IHTFP - Loving it or hating it, come discuss.

sakky
Sat, 24 May 2008 10:54:09 +0000

The way advisors are dished out is that faculty are asked if they are comfortable advising students towards going to Medical School. At least for course 6, specifically some of the profs indicated that they are comfortable doing premed advising. Many profs would simply say: “I have no clue about doctor-ing, I have no clue about premed, my entire philosophy towards education is completely different from what a premed probably wants.”



And maybe that’s precisely part of the problem: why exactly does that advisor need to come from your major. Now, granted, if you match all premeds to advisors within their major, then that’s great. But if you can’t, I would argue that it’s a heck of a lot better to get an advisor who’s not in your major than to not even get an advisor at all, which is precisely the problem that I’m talking about.



There are a finite number of faculty at MIT. Not all of them advise (they don’t have to all the time, they have other responsibilities instead).



All of MIT’s competitor schools have a finite amount of resources also. Yet you don’t hear Harvard or Yale premeds complaining that they can’t even get advisors.



MIT seems to make a good effort in getting everyone who indicated they want a pre-med advisor in their first two years a premed advisor. The person in the article complains that she should get priority over the sophomores. But she shouldn’t. It’s a queue. She had her chance, now they are getting theirs. Now she has to wait in line just like everyone else.



But the question then is, why should there be a queue? Why aren’t there enough resources for all of the premeds so that nobody has to queue? Again, other schools provide that, so why can’t MIT?



How many of the profs in many of these schools will spend as much time one-on-one with students on research projects and such? You have to admit, MIT’s UROP program is truly one of its gems.



Yet at the end of the day, that’s not an excuse for not having enough premed resources. After all, not every MIT student wants to participate in UROP. Not every MIT student wants to work on research projects. I agree that the majority do, but not all.



I’m not saying students don’t “deserve” advising for premed, but I am saying that don’t be shocked to find out that MIT might not have the same priorities as you do.





Perhaps it is part of the culture? Perhaps students don’t want to live in an environment where they subsist on low-hanging fruit? Maybe the students are all ■■■■■■-bag masochist hardcore-major-wankers that want to make life as hard as possible for themselves and others? Who knows?!?





Perhaps my arguments so far are all non-sensical (I feel they are myself!). So instead I’ll just say what my advisor said on my first day of MIT: “We like to let people who know what they are doing just take off and blow us away. Everyone else better learn to sit tight and get through the ride.”



You see what you just did right there in those last 3 quotes? All you’re doing is simply reinforcing the point that I made earlier, which is that if you want to be a premed, MIT may not be the best place for you to go, and that you may be better served by going to one of MIT’s peer schools like Harvard or Yale. It’s sad; I wish it wasn’t true, but unfortunately, it’s true. Look, you said it yourself, and I’m just going to paraphrase what you said. If you’re a premed, why go to a school that doesn’t have the same priorities that you do? Why go to a school where the student culture is not entirely conducive to premeds? Why go to a school where the faculty attitude is that you have to “sit tight and get through the ride.”? Why put up with any of that if you can go to one of MIT’s competitors that are more accommodating to premeds?

Look, the bottom line is this. If MIT wants to be a more welcoming place for premeds, then MIT will need to make certain changes (i.e. get more advisors). Now, if MIT just doesn’t want to do those things, that’s perfectly fine, but then we have to agree that MIT may not be the best place to go for premeds. You can’t have it both ways.

Nor do I think this is shocking revelation. Let me put it to you this way. MIT and Caltech are basically ‘cousins’ to each other. Yet Ben Golub - who is one of the biggest Caltech boosters on CC - freely concedes that Caltech is probably not the greatest place for premeds, and that premeds would probably be better off elsewhere. Hence, I don’t think it’s shocking to state that MIT is also probably not the greatest place for premeds and that they may be better off elsewhere.