I'm a '95, and I am currently attending Northwestern Medical School in Chicago. I'm writing to give a little advice to all you pre-meds out there. A few months ago an article ran in the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine about the lack of students choosing to go on FSPs and LSAs. The writers of the article attributed this distressing situation to the rising number of pre-med students who were opting to go into the sciences.
These people, obsessed by off-terms spent doing frontal lobotomies on lab rats, of taking the MCAT by their junior springs, of writing that senior thesis about the brainless rats -- what time had they for such frivolous nonsense as study-abroad programs? The only option for them was the Costa Rica Biology FSP, and that was just too hippy-granola-environmental sounding -- what medical school would ever take it seriously?
Well, I'd like to tell you that you've got medical school admissions all wrong. Recently, one of the admissions officers at Northwestern, a pathologist, was speaking to a group of high school students who were interested in medicine.
In answer to a question of "What should I major in in college?" Dr. Roth said, "Medical schools don't care what you major in in college. What they don't want to see is people who majored in biology or chemistry, not because they loved it, but because they thought they should for medical school."
And he's right. Sixty percent of my medical school class are non-science majors -- some are even painting and dance majors. About 35 percent of the class took at least one year off between college and medical school; about 10 percent took five years or more off.
If you are majoring in the sciences because you think that you should and not because you love it, then quit right now and save the money and go to your state school. State schools often have more impressive research going on anyway, because they get more federal funding than a school like Dartmouth. The greatest thing that Dartmouth has to offer is its professors, their dedication to teaching and their approachability.
If you're studying a subject that you love, you'll get to know these people, and you'll get the most for your tuition. I was a history major at Dartmouth, definitely the strongest subject at the College. I spent time in Reed Hall bothering people like Allen Koop, Jere Daniell, Mary Kelley, Ken Shewmaker and Doug Haynes. These people were so amazing and so interesting.
They were what convinced me to spend two terms studying 10th century monks at Oxford. I did a French LSA, and I spent my off term doing a NOLS course in Kenya. Apart from the painful time I spend in Orgo lab, I've never touched science research.
I didn't take my MCAT until the spring of my senior year, and I spent the year before medical school teaching history at a British School in Athens, Greece. When I interviewed at Northwestern, I spent an hour talking about hermits in Egypt in the 1100s and modern Greek policy toward Turkey. I didn't talk about science at all.
There is so much that Dartmouth has to offer that other schools don't have. The opportunity for foreign study is one of them. So take advantage of things like FSPs, and don't feel that you have to go straight from college to medical school without taking time off if you want.
Major in history or anthropology. You don't have to do lab research if you don't want to. Go build latrines in Nicaragua instead.
