<p>And it’s about freaking time.</p>
<p>[The</a> Brown Daily Herald - Policy change rankles PLMEs](<a href=“http://www.browndailyherald.com/policy-change-rankles-plmes-1.2057445]The”>http://www.browndailyherald.com/policy-change-rankles-plmes-1.2057445)</p>
<p>The only issue to me is whether it is fair to make this new rule apply to current students, since they applied and matriculated under the old assumption. For anyone entering PLME next, year, this seems OK.</p>
<p>Yeah, I agree that it was a poor choice to implement for current students and I’m sure that they will end up reversing that decision. However, this is a policy that should have long been in place.</p>
<p>Bump</p>
<p>I agree.</p>
<p>What is the policy at competitor BA + MD programs about applying out? ie. is Brown stepping into, or out of, line with the other schools by making this change.</p>
<p>Not sure. Personally, I think the whole BA+MD program thing is a terribly flawed concept and it should be nixed all together.</p>
<p>It’s closer to the medical training systems in most of the rest of the world, which begin immediately after high school and run for a similar number of years to the BA+MD. It maybe doesn’t mesh perfectly with the schedule and philosophy of US college education but certainly there is some precedent for doing it this way.</p>
<p>Getting a BA in Humanities knowing that you’re going to medical school seems to be the biggest problem that I hear most people (and other professors) complain about.</p>
<p>siserune, I don’t think it’s unprecedented, just a flawed concept in the context of American Higher Education.</p>
<p>What’s wrong with studying humanities and being pre-med, too? The analytical skills gained from majoring in English could be quite valuable to a doctor.</p>
<p>Maybe in penmenship especially :)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>The background one has when entering med school will be weaker for anything going beyond basic pre-med requirements. If you want a doctor to understand the organic chemistry that he learned for medical purposes it is desirable that he know further chemistry beyond the bare requirements, to put the orgo in perspective, and the same for all other science. The more you know the easier it is to keep it straight in your head and access it later when you (or your patients) least expect it to be useful.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>Any gains have to be balanced against the skills lost by not taking more science and math classes. It could be a negative overall.</p>
<p>I don’t think alternative (non-science) undergraduate paths to an MD add much value at the individual doctor-patient level. The value is in having more cognitive diversity within the overall population of doctors. However, that’s only the case if selection of doctors through the English track is as indicative of future abilities as selection through the science track. If the English track is fundamentally easier than the humanities track, it may end up being a means for comparatively less able people to enter the profession.</p>
<p>“If you want a doctor to understand the organic chemistry that he learned for medical purposes it is desirable that he know further chemistry beyond the bare requirements, to put the orgo in perspective, and the same for all other science. The more you know the easier it is to keep it straight in your head and access it later when you (or your patients) least expect it to be useful”</p>
<p>As a practicing physician, I can tell you that you will never have to pull up anything you learned in organic chem.
Humanities majors do just as well as science majors, both in med school and in practice. I was a bio major and there is very little that I learned in my advanced bio and chem courses that I needed. In fact, you really only need the basics. You will get everything you need in the 1st two years of medical school.The word on the street is that adcoms are currently giving the edge to humanities majors because they have the strange idea that they bring to the doctor-patient relationship a set of social skills that a science major might not. This is complete B.S. I have seen med students/doctors treat patients with great compassion who were biochem or neuroscience majors. I have also seen sociology/english majors who have no social skills at all. But for now humanities seems to be the flavor of the day. It’s a game you have to play as a pre-med if you don’t get into PLME</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s a matter of whether medical practice literally requires the ability to solve organic chemistry exercises from 10 or 30 years earlier. You probably also didn’t need everything that you learned in medical school classes to function as a doctor, but that doesn’t mean those courses were superfluous, or that more of them wouldn’t have produced an even better doctor. </p>
<p>Having more bio and chem background means you operate under a lower cognitive load in those courses at med school. You don’t need to work quite as hard as the English majors would, to keep up with those classes. That might free up a bit more time to sleep or to absorb the material from the other, less familiar classes.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>One would expect differences to be subtle, even if they are real, and that “doing just as well” may not have to do only with academic medical competence. If the English majors are more sociable or outwardly confident, they might be better at dealing with patients or running a clinic, for example.</p>
<p>It could be that med school admission perfectly adjusts for all factors and really does enforce equal ability and qualification from the English majors. But I don’t think it is safe to assume that that is automatically the case, or that all those undergrad humanities seminars are really developing stronger analytical skills, better ability to consider medical ethics, or other such advantages compensating for the abbreviated science/medicine curriculum.</p>