5 ms·
Just getting accepted to a medical school is pretty hard unless you’re amazing/very good at the tests. Had a cousin and a friend (both I would characterize as
by NegativeLatency 4y ago
Just getting accepted to a medical school is pretty hard unless you’re amazing/very good at the tests.
Had a cousin and a friend (both I would characterize as smart and hard working) take several years after undergrad and eventually “settle” for physicians assistant schools.
- j-bos 4y agoI personally want my doctors to be amazing and very good. For now tests are a fair proxy, it's the 8 years that seem ridiculous, esp when looking at non US countries.
- ncallaway 4y ago> For now tests a a fair proxy for that Is it? Is there a study demonstrating the correlation to pre med test scores to patient outcomes?
- j-bos 4y agoPersonal intuition, feel free to dismiss.
- NegativeLatency 4y agoI agree with your sentiment however it reminds me a lot of the leet code style interviews and all their downsides.
- ncallaway 4y agoMakes sense, and seems like a sensible prior. It just strikes me as something that wouldn’t be particularly hard to answer with a detailed study, and probably is a pretty high value question to answer, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a study. Maybe I’ll poke around this weekend
- lofatdairy 4y agoI would argue that having onerous tests are not a great proxy. Not only do they not necessarily measure how good a physician a student would be, but it also encourages undergraduates to intentionally enter easier/less rigorous coursework to focus more on the exam aspect (though GPA plays a large role as well). I'm sure a psych major may make a fine physician, but I don't want doctors to only be educated in a rather dubious field. If undergraduate education is only a stepping stone towards medicine, then just integrate medical education with undergraduate studies, rather than adding a ritualized acquisition of a bachelor's degree.
- dogmatism 4y agoNah, doesn't matter. There are still the pre-med requirements (organic chem etc -- recall recent bruhaha about that at ?NYU) that can't be sidestepped for easier courses
- jmcgough 4y agoEveryone takes the same premed courses though, and you need to be able to teach yourself any MCAT content that wasn't covered by coursework. Sure people will game it, but it's your science GPA that counts, and having people from a diversity of backgrounds is a good thing.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]