Rizal in UST

• enrolling in the Pre-Law Course, which was made up of philosophical subjects

• He passed the course brilliantly with the highest grades in spite of his initial indifference to philosophy and his youthful distractions through the year.

• The Pre-Medicine Course was also called Ampliacion

• In his courses of medicine, Rizal was a good student, above-average, though not excellent; but none of his classmates were excellent.

• Summing up, in the 21 subjects taken in UST, Rizal obtained one aprobado (passing grade), eight bueno (good), six notable (very good) and six sobresaliente (excellent). Majority of students in Rizal’s time, or in any time, would have been satisfied with the above grades

• It is possible that Rizal was not, but it is a fact that he never complained about his grades.

• Rizal was excellent, though not the only excellent student

• At the UST, none of his classmates ever got near to keeping a straight record of Excellent. And this was because Medicine was a different kind of stuff altogether

• Therefore, if we are to arrive at a just appreciation of Rizal’s performance at the UST, we should compare, not his grades in the high school with those in the university

• Rizal’s grades in Medicine against those of his classmates. In the first year of medicine, Rizal’s class was made up of 24 students, but due to academic failures

• seventeen of them were left by the roadside before they reached the fourth year

• in this fourth (and for Rizal last) year, he landed in second place behind Cornelio Mapa

• A persecuted Rizal would have probably ended by the same roadside as the seventeen “debarred” classmates, or would have never boasted of being second when he left for Spain in 1882.

""It can hardy be said that Rizal was discriminated and treated shabbily by the Dominicans""

• While he was undoubtedly inclined to, and remarkably fitted for, the arts and letters, he was not much attracted to Medicine.

• Medicine was a convenient career taken up in consideration of the poor health of Rizal’s mother, whom he wanted to help, and eventually helped as a physician.

”Medicine was not his real vocation”

• It was while studying at UST that Rizal obtained public recognition as a poet. It was the Dominican, Fr. Arias who helped him cultivate his craft in poetry

• During his Thomasian years, Rizal composed the best poems of his pre-European period, one of them being A la Juventud Filipina, winner of the first prize in the contest organized by the Liceo ArtisticoLiterario in 1879

RIZAL ENTERED THE UST IN 1877

In 1878-1879 he took simultaneously the Pre-Medical Course and the First Year of Medicine.

All and more inside this video

"Rizal had Dominican friends in the persons of Fr. Evaristo Arias and Fr. Joaquin Fonseca"

Was Rizal “far below his usual standards”?

Rizal’s inclinations and abilities must be taken into account

When Rizal transferred to Spain and continued his studies at the University of Madrid, he showed there similar characteristics.

"He was sobresaliente in the humanistic studies (literature, languages, history), while in Medicine he fared worse than at the University of Santo Tomas".