When to Take MCAT

[Vinsanity331]

I am a 2nd year undergraduate student at Ohio State University studying Neuroscience. Currently, with my AP credit, I am able to finish my courses after 2.5 years, which would be in December 2021. I plan to complete my pre-med courses by the end of my second year (except for OChem 2, which I will take my first semester junior year). My questions are:

1. When should I take the MCAT?
2. When should I apply to medical school? If I apply on the regular cycle as my peers, what should I do during the remaining 1.5 years of undergrad?
3. Should I pursue another degree? If so, what major or minor would best couple with Neuroscience for the best application to medical school? Maybe some kind of business degree such as finance?

Looking forward to hearing your responses!

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[Goro]

1 and 2) When you are 100% ready for it.

Read this:
Med School Rx: Getting In, Getting Through, and Getting On with Doctoring Original Edition by Walter Hartwig
ISBN-13: 978-1607140627

ISBN-10: 1607140624

 

[eigen]

I am a 2nd year undergraduate student at Ohio State University studying Neuroscience. Currently, with my AP credit, I am able to finish my courses after 2.5 years, which would be in December 2021. I plan to complete my pre-med courses by the end of my second year (except for OChem 2, which I will take my first semester junior year). My questions are:

1. When should I take the MCAT?
2. When should I apply to medical school? If I apply on the regular cycle as my peers, what should I do during the remaining 1.5 years of undergrad?
3. Should I pursue another degree? If so, what major or minor would best couple with Neuroscience for the best application to medical school? Maybe some kind of business degree such as finance?

Looking forward to hearing your responses!

Two things come to mind, neither of which directly answer your point:

Have you double checked that your AP credit is going to work for med school pre-requisites? Many do not accept it for pre-requisite courses, or require additional upper level coursework in the discipline to be used to satisfy the requirements.

You mention taking OChem 2 in your junior year. When are you planning on taking biochemistry? It's often something you take along with/after your second semester of OChem. Granted, your school may have your chemistry classes structured differently.

 

[lumya]

You should take biochemistry before the MCAT, it really helps. Also I went to OSU and took my pre-reqs there, if your scheduling doesn’t work out take Ochem 1-> Biochem -> Ochem 2. Most of what’s in Ochem 2 isn’t material on the MCAT and the first Ochem prepares you pretty well for the Biochem.

There’s also no reward for finishing early. If you have other interests you can pick up a different major. OSU has a lot of great resources for pre-meds and staying in gives you access to lots of volunteer, shadowing, and research opportunities that will be much harder to find as a non-student.

 

[eigen]

You should take biochemistry before the MCAT, it really helps. Also I went to OSU and took my pre-reqs there, if your scheduling doesn’t work out take Ochem 1-> Biochem -> Ochem 2. Most of what’s in Ochem 2 isn’t material on the MCAT and the first Ochem prepares you pretty well for the Biochem.

Just wanted to add a caveat for future people reading this who aren't at OSU: this advice depends a ton on how the OChem series is structured and is very school dependent. For some broader background, there are two "main" ways to organize the two semesters of OChem.

In the more traditional approach, you'd spend the first semester on instrumentation and substitution/elimination reactions with little to no carbonyl chemistry. This very much does not set you up well for biochemistry.

The alternative approach is to teach carbonyl reactivity in the first semester, with the second semester more focused on things like diels-alder reactions, NAS/EAS reactions, redox reactions, radical reactions, etc. This sets you up pretty well to take biochemistry after one semester of OChem.

More universities teach the "traditional" approach which would require Orgo 1 -> Orgo 2 -> Biochem, largely because that's the way most textbooks are set up. There are an increasing number that teach the alternative.

 

[Vinsanity331]

Two things come to mind, neither of which directly answer your point:

Have you double checked that your AP credit is going to work for med school pre-requisites? Many do not accept it for pre-requisite courses, or require additional upper level coursework in the discipline to be used to satisfy the requirements.

You mention taking OChem 2 in your junior year. When are you planning on taking biochemistry? It's often something you take along with/after your second semester of OChem. Granted, your school may have your chemistry classes structured differently.

So I retook Gen Chem and the basic biology classes, and will be taking all the pre-med requirements at OSU, so I don't have to worry about that. Taking all those courses, I can still finish in 2.5 years. Also, I plan on taking ochem 1 my first semester sophomore year and biochem the second semester sophomore year.

 

[Vinsanity331]

You should take biochemistry before the MCAT, it really helps. Also I went to OSU and took my pre-reqs there, if your scheduling doesn’t work out take Ochem 1-> Biochem -> Ochem 2. Most of what’s in Ochem 2 isn’t material on the MCAT and the first Ochem prepares you pretty well for the Biochem.

There’s also no reward for finishing early. If you have other interests you can pick up a different major. OSU has a lot of great resources for pre-meds and staying in gives you access to lots of volunteer, shadowing, and research opportunities that will be much harder to find as a non-student.

Yes I plan on taking Ochem 1, biochem, then ochem2 in that order. Also, do you have any suggestions on what major or minor would couple well with neuroscience? And I don't plan on graduating early. I simply want to finish my courses early, but still graduate on track with my peers, allowing me to not have to pay a year and a half extra of tuition, but also still take advantage of OSU resources.

 

[lumya]

Yes I plan on taking Ochem 1, biochem, then ochem2 in that order. Also, do you have any suggestions on what major or minor would couple well with neuroscience? And I don't plan on graduating early. I simply want to finish my courses early, but still graduate on track with my peers, allowing me to not have to pay a year and a half extra of tuition, but also still take advantage of OSU resources.

If you have any interest in the humanities, I highly recommend the technical writing English minor. It really helped me with a lot of critical reading skills which definitely translates to CARS. Neuroscience is pretty broad so it does cover a lot of the bases but there are many non-science courses that are great. There’s also classes that taught me a lot of things peripheral to medicine but will probably be applicable in the future such as health economics, public health, biostats, finance, social work, medical literature, social psychology (actually taught a lot of what’s in the P/S section), ect. Also, I don’t know if this is part of the core neuroscience curriculum (I graduated before the neuroscience Major was established there) but I really enjoyed Psychopharmacology with Prof Wenk, it was my favorite class of all time (if he’s still teaching it).