Course and Degree Requirements for Medical School Applications

When you are planning on applying to Medical School, you may, like most students, choose to follow a Traditional Path through a Bachelor's Degree in a science-related field. Students may elect to pursue a degree in Chemistry, Biology, or Microbiology to name a few — but this is well-treaded path is not the only way to get noticed by a Medical School Admissions' Board.

About 50% of candidates who are currently enrolled in a US Medical School have instead elected to pursue a degree through a Non-Traditional Path. You are able to chose a degree in English, Psychology, or Philosophy, to name a few options, and still be eligible to apply to Medical School programs.  

The key thing to remember is that there is indeed a list of courses that you are obligated to take and must score highly in to be able to apply to Medical School. In this article, I will cover the general courses that you need to take in order to become eligible for consideration, as well strategies to improve your chances to make it to Medical School with a Non-Traditional Degree.  

The Required Courses That You Must Take in Undergrad and a Strategy for a Scientific Degree 

Although Medical Schools do have various individual requirements of their own for what courses a student has to have successfully passed when they were completing their Bachelor's degree, all schools require you to have at least 1 year of Biology, 1 year of Physics, 1 year of English, and 2 years of Chemistry.  

In most cases, universities will offer these programs as semester courses of Biology 1 and 2, Physics 1 and 2, some type of English course, and then Inorganic Chemistry 1 and 2 and Organic Chemistry 1 and 2.  All these core Science courses also have some type of Laboratory component that can eat away at your schedule, so it is important to make sure you are not overly ambitious when you are designing your course load.  

What most of my colleagues did as Freshmen was to start with a Biology and an Inorganic Chemistry class, and then take simple courses necessary for their degree requirements afterwards. It is going to be hard to adjust to the pace of the coursework. Most students who have a passion for Science will find, however, that Biology starts relatively slowly until after the mid-term, when you cover DNA sequencing and amino acids.

Chemistry will be the hardest hurdle to combat for many students, but if you are completing a traditional Fall and Spring semester, you will have to complete Chemistry eventually, so just utilize office hours with Teaching Assistants and make sure you study as hard as you can to score well on assignments.  

Another strategy would be to delay Chemistry until a later year, but the longer you delay these required courses, the more challenging it can be to complete your prerequisites for other classes if you are in a Science-related field.

Physics is also a hard class to tackle if you are weak in Calculus or theoretical thinking, so you would be wise to stagger Physics to your Sophomore year so you learn how to study effectively before you get started. You will face Organic Chemistry with Physics in this circumstance, but one year is a sufficiently large amount of time to develop new and more effective study habits. You will be more capable of dealing with these topics with more experience as you progress up the educational hierarchy.