Two questions - Biology Program and Med School Admissions

mmcnell
Mon, 11 Jul 2011 04:15:45 +0000

swimchiki,
No problem! I ended up here thanks to other people taking time to answer my questions, so it’s the least I can do.

First answer- I always suggest a summer study abroad for busy pre-meds, and I think the summer after your sophomore year is probably a very good time to do it. I wouldn’t wait any later than that, anyway, since you will be very busy with applications the summer after your junior year.

Second- You really should take both if at all possible, but if I remember correctly it seems like there were more questions that were cell biology related than were specifically microbiology. And you’ll definitely want as strong a basis as possible in cell biology for your first year of medical school. I hate to say that since Microbiology is one of my favorite subjects and I think it’s valuable too, but cell bio really is one of the most important foundations of a lot of medicine and will be tested accordingly.

Third answer- I believe my heaviest semester was 18 hours, which was busy at the time with work and the other resume building activities, but now it doesn’t sound so bad :). There’s no reason you’d need to do an especially heavy a semester unless you’re working on an ambitious double major or trying to schedule in a semester abroad though, so I hope you won’t have to consider a semester over 18 hours. 15-17 hour semesters will be your average I would imagine, and should be quite manageable with decent study skills.

-Matt