Premed Requirements
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Premed Requirements
Acing Premed Requirements
Medical schools require that you take certain pre-medical classes as undergraduate.
The "pre-med" classes required by virtually all schools in the US are as follows:
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A year of Freshman Chemistry along with the appropriate laboratory courses
A year of Organic Chemistry along with laboratory courses
A year of Biology along with laboratory courses
A year of Physics along with laboratory courses
A year of English
A year of Calculus or other advanced math classes, including Statistics
In addition, many schools require a certain number of credits in non-science classes. Less
common are the schools that have more specific requirements such as coursework in Behavioral
Sciences (Psychology), Philosophy, etc. Consult particular medschools (or look at their web
sites) to find out the specifics.
Pre-med requirements play a very important role in admissions for several reasons.
1. Pre-med requirements make the bulk of the science classes you will take in college and
determine your Science GPA, which one of the determinants of your chances of
admission.
2. You will need to get recommendations for medical schools from science faculty, and if
you do not take other science classes, getting them from professors who taught pre-med
classes will be your only option.
3. Pre-med requirements cover most of the material you need to know for the MCAT. The
better you know the stuff covered in these premed classes the better off you're when the
time comes for taking MCAT.
4. Schools ask you explicitly to list premed requirements along with your grades on their
secondary applications, which means they bear a lot of weight.
Acing Premed Requirements
There is an obvious way to succeed in your premed classes: work hard, and this is obvious and
true for all classes.
Yet science classes that make up the premed requirements are different from all others. For one,
they are the lifeline to your medical career. They also require different approach than let's say
History, Psychology or Anthropology.
In all your science premed classes: Freshman Chemistry, Organic Chemistry, Physics, Calculus
and to some extend in Biology, the difference between a good grade and a bad grade is not
necessarily knowing stuff. You can read Chemistry all you want and know every tiny fact about
it but the chance is that this alone will not ensure you a good grade.
The "secret" to doing well in these classes is:
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(1) Understanding the topics, theory, etc
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(2) doing practice problems
Without doing MANY practice problems you will NEVER do well on the exams. Most
exams I've seen are structured to test problem-solving ability and this is also true of MCAT. So,
do spend the extra time practicing solving actual problems. Get a solution manual for your
textbook and check yourself.
For Organic Chemistry and Physics, you should be aware that often there are more than
one correct way to solve a problem. The solution manual for your textbooks will usually give
only one approach. You would know if you solved it correctly in Physics because if you did you
will get the same numbers. In organic chemistry, there is no way for you to know for sure if your
"alternative" solution is correct because even though you may have gotten the right result, your
methods may be erroneous. I would recommend that you take your solution to your professors or
TAs and ask them to look at it. You will derive two benefits from doing so: (1) you will know if
you solved problems correctly, and more important, (2) if you did not solve it correctly, you will
understand why your approach is erroneous and does not work.
Organic Chemistry:
I had trouble with organic chemistry and I have found a "miracle" book that helped me both to
understand organic chemistry and to ace the second semester of it. The book is "Guidebook to
Mechanisms in Organic Chemistry" by Peter Sykes. I think the book is excellent. It is a hybrid
of a review book and a "guidebook" that explains the foundations of organic reactivity by type of
reaction. I feel it is a valuable book. I found it very useful for reviewing for MCAT, which I took
two years after I took Organic Chemistry. The book is pricey--so you may want to check your
library.