Accepted-Best Way to Prepare

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GreenPlant2010

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I have been accepted to medical school, and I would like to get a head start on some of the material. What books do you recommend to prepare, nothing too drastic though. Thanks.
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This question is asked ~400 times per week, do a search and you can spend hours reading. OR, you can read below and get the exact same info in a fraction of the time:

DO NOT TRY TO STUDY IN ADVANCE. IT WILL DO YOU NO GOOD WHATSOEVER. USE THIS TIME TO ENJOY LIFE - YOU WON'T REGRET IT (WE PROMISE!)
 
Do not try to study in advance. It will do you no good whatsoever. Use this time to enjoy life - you won't regret it (we promise!)
 
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I cant believe people would actually think of doing this?! Dont people have lives...lives where they drink beer and chill with friends?
 
Do not try to study in advance. It will do you no good whatsoever. Use this time to enjoy life - you won't regret it (we promise!)
 
rock_climber said:
This question is asked ~400 times per week, do a search and you can spend hours reading. OR, you can read below and get the exact same info in a fraction of the time:

DO NOT TRY TO STUDY IN ADVANCE. IT WILL DO YOU NO GOOD WHATSOEVER. USE THIS TIME TO ENJOY LIFE - YOU WON'T REGRET IT (WE PROMISE!)
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+1

the duck said:
Do not try to study in advance. It will do you no good whatsoever. Use this time to enjoy life - you won't regret it (we promise!)
Click to expand...

+2

willen101383 said:
I cant believe people would actually think of doing this?! Dont people have lives...lives where they drink beer and chill with friends?
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+3

Here's a good way to prepare:
Get drunk, talk to some cute girls, play some pool, sit in the sun, read a good book (Catcher in the Rye, Farenheit 451, and The Stranger are some good ones), ride your bike, learn to longboard/skateboard, go skiing, go hiking, go swim, buy a last minute plane ticket to somewhere random/kickass, learn to cook foreign food, teach yourself Spanish.....

Come back when you're finished with all that homework and I'll give you more.
 
Go shadow more doctors or start doing research.
 
brygguy1 said:
+1



+2



+3

Here's a good way to prepare:
Get drunk, talk to some cute girls, play some pool, sit in the sun, read a good book (Catcher in the Rye, Farenheit 451, and The Stranger are some good ones), ride your bike, learn to longboard/skateboard, go skiing, go hiking, go swim, buy a last minute plane ticket to somewhere random/kickass, learn to cook foreign food, teach yourself Spanish.....

Come back when you're finished with all that homework and I'll give you more.
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All of this :thumbup::thumbup::thumbup::thumbup:
 
I expected that people on SDN would have supported me on this plan! :(
 
GreenPlant2010 said:
I have been accepted to medical school, and I would like to get a head start on some of the material. What books do you recommend to prepare, nothing too drastic though. Thanks.
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Everyone has it all wrong for the OP.

What he should do, as a premed, is to get a copy of Big Daddy Robbins and memorize the whole thing, word for word. Then he should get a copy of Harrison's and memorize every word of that. That should give him enough of a head-start. ;)

He'll be *years* ahead of everyone else.:laugh:
 
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Dear god your avatar. It's so chic.
 
well i've been accepted to med school and i'm already studying for the boards. i would recommend taking a practice test from now till the end of of your second year a week, just like me. talk to current med students and get their notes when they're finished with the class and just study hard man.

if you booze, you lose -- remember that

don't talk to girls -- just jerk it every day... like me

and whatever you do, do not travel
 
Think of all the time you could spend auscultating and reading radiographs instead of jerking.
 
Why do people ask this question all the time!? Who would want to do extra work (that likely won't even pay off)? Some of you SDNers scare me!
 
