The New York Times reveals a fact we’ll be you never knew: Every year, Mount Sinai Medical School, a top med school located in New York City, admits a few lucky students who neither have hard-science backgrounds nor have taken the MCAT.
Mount Sinai’s Humanities and Medicine Program guarantees spots to about 35 college sophomores or juniors each year, just so long as they maintain a 3.5 GPA and agree to major in the humanities or social sciences, and not the traditional pre-med majors.
The humanities students at Mount Sinai need to take basic biology and chemistry, but don’t need to take any organic chemistry, physics, or calculus courses prior to med school. They do, however, need to pass an abbreviated, intense catch-up course during Mount Sinai’s summer boot camp. Instead of the MCAT, these select students need to submit SAT scores, high school and early college GPAs, and two essays. (In 2009, mean verbal and math SAT scores for these students was 1444; the mean freshmen GPA was 3.74. Also, about one-third of the 2009 class had at least one parent who was a doctor, compared to the one in five statistic for all med schools.)
A recent study published in Academic Medicine last week shows that students in the Humanities and Medicine Program performed as well as their traditional, more scientifically prepared classmates. The study showed that the humanities students made more sensitive doctors, and that they were twice as likely to become psychiatrists. They were less likely to go into primary care positions, surgical fields, or anesthesiology.
One surprising find was that the humanities students were more likely to spend a year doing scholarly research than were their traditionally trained peers.
About 5-10% of these students drop out of the med program, either because the sciences prove to be too challenging or because they simply decide medicine is not their calling. (Acclaimed author Jonathan Safran Foer was one such med school dropout.)
Most medical schools are not willing to make such a bold move, despite promising performance reports. Admissions officials believe that requiring MCAT scores helps their schools rate high in medical school rankings, and that a high MCAT score is more indicative of high academic performance than the GPA.
Related Accepted.com Med School Resources:
- AMCAS Essays for Acceptance, a free, instantly viewable webinar.
- Med School Personal Statements for Non-Science Majors, free tips.
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Read the full article: No hard sciences? Don’t rule out med school!
