"pre-med" advisors

[asama527]

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For those of you who have had a pre-med advisor during your undergrad, what have your experiences been?

 

[Jeffy]

mine seems to have less of a clue what's going on then me, and she's supposedly been doing this for years. she couldn't give me the AAMC's definition of what a URM was. I almost kicked her.

 

[Bones2008]

Mine is nothing short of awesome.

 

[bellajoy]

My advisor is great. And, he's been especially great through my recent serious illness. While I was in the hospital on life support, he personally called up all my schools I applied to and told them about my situation, plus he dealt with all the school things that came up as well. Plus, he's worked with me so I can graduate before fall after missing this whole fall semester. And, besides all that, he's a nice guy with a lot of good info.

 

[Heal&Teach]

At my state school, I had three different advisors during my four years. The first (freshman year) was a witch and decided that she wasn't going to give me the time of day. I walked into her office, and she gave me the whole "med school is competitive speech", saying that not everyone can make it, etc. She then changed her tune when she looked at my transcripts and saw that I was serious. She left (TG) after my first year, and then we had another person come in who was clueless - I gave her more advice than she gave me. We all got used to her and then she had to move b.c her husband got a new job in another state. The last person I had at least stayed through my senior year, and is still there now.

Unfortunately, the one thing I noticed about our advisors was the fact that none had any pre-health experience whatsoever. Besides the first one, the last two were encouraging, but not as helpful. I think I learned more about allopathic and allied health from my undergraduate science club.

So my rating was "Encouraging but useless".

 

[Jenuine]

All I have to say is that I don't envy their position. There job is to yes, help pre-meds, but also to remain credible to the medical schools. Thus they have to look critically at the applicants, while trying to remain helpful and encouraging. It must be really difficult.

The same goes for admissions committees. Can you imagine what it would be like to try to pick applicants out of such a pool of truly exceptional individuals?!?! Wow. Craziness.

 

[dstn2bmd]

The worthless b!stard!!

 

[UCLAstudent]

My school doesn't have a pre-med adviser, so I go to the biology counselor, instead. She's wonderful! 🙂

 

[thackl]

If I had listened to the UT Austin advisor, I wouldn't be starting until 2005. Very cold, very poor advice. Then again, the admissions counselors from the schools themselves will show up at various campuses and blow a bunch of useless and misleading smoke up the students' collective asses. I don't know if they are sadistic and get off on this or if they really don't know what they are doing..........

 

[DrBodacious]

My advisor is totally worthless, and a biatch. She wastes my time everytime I go to see her, telling me crap I already know. Plus, she wouldn't write me a LOR that was requested by Loyola, because she was too busy. I only gave her over a months notice because I didn't know about the requirement (thanks to her in part I suppose). Sure there are alot of pre-meds at my school but I am probably one of the better rounded and qualified applicants, with actual chances of getting in from my crappy state school and she apparently doesn't see that, even though I tell her about all the stuff I'm involved with. She just doesn't care about anything but lecturing you on crap everyone knows already.

 

[ironey]

I talked to one pre-med advisor once. That was enough time to find out that the MCAT was given twice a year and a second quarter of calculus was usually encouraged at most med schools. After that USELESS talk where he told me how hard it was and how I shouldn't get my hopes up (without looking at my transcripts from undergrad), I decided to do it on my own.

Frankly, I can't imagine depending on anyone to remind me that I need 4 LORs for X school or that the deadline forr Y school is approaching. What is there to getting into med school that you can't learn or do on your own? NOTHING!!!

They are in general a useless waste of time and resources. Everything they have to share is attainable on the internet (school web pages and AAMC).

Anyway, that's my rant against "advisors."

 

[musiclink213]

mine told me that i don't need biology lab for med school 😕 then, the other one told me that i'm crazy for taking physics and biochem at the same time (like i have any other choice?) than, the first one told all of us in the premed club that we're probably not going to get into med school because we have a disadvantage, cause my school is not known for it's strong science program, and we should give up on our dreams right there and then. she said most of us would have no shot at getting in. so much for encouraging.

 

[bellajoy]

Originally posted by musiclink213
mine told me that i don't need biology lab for med school 😕 then, the other one told me that i'm crazy for taking physics and biochem at the same time (like i have any other choice?) than, the first one told all of us in the premed club that we're probably not going to get into med school because we have a disadvantage, cause my school is not known for it's strong science program, and we should give up on our dreams right there and then. she said most of us would have no shot at getting in. so much for encouraging.

ouch. that was harsh.

I guess I just feel lucky that there's a decent program at my school with decent advisors.

 

[exmike]

my adivsor is SDN, s/he is pretty good

 

[asama527]

Originally posted by exmike
my adivsor is SDN, s/he is pretty good

I gotta agree with you on that one. SDN is definitely a pretty good pre-med advisor.

 

[boomuntilnoon]

Perhaps the pre-med advisors are simply reflections of their pre-med students... useless but still act omniscient. 😀

 

[AthanasiusJam]

I think we should all remember the type of people our pre-med advisors deal with. Bitchy, neurotic, high-strung gunners all over the place and each year.

No wonder they seem to have such a high turn over rate as I have been seeing reading this post. They must retire early also.

 

[twinklz]

My pre med advisor did nothing beneficial for me but put together the rec from the committee. Granted, his name is well known around the med schools, so his word says something.

BUT...the reason I'm not such a fan is that he tries to mold each freshman pre-med into the typical, ideal candidate. Instead of encouraging them to explore different humanities classes or different ways to volunteer he pushes them to bio and volunteering at the hospital.

So we have a bunch of cookie cutter zombies...but a high acceptance rate to med school. Give and take I guess....