Medical Prerequisite Courses

I had the fortunate direction of knowing that I wanted to do MD-PhD quite early on: fall of sophomore year of college. Somewhere around there. That means that my life got really really easy from there.

I started off as a chem/psych major, so I took a LOT of classic pre-med pre-reqs (orgo, physics, math, english) in my freshman year. I finished off the rest of my pre-reqs (p chem and bio) in my sophomore year. That made me be able to take the MCAT in the summer after my sophomore year. That was a very good decision.

I didn't take all of these classes in order to do this. I'm a hard science guy (Neuro and math major), so these classes were the classes that I wanted to take. That made it easy for me. If you're not hard science, for one you should question if you really want to do MD-PhD, for two, you've got a long and hard road in front of you. These pre-reqs will make your first two years not that much fun and you'll have lots of exams and hard classes, but it's totally worth it if you like at least some of the material.

My philosophy on taking classes is that you should take what you want. Majors and requirements are just suggestions of cool things that can combine quite well. If you think that a requirement is just impossible or you hate it so much, you should see that as a sign that maybe this career is not for you. Maybe there is a reason why they have this pre-req. Does your aversion to this class or classes say something if you should be a doctor/phd?

To get back to specifics:

My freshman schedule:

Fall:
Orgo 1
Physics 1
Calc 2
English

Spring: (note: too much for one semester)
Orgo 2
Physics 2
Calc 3
Psyc 1
Bio class (not intro bio)

Summer:
Orgo lab

Sophomore year:

Fall:
Stat 1
Intro Bio 1
English
P Chem 1 (instead of gen chem)
Major class

Spring:
Stat 2
Intro Bio 2
P Chem 2
Major class
Distributional requirement

Yea, that looks like a lot of fun. A LOT of fun. It wasn't really that bad. That's because I had fun in P Chem, Stat, Physics, and Calc. Without legitimately enjoying those classes, that load would have been hell.


If I would give any one piece of advice about taking the pre-reqs, I would say: get them done early. You're going to want to get the MCAT out of the way early so you can focus on applications and getting good research done. The pre-reqs are also there for a reason. You "need" them to understand the basics of medicine and the types of questions that can be asked. Without seeing all of this, there's no way that you can make an informed decision about what your best track in research is. If you think that you can, you're deluding yourself.

Let me clarify that. Sure, you're amazing at cell bio. Sure you have 3 years of high school research and four publications in that field. That doesn't mean that you won't find your passion somewhere else. It could just mean that you're amazing at researching anything. What if you're going to get burned out from cells at some point? What if you find that you really really like computation later? Without actually taking the classes, you can't reasonably answer those questions for yourself.

Introduction to the Process

So, I've never written a blog before. So bear with me.

In my process of applying to MD PhD programs this year, I found that there is not a lot of information out there about how it was to go through the process. I had a lot of questions that were just unanswerable.

My goal with this blog is to let you know what it was like for me to apply (successfully) to MD PhD programs this year. I'll try to give you all the gorey details so that you can know what the process is like, what stresses are present, and generally if you should go through it yourself.

Once I get done with writing about the application process, I'll probably get down to writing about what it's like to be a MD PhD student.

I hope you enjoy and might gain some insight from this.