Ask a current medical student anything

[Gannador]

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I just finished my clinical year today at Columbia currently, went to a big, low ranked public. 4.0, 36S, no pubs, 2 years research, studied physical science and minored in the arts. 3.99 in high school unweighted. National Merit. Nothing else of interest.

 

[ozzi22]

How is your curriculum structured in pre clinical and clinical years? Are the grading system Pass/fail? Are you guys ranked?

 

[Gannador]

How is your curriculum structured in pre clinical and clinical years? Are the grading system Pass/fail? Are you guys ranked?

18 month systems based preclinicals. Combination of lectures with supplementary PBL. 1 year clinical year with exposure to almost all major specialties except dermatology (though there is a week of exposure during pre-clinicals), including ER, the surgical subspecialties, and neurology. Pre-clinicals are unranked pass fail. Clinicals are H/HP/P/F. There is no formal ranking, but they do send a breakdown of the grades received by the class (this many honored a given rotation, etc). AOA is determined by being in the top 25-50% of the class + your resume. About 1/5 of the class is nominated.

 

[deleted393595]

I just finished my clinical year today at Columbia currently, went to a big, low ranked public. 4.0, 36S, no pubs, 2 years research, studied physical science and minored in the arts. 3.99 in high school unweighted. National Merit. Nothing else of interest.

I just have a few

1) Is the grass really greener on the other side?
2) My sporfwoggle sporfwoggled and went kambfoof. What should I do?
3) How would you judge your experience at Columbia so far?
4) Cursive or print?

 

[Gannador]

I just have a few

1) Is the grass really greener on the other side?
2) My sporfwoggle sporfwoggled and went kambfoof. What should I do?
3) How would you judge your experience at Columbia so far?
4) Cursive or print?

1) If you go into medicine for the right reasons and choose a school for the right reasons if you are fortunate to have a choice, then yes it definitely is. Being miserable or happy in medical school are both possible.
2) Don't talk with your mouth full.
3) Ballin'
4) Print, and my handwriting still sucks.

 

[deleted393595]

1) If you go into medicine for the right reasons and choose a school for the right reasons if you are fortunate to have a choice, then yes it definitely is. Being miserable or happy in medical school are both possible.
2) Don't talk with your mouth full.
3) Ballin'
4) Print, and my handwriting still sucks.

Haha. #1 wasn't pertaining to medicine but was just really random.

Thanks for answering my dumb questions though!

But to be serious, how has the transition between undergrad and med school been and what does your daily and weekly schedule look like?

 

[Gannador]

Haha. #1 wasn't pertaining to medicine but was just really random.

Thanks for answering my dumb questions though!

But to be serious, how has the transition between undergrad and med school been and what does your daily and weekly schedule look like?

The transition was relatively smooth. Overall, I found that I had substantial free time, which gradually increased as I became more comfortable with the volume of studying and the process of doing so. Pre-clinical schedule was typically wake up at noon, go to small group until 1, go to anatomy (later a different class) from 1:30-5;30 once a week and another class/clerkship another day a week during the sam eperiod. Participate in activities and watch morning lectures that I skipped until 8, dinner, study from 9-12 or 1, go home, relax or do research, bed around 2-3. Weekends typically consisted of waking up late, chilling out until 5 or so, then studying for the night. One night (fri or sat), I would go out or participate in some kind of EC. Week of exams I would do the same thing except less ECs and more studying. I would also catch up on lectures that I hadn't watched yet (sometimes as many as 6-10 lectures behind. I would sometimes skip particularly painful lectures/subjects until a few days prior to the exam to minimize the need for re-review). Clinicals varied immensely. I tried to study or do required projects for at least 3 hours a day (roughly 1 study material such as a review book or a question bank every 1-2 weeks depending on the course), but that included daytime studying and often was accomplished during the day while at work (i.e, during gynecology there was an entire day where there wasn't surgery, so I mostly studied at work and then took the night off).

 

[CeeEstee0]

-Your favorite and least favorite rotation thus far?

-Why?

Thanks!

 

[Gannador]

-Your favorite and least favorite rotation thus far?

-Why?

Thanks!

Well, I've completed all of the required clinical rotations. I really enjoyed family medicine, but that was because I got to go to an indian health services hospital in AZ. Subject for subject, my favorite two were definitely surgery and neurology. I really liked the quality of the teaching in each, and I enjoyed to material covered. It just came easier to me than other stuff. My least favorite rotation was probably internal medicine. There was a lot futility in what we were doing as medical students. I always felt like I was racing the intern/resident to do things rather than assisting them. The hours were very long for the stuff I got to do, and then I had to go home and write these 8-14 page write ups for my preceptors, which sapped as much as 50% of my cumulative study time for the rotation and made me feel like I got less out of it than I did on others despite the fact that it was twice as long. Write ups definitely have their uses, but a 3 page write up isn't particularly less informative or less educational than a 10 page one. It's all about diminishing returns, and the 4-5 page discussions that I was forced to write, along with the 2+ page histories, were very painful to me. I enjoyed Internal Medicine, but I didn't love it like my other rotations.

 

[deleted393595]

Last question. I promise.

How is the competition between your classmates and is it harder to get into AOA than at another school?

 

[Gannador]

Last question. I promise.

How is the competition between your classmates and is it harder to get into AOA than at another school?

I haven't found my class to very competitive with each other. Fortunately, most of you "grades", per se, are based on individual performance against an more absolute scale rather than against just the performance of those you being evaluated at the same time.

I have no clue how hard it is to get AOA at other schools, nor would I know how to compare it objectively. The only statistic that I can give is about 20% of the class gets AOA.

 

[CeeEstee0]

Any experiences/recommendations/stories from anatomy lab?

Thanks again!

 

[Gannador]

Any experiences/recommendations/stories from anatomy lab?

Thanks again!

Well, IDK what level you are referring to in terms of pre-med vs medical anatomy class, but my biggest recommendations would be to know the anatomy on paper before trying to memorize in the lab and don't bother to try identify things vigorously until you have everything cleaned up. This is for two reasons. First, there is a ton of variability (my cadaver had a vertebral artery coming off the arch of the aorta, another had an non-continuous axillary and brachial arteries). Second, even professional anatomists struggle to identify things without a clear view. Much of anatomy looks the same in a fixated specimen. Further, a lot of things are named based on their relationship to other structures. Until you can see those other structures, you can't often be sure.

As far as stories, we had someone throw a scalpel into the ceiling to be cute. It wasn't. We had a cadaver that was so cancerous that it was physically impossible to separate out any structures withing the abdomen and pelvis.