DMB said:
well i've been accepted to med school and i'm already studying for the boards. i would recommend taking a practice test from now till the end of of your second year a week, just like me. talk to current med students and get their notes when they're finished with the class and just study hard man.

if you booze, you lose -- remember that

don't talk to girls -- just jerk it every day... like me

and whatever you do, do not travel
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:laugh::rofl:

But seriously, instead of studying
you should just work out like a madman and become extremely buff
then you can use your physique to hulk smash your way through med school
make of that what you will
 
GreenPlant2010 said:
I expected that people on SDN would have supported me on this plan! :(
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Right. The fact that SDN, one of the most neurotic places on the internet, advises you not to bother preparing, then that means something!

Studying in advance won't get you anywhere and you'll burn out earlier than your classmates. Go out and do the things you'll most likely have to give up once you start school - which reminds me of another piece of advice to add on top of this one:

Once you get to medical school, don't give up all of your non-medical extracurriculars. You need something outside of school and medicine to keep you sane. :oops:
 
I got accepted somewhere in November so here's what I did:

Prepare an outline of the boards so that you can fill it in while going through the medical books in depth later. You'll definitely want to color code it and put it into several 1 inch binders (10+, if you find yourself using nine 1 inch binders it means there's not enough detail and you should burn the notes and start over).

Make sure you cover the major points of each subject and also include clinical tie-ins.

Then you want to look up the 2000 most common diseases by frequency in the U.S. and make a detailed outline of the treatment procedure for each of those diseases, as well as their pathologies, histology samples, etc.


Okay, that covers day 1.


For day 2, you want to install several hidden cameras in various patient rooms. Make sure you hit up both community and university hospitals for maximum exposure. Of course, you want to write some custom code to track faces and match names (by sound) and blur/bleep them out so that you are not violating patient privacy.

Take notes on ALL the actions doctors do. If the doctor stubs their toe, it's definitely to establish "average man" rapport with the patient, and you'll want to make sure you practice stubbing your toe in the same way. If you can't do it believably you'll probably fail the patient interaction part of the USMLE.

With the combined hospitals, record the patient response to various doctors to create a dataset of trigger/response combinations, and then do a factor analysis for the best things to say to a patient. Write it up into a paper, send it to a journal of your choosing.


I can't tell you about day 3-200, obviously, because I need to get the top USMLE score in the nation and you'll be competition.
 
20080311-heineken.jpg



this...
 
If you don't memorize all the muscles, bones, parts of bones, and nerves of the entire body at least 1 week before you start med school, you might as well just drop out.
 
GreenPlant2010 said:
I have been accepted to medical school, and I would like to get a head start on some of the material. What books do you recommend to prepare, nothing too drastic though. Thanks.
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As many people have said there is no head start to be had. That said, if you're excited (and you should be, you got in to medical school, and that's exciting) and you can't restrain yourself, read whatever you want. Nothing will hurt. Don't expect too much from it. What topic are you interested in? Read about that.

You can check out the websites on this thread: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=16494

Every year someone who gets accepted posts a thread like this, and medical students will throw down the idea likes it's idiotic. But I remember feeling excited to get started. Telling an excited soon to be 2014 med student not to read if they're excited to do it might be like telling a 7 year old that Christmas will be more fun if they get a good night sleep the night before. Forgive us med students for being a bit cynical. We're just sick of studying, and can't remember what it was like to be excited to do it. You'll soon know what we mean. It's not all bad all the time, though.
 
Even Hermione Granger would take some time to party her ass off before medical school.
 
Start studying for Step One during the summer before you start med school. Your classmates are out to get you, so get the jump on them.
 
If you really want to prepare, go read some memoirs of docs who have already been through this. I love Healing Hearts by Dr. Magliato (esp if you're a woman), and Intern and Complications are both good too.
 
You mean you haven't started yet? Christ, you are behind. THIS ISN'T UNDERGRAD! YOU CAN'T JUST START SLACKING ON DAY -120! GET IT TOGETHER!
 
clinicallabguy said:
As many people have said there is no head start to be had. That said, if you're excited (and you should be, you got in to medical school, and that's exciting) and you can't restrain yourself, read whatever you want. Nothing will hurt. Don't expect too much from it. What topic are you interested in? Read about that.

