Medical & Liberal Arts

Medical schools are hard places to get into, and an undergraduate headed for one is likely to load himself with courses in the hard sciences and let the humanities go hang. The result: U.S. doctors, as conversationalists, are apt to be excellent physicians. But the climate of opinion in medical schools is changing. A report issued last week by Harvard University indicates that potential physicians need not insulate themselves from the liberal arts, and in some cases may hurt their chances by doing so.

Gist of the report, which studied the careers of 1,390 Harvard students who went on to medical school from 1949-56: grades and academic honors weigh heavily in determining admission to medical school, but a student's choice of major--assuming he has met minimum science requirements--has no bearing. Writes Author Dean K. Whitla, director of Harvard's office of tests: "It would be regrettable if some of our students who plan to become doctors felt that they must turn away from their interest in the liberal arts for fear of being rejected at medical school without a premedical major." Surprise of the study: at Harvard Medical School, premed-prepared students do better the first year, but by the third year they fall slightly behind students who majored in the social sciences.

Medical schools, writes Whitla, have become increasingly more aware of the importance of liberal arts backgrounds. But at Harvard, at least, the students have not; in 1949, 47% of those who went on to medical school took premed courses; by 1956, the last year the report covers, 67% were premed majors. For future physicians, some comments from the men in charge of admissions at five other major medical schools:

MICHIGAN. Says Assistant Dean Robert G. Lovell: the University of Michigan does not particularly care what a student's major is, will admit social science and humanities majors as readily as premed majors if they meet science requirements.

PENNSYLVANIA. Medical Faculty Dean John McK. Mitchell: the school pays no attention to majors, is interested in the man and how he handled the courses rather than what courses he took.

CHICAGO. Preference has swung toward humanities majors, says Dr. Joseph Ceithaml, dean of students at the medical school: "If two men apply, and both have the required basic scientific courses behind them, and one was a philosophy major and the other solely a premed student, the philosophy man gets the nod." In the past, students headed toward medicine piled up huge backlogs of scientific courses, "which they could very well have done without."

NORTHWESTERN. "You're in medicine for the rest of your life," says Medical School Dean Dr. Richard H. Young. "The broader scholastic background a man has before he enters medical school, therefore, the better."

JOHNS HOPKINS. Dr. Thomas B. Turner, dean of the medical faculty: "I cannot candidly say that liberal arts in any sense outweigh science. We want both in our entering students: a background that is broad culturally and a preparation in basic science, specifically chemistry, biology and mathematics. The old unconcern for liberal arts has vanished. We want a man to be intellectually mature, and we recognize that he cannot attain that status taking nothing but science courses."

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