College Confidential - View Single Post - Pre-Med Neuroscience Schedule

phillySASer08 · 07-05-2008, 06:02 PM

some assorted thoughts on this, noting that I graduated this May doing the neuroscience concentration and will be attending med school in the fall:

keep in mind that for your premed requirements you need two semesters of Bio WITH LAB, which is why I tend to advocate taking the 101/102 sequence as opposed to 121/whatever. All of the intro bio classes give out relatively few A/A- grades (about 20%), and really, I don't think 121 is appreciably harder than 101, it's just more focused on a narrow range of things already covered in 101. 102 is a class I really enjoyed and highly recommend taking, as the labs are pretty good.

If you do go the 121 route, bio 251 (which you need to take for the neuro concentration) would suffice for your other class with lab, but you would want to plan on taking it junior rather than senior year so it's finished before you apply to med school.

Generally, do not take classes at local colleges. Summer courses are generally ok as long as it's alright with the department (though avoid taking many of your premed requirements this way), but it's much better to take them at Penn if at all possible. The classes you take beyond the med school requirements matter very little for med school (this isn't like for undergrad, where people care about degree of difficulty), so take whichever language interests you, though clearly Spanish would be more useful down the road in a medical setting.

I highly, highly recommend the neuroscience concenration. In the upper level classes you get to work pretty closely with the faculty, most of whom are fantastic (particularly the team that does Bio 251 - Ted Abel and Marc Schmidt especially are very approachable and offer excellent 400-level seminars). It is important that you get plugged into research relatively early, because you do have to do a thesis as part of the concentration (though it doesn't have to be in neuroscience-mine wasn't). I would definately recommend doing the Neuroscience concentration over BBB, it is definately tougher but you come out with a much stronger science background.

07-05-2008, 06:02 PM	#7
phillySASer08 Member Join Date: Aug 2005 Posts: 765	some assorted thoughts on this, noting that I graduated this May doing the neuroscience concentration and will be attending med school in the fall: keep in mind that for your premed requirements you need two semesters of Bio WITH LAB, which is why I tend to advocate taking the 101/102 sequence as opposed to 121/whatever. All of the intro bio classes give out relatively few A/A- grades (about 20%), and really, I don't think 121 is appreciably harder than 101, it's just more focused on a narrow range of things already covered in 101. 102 is a class I really enjoyed and highly recommend taking, as the labs are pretty good. If you do go the 121 route, bio 251 (which you need to take for the neuro concentration) would suffice for your other class with lab, but you would want to plan on taking it junior rather than senior year so it's finished before you apply to med school. Generally, do not take classes at local colleges. Summer courses are generally ok as long as it's alright with the department (though avoid taking many of your premed requirements this way), but it's much better to take them at Penn if at all possible. The classes you take beyond the med school requirements matter very little for med school (this isn't like for undergrad, where people care about degree of difficulty), so take whichever language interests you, though clearly Spanish would be more useful down the road in a medical setting. I highly, highly recommend the neuroscience concenration. In the upper level classes you get to work pretty closely with the faculty, most of whom are fantastic (particularly the team that does Bio 251 - Ted Abel and Marc Schmidt especially are very approachable and offer excellent 400-level seminars). It is important that you get plugged into research relatively early, because you do have to do a thesis as part of the concentration (though it doesn't have to be in neuroscience-mine wasn't). I would definately recommend doing the Neuroscience concentration over BBB, it is definately tougher but you come out with a much stronger science background.
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