At Caltech, everyone takes the same Core classes. After that, a pre med would need 2 semesters of organic. That’s it. The Core includes 5 classes of physics. At MIT, 2 physics. After the Core, There aren’t easy classes, but there are some really hard ones. The P/F options for some classes is a nice option. I’d trust an MD from either of these schools.
I worked at one of the Harvard hospitals for dozen+ years. I met amazing docs. Fortunately, a lot of good MDs moved to FL.
Not all doctors need the same level of scientific rigor.
If you are assessing an organ transplant plus a lifetime of anti-rejection medication, I’d like to have an actual scientist walk me through the statistics, discuss what we know today about lymphoma risk among people on anti-rejection meds, assess the most recent Meta- studies on survival rates. I don’t need that when my kid had a stomach bug- just needed someone to ascertain that fluids and Pedialyte were the way to go.
The only reason I would believe that a med student had for regretting their Harvard education is if they had gone into a lot of debt to obtain it. That plus med school debt might be cause for regret. Otherwise, I find that statement not to be believed.
Not necessarily. I can see how a few Harvard or other elite private college pre-meds may feel it’s not worth it either because they felt they’ve had to work much harder than students at less elite colleges to end up in the a “lower ranked AMA med school” or as was the case with one medical resident roommate I’ve had who was a Harvard College graduate that it it didn’t help him gain admission to a topflight med school he wanted nor did it help him attain residency in the more prestigious specializations like surgery, cardiology, etc that he wanted rather than internal medicine which was where he ended up*.
Not saying it’s right or that their perspectives aren’t warped…but it’s one that every medical doctor I know has admitted is a common mentality among a vocal subsection of med students/residents/doctors.
And on the flipside, I’ve known Harvard College graduates who enjoyed their undergrad experiences as pre-meds and completely disagree with those who have had such regrets.
Granted, one had what many doctors considered an unusual outcome as someone who graduated Harvard near the top of his class, HMS, and ended up going into one of those specializations and retained as a fellow at the end of his residency at one of Harvard’s teaching hospitals.
** One price many don’t seem to account for is the horrendous hours which come with it. One extended family acquaintance who was a topflight surgeon ended up leaving it behind for a med school teaching post at a Midwest med school because the surgeon hours were having a severe negative impact on her family life.
Anybody who becomes a surgeon and is shocked that the hours have a negative impact on family life wasn’t paying attention during med school.
There are no shortages of opportunities in pathology, radiology, psychiatry, and anesthesiology- the more “family friendly” specialties, that to invest in surgical training and to bail due to the hours seems crazy to me. The choice is not to become a GP vs. specialize- it’s much more nuanced than that.
From observing folks who went into biglaw, one possibility is that the impact and reality of long hours doesn’t impact doesn’t really sink in until one is no longer a single person and starts having serious family/parental responsibilities.
Most single folks I knew in biglaw* pulled long hours swimmingly with a few gripes uttered here and there. Some even felt a perverse sense of machismo in being able to work what most of us would consider to be ridiculously long hours However, the married folks and the single folks get married and start/have children, those long hours really start wearing on them.
Sometimes, the reality needs to actually be experienced before it sinks in for some.
The level of difficulty in entering the psychiatric specialization is arguably just as high as that of cardiology or other specializations like it.
With some added aspects which some in other specializations would find harder to endure…much less pass. A relative who went into psychiatry recounted one screening test required for prospective psychiatric specializers in med school to be placed in a room with several sessions of simulated live “patients” with various serious psychiatric illnesses…including those acting out in ways ranging from screaming abusive language to actually being violent and having to dodge objects being thrown at them…and the prospective specializer was being evaluated on how well he/she responds while continuing to provide the requisite patient care in a professional manner expected of a psychiatrist.
Having multi-level classes for different groups and students with different backgrounds is quite common. For example. Stanford has 3 levels of freshman physics. The most advanced level targets students who are contemplating a physics major and requires “mastering” AP physics in HS as a prerequisite. Having a group of students who have mastered AP physics permits adding extra rigor to the material and covering some additional topics beyond standard freshman physics. The intermediate level targets engineering students and uses calculus, as engineering students are likely to need calculus based physics/engineering in their upperclassmen major classes. The lowest level targets non-engineering majors including most premeds and does not use calculus. The same idea applies for math, chemistry and other fields.
Is the level of undergraduate freshman physics that pre-med students take really that important? I could understand favoring students who take a more rigorous course load in general, but I think this would more apply to challenging upperclassmen courses than pre-med requirements, which tend to be foundation, underclassmen type courses.
If you look at the actual med school admission rates for a particular GPA and MCAT score, they tend to be a lot higher at selective colleges than at less selective colleges. For example, early in the thread I posted WUSTL med school admit rates. They had a 87% admit rate for a 3.4-3.6 GPA with their median MCAT score of 33-35. The admit rate for all colleges for this GPA and MCAT is 60%. A similar pattern occurs at nearly all other GPA/score combinations. This might indicate favoring a particular GPA at more selective colleges over less selective, or it may indicate WUSTL applicants are more likely to excel in other sections of their application, better advising, or a variety of other possibilities.
I never said psychiatry was easy.
Psychiatry is a family friendly specialty which is not the same thing. Cobrat, did you even read my post?
Psychiatry as a specialty has different aspects as any medical specialty.
If one considers the degree of difficulty of matching to a certain specialty, Psychiatry is the easiest one. If you consider the actual job, it is not easy at all. I also believe that psychiatry requires a certain personal skills, you can call it talent or skills that person took special care to develop. I am talking about a high level of ability to connect to others, including mentally ill. My D. was considering psychiatry but got disappointed in this specialty during her medical school rotations.
