Spectrum Frontpage | Spectrum Literary Feats
As Owen explains below: this is a one shot deal. No more Spectrum after this one.
The Price of Med School Admissions article is rescued here for the first time. Originally, the columns of text were mixed up in order, making this detailed accounting of costs pretty much incomprehensible. But restored to the proper order, it makes the reader glad that medicine was the author’s objective, not accounting.
By our 50th, we will have legal weed in Minnesota. And “Dean Phillips” has a whole new meaning for readers who followed the 2024 election.
Student rights activists probably had their heyday in the radial sixties. The mood of radicalism has seemingly decreased since then. Many people are now pointing instead to the rising conservatism as the new mood. Lately, Carleton’s student rights have been jeopardized, but not because of an increasing conservatism among the administration. Rather the administrators desiring to cut costs have acted in a detrimental but not hostile way towards student’s rights.
At Carleton, the case of the Burton Two brought some students to suggest that the Dean’s Office encroached upon their right to privacy. According to the Dean’s office and the rationale used by John Koten in his recent ‘tonian editorial, the search and seizure of the marijuana and its removal for evidence justified if one accepts the precedents set in recent course cases Koten cited.
The Dean’s Office saw the confusion arising because of the inability of the defendant and others to understand why the actions taken were valid. To make it clearer, Dean Phillips,* a week after the trial brought a proposal to the SPC which gave the Dean’s Office express permission to do what they had done.
The issue of D.O.S. powers regarding student rooms is now clearer and a precedent set that the D.O.S. can rewrite the handbook as it goes along. However, what is important not because the D.O.S. would even intend to raid student rooms but that the proposal would allow them to avoid excessive paperwork and long meetings.
The Dean of Students Office may have due cause to cut its expenses. Yet, if they judged their actions to be valid in the Burton Two case or the precedents set in national course cases, they should keep using that method for justifying their actions in other cases. The narrow scope of the proposal put before the SPC entrenches the D.O.S. position without regard to court cases that may follow. The extra paper and hours spend in hearing board decisions such as the Burton Two will keep Carleton abreast of developments in student’s rights nationwide.
-Owen Lippert
This is the last issue of Spectrum this year and my first as editor. I took over this post last Wednesday in a state of “Cave beer” induced egomania. This new Spectrum doesn’t contain journalism that competes with official school papers but material possible too “informal” for either the ‘tonian or the Mess and too incriminating to be published anywhere else.
(Watch out, this is the punchline)I hope people will read the Spectrum and appreciate what’s there without having to compare it with either of the school papers.
-Owen Lippert
As an alumnus and a Northfield resident who keeps in close touch with students, I feel that it is time to kick out the jams on the so-called “issue” of mariguana. I am laying it on the line to all of the mindless, brainwashed, institutional types who try to control our moral lives and minds from behind the paper walls of your house of cards. The drugs that you and your peers are addicted to are the dangerous ones: coffee, sugar, nicotine and alcohol – all known to be poisons.
Read Consumer Reports and from that, marijuana is harmless. Any objections, any reasons currently formulated as anti-marijuana, are sheerly political – part of the sick, sick, sick political economic structure that “democratic” autocrats are trying to maintain as it crumbles around them.
There comes a time when legal reform is necessary, and the first step is to show the political and administrative corruption that results when the law assumes the role of conscience instead of protector. From all reports of administrative activities over spring break, it seems as though the security force was spending more time investigating student’s rooms than keeping outsiders out of them.
Hopefully, you watched Dave Moore’s recent T.V. special on marijuana. It brought all the fallacies and truths of marijuana usage into the homes of thousands of people who ordinarily would have gone on accepting as gospel P.T.A. scare notices or street talk. On Mr. Moore’s show, the shower of lies that is the media ceased for once, and we were treated to a refreshing dose of accurate, objective reporting.
He confirmed the published reports that show marijuana to be essentially harmless and exposed the fallacious foundations of the most misleading of the negative reports. All of you had better hope that your kids take up weed smoking before they get hooked on the “Dean’s drugs” – caffeine, sugar and alcohol.