You can check out the websites on this thread: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=16494

Every year someone who gets accepted posts a thread like this, and medical students will throw down the idea likes it's idiotic. But I remember feeling excited to get started. Telling an excited soon to be 2014 med student not to read if they're excited to do it might be like telling a 7 year old that Christmas will be more fun if they get a good night sleep the night before. Forgive us med students for being a bit cynical. We're just sick of studying, and can't remember what it was like to be excited to do it. You'll soon know what we mean. It's not all bad all the time, though.
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I remember what it was like when I got accepted to medical school. I didn't want to start studying ahead then and now I sure as hell would not suggest someone to start studying. If you enjoying reading then read but don't do it because to just to get a jump on medical school. Do something you enjoy because come the start of medical school, free time starts to disappears. Good luck and congrats on the acceptance to the OP....
 
I dont think there could be a more inefficient use of your time. Its honestly very unlikely that whatever you do study will be remembered or will be very relevant to your medical education.

Only thing I would consider doing is takinga challenging course that you have no exposure to. I hadn't taken a single anatomy class before my first year and it was quite a struggle. I'm sure biochem was the same for students who hadn't taken it before. However, I still think you should do something else that you enjoy. Otherwise, you will find yourself in the middle of your first semester upset with how you spent your free time doing the same thing you'll be doing for a very very long time. I worked a lot my senior year and I traveled all summer and I am very glad I did.
 
But Hermione has Felix Felices, I don't have a bottle of guaranteed luck to get me through my pre med and med school lol….man im so jealous.
 
tompi90 said:
But Hermione has Felix Felices, I don't have a bottle of guaranteed luck to get me through my pre med and med school lol….man im so jealous.
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Nah dude, felix felicis takes months to make. And you can't just ignore the side effects of dangerous overconfidence, excess giddyness, etc. Trust me, you don't want to get addicted to felix felicis. I would recommend using the time-turners (if only they weren't all destroyed!).
 
Kaushik said:
Nah dude, felix felicis takes months to make. And you can't just ignore the side effects of dangerous overconfidence, excess giddyness, etc. Trust me, you don't want to get addicted to felix felicis. I would recommend using the time-turners (if only they weren't all destroyed!).
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Lol aight ill take your word for it, since clearly you have experience with felix felicis abuse :). Dude time-turners would honestly confuse the $hit out of me because im pretty sure id lose track of what time frame i would be in lol….if all else fails ill just Imperius Curse the USMLE board and pass with flying colors….though thats my last resort. Yea im THAT bad@ss lol….i used to hang out with Voldemort way back in the day before Harry had to come and ruin all of it lol jk jk.
 
reading ahead of time won't accomplish anything.....the onslaught of material is constant and continually builds.....it's not undergrad anymore so reading a "text" won't give you the complete picture.

The BEST way to prepare is to relax, prepare yourself mentally, and be ready to hit the ground in a full sprint.
 
tompi90 said:
Lol aight ill take your word for it, since clearly you have experience with felix felicis abuse :). Dude time-turners would honestly confuse the $hit out of me because im pretty sure id lose track of what time frame i would be in lol….if all else fails ill just Imperius Curse the USMLE board and pass with flying colors….though thats my last resort. Yea im THAT bad@ss lol….i used to hang out with Voldemort way back in the day before Harry had to come and ruin all of it lol jk jk.
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Using the Imperius curse is illegal and unbecoming of a Healer. I think you'll make a poor Healer and should reconsider your career choice.

:p

PS. I like the HP turn this thread has taken. Let's keep it going.
 
Kaushik said:
Using the Imperius curse is illegal and unbecoming of a Healer. I think you'll make a poor Healer and should reconsider your career choice.

:p

PS. I like the HP turn this thread has taken. Let's keep it going.
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Ok now don't judge me too quickly, remember, thats a very last resort, and I would only use it on the USMLE board, not my patients lol….its either that or I hire Hagrid to do my business for me lol.
 
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