As a rising senior premed student, you have just one year left before you embark on medical school. While the prevailing advice may be to take the lightest course load possible senior year, there are a few key courses you should consider that will help you to hit the ground running in medical school. This is the advice I wish I had when planning my senior year of college.
First, the good news: Unlike preparing for the MCAT, a comprehensive understanding of general chemistry, organic chemistry and physics is not necessary to excel as a medical student. While these courses are important prerequisites from the medical school admissions committee perspective, a basic understanding of the concepts presented in these courses will suffice if your goal is to do well in medical school.
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However, several undergraduate courses are highly relevant to the material covered in medical school curricula, and taking these courses will pay major dividends for you.
— Physiology: An in-depth understanding of the physiology is fundamental to excelling in the first year of medical school. Physiology is the foundation of nearly everything you will learn in medicine, and it is essential to the understanding how the body works and the impact of a disease on an organ system.
The material presented in this course is so important that I recommend formally enrolling in a physiology course even if you have studied this material informally in preparation for the MCAT. If you have already taken a physiology course, you may consider offering to tutor for that course. This will help you keep the material as fresh as possible.
While you can afford to forget the finer points of Grignard reagents as a physician, you will use the concepts taught in a physiology course every day in medical school and later in the wards.
[Learn about five ways nonscience courses prepare students for medical school.]
— Microbiology and immunology: Some undergraduate institutions offer microbiology and immunology as separate courses, while others offer combine them in a single course. Regardless, this material is a tour de force in memorization and — like physiology — is central to the understanding of disease pathogenesis.
A command of the classification of major microbial pathogens by their growth properties, stains and common sources of infection can be intimidating at first. Likewise, concepts like antigen presentation, the positive and negative selection of lymphocytes and the genetic basis of immunodeficiencies are detail-oriented and highly relevant to medical school curricula.
For these reasons, the earlier you can start learning this, the better. If you enroll in a microbiology and immunology course, it may be helpful to purchase a review text aimed at medical students to follow alongside the material presented in the course.
This will help you to see how the focus differs in undergraduate and medical school courses and — by underscoring the clinical relevance of these pathogens — will make the necessary memorization more palatable.
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— Biochemistry: While an intensive biochemistry course is not necessary to excel in medical school, a basic knowledge of topics such as metabolic pathways and the principles of commonly used laboratory techniques are highly relevant. Yes, you will be tested on glycolysis and the TCA pathway again.
Undergraduate institutions often offer biochemistry courses of varying intensities. If given the option, I recommend taking a course that emphasizes concepts rather than the detailed memorization of pathways and intermediates.
From the perspective of doing well in medical school, it is most important to understand the key regulatory steps of metabolic pathways and how they relate to disease states rather than to be able to regurgitate glycolysis from beginning to end.
— Neuroscience: This is a course that many undergraduates do not have the opportunity to take but is highly relevant to the material presented in both physiology and neurology courses in medical school.
Courses that emphasize neuroanatomy — especially with regard to the sensory and motor tracts of the spinal cord and the brain — are particularly pertinent. Courses that cover related pathologies, such as the impact of strokes in different regions of the brain or Alzheimer’s disease, are especially desirable if your undergraduate institution offers them.
These four courses are fundamental to doing well in medical school and — eventually — to your future ability to treat patients.
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Plan Senior Year Coursework for Medical School Advantage originally appeared on usnews.com
