No matter how much you've prepared, you still need the skill to move through information rapidly. While I agree it would help out for a month or two, extra classes will have no impact on an 8-10 year medical education.
skill > knowledge.
I agree. There is no medical class that I wish I had taken prior to medical school, perhaps with the exception of medical terminology. There is likewise no clinical rotation that I wish I had taken prior to internship, perhaps with the exception of doing an easy elective at this hospital so that I'd have already known the system, including the EMR.
For those of you who are premeds and wondering how one person can say that taking all of the med school classes twice helps immensely while the next says it basically doesn't help at all, it's because we have different conceptions of what it means to make medical school "easier." I would define making medical school easier as "what would allow you to do well in medical school with the least amount of angst and wasted time." Classes like anatomy and histo are sheer memorization. Memorizing tons of useless minutiae once is painful enough. Having to do it twice would be twice as bad, and it's not going to give you a high enough return in terms of what you get back for the amount of time and effort that you put into it.
Keep in mind too that you would likely be taking these classes with a bunch of other premeds, all of whom are gunning for those As the same as you are. As long as you pass, no one cares what grade you get in your med school anatomy class (if your school even gives you a grade at all). But every med school is going to care what you got in your UG anatomy class when a suboptimal grade drags your AMCAS GPA down a point or two. Every time you take one of these "med school lite" classes, you are exposing yourself to an increased risk of tanking your UG GPA.
So, what should people who want a "leg up" do? I suggest not taking any medical school subjects. Spend time with your family. Go on cool trips. Volunteer. Visit museums and parks. Take off a whole week to do absolutely nothing except watch old movies and Law & Order reruns in your PJs. If you must take a class or two, then take ethics or psychology or a foreign language, all of which would be immensely more helpful for medical practice than anatomy or histo would be.
But, if you're not going to follow that advice, and you want to know, ok, really, what college classes would most help me the first two years of medical school, then focus on taking classes that are principle-based rather than memorization-based. In the long run, you will get a lot more bang for your buck. Because unless you have a photographic memory, which the vast majority of us do not, you will remember basic physiology principles long after your brain has dumped all of the memorized anatomy minutiae.
Here, then, is my short list in terms of classes that give you the most gain for least pain:
- Medical terminology: it would have been nice being able to read my handouts and textbooks without having to waste time looking up every other word. Relatively easy class and not a med school subject, so can conveniently be taken online and/or audited. Not that you'll remember every word you see, but you can have some basic familiarity with medical terms for a relatively small investment of time and effort.
- Physiology: almost entirely principle-based, very high yield for medical school, very high yield for Step 1 of the boards. You will remember a lot of what you learn, and it will give you some foundation even though it will likely be wholly insufficient for med school purposes unless you take a med school physio class
- Pathology: also very principle-based, extremely high yield for medical school and Step 1. You should take it after physio, and preferably with a lab.
Classes that could be helpful, depending on how they're taught:
- Pharmacology: The med school version of this class can be very memorization-intensive, but the grad school version I took was much more principle-based. The amount of overlap was limited, so you can't count on it giving you a huge leg up for medical school. However, having a knowledge of basic pharm principles is definitely high yield, both for medical school and for Step 1.
- Other classes that fall into this category are biochemistry, cell biology, genetics, embryology, microbiology, immunology, and neurobiology. Look for classes that emphasize principles, and steer clear of classes that are largely memorization. You may have better luck with MS level classes for this purpose.
Classes that are a ton of pain for very limited gain:
- Anatomy: massive memory dump after every exam. Boring as all get-out. Low yield for Step 1. Low yield for clinical rotations. Significant risk of lowering your GPA depending on how the class is taught and graded. You basically get the same benefits of a medical terminology class for a lot more work, stress, and time.
- Histo: same as anatomy
out of my mind.
