up turning in an average performance (roughly 75% percentile amongst a random group of undergrads).

As I understand it, average is defined as the 50th percentile. Therefore, the 75th percentile is well above average.

 

[swpm]

As I understand it, average is defined as the 50th percentile. Therefore, the 75th percentile is well above average.

Then you understand things incorrectly, or at least incompletely.

A lot of self-selection goes into applying to medical school. You are not competing against all students at your school, or even all the ones who think they might like to be a doctor someday. You're competing against the ones who want to go to medical school and have the grades & MCAT scores to support a reasonable application.

The chumps who graduate with a 2.1 gpa and make you feel good about being "well above average" aren't spending any time on the AMCAS web site. Truth is, the vast majority of the people who who are applying (and thus, are asking professors for LORs) come in above the 75th percentile.

Most pre-meds have the sense not to ask professors who don't even know them beyond a face in the class to write LORs on the "strength" of a B. So given the kind of students that usually ask this professor for LORs ... yeah, 75th percentile is weak.

 

[hardy]

I had a genetics professor who loved to hand back our exams, letting us know with glee that we can all beg for 'sympathy points' if we'd like and he may throw a few points back our way. He knew many of us were premeds and would fight tooth and nail for each point and he seemed to enjoy the power he had over us.

absolutely awesome!