The Pre-Med Problem

"Two seniors, supposedly friends and both candidates for the same medical school . . . were about to take an important examination in chemistry. One confessed to the other that, should a certain question be asked, he was unprepared to give the correct answer. His classmate proceeded to give him the wrong answer, although he knew the right one." The authors of Preparation for Medical Education admit that this is an unusual incident. But it does point up the intensity of the competition among pre-medical students.

The cause of the competition is obvious: "In 1925 practically all applicants who had completed their premedical requirements were admitted to medical school, and the Class A schools still had 1,500 vacancies." Twenty-five years later, despite higher standards for admission, 24,000 students applied for 7,000 places in the freshman classes of the nation's medical schools.

But the vast disparity between applications and acceptances has made the whole subject of premedical education emotionally explosive, creating numerous misconceptions and special problems. In order to inject some system into suggestions for improvements, the Committee for the Survey of Medical Education, aided by a grant from the Markle Foundation, set up a committee to study pre-professional education.

Their report's central thesis is "the value of a sound liberal education as a preparation for life and also as an educational basis for later vocational training." With this criterion, the authors blast away at students, teachers, colleges and medical schools alike. Present medical school admission requirements, they contend, attract a vocationally oriented group of students to liberal arts colleges. Many of these students have little interest in courses which do not obviously contribute to their occupational objectives. The students are not entirely to blame, however. Medical schools, for instance, contribute to overspecialization by suggesting lists of "recommended" science courses beyond the necessary minimum. As a result, say the authors, premeds interested in the humanities tend to forego courses in literature in order to study more chemistry.

The book contains a number of provocative recommendations concerning almost every level of pre-medical education. But central to all of them is the authors' insistence that "every student, irrespective of what he intends to do vocationally, should think of himself as a liberal arts student in search of a well-rounded education and should be treated as such."