Raise your hand if you are currently in a class for which you don’t care.  Specifically, what classes do you have to take that simply don’t seem to be necessary for your degree?
   I happen to be in the physics department, and as a teaching assistant, we get to overhear the mutterings of the various students as they work on their lab activities. It’s not an incessant stream of complaints, mind you, but more occasional remarks such as, “I’m never going to use this,” or, “Why do I have to learn this? I’m going to be a pharmacist.” Often times I want to interject and try to inspire the student to see how this particular experience can help. Instead, I hold my tongue and let the moment pass because I don’t have a strong answer that would successfully convince the student.
   So this begs the question: why do we have to take classes that seem beyond the needs of our discipline? Admittedly, unless a doctor goes into research, it is not obvious to me they would need any mathematics or a good grasp of quantum mechanics to do their job.  
   I took this question to Mary Reese, director of undergraduate advising in the Department of Biological Sciences.  When medical schools consider applicants, their cumulative GPA is one factor taken into account.  However, equally, or perhaps more important, is a calculation called the BCPM GPA, which stands for biology, chemistry, physics and mathematics. It is this GPA, in addition to your MCAT or PCAT scores, that will dominate the attention of those med schools.  
    We’ve all grumbled and bristled at requirements our degree programs place before us.  As a doctoral student, I’ve had to endure four exams for which I had to study for weeks or months ahead of time in order to be prepared for any question the exam committee may put before me. Prior to the exams, I too had my fair share of moments where I ponderedthe point of these exams.  As had most of my fellow graduate students, I’d already done well in the courses, including the final exams, which were all comprehensive. These exams seemed redundant. Indeed, a running joke in these circles is that the doctoral exams are a sort of rite-of-passage, and we have to take them because the professors had to take them before.  But in hindsight, I feel like I have a better, more thorough grasp of those topics thanks to my seemingly endless studying.  
   According to Reese, professionals in the medical fields have found that students who do well in the BCPM courses tend to be better equipped to handle the med school courses.  It is the intensity of learning to absorb, process, analyze and synthesize information that matters, not necessarily whether you are able to find the limit of a function or whether you really “get” rotational motion in physics.
   Mathematics and physics, more than most, tend to be more challenging because of their high reliance on logic and deduction rather than on memorization. But it is these skills specifically that will help the student become prepared for the MCAT and then medical school. And that’s exactly what we came to school for in the first place, right?  To learn things we didn’t know before, to develop skills we didn’t have before and to become prepared for just about anything in our respective fields as we become highly-trained professionals?