They recommended that we buy one book and familiarized ourselves with it....Bate's Guide to Physical Examination and History Taking 9th Ed. It's basically what the titel says, but we found that there was really no advantage to 'familiarizing' ourselves with it since we didn't start using it for a few weeks. All your other books- absolutely WAIT. You are going to hear 10,000 different people say different things about the books. Most people say don't buy all of them, wait and buy them as you need them (I'm pretty sure they're all in the liabrary for free, too). I went ahead and ordered every single book on the required list and a few on the recommended and spent well over $2,000. All together I have about 30-35 textbooks in my room and I use about 5 of them frequently and another 2-3 every once in a while....yeah, i shouldn't have bought them all but atleast they make me look smart when my friends come over!! Absolutely buy your books online...you will save a lot of money....look on all the big sites: Borders, B&N, Amazon, etc...With B&N you can buy a $25 membership and then save like 20% or something on all purchases which is absolutely worth it when you're spending thousands of dollars.
99% of our lectures are powerpoint presentations and the notes are available to us before hand 85% of the time. There is a policy that up to 25% of the test material can come from the required readings but its never that much.
As for what you can do to prepare...RELAX. You will seriously find yourself with zero free time 2 weeks into school. The major problem with med school is time management since time is so limited and valuable like you have no idea! Be sure your friends and family understand that you won't be seeing or talking to them for weeks at a time. Take the summer off if possible, go to the beach, and do nothing academic!!
