I don’t think that’s terribly far off although it seems a little bit low with maybe around 60% success being closer. </p>
<p>
It’s certainly unfair and I’m concerned by this. The message seems to be - take the easiest, least rigorous courses possible (as long as the required core is included) if you want the greatest chance of being accepted to medical school. It seems to me that it discourages some of the best and brightest from entering the profession. It seems like it also discourages those interested in heavy sciences and engineering from entering the profession which makes no sense for a profession that relies so heavily on the sciences and engineering fields. It really doesn’t make sense that medical school adcoms are so myopic on this point. I think we could use more people with an engineering or heavy science background like ‘scidoc’ in medical schools.</p>
<p>As a medical consumer, I gotta disagree with the notion that an engineering GPA should somehow be favored over social sciences or humanities. If engineering is your schtick, then by all means go there. If biomedical engineering together with an MD is what you’re after, fine, that’s good, as long as you never have to deal with actual living patients. A clinician (general practice or specialty) is, IMHO, far better served by an education in ethics and other human concerns. Perhaps this is not entirely due to coursework at all, but rather that people best suited to the service professions are the people who choose and excel in social science and humanities.</p>
<p>ucsd<em>ucla</em>dad Your assessment is correct. One of the reasons is that
many admissions committee members may have majored in English themselves. We are in total agreement.</p>
<p>The premise espoused by celloguy that ethics constitutes an important prerequisite for practicing medicine is of course undisputed. </p>
<p>However, IMHO, the idea that liberal arts majors are more ethical than scientists is false. Almost all lawyers, businessmen and politicians majored
in “social science and humanities”; let’s say to be non-confrontational that they are not more ethical than their peers.</p>
<p>I don’t think medical school adcoms are “myopic” on this point at all. It’s not like there’s a lack of engineering/science-oriented students in medical schools. As far as I can tell, they constitute a majority of the students there, or did when I knew lots of medical students.</p>
<p>What the medical schools seem to believe, as a philosophical matter, is that their institutions and the profession in general will benefit from having a decent number of participants who were NOT always exclusively engineering- or science-oriented. None of them would dream of admitting a class consisting entirely of English or Sociology majors, but none of them would dream of admitting a class consisting entirely of MBE and Biology majors, either. They admit the best candidates they have, paying some attention to diversity of interests. </p>
<p>I’m sure a far greater percentage of MBE and Biology majors apply to medical school compared to English majors, so it probably seems harder for them to get admitted. But at least among the people I know who went to medical school, the non-scientists who got admitted were incredible stand-outs – no one got accepted who did not ace the premed core and the MCATs, who did not have some substantial extra-curricular involvement in health or science, and who did not have some real accomplishments in their fields. They were certainly not dumber or lazier than the engineering or science types.</p>
<p>Celloguy’s entry above reminds me of a long-ago comment a new acquaintance (himself a ‘social scientist’ of some sort) made to me when he discovered I was studying bioochemistry. He asked me why I didn’t spend my time studying something that was “socially useful”. At the time I was involved in a project that was trying to develop an inexpensive, field-ready vaccine for Dengue virus, a mosquito-borne scourge of poor tropical countries. I thought it was useful.</p>
<p>The most soft-hearted physician I know earned a PhD in nuclear engineering, worked for years in the field, then returned to school to study medicine (he is now a practicing radiologist). The stereotype of engineers and science students as somehow less concerned with humanity is ridiculous.</p>
<p>Whoah! I didn’t say that. Faulty syllogism there. What I was struggling to convey was that people who prefer art history to fluid dynamics generally have better “people skills.” That is, they listen better and communicate more compassionately with a broad spectrum of clients.</p>
I agree that they shouldn’t be favored but in reality, the other majors are being favored due to the well-known grade deflation at many colleges for the engineering majors. This was my point. In their effort to balance the majors they’re actually decreasing the likelihood that engineering majors would be admitted due to the focus on the number (GPA). I believe law schools are the same way.</p>
<p>And yes, there are many bio majors planning to enter medicine but many of them take the lowest-level bio courses they can in order to maintain the highest GPA possible. (I’m generalizing here).</p>
<p>It just seems to make sense to me that the adcoms would want a well-rounded field and should balance the pure GPA number against the curriculum rigor. Colleges do this for HS grads so why wouldn’t it be done for med school as well?</p>
Why would you say this? You believe that only introverts would choose fluid dynamics and extroverts art history? This is way too much of a generalization for both groups.</p>
<p>Okay, I’m a LAC junkie and ignorant on this. “Grade deflation”? I don’t understand. Do you mean that, all else equal, a brilliant student taking theoretical physics at an LAC would score higher than same student taking theoretical physics in an engineering school? Or do you mean that a higher percentage of students in engineering courses flunk out than the percentage of students in, say, Basketweaving 101?</p>
