Thursday, August 30, 2012

Med School Prerequisites and Community Colleges

By Dave Young


I am asked a lot regarding my opinion of acquiring your post-baccalaureate science programs in a community or technical college. These colleges will often be far easier for many people given that they offer nighttime and Saturday and Sunday classes as well as the usual Monday-Friday arrangment. They likewise represent the most cost effective approach in college presently. It may sound like they will be a great way to get through the prereqs and start working on medical school.

Hold on there a minute! The majority of admissions committees don't think of community or tech college classes to be similar to those of four-year universities. Quite a few medical schools actually proclaim this on their sites and won't even give consideration to technical college courses in the slightest!

Several will give consideration to them if you've taken upper division classes from a 4-yr university, but even then you ought to wonder whether any kind of 2 year college classes will be troublesome for you. And what if you have a B or maybe a C in any 2 year college school?

I think the med school aversion to community college and technical college training is actually a heap of garbage. Everybody needs to go ahead and take MCAT in any case, so why then would it really make a difference where you take the classes? Plus, do they believe that a class of 20-30 individuals with a professor is not as good as being in a 300 person lecture hall and laboratories explained by TAs?

The caliber of introductory coursework, even from the finest institutions, is often really low quality and quite a few community and tech colleges in fact have better training. Unfortunately, the anti-community college tendency appears securely entrenched.

Until you want to acquire upper division classes on the same subject areas, don't squander your time or cash on community or tech school courses right now. The only condition I can imagine where it would be sensible is that you're employed full-time and questioning if you possibly can deal with the classes, perhaps a few community college classes on the side will allow you to test the waters before going to some 4-year university and going through the courses when they will truly matter.

At the 4-yr college, you have got many choices. First, you could search for a formal post bac program and try to get an acceptance. For all those with low grade point average or reduced capital, it's easy to check out a neighborhood 4 year college and merely piece together your own postbaccalaureate program.

Most of the people do the latter, but for a few the conventional program may possibly be a more desirable opportunity. Be sure you shop around seeing as there are some less trustworthy programs nowadays simply trying to make a quick sale.




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