To get into medical school, future doctors are now urged to take psychology on top of the ‘hard’ sciences. But calculus? Not so much.

Anushka Ghosh rattled off the long list of classes she was urged to take to get into medical school.

Two-and-a-half years of chemistry. One year each of biology and physics. Courses in statistics, the humanities, and social sciences.

Ghosh, now in her second year of medical school at Thomas Jefferson University, took them all. She even took calculus, though that old standby is no longer required by most medical schools, and minored in studio art.

“You come in thinking ‘I want to do everything,’” she said. “You slowly realize that you might not have the capacity.”

A rigorous, well-rounded course load is what medical schools want these days in the Philadelphia area and beyond. Renaissance scholars are in demand, who are adept not only in the traditional “hard” sciences, but also are empathetic humanists — good communicators with an understanding of sociocultural factors that play a vital role in human health.

The latest twist? In addition to recommending extra courses in “soft” subject areas, admissions officers are now trying to measure the related skills with standardized tests.

The Association of American Medical Colleges added a psychology-sociology section to its MCAT standardized admissions exam in 2015. And last year, the organization rolled out an optional multiple-choice “situational judgment” test, posing ethical conundrums such as how to deal with a classmate who violates patient privacy on social media.

Whether the added coursework and new assessments are yielding better physicians remains to be seen. The revised MCAT exam may be a better predictor of student performance in the third and fourth years of medical school, when they start to interact with real patients, a University of Minnesota study suggests.

What’s clear is that medical educators are placing renewed emphasis on the old idea that medicine is as much an art as it is a science, said Jacob W. Ufberg, associate dean of admissions at Temple University’s Katz School of Medicine.

The newer requirements and tests seek to capture some of the same qualities that are identified through essays and interviews, he said.

“It’s a recognition that just being good at physics doesn’t make you a good doctor,” he said.

» READ MORE: Try these sample questions from the AAMC's test of ethics and situational judgment

Psychology, sociology, and other social sciences — “psych-sosh” in the hurried lingo of overscheduled premedical students, spoken all in one breath — are not the only additions to the undergraduate course load. More medical schools are now recommending an extra “hard” science, biochemistry, prompted by the addition of MCAT questions on that subject.

The course list can seem intimidating at first, said Ghosh, the second-year student at Jefferson’s Sidney Kimmel Medical College. She worked as a peer adviser while an undergraduate at Brandeis University, reassuring younger premed students as they tried to plan their schedules.

“There’s a lot of anxiety about getting through everything,” she said.

But she found it manageable, in part by taking courses that piqued her interest. Instead of sociology and psychology, Ghosh opted for several classes in anthropology, which some schools accept as an alternative. One favorite course explored the role of medicine in different world cultures.

“It definitely changed a lot of my opinions on what a physician’s role is,” she said.

Anticipating more interest in psychology from its undergraduate premedical students, Temple has created a clinical and health psychology minor, said Cynthia Gooch, a professor in the department of psychology and neuroscience.

One traditional requirement for premeds, meanwhile, has largely fallen by the wayside. Just one-third of medical schools still recommend that applicants take calculus. Most urge statistics instead. None of the Philly-area medical schools recommend calculus, though Penn State College of Medicine still does.

That shift, which took place more than a decade ago, was a reflection that statistics is more relevant to the day-to-day practice of medicine, Temple’s Ufberg said.

“When’s the last time that I, as a physician, used calculus?” he asked. “I can’t remember.”

The differing recommendations from school to school can be a challenge, said Gigi Simeone, who advises Swarthmore College students and alumni seeking to enter the health professions.

That’s because getting into medical school is so competitive that people often apply to at least 20 schools.

“If Harvard has a particular thing, and Penn has another particular thing, it becomes hard for them to meet the requirements for a whole bunch of schools,” she said. “We encourage them to do the coursework as broadly as possible, so that when it comes time to apply, they’ll be eligible to apply wherever they want.”

Some students don’t complete the recommended coursework until after they graduate from college, perhaps taking night classes while working in a lab during a gap year, she said.

Other students decide that covering all the bases isn’t possible.

Jake Heilizer, a classmate of Ghosh’s at Jefferson, said he took the “bare minimum” of recommended premed courses when he was an undergraduate at Tulane University. He already had his hands full earning dual undergraduate degrees in math and public health.

So he decided not to take psychology at Tulane, especially since he had taken an advanced-placement course in the subject during high school. To get ready for the MCAT, he simply studied psych by himself, and he did just fine.

“I was like, ‘I’ve got my plate full. I trust myself to handle that on my own,’” he said. “I got the Kaplan review books, read through them, and did the flash cards and all that.”

To those who wonder how medical-school applicants can fit in all the courses, Harvard professor Richard M. Schwartzstein said that concern is misguided.

He was on the AAMC committee that recommended adding the psychology-sociology section to the MCAT test a decade ago, and he also wanted to add yet another subject — economics — but was voted down.

There is plenty of time for students to take all the recommended preparatory classes, said Schwartzstein, a professor of medicine and medical education. But it’s not important that they remember every last fact from each of those courses, just that they learn how to think and solve problems.

Schwartzstein said the revised MCAT reflects that reality, with more questions requiring that test takers use analytical skills rather than simply memorizing material. That approach makes more sense in an era when so much raw knowledge is available on a smartphone.

“Finding facts is not a challenge these days,” he said. “What education is supposed to be about is how we apply it, how we reason, how we contemplate and solve problems.”

That includes a good understanding of the economic, cultural, and behavioral factors that can affect patients’ health and their ability to follow their physician’s advice, he said.

If that all sounds like a lot to predict with a standardized test, stay tuned, said Claudio Violato, a professor and assistant dean at the University of Minnesota Medical School.

It’s too soon to say for sure, but preliminary evidence suggests that the revised MCAT may be better than its predecessor at identifying students with the best interpersonal skills, he said.

“They used to be called soft skills, and it turns out they’re actually a really important part of the whole thing,” he said. “Of course, you also have to have the technical knowledge. But so much of that is now done by computers.”