Premedical Education for Biomedical Engineers
A Discussion Between Profs. Kourennyi and Marchant
To: Dr. Marchant
From: Dr. Kourennyi
Re: Premedical Edication
Dr. Marchant,
You mentioned a couple of times the biology requirements (Biol 214 and 215) for engineering premeds. As far as I remember, this requirement is "knowledge-based" thing (just to make sure that students know biology), rather than the official requirement.
Could you please clarify this issue? I don't want to give a wrong advise to students (such as "don't take biology"), but also don't want to force them into extra course if they don't need it.
This is how I understand the requirements (including the possibility of taking courses at another university in the summer):
1. EBME 201/202 (automatically satisfied as part of the BME degree, no problem here).
2. CHEM 113 (Chem Lab, can be taken at Case or somewhere else).
3. CHEM 223/224 (Intro to Organic Chemistry I/II; recommended to take at Case because of quality, but possible somewhere else).
4. BIOL 214/215 (Genes and Cells; knowledge-based recommendation, can be omitted if student has a strong feeling that (s)he knows biology well, e.g. AP class with good mark; can be satisfied by taking one good biology somewhere else).
5. CHEM 233 (I always recommend OChem Lab, - lab skills are always useful).
Please correct me if I am wrong.
Thanks,
Dmitri Kourennyi
To: Dr. Kourennyi
From: Dr. Marchant
Re: Premedical Edication
Dr. Kourennyi
I agree with the comments you state.
There are two key things about being a premed student in our BME undergraduate program. (1) The student must do well on MCAT and (2) satisfy requirements for the med school of interest - these requirements can vary a lot between med schools. Besides required basic courses like physics, chem, math, etc. that BME students take, Organic Chemistry I and Organic Chemistry II are essential to prepare for the MCAT (Organic Chemistry I is required for Tissue Engineering and Polymer Biomaterials Specialty Sequences). The Organic Chemistry lab is not needed for MCAT but is required by almost all med schools (so this can be done at any time before graduation, and not necessarily when the courses are taken, which should around the sophomore year). I would also strongly recommend that a student buy a couple of MCAT prep books (at the end of the sophomore year) and try a couple of practice MCAT tests in those books. This is great for showing a student what their areas of weakness might be, a study strategy and courses (if needed ) can then be planned.
The second area that needs to be covered is a broad based biology course. As you state, a good performance on AP Biology just about covers it. This also used to be satisfied well by Biol 105, until they decided to create 3 courses out of it. Of the three main biology courses (Biol 214, 215, and 216) two of them are pretty much covered by EBME 201 and 202. The only one I might recommend is Biol 215 (it has some very useful cell biology). Some basic biochemistry is also useful. Most of the useful structural biology that is in biochemistry (DNA, proteins, phospholipids etc) can be obtained from EBME 303.
On the issue of med school requirements, students should check each school they might be interested in at an early stage. Secondly, the schools typically expect students to "line up" courses along physics, math, and biology categories. It is important for students to realize that a course they have taken does NOT have to be labeled BIOL XXX to be listed under the biology heading (similarly for physics and math). So EBME 201 and EBME 202 fall under the biology heading and so on.
Roger Marchant