<p>Well, first of all, I question your use of “extrovert” to define a good listener. But I understand that’s a fairly common misapplication of the term. Truth is, “introverts” tend to be more attuned to people around them – it just wears us out sooner.</p>
<p>But as for good communicators clustering in the arts/humanities/social sciences, yes, that’s a generalization. I was speaking in generalities. That doesn’t make it less true. There are libraries full of research to supporting that generalization.</p>
<p>I’m saying that at many of the top colleges the average GPA for an engineering major will be significantly lower than the GPA for many other majors. This is within the same school. I’m saying that the majority of these exact same engineering students could switch to another major at the same college and maintain a much higher GPA. It’s simply easier to maintain a higher GPA in PoliSci, History, Communications, etc. than in Engineering at many of these colleges. This is the same student, same college, but different major. There have been several other threads on this subject. Check out the average GPAs by major at some of the top colleges (if they post them) and you’ll see that engineering can easily be at least a half point GPA lower than the rest of the majors.</p>
<p>I used the terms ‘introvert’ and ‘extrovert’ to describe in a general way personality types that one might equate to ‘people skills’. It was an over-simplification but you probably get my point. I don’t think there’s anything inherent in the fluid dynamics versus art history fields to generalize one way or the other.</p>
<p>Exactly what evidence do you have that “other majors” are being “favored”? Are English majors being admitted to medical school with lower MCATs and lower grades in core premed courses at the same institution than science majors? In large numbers?</p>
<p>Give me a break. I don’t believe that’s happening. I DO believe that grades are generally lower in hard sciences and engineering than they are in most humanities fields, so that between equivalent students majoring in English and Chemistry the English student is likely to have a higher GPA. But I don’t think that means that medical schools are swamped with English majors. They are the exception, not the rule.</p>
<p>And as for the bio majors who “take the lowest-level bio courses they can in order to maintain the highest GPA possible” – those are the students I wouldn’t want in medical school. Just as I wouldn’t want someone who had said “I’m going to be an English major because that will give me a higher GPA for medical school.” Yeesh! Don’t the medical schools do candidate interviews? I would think you could sniff out someone like that from his transcript and interview pretty well, and I’d blackball his butt.</p>
<p>Okay. Sounds right. Engineering is tougher than basketweaving for most of us. But maybe there’s a question of aptitude? In other words, perhaps kids lacking math/science aptitude choose an engineering path because of parental pressure or promise of $$ at graduation? Whereas, nobody I know who hates English Lit ever chose to major in it; we all know lit majors end up at McDonalds. I’m not sure how to get meaningful stats. Anecdotally, I know that trying to teach Shakespeare to most engineering students is a lost cause – they hate it, they don’t see the point, and they’re frankly not any good at it.</p>
<p>Goodness. Everybody is misquoting/misinterpreting me, so I must be communicating poorly. At no point did I suggest that biochemistry (for example) was not socially useful. Science education is absolutely crucial for survival on the planet. That’s not it at all. What I said, or tried to say, was that the skill set most needed by a practicing physician involved dealing ethically and compassionately with sick people. Yes, keeping up with the literature, understanding new treatments, knowing when to call in the specialists, these are all needed competencies too – but it ain’t rocket science.</p>
<p>My point was simply that admission to med school should be, and apparently is, based on mastery of the premed core curriculum and an overall successful liberal education. I took issue with the idea that engineers deserved extra points for taking “hard” courses that would be essentially irrelevant in clinical practice.</p>
<p>JHS:
In my post I was referring strictly to the GPA component - one I’ve been told is reasonably important in med school and law school admissions. I didn’t refer to MCATs, LSATs or grades in core classes. </p>
<p>celloguy:
I’m sure that there are many that fall into this trap. Some of those with the aptitude also simply decide they don’t want to do the amount of work most engineering programs require.</p>
<p>My S is one of those engineering majors who probably won’t ever be a practicing engineer–at least he currently has no plans in that direction. However, he rather spend six hours doing math than one hour writing a paper. So far (still in first semester) he is doing fine with grades and has no expectations of transferring. He is putting in more hours of studying than his friends in other majors, but was prepared for that going in and considers the trade-off of being given an English for Engineers class worth all the calculus and chemistry they can throw at him.</p>
<p>Some people are strong in sciences, some are strong in the humanities, but it is more unusual to find people who are good all around. I think the English majors who get high MCAT scores are good in both English and the sciences, and these people probably stand out in the medical school application process. I doubt that English majors who went into English in order to coast with minimal work (if this is even possible) manage to do well enough in the sciences to get high MCAT scores.</p>
<p>I met a young woman who’d done her undergraduate studies at Harvard then attended HMS. Her major complaint was the amount of reading assigned in some of her humanities classes. This seemed more of a challenge to her as a premed major than her sciences classes.</p>