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Medical students who took easy degrees


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ummm, for me, im very judgmental of people in the medical profession, almost elitist you could say... i say i judge people that don't put in a full effort, i know not everyone is as gifted in different skill sets (me doing rads - fail) but i hate slacker med students, i'm just like, bang, replace with an elite foreign born img, save the gov 400 g please... i don't really give a **** about any credentials really, phd's people may have prior, "hard" degrees, if your not on top of things it's flagrantly obvious.

 

Do you think medical students who took easy degrees to get into medical school are looked down upon by other medical students who took harder degrees?

 

Or is everyone treated the same?

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No one cares in our class. But indeed if you did something that has little relevance to medicine (i.e. music) they do seem to struggle ALOT more once in. But all in all we are all in it together and dont judge each other once in, unless of course you are not pulling your weight in group work (PBL group work) ... which is never cool, previous hard degree or not.

 

Beef

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No one cares in our class. But indeed if you did something that has little relevance to medicine (i.e. music) they do seem to struggle ALOT more once in. But all in all we are all in it together and dont judge each other once in, unless of course you are not pulling your weight in group work (PBL group work) ... which is never cool, previous hard degree or not.

 

Beef

 

People with non trad degrees usually only have some trouble for the first year or two because trad degee'd people have seen some of the information before, and therefore have some passing familiarity with the topics. For example, a biochem major is going to think learning the Krebs cycle again is easy, while an engineering major will find it much more difficult because it's their first time through the material.

 

Once you hit more medical specific learning and especially once you start to practice medicine (i.e. clerkship) everyone is more or less at the same level.

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Agreed. I should have clarified to the OP that I am first year and my observations are only for first year.

 

People with non trad degrees usually only have some trouble for the first year or two because trad degee'd people have seen some of the information before, and therefore have some passing familiarity with the topics. For example, a biochem major is going to thing learning the Krebs cycle is easy, while an engineering major will find it much more difficult because it's their first time through the material.

 

Once you hit more medical specific learning and especially once you start to practice medicine (i.e. clerkship) everyone is more or less at the same level.

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English where it's super easy to do well. I should have majored in English.

 

Lol. Good luck maintaining that 3.9+ GPA in an english major. You have the right idea though, easy degrees ftw. Science kids just make up for this by taking bird courses.

 

Honestly though rmorelan has the right of it. I probably know less than 10-20% of my classmates' degrees.

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Subjects like English Lit or Sociology are only deemed "easier" because they require less effort to achieve an average grade, whereas the same effort in science might get you an F... That being said, I bet more than a few science students would struggle if they had to do Arts.

 

Everything in med school is taught from scratch anyways, so it hardly matters who came in with what.

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Subjects like English Lit or Sociology are only deemed "easier" because they require less effort to achieve an average grade, whereas the same effort in science might get you an F... That being said, I bet more than a few science students would struggle if they had to do Arts.

 

Everything in med school is taught from scratch anyways, so it hardly matters who came in with what.

 

I have said a few times that my Arts degree to get over 90 in a class took way more work than my Science ones once I hit year 3 or so (and the essays took over). Before that for me it was the other way around.

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you gotta just learn to play the game. The only thing science gets you is a job at your local tim hortans if your lucky bestbuy, if you don't get into meds.

 

That is ridiculous. I graduated last year with a micb degree, and was hired 2 weeks later for a small pharma company in my city. I had 2 other job offers that I turned down.

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Yeah no one cares so you might as well major in something like English where it's super easy to do well. I should have majored in English.

 

Some English profs are brutal markers. I have a masters degree in a humanities subject and recently took a half credit English course (2nd year) as part of a 2nd degree. Barely pulled off an 81 and I am a very good writer and have tons of essay writing experience. Our TA told us that our C- avg. for the essay was excellent. I am not sure I could have achieved a grade higher than A minus on my papers. That said, this is not true of all humanities courses (just depends on the prof/TA and is far more subjective).

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Some English profs are brutal markers. I have a masters degree in a humanities subject and recently took a half credit English course (2nd year) as part of a 2nd degree. Barely pulled off an 81 and I am a very good writer and have tons of essay writing experience. Our TA told us that our C- avg. for the essay was excellent. I am not sure I could have achieved a grade higher than A minus on my papers. That said, this is not true of all humanities courses (just depends on the prof/TA and is far more subjective).

 

I've taken a few English classes where I worked my a** off for only an 80.

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I guess A&H is pretty subjective so everyone finds it differently. I haven't personally taken too many A&H courses since I'm not in A&H but my marks have been pretty good in those courses. I have a few friends in A&H who pull off 4.0s by writing essays last min, but they're all really artsy people.

 

Having been one of those arts (well, social sciences) people in the past, I can say that writing essays at the last minute was doable... and utterly terrible. I don't know why I ever subjected myself to that. Emailing a finished essay at 6am? UGH. If there's one thing I'm glad to have long-since gotten out of my system, it's *that* kind of procrastination.

 

Anyway, getting a 4.0 is very difficult on the arts side of things, though I came close at least one year. Profs tend to be picky on papers; I got a number of As, numerous A-'s, and only one A+ on a paper.

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I guess this is now the thread where all the science kids bash the A&H kids that do not actually exist on the forum.

 

well I am still here with my pysch and economics degree :) Granted I also have science degrees so I am probably a hybrid - few people on this forum have taken a serious number of senior arts based courses. I still say senior arts based courses are hard, hard courses to do extremely well in.

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I did half an English degree and a complete psych degree, and also complete biology and then a health science (was a double major with the psych).

 

I think the upper year non-science courses are a lot more variable in terms of grading so on average its harder to guarantee yourself consistently high grades using similar methods. Take a third year immunology exam and let profs from other schools mark it, you'll get a similar grade distribution. Take the top students from that course and let them sit another school's immunology exam, they'll probably do well too. Once you've memorized Janeway (or whatever intro Immuno book) there isn't much debate over how to answer questions about cell differentiation, receptor activation, and molecular pathways involved. Its all pretty objective and consistent.

 

Submit an upper year Arts project (written, drawn, etc.) that is marked not only on content but on delivery, style, creativity, originality, entertainment value, etc. then there's a lot more room for confounds. You can generally pull an A- if you're a diligent student* but at the higher end of the mark spectrum that subjectivity can more frequently mean the difference between an A and an A+ (not that it happens all the time - just more frequently than in science).

 

For the students that can generally get higher grades I don't think there is much difference in terms of workload or understanding concepts - a lot of that is very individualized. Its more a function of Arts classes having slightly more subjective components that can mean the difference between a high grade and a really high grade.

 

(*Edit: Though you'll sometimes run into profs who think an A+ is reserved for a life-altering composition that occurs only twice per decade, which is frustrating)

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