Medical School and Physics
Should you take Physics Elsewhere if you are thinking of
applying to Medical School or other Health Professions School?
Dean Kay Singer's assessment of taking physics away from
Duke (Update Fall, 2006).
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Most health professions schools find it easier to evaluate your
prerequiste courses if they are all done at the same
institution. They may not give the same credence to a course
taken in the summer at another institution as they would to
a Duke course. This is particularly so if your primary
undergrad institution is a highly rated school like Duke and
the school where you took the summer course is not as
demanding.
However, this might not be the case at some schools. For
example at NY schools, they will have a lot of
applicants who took physics at some of the colleges and
universities in New York. If you took physics at one of
those colleges/universities and did better than most of the
applicants who actually attend those colleges regularly, the
NY schools might not find that a problem at all. But it
might be more of an issue at a school outside of NY--such as
Duke Med or Stanford or Emory. One of the things med schools
do to see if the courses away from your home school were
strong is to pay attention to how you did on that section of
the MCAT.
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We know that Duke Physics prepares our students well for
the MCAT and other standardized tests. We don't know that about all physics (or chem, or
orgo, or biology) courses at other institutions
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If you have a very strong academic record with good grades
including in the sciences, health professions schools are less likely to be
concerned about your taking a science course away from
Duke. If you have a weak record in the sciences at Duke,
taking a course away from Duke may be read as an effort to
avoid science courses at Duke.
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While taking a calculus-based physics course at another
approved University would allow you to have credit for PHY
53/54 rather than PHY 888, it is doubtful that it will be
particularly critical to health professions schools. The important part
for them will be, if you took physics away from Duke (where we
know you would have been well prepared for the MCAT) how did
you do on the subtest of the MCAT that covers physics. If you
do well, it is unlikely to matter much to them whether you
took the course away from Duke. They will have the transcript
from the school at which you took the course and evaluate by
its own number and their experience with students who took
that course rather than by the Duke equivalency number.
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College is full of trade offs. Students often make decisions
that in turn force other decisions. For example, the most
common reason for taking physics away from Duke is so that a
student can go abroad or to Beaufort. Health professions schools
recognize this fact. Sometimes they ask, "Why did you
decide to take ____ away from Duke?" Acceptable answers
include freeing up your schedule to do something like going
abroad or taking courses you really want to take from specific
professors that are only taught at particular times, etc. The
most common reason for electing to take away from Duke a
course that is offered during the summer is financial and I
think schools understand that as a reason.
The bottom line is that it is not likely to be important to a
health professions school that you take a calculus-based physics course. If the
biology program or any other major that requires physics will
accept PHY 888 and you do well on the MCAT it is unlikely to
have a detrimental effect on your application that your credit
transferred as 888 rather than 53/54. You may get asked why you
took it away from Duke rather than Duke, but you can answer that
question when the time comes.