| "It's a bit of academic hazing to wash out weaker pre-meds from the undergrad program" In undergrad chemistry my lab partner was a med student whereas I was doing science and engineering. In essence, there were unavoidable common core threads for everyone. I'm not saying that's good or bad but it was problem for my co chem student not because he was doing poorly but because he was overloaded (his workload was definitely much heavier than mine). His experience is the reason why I'm not in favor of that approach because it also filters out good students who do badly for other reasons. For example, some students have family commitments and don't have as much time available for study. Others have less time because they have to travel long distances to lectures. Take my situation, for a part of my studies I used to travel the better part of 200 miles round trip by train and bus each day. I'd leave home when it was dark and also arrive home when dark—that was nearly 6 hours traveling per day. Making up time studying on the train wasn't an option as I'd just fall asleep. If I'd been doing medicine and that weeding out process adopted then I'd not have stood a chance. Edit: at a different period when I eventually managed to get closer to uni my flatmate was also a med student and he too always had a much heavier workload than I did. If I'd been a med student under those conditions, I reckon I'd have wanted to ditch organic chemistry if given half a chance. |