Guest willsanna Posted May 10, 2004 Report Share Posted May 10, 2004 Hi all, What are the best courses to take at U of T to prepare myself the best for MCAT and eventually for med school ? My background is engineering. I am planning to take the life science pre-reqs from the following: - PSL 300H1 - PSL 301H1 - Human Biology 265H1 - BCH210H1 - ANA301H1 - Bio150Y1 - Bio250Y1 - or any other course you may have taken and find quite stimulating and interesting at U of T My biology and organic chemistry background is not that great now. thanks, Willsanna Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Steve U of T Posted May 10, 2004 Report Share Posted May 10, 2004 Physiology is very useful for the MCAT, and although I'm not there yet, I think it will be useful for medical school as well. Will they allow you to take either PSL300 or 301? I think those are for neuroscience students only. You may have to take both of them (i.e. PSL302). If it is possible for you to take only half, I'd probably recommend 301, which is the 2nd half of PSL302, covering respiratory, renal, cardiac, GI physiology. PSL300 (the 1st half of 302) covers neuro (in way more detail than you'd need), as well as endocrine. 301 will give you more useful information for the MCAT than 300. Don't expect PSL302 (300/301) to bring up your average. A lot of people have difficulty with this course, and don't do as well as they hope. It's certainly possible to get an A, although this is one of the courses at U of T people complain about most frequently. HMB265 isn't the best taught course around, and it goes into a lot more detail than is needed for MCAT genetics. If you have no background in genetics, it might come in handy. I don't imagine it'll be very useful in medical school, although that's just a guess. BCH210 is a pretty well-taught course, and I'd certainly recommend it. I haven't taken ANA301, so I can't comment on the course itself, although I know embryology really won't help you on the MCAT. However, it may be useful in medical school. I don't think BIO150 provides any preparation for either the MCAT or medical school. BIO250 may come in handy in preparing for the MCAT. I have a friend who was a commerce student (now in law school) interested in biology (he wants to go into biotech law), and took BCH210, BIO250, and HMB265 during his 4th year. He did very well in all of them (he somehow got a 100 in BCH210), without having taken BIO150, so you shouldn't worry that your lack of background in biology will hurt you. As long as you have senior high school level bio (grade 12 or OAC), you should be okay for any of those. Even though those are 2nd and 3rd year courses, they're still introductory level courses. At the introductory level, I'm not sure there's anything else I can recommend. I took LMP301 (clinical biochemistry), which was reasonably interesting, although I think it's wise to have a good physiology background before taking that course in order to do well. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest UofT Student Posted May 10, 2004 Report Share Posted May 10, 2004 I would highly recommend any future doctor or scientist to take a statistics course (e.g., STA220H - Introduction to Statistics I). It really helps you to understand the importance of large sample sizes, how you can draw conclusions from data sets, the reliability of data sets, and so on. It comes in handy whenever you're reading a scientific paper or reading about how a clinical trial was set up, and you come across terms like "z-score" and "t-test". Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Kirsteen Posted May 10, 2004 Report Share Posted May 10, 2004 Hi there, I haven't taken ANA301, so I can't comment on the course itself, although I know embryology really won't help you on the MCAT. However, it may be useful in medical school. I hear that it may be very useful in medical school, particularly if you end up being a UofT medical student. I'm not sure if UofT still exercise this policy, but if you managed to take the embryology course during undergrad, they would waive your requirement to complete the embryology section during medical school. Perhaps that's one of the reasons why the UofT embryology undergraduate course fills up so quickly? As to the above post re: statistics, I may have a bit of a biased opinion, but I agree completely. There are quite a few doctors out there whom I've met who know surprisingly little about the statistics behind the studies they read. Cheers, Kirsteen Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest cheech10 Posted May 11, 2004 Report Share Posted May 11, 2004 That policy is still in place, but you only save 10 to 15 hours of class. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest mydream88 Posted May 11, 2004 Report Share Posted May 11, 2004 go STATISTICS!! mydream88 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest UTMed07 Posted May 12, 2004 Report Share Posted May 12, 2004 Hi willsanna, Anatomy is a nice-to-have --when you're in medical school. IMHO it is useless for the MCAT. I don't think BIO150 is that great-- and I've said that much before. Read through this thread--it discusses it and incidentally also touches on the engineering route to meds. I would highly recommend any future doctor or scientist to take a statistics course (e.g., STA220H - Introduction to Statistics I).I don't think that it is so important... also it is pretty easy to pick-up if you've done engineering. If you're dying to learn stats just pick-up Biostatistics - The Bare Essentials --it is, surprisingly for a stats book, an enjoyable read and avoids all but trivial math. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest kylle345 Posted May 12, 2004 Report Share Posted May 12, 2004 take bch 210 and bio 250 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest Krish Posted May 13, 2004 Report Share Posted May 13, 2004 I know I am not a regular poster, but just wanted to add my two cents in this discussion. If you take a MCAT prep course, you will be pretty good in the sense they will teach you everything you have to know for the MCAT. But if you want to take additional courses, a physiology course as mentioned before will probably be the most helpful. For med school in general, physiology and anatomy are pretty helpful. Take care, KP Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest willsanna Posted May 14, 2004 Report Share Posted May 14, 2004 I appreciate it a lot. Thanks, willsanna Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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