mcworbust is absolutely right in every way, except for maybe giving up lunch.
Whenever I see some poster tell a high school kid, who wants to go to med school, to take it easy in high school and then major in Physics and Materials Science, at the toughest school to which he or she has been admitted, I have to believe that poster is a troll. The same is true when I see kids advised to take AP credit or college honors courses. The key in high school is to make your first year of college a repeat of high school. In college you must get every A you can. This is a numbers game. If you don't have the numbers, you won't get interviewed. It's cruel and stupid, but that's the way it is.
Thanks!
I'd agree with you on the following:
- posters who tell students to chill at any level of education and then subsequently take on the hardest route possible (hardest major, hardest school) are indeed giving bad advice.
- it is a numbers game, and if you don't have numbers you wont get interviewed BUT if you are only numbers you won't get admitted. med schools have the luxury of having many qualified applicants, so if all you have to show for your undergrad experience is a GPA you won't be as interesting to admission committees as other students who clearly grew as people during their undergrad years - basically, GPA is very important, but one down semester (ie down to maybe a 3.3, from personal experience) is possible to recover from and is worth it if you are cultivating other interests that shape who you are.
I'd slightly disagree on a few things:
- If someone is a proven hard worker in high school and enjoys the content of a major that is traditionally hard, I wouldn't dissuade them from pursuing a "hard" major because doing something you enjoy will provide more fulfillment and success then doing something easy that you're uninterested in to get by with a high GPA. I say this because there are many biology majors out there that did biology cuz it was easy thinking it was a good path to med school, but then didn't get into med school and now have a bio major that they weren't super passionate about in the first place (One of my majors was a bio major, so I know these people well). For high schoolers at the beginning of their journey, I'd value doing something you're interested in because that makes it easy as you are motivated to learn, and not everyone who comes in as a pre-med will conclude that it is really for them in the end.
- AP credits can be a great thing to give you more time in undergrad to do what you want, but before taking AP courses in high school, students should check with their top 2 or so choices for undergrad to understand which AP courses get them what credit based on what score they get on AP test. They should know that usually the core courses required by med schools should be taken at a 4 year university (so these AP classes aren't as good of a time investment as others as you'll need to take those classes again in UG for med school admissions).
- College honors courses get a bad rap, but I happened to be in an honors biology track at my UG that helped me develop into a productive researcher and challenged me in a way that was very helpful for my preclinical coursework in med school. Again, I was excited about the material, so I wanted to do the work, so I did well enough GPA-wise and it worked out. Don't do college honors just to show off that you got honors (at least for med school admissions), do honors for the challenging learning and research opportunities and the opportunity to take more individual responsibility in learning about what you are really passionate about.
- Making first year of undergrad a repeat of high school isn't the worst idea, but, for example if you already tested out of algebra, don't take algebra again in undergrad just for the A! I think that's such a waste of time - time that would be better spent simply studying more for the classes you are taking, or doing other things you might be interested in (volunteering, shadowing, clinical work, research, etc). I'd instead say take a lighter load freshman year so you can learn how to learn/work on efficiency and these things will result in better grades in the long term (over the 4 years) vs. getting a few extra A's because you're repeating high school material. But to each his own...
Sorry for the long post, it's just that many high schoolers enter this process with a 1 track mind and i would instead encourage everyone to take stock of what you're really interested in as this is the path to happiness, which is the path to success in whatever career path you choose.
