Professor fired for being too tough (biology, history, profession, organic chemistry)

[BigCityDreamer]

If someone cannot get through organic chemistry, then they don't deserve to be admitted to med school.

It's that simple.

[YorktownGal]

Originally Posted by EDS_

He's moved on but my son's medical school publishes its prerequisites

*Every science and math class must be a "for science majors" class...........no nursing, pharmacy or allied health classes count.

Biology 14 hours

Biochemistry 3 hours

Chemistry 12 hours

Calculus or calculus based bio-statistics 3 hours

Physics 8 hours

English 6 hours


And very few admits get in with just the prerequisites........I can tell because they breakdown matriculants by major. Not quite 90% have a STEM degree (~50% biology, 20%physical sciences etc.).

Your list comes to 16 courses (assuming 3 credit courses). It's about half the usual undergrad number of courses.

Art History requires 16 art history courses. Plus an additional 2 foreign language courses (French and/or Italian). With 2 required art courses, it's up to 20 courses. It is the bare minimum courses and most art history major take far more. Then, I vaguely remember having to take a philosophy, writing, sociology (or some sort of social science course) and a math course.

Originally Posted by JONOV

I don't think you can draw that conclusion. It's more likely that very few applicants take the prerequisites without a STEM major. I know a music major that went to med school but he had to take another year in undergrad and a couple summer classes.

So basically, his undergrad was a five and half year project. He probably had a double major by the time he was done.

[JONOV]

Originally Posted by YorktownGal

Your list comes to 16 courses (assuming 3 credit courses). It's about half the usual undergrad number of courses.

Art History requires 16 art history courses. Plus an additional 2 foreign language courses (French and/or Italian). With 2 required art courses, it's up to 20 courses. It is the bare minimum courses and most art history major take far more. Then, I vaguely remember having to take a philosophy, writing, sociology (or some sort of social science course) and a math course.



So basically, his undergrad was a five and half year project. He probably had a double major by the time he was done.

Yeah, that does tend to happen when you make a significant change your Jr. year.

Lots of kids come into school with AP or College credit ahead from Community College/Highschool hybrid programs too. I was able to skip a couple humanities type classes (English IIRC,) and could have done with only taking one foreign language class (though I ended up minoring in it.)

I ended up taking my math class over the summer; honestly, the instruction was far better for non-math minds at community college. The professor at my college was brilliant, but not a great instructor.

[Ruth4Truth]

Well, then there's this bit of news, from a new thread on this subforum:

The average ACT test score for students in the class of 2022 dropped to its lowest level in more than three decades, according to data out Wednesday.
Why it matters: The decline in scores is the latest indicator of the pandemic's detrimental effects on the nation's students — and underscores the extent to which graduating high school students are ill-prepared for college.

https://www.axios.com/2022/10/12/act...niors-covid-19


Helps put the professor's comments in perspective.

[EDS_]

Originally Posted by JONOV

I don't think you can draw that conclusion. It's more likely that very few applicants take the prerequisites without a STEM major. I know a music major that went to med school but he had to take another year in undergrad and a couple summer classes.

I don't see much of a difference. Maybe I'm missing your point?

[EDS_]

Originally Posted by BigCityDreamer

If someone cannot get through organic chemistry, then they don't deserve to be admitted to med school.

It's that simple.

The hard truth is with rare exceptions someone who does not do well in O-Chem I and to a lesser degree O-Chem II is very likely to be outed by the MCAT.

[EDS_]

Originally Posted by YorktownGal

Your list comes to 16 courses (assuming 3 credit courses). It's about half the usual undergrad number of courses.

Art History requires 16 art history courses. Plus an additional 2 foreign language courses (French and/or Italian). With 2 required art courses, it's up to 20 courses. It is the bare minimum courses and most art history major take far more. Then, I vaguely remember having to take a philosophy, writing, sociology (or some sort of social science course) and a math course.

Keep in mind that is the bare minimum set of requirements. Very few get in without degrees and I noted elsewhere not quite 70% of US med. school admits study biology or a physical science usually chemistry.

[phetaroi]

Originally Posted by rummage

School needs to be easier for students so they have time to belong to fraternities and sororities, attend college pep rallies and sporting events, and the regular partying and drinking.

Fraternities and sororities should be eliminated.

[Grainraiser]

Originally Posted by JONOV

NYU has an undergrad enrollment of 30K students (or close to it.) Presumably, this professor isn't the only instructor teaching organic chemistry. Presumably, the department and administration have reference points for comparison. Even in a tough weed-out class like organic chemistry, four instructors teach 50 kids each, and one of them has a 10% pass rate and the rest have a 50% pass rate, that's a sign.

I'm with this post. Administration has a reference point to compare professors. Organic Chemistry is a weed out course for premed students and the failure rate is high. The question is if his fail rate was much higher than the other professors teaching the same class. Not enough information was provided to come to a logical conclusion.

[MKTwet]

How many managers will American companies have in the future before workers. I feel like like 20 years ago, you have 3 managers in a dept of 30-50 people. Today it seems like we have 10 managers before 30 workers. That’s the problem we will end up with because we will have too many incapable workers that are only good at management and not actual difficult work like engineering, design, and solving science problems. We lack students capable of high tech work. In my line of business almost 80-90% of workers that are working on tech work are foreign born. While managers are almost mainly American born.