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Re: For seniors, no algebra, no diploma
Posted:
Nov 18, 2003 11:47 PM
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Paul Tanner wrote:
> I'm amazed at how many kids who say, "I'm going to be a doctor, so I
> don't need to learn all this math." Their jaws drop when I tell them
> that the typical minimal pre-med major has to go through at least
> Calculus I in college. Their jaws drop even further when I tell them
> that a typical better-than-minimal pre-med major is chemistry, where
> the math requirement is Calculus I, II, and III, followed by
> Differential Equations.
Be honest with them, Paul. Tell them that success in such a program
raises the likelihood of being accepted into medical school, but has
very little to do with what happens thereafter for almost all who go on
to become physicians.
The standard pre-med programs, in fact, have had so little to do with
what happens in medical school that Lewis Thomas (The Lives of a Cell,
The Snail and the Medusa, inter alia), several times chairs of
departments medical schools, at one time dean of the NYU School of
Medicine, and a president of the Sloan-Kettering Institute, (see
) sent a letter-to-the-editor
to a medical journal in the late 70's in which he proposed that any
medical school applicant who admited to having been in any kind of
contact with any undergraduate program that called it self a "pre-med"
program should be summarily denied entrance to medical school. I saw
the letter in the medical journal, but have forgotten which one it was.
However, he made the same suggestion in one of his books--probably one
of the two I've cited above.
It is very clear that the real purpose of such pre-med programs is that
of filtering applicants--not of preparing them for medicine.
--Lou Talman
Department of Mathematical & Computer Sciences
Metropolitan State College of Denver
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