If she has the cash, there’s no reason not to keep going through SC. It’s not like it’s her money.
My med school class was small (50 or so students) and we occupied the same lecture hall for basic science/medical science-type classes the first two years. When education involved going out into the community for 1 on 1 experiences “following” primary care practitioners or practicing physical examination skills on volunteer “patients” (who in my estimation couldn’t have been paid enough for their services) students weren’t grouped together doing the exact same thing at the same time.
Third and fourth year, there was a lot more variability in scheduling depending on what clerkships/rotations you were on at a particular point in your training. And starting third year there were two training locations at opposite ends of the state, so you didn’t see your compatriots for much of the time.
In a number of (most?) programs, M.D./PhD students take pre-clinical classes on the same schedule as M.D. students, but there are exceptions where you start out on the same track as regular PhD aspirants.
Obviously this was meant for a different thread
I just assumed you were referring to an offhand comment (that I had missed) about a woman paying out of pocket to go to med or law school in either South Carolina or Southern California.
I’m surprised it seemed coherent. It was about Nikki Haley’s political campaign.
Just curious - is getting into law or medicine the same in most places as I saw in Toronto?
To get into medicine, one had to do 2 years towards a science undergraduate degree taking relevant courses. Since marks counted bigly for entry, it was a good idea for non-med students to avoid certain second year courses which were pretty much required for “pre-med” - the competition was absolutely fierce. Relevant reference books were stolen or pages torn out, other books perpetually checked out of the library, experiments would be sabotaged, keeners were whining for marks. Those who failed to get into med would then apply for dentistry. Doctor wannabees would lock themselves in their room and do nothing but study for two or three years…
I heard a scandal about organic chemistry - the assignment was to identify and purify a mystery substance. Some students identified it and diluted it with stock solution, some to a purity greater than they could actually have achieved with the process they were using - but the stock had a radioactive tracer added, and a number of students were expelled for cheating.
Since I was in science (and fortunately not chemistry) I didn’t hear any stories about law school entrants, I gather the courses available to qualify for law were quite a bit more varied so not the same level of competition around a small number of courses. However, the requirement was similar - take two or three years of undergrad then apply.
I originally thought along similar lines - although mine was a little more about needing more professors teaching a particular course than if you had different people taking the same course at different times. Not necessarily more professors in total , just that you couldn’t have a required course that was only taught by one or two professors if you needed four sections to fit all the students. But I hadn’t realized how small med and law school entering classes are * or how large the sections could apparently be -120 people in a lecturer seems kind of normal to me , but I never would have thought of 120 people in a single lab.
* I didn’t think thousands were admitted each year but I didn’t think it was ever as low as 50
I’ve never heard of that kind of competition for law school entrance. One reason is that there are no classes that are clearly pre-law, in the way that pre-med classes are. It was more about how good your marks were in your undergrad.
I was in law school with a history degree. (Lots of those.). Others had English degrees. A few I remember had B.Music. Some had B.Sc. degrees, some had B.Comm., I think one fellow had a B.Eng.
When I was there, the minimum was two years undergrad, but almost everyone had a bachelor degree of some sort. I think that’s still the pattern.
Going into law school, I had heard stories about insane competition, but at my school, that wasn’t the case. From day 1, the profs sent the message that if you were good enough to get into the law school, you would be good enough to pass. They didn’t want to waste resources on students who couldn’t handle the work, so the acceptance process was the main filter.
That didn’t mean everyone would score high marks in law school. There was a sorting within the courses. Your grades could affect your initial options once you graduated, but if you got in, you were on track to pass the bar as well.
And again, this was my experience in a common law school. In Quebec, since the LL.B. was an undergrad degree, getting in depended on CÉGEP marks, which did not have any clearly defined pre-law courses, as far as I could tell.
I can’t speak for Canada, but in the US, most (all?) law schools don’t have requirements for undergrad course work like medical schools do. You can get in with almost any background. Heck, one of my classmates had just received an MD degree.
History and political science for me. Lots of bachelor’s degrees in my class, some master’s, and even a few doctorates. But yes, all pretty varied—foreign languages, music, and journalism, among others. We even had some engineers.
Of course, not everybody came straight out of their undergrad schools, and some of us had careers before going to law school. One of my classmates was a former high school principal, one was a financial planner, and one was a former plumber. I myself had been a technical writer.
If I recall correctly, we only had one such student (two years of undergrad) in our first year class of 180. She was definitely exceptional, with a GPA of 4.0 and an extremely high LSAT score. The rest of us all had degrees of some sort.
Not a doctor or ever went to med school, but my wife is the Registrar for a medical School. IIRC, the first two years may differ in class order and detail from school to school, but for all, the primary goal of year 1 and 2 is to prepare for the USMLE Step 1 exam, which is ideally taken by the end of the 2nd year.
When I applied to our state law school in mid 80s, there was an equation and if you had a certain level GPA and LSAT score, you were admitted. No essays or interviews required. I’d never before heard of someone attending US law school w/o a BA/BS degree.
But no required undergrad courses. I always find it amusing when someone says they are in “pre-law.” Hmm - studying to be a pre-lawyer?
