Vanderbilt Premed Weed Out

bernie12
Sat, 24 Oct 2015 19:21:30 +0000

Yeah, I’m not thinking in terms of lab sciences, I think I’m just thinking science courses in general. Often while lab sciences are tedious, they often offer grade support (especially when integrated labs) than more difficult non-science lectures may offer.

Well, schools won’t require bchem with lab simply because most or many schools (especially privates, even top ones), don’t offer it. Fortunately my alma mater is working on offering one next year but who will take it?Not sure because there are two biochemistry (biology and chemistry) courses and only chemistry dept. will offer the lab so then you get into the politics of deciding whether or not biology majors can and should take the chem version for and with its lab.

Looking at all of that and how slow some schools are to change despite the new MCAT. What is more awkward is that a biochemistry will essentially be offered to freshmen. The 2nd semester of gen chem is supposed to go away completely and be replaced by intro or intermediate versions of the core chem classes like pchem, bchem, ochem, and inorganic. I think it is a great idea but it is certainly awkward for pre-healths, especially pre-meds whose course selection is kind of supposed to fit the mold you describe above. They simply will not have a second semester of general chemistry unless the “inorganic” is ultimately watered down a lot to accommadate them and they just go there (following the script they will no doubt assume that only courses explicitly named “general” or “inorganic” is allowed to fulfill those requirements). And I get a feeling that most med. schools may not allow for them to just take bchem w/lab instead and then count it as an inorganic which kind of a shame when you think about it. Things are about to get really “interesting” at the school if that chemistry curriculum is approved. It will be great for future scientists and engineers but present hurdles to to those more or less encouraged to have a chunk of their course load be from an academic cookbook of sorts dictated by the professional school of interest. Kind of disappointing because their requirements are often used as an excuse for schools and faculty members to avoid educational/curricular innovation in the life sciences. It makes for a very easy scapegoat I must say.