Q about Major Classes

You don't really need the extra science classes for the mcat. I never took biochem and did fine on the biological section. You should probably take it before medschool, though. Many of my friends who were bio or chem majors said that their advanced coursework did them little good.

 

I don't know that any adcoms are concerned with when you complete your in-major classes. My understanding is that courses in molecular biology and biochemistry are helpful for the biology section of the mcat, although they are not essential.
Personally I felt that my mol. bio & biochem classes really helped my bio score, but as dr octopus pointed out above, they aren't essential.

 

Worse yet, I guessed on all the MCAT organic chemistry questions. Not even educated guesses. Just outright guesses except for maybe a couple of the obvious ones.

Even though I took all the requred organic chemistry classes and made an "A" in all of them, my university had a weak chemistry program with embarressing grade inflation.

I still managed a respectable score on the MCAT. Not outstanding but decent. Organic chemistry only accounts for about a quarter of the questions on one section of the test which means it only accounts for 1/12 of your entire combined score.

Call me lazy. Call me ignorant. I only applied to our two state medical schools here in Louisiana and was accepted to both. If you are applying to Harvard you might want to disregard the previous!

So don't stress about it. You do not need to know any organic chemistry when you walk through the doors of medical school. You will learn everything you need in biochem.

Incidently, undergraduate organic chemistry is taught with an emphasis on molecular structure, details of reactions, and "following the electrons." This is all very nice...but not essential knowledge. You can pretty much fake it, unless you go to a PBL school where you might be forced to actually learn all of the pathways to present to your group.

Sincerely,

P. Bear
MSII