They are taking general coursework with the anticipation of applying to law school. A buddy of mine graduated with a BA in “General Studies” from (I think) University of Washington and then went on to law school.
Grades are important, as is a good MCAT score, but the specific courses taken outside of a few requirements aren’t important. Someone majoring in philosophy or history isn’t at a disadvantage compared to a biology or chemistry major. I majored in biology and minored in biochemistry. I took those labs, identifying mystery substances, running gels, breeding fruit flies and studying their traits, all that kind of stuff, but I never saw or experienced any of that type of competition. There wasn’t any sabotage of experiments, tearing out pages in library books, or things of that sort. Even if there had been, the benefits to those doing it would be minimal, since the competition is with everyone who is applying to the same med schools, not just the other people at the same particular university one happens to be attending.
If memory serves, pre-law types tend (ironically, but not unpredictably) to have among the lowest LSAT scores while, for example, math majors tend to score higher than average.
ETA: https://umanitoba.ca/faculties/arts/departments/philosophy/media/Average_LSAT_Scores_by_Major.pdf
ETA2: but I do love how “criminal justice” is brining up the rear. That must surely say something about something…
This was back in the 70’s, so things have I hope changed since then. One of the changes I recall a decade or so later was a greater emphasis on the interview and interpersonal skills over pure marks - although the negative cynical comments were that this was constructed to weed out the preponderance of Hong Kong students who were book smart but spoken-English-challenged. (To be clear, the nasty competition was home-grown, before the major influx of HK students)
Another point I remember from my fellow dorm mates who were in Med School was that they mentioned that people rarely “flunked out”. If you were good enough to get in, they were forgiving enough to allow you to repeat any courses you failed. Considering the marks level for entry at the time was at least high 80’s, nobody was a dummy.
Although the rquirement at the time was for science undergrads to take one arts course by second year, so the pre-med guys were always on the lookout for the alleged “bird courses” AKA “Mickey Mouse courses” where minimal effort guaranteed a maximal mark.
It was the same at law school. The hard part was getting in; once you had, you could manage. It would be hard work (and it was), but as long as you fulfilled all the requirements that were presented to you, it was unlikely you’d flunk out. Though you may not pass by much.
Regardless, it was the getting in that was the hard part. After that, it wasn’t gravy, but it was certainly doable. And the school, having invested in you, didn’t want to see their investment flunk out. If you needed help, it was there; you just had to ask for it. Our professors made sure that they were available during office hours, or by appointment. They did their best to make sure that you ended up where you wanted to be: that is, a graduate of the law school.
Looking forward to when I next get to wear the crimson hood of a law school graduate, instead of the white one of a bachelor of arts. 
When I attended law school (state university, early 2000’s) the 1L schedule was the same for all students, except for a couple of seminar style legal methods courses in which we were separated into something like 8-10 smaller sections. All ~100 of us attended the core courses together (e.g., contracts, torts, crim).
Everyone in my class had at least a bachelor’s degree as far as I know. I thought it was an ABA requirement for accredited law schools but I looked it up and apparently rare exceptions can be made.
(a) A law school shall require for admission to its J.D. degree program a bachelor’s degree, or
successful completion of three-fourths of the work acceptable for a bachelor’s degree, from
an institution that is accredited by an accrediting agency recognized by the Department of
Education.
(b) In an extraordinary case, a law school may admit to its J.D. degree program an applicant who
does not possess the educational requirements of subsection (a) if the applicant’s experience,
ability, and other characteristics clearly show an aptitude for the study of law. The admitting
offi cer shall sign and place in the admittee’s fi le a statement of the considerations that led to the
decision to admit the applicant.
https://www.americanbar.org/content/dam/aba/publications/misc/legal_education/Standards/2013_2014_standards_chapter5.authcheckdam.pdf
Never heard anything like that about undergrad but I heard stories that it happened in law school. When I attended, we were graded on a C+ curve, which incentivized competition since profs could only give a limited number of A’s and B’s. I recall a prof telling us she could basically award 5 A’s and 10 B’s and nearly everyone else in the class of 100 would get a C. I don’t recall anyt particularly nasty competition in my class but stories went around about pages or entire books in the law library disappearing in prior years.
I went to an extremely competitive university for pre-med undergrad '75-'79 and while there were always rumors about the cut-throat maneuvers of the more insane pre-meds, my friends and I never actually experienced such stuff ourselves or meet anyone reliable who said they had experienced that. We did get our hands on past exams by the professors to see what the tests were like, and we studied a LOT and didn’t party much, that bit is true. Organic lab was tough as hell and we were graded on yield and purity of the product but I didn’t hear of any expulsions over it or presence of radioactive tracers to identify tampering.
I don’t doubt such tactics happened sometime and somewhere but it didn’t seem rampant at the time to me. Just my two cents.
This part is true. From what I recall, the only people who flunked out were the ones who ran into problems due to things like substance abuse or other problems with “moral turpitude”. I don’t recall any of my classmates who studied hard, attended classes, took the required exams, behaved themselves, and so on but still flunked out due to low grades. That just didn’t happen.