hesble's post about pre-reqs made me think a bit more about the school courses themselves and how it's served them after grad. since starting work I've had students from schools different to mine rotating through or worked with people who attended different places. It's interesting how much diversity there is in many Australian schools. But as a pre-med, you have any idea. Many just go off what's easier to get into, if students are happy in the course and what the "world ranking is" etc.
Anyway,
one clarification that could be made under the "course" section is that "Preparing for practice" is widely considered the pre-internship term or year. Not all schools have this. And I can see students confusing that title or term with regular core rotations that clinical year students take which is completely different.
i.e. a surgical rotation is a regular clinical rotation or clerkship where you learn about surgery for the first time. a pre-intern on surgery implies that you've already done the core surgery rotation before and passed. you're now just shadowing the residents and interns on their surgical rotation, learning how to do their jobs and actually sharing their jobs but under their supervision.
On the side/off topic,
Reason why the pre-internship is not widely part of all curricula - Uni Melb for instance has pre-requisites (not all schools do - some schools have 0 pre reqs, bit scary for business and arts students going into med having never taken a single science course in their life) and their prereqs are there because their students do one pre-clinical year and 3 clinical years with one research semester in there. Others like JCU and Monash have longer degrees. Monash is a 5 year one.
(it's by no means the equivalent to the 'subintern' year by the way, for any North Americans snooping into this thread)
A research concludes that there's almost no differences between science students and other students after they start working in hospitals. However science students generally score higher in USMLE step 1&2 so maybe it's not so scary. Well, that's just another topic and the conclusion isn't necessarily accurate. Especially when people don't know who publishes it.
The reason why I brought up the "pre req" thing is that.......
If only I had the chance to take science classes........
I mean, the system in North America and other countries are quite different. In North America, law and medicine are considered professional education, or graduate education . But in most of other countries, they are undergraduate. In my country, there are some universities that only have law and medicine majors. And unfortunately, I am studying at a law school. I have taken very few science classes since admitted into university because the school don't have many except something like computer science or forensic. All of the science classes are at introductory level. I have heard that medical schools require that students should take science classes at science majors' level ( corret me if I am wrong), which is another problem. Neither do I think introductory level classes are enough for studying medicine.
Another tricky thing is that we are not allowed to take classes other than what you are required to. For example, our school do have calculus class and it could only be taken by students who major in financial law. What I mean is that you are more than welcomed to sit in the classroom, but you can't get semester hours or grades of this curriculum.
I am curious about the students who have never taken science classes. Haven't they taken them in high school? I took all of them at that time. Besides, all of applicants are required to take MCAT or GAMSAT, aren't they? If they never took those classes, how did they make it to med school? Maybe it's argumentative, I think self-studying is a lot harder. I am going over the science lessons on my own (Thanks to resources on Internet ), it's obvious that what I have learnt before comes back really quickly, however, I am struggling with college level chemistry, especially biochemistry. It is said that GAMSAT requires less science knowledge. Anyway, I would love to know how they became med students.
I am also wondering what is a research semester. I thought all of the med students are required to have research experience by the time they graduate. Do you mean that schools that have 0 pre reqs don't reqiure research semester?