D. discovered that while she enjoyed the “behavioral” part of treatment - helping the patients in one on one sessions, she did not like the “over-drugging” part of this specialty. It is a dangerous specialty when you are one of one with very mentally unstable people. The doc. is responsible for somebody who can lock herself in a bathroom and start cutting herself with the screwdriver that she managed to hide and things like that.
Overall, medical students are pretty flexible in regard to certain specialty for several reasons. The most important, one needs to experience specialty thru rotations and also one needs to have certain scores for Step 1 and Step 2 to be able to match to highly selective specialties. Those who have highly selective specialties in mind, better be of “grade grabber” mentality as they have to study much harder for their Step 1 exam, I am talking about studying some 14 hours / day, every day for about 7 - 8 weeks. They need it not only for absorbing material, but also for building up “brain stamina” to be able to seat thru many hours of extremely hard exam.
Again, those who consider Psychiatry, do not need to study as hard for Step 1, it is considered the least selective specialty.
There’s a nuance that I’ve observed.
There is a third path to high grades besides being “naturally smart” or “working hard.”
I observed (particularly in non-science/math classes) that having a keen ability to “know what the teachers want” can get you very far. When you see a student that seems to be “punching above their weight class” this is very often the reason why – some kids are just plain better at getting inside the teacher’s head and figuring out what the want to see. When writing a paper, sometimes just pushing a few of the right buttons can turn a B paper into an A paper.
@soze, that is a good point. My D1, who has pretty average test scores, has a really strong EQ and is great at projecting what questions will be on tests. She is also good at going in early for feedback on projects/papers and listening very carefully to the feedback. Obviously this is more helpful in non-STEM majors like hers. She worked hard, but I think that skill pushed her to a 3.96 and Phi Beta Kappa in college. It also has made her s top performer in her job.
soze,
yes,the "third pat"h will work in some classes, but it would not work in standardized testing. The standardized testing scores will reflect only how hard the student prepared, more so at the higher level of these type of testing though. SAT / ACT depends a lot on a kid’s reading skills, the avid readers are at advantage, which they may not have in classes though
. Some classes at college / grad. schools actually use the standardized (nationally) testing to test in class, then it would not matter what a specific teacher wants. The teacher may not even present some pieces of information at all, it is the student’s responsibility to seek additional information.
"The only reason I would believe that a med student had for regretting their Harvard education is if they had gone into a lot of debt to obtain it. That plus med school debt might be cause for regret. Otherwise, I find that statement not to be believed. "
The Harvard grads (and current) students I know don’t seem to consider it ant hardship at all, they love it. And with the great FA, they certainly aren’t going into debt for their undergrad education.
Miami, your D is surely lucky to have had you to finance med school AND her living expenses during undergrad. I don’t know anyone who is in debt after attending Harvard- their need based aid is among the most generous for undergrad.
@soze:
"When you see a student that seems to be “punching above their weight class” this is very often the reason why – some kids are just plain better at getting inside the teacher’s head and figuring out what the want to see. "
My kids have never seen the kid that this sounds like, unless this is the kid who speaks in wrap-up after all the other kids have spoken, who weaves together the bits and pieces that seemed to carry a whiff of what all could see the teacher responded to when the first couple of students said it.
Then there are kids who seem to “know how to get inside the teacher’s head” who hog class time with inchoate rumblings for the sake of having class participation points, and they do it in a way that makes them seem less than oblivious, and less than obnoxious and obsequious, and yet the impact is they wind up being perceived as all of the above - but not by the teacher. (I listen to the kids and their friends as I drive them home, and there has always been one student in school who is simply ‘that kid.’)
Teachers are no less susceptible to being schmoozed than the clerk at the local store, or the civil servant who, until this moment, didn’t seem to respond well to any of the other people who stood before her desk. Affinity matters.
My D1 isn’t a schmoozer in that sense, but she is a VERY good listener and reads unspoken cues very well. And she knows what to do with that information. She is a good participator, but not an obnoxious one. I think people (other students, maybe profs) think she is smarter (IQ) points than she really is. She really is a kid who “punches above her weight” academically, but there is nothing obnoxious about it. Some people learn to leverage the talents they were given, and she is one of them.
And sometimes while exceedingly risky, doing nearly the exact opposite can also yield great results.
Had a Prof who gave me an A as a final grade despite the fact he admitted gritting his teeth while reading my final paper making a case for a certain somewhat gaffe-prone conservative politician being a hero.
He was also able to look beyond some admittedly jerky frosh moments like the time my classmates and I brought in some strong fragrant curry to his lunchtime class which left an odor which was still present the next day enough to write great LORs. 
Miami, your post makes no sense at all. What is “an anonymous debt”? Sometimes your posts are practically incoherent. Do you mean to say they have “an enormous amount of debt”? You are talking about med school loans. I was talking about having a lot of debt from the Harvard degree being a possible cause for regret, so why are you blathering about med school debt? Harvard has some of the best financial aid, making it cheaper for many than their own state flagships. It is actually cheaper for them to go to Harvard than their local state school!
Keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel better, Miami. I also sent both my kids to public universities, but I don’t for a moment kid myself into believing that getting a Harvard degree brings those students “nothing.” GMAB.
Ditto.
I disagree with this, and here’s a story to illustrate why.
A neighbor’s kid went into the pediatrician with a stomach ache. Was sent home, saying it was a stomach bug.
Stomach bug seemed to go away, then came back worse. Prescribed prilosec or something like that. Another month goes by and suddenly her stomach hurts her so bad the parents take her to the ER.
Diagnosis? Stage 4 neuroblastoma that had spread to her organs. 
I don’t know if the month spent without a correct Dx would have saved her, but I do think that having docs that are good at spotting something not quite right and going with it are incredibly important.