Finally, let’s look at some of the more far-reaching political ramifications to the current drug laws. Look at all the poor, underdeveloped third world countries where they grow great smoke. Why, those countries could be rich as us if they could gain revenue from legal sales export. But no, The U.S. would rather exploit than develop. Well, bullshit on that – off the pigs! Look out Mr. Jones, there’s something in that rock ‘n roll and gonna tear your house down.
“Everybody must get stoned.”
Signed,
Mr. Mick O. Soffa ‘75
How much does it cost to get into medical school these days? Time and Newsweek magazines are rampant with stories of cheating scandals among pre-med students. There are similar rumors sickening the hearts of would-be doctors and patients concerning the enormous amounts of “extra fees” to be paid in order to accepted into certain schools or concerning the expediency of being a trustee’s son.
Leaving the seamier aspects aside, how much does it cost to get accepted to medical school legally?
Our hypothetical prospective, Joe, starts the painful process in the spring of his junior year of undergraduate studies. This first step is to take the Medical College Admissions test. This test, known as “MCAT,” is similar to the SAT scores everyone took to get into college, only harder. It contains the usual vocabulary questions, mathematics is so elementary that you forgot how to do it (e.g. high school geometry), a trivia test under the pseudonym of “General Knowledge,” a basic science section which usually concerns more advanced science courses. The grueling 5 hour test is usually given on the first weekend in May.
(This weekend is picked purposely by the MCAT people because they know it’s the first weekend of nice spring weather for students living in Northfield)
The test costs a modest $25.00. For $25:
- You get to take the test.
- You get to have your scores sent to 6 schools
The average Carleton applicant for the 1975-76 class applied to 9 medical schools. (Information kindly supplied by Dr.. Ross Shoger, Carleton’s pre-med advisor) It costs Joe extra money to have his scores sent to three more schools. At $2.00 apiece for each school, that’s a total of @25 plus 3×2 =$31 for MCAT people. (If Joe wants to take a practice test to prepare for “the biggie,” it costs a mere $12.00).
In June before his senior year, Joe starts actually applying to medical schools, …it does no good to write to the school of one’s choice and ask for a catalog or application blank. All one gets in return is a letter saying: “I am sorry, we are not sending out catalogs because we have too many requests.”
AMCAS is a centralized method of applying to AMCAS-affiliated med schools. Approximately 90 percent of medical schools are AMCAS affiliated. Joe fills out one application form similar to the one he one he filled out to get into college. For $30, AMCAS xeroxes this form and sends it to 5 schools of his choice. For $2 plus postage, Joe could do the same thing himself. For the four additional schools, it costs$10 apiece to get AMCAS to send out a xerox copy.
In all, AMCAS gets $70. In addition, Joe must send in letters of recommendation, and pay $1 to the registrar office to send an official copy of his transcripts. He is not finished yet.
Trickling in from July to January are requests from each medical school for “additional processing fees.”
Fees
These are requested by the school generally as soon as they have “processed” your application where they know you don’t have a “C” average. These extra fees range from $10 to $30. The average is about $20. $20 per school x 9 schools is $180 in extra fees.
By this time, it is January. Joe is $292 in the hole and has not even had an interview yet. Almost all the medical schools require interviews. Let’s be conservative and say that Joe only goes to two interviews. Most of the medical schools are in more populous states like New York, Illinois and California.
Again, choosing the most conservative figures possible, suppose that Joe has one interview in Chicago and one interview someplace close to Northfield or his home so that transportation and lodging, etc. costs are lowered. Round-trip plane fare from Minneapolis to Chicago is about $85. $4 for the bus to and from Minneapolis to Northfield. $5 for bus, cab fare and food from O’Hare airport to the med school and back. The interview in Chicago costs $104, Joe could spend only half that much in a second interview by getting a ride with some Ole, eating and sleeping in his high school buddy’s apartment, etc.
The process would still cost about $156 for interviews. Meanwhile, three schools require additional transcripts covering the terms that had elapsed since Joe applied last spring. 3 terms x 3 schools, $9 for transcripts.
After all this, it is now a year later, and Joe Hopeful is still waiting to hear from many of the schools he applied to. He has shelled out $447 and gotten nothing but anguish in return. He may get in and he may not.
If he gets in, it will cost another $100 to hold a place in the class.
