Does/Did anyone find med school "easy"?

[casperhater123]

I’m grateful to have been accepted to medical school, and I really am trying to figure out what the experience will be like for me. I'm one of those people who was blessed with a mind for school. I didn’t take a single note in college, played games on my computer all class, barely studied if at all, but still managed to get 99’s on my exams. School, specifically science and math, has always been my bread and butter. I don’t want to say that I have a photographic memory, but it’s close to it. And once I understand something, I rarely forget it. Science and math just kinda click for me is the best way to put it.

Point is: I know I am not the only one who school comes naturally to. So for people who have had a similar experience, what is/was medical school like for you? Did you get slapped in the face by reality, or was it just as easy as undergrad? I know that the sheer amount of information is much greater, and so studying in some capacity is a must (learned this during my MCAT experience). But studying 12 hours a day every day just doesn’t seem like something I would have to do. Am I wrong about that? I’m willing to do what is necessary to succeed so if I am wrong, then studying 12 hours a day every day is what I’ll do.

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[Mr.Smile12]

Medical school was different four years ago, and much changed because of it!

Grab your popcorn.


P.S. Get some help making your study habits much more effective. You've been able to succeed by typing with just two fingers. You must teach yourself to use your other fingers. The sooner, the better. If you wind up studying for 12 hours/day, you will burn out, and then you will start to fail.

 

[casperhater123]

P.S. Get some help making your study habits much more effective. You've been able to succeed by typing with just two fingers. You must teach yourself to use your other fingers. The sooner, the better. If you wind up studying for 12 hours/day, you will burn out, and then you will start to fail.

I did manage to improve my MCAT from a 50X to a 52X. So I seemed to find something that worked for me for the MCAT, just not sure if it would also work in medical school (because what I did for the MCAT wasn’t all that strenuous or crazy).

Either way I know I’ll figure it out, just curious about what it will entail.

 

[xffan624]

I did manage to improve my MCAT from a 50X to a 52X. So I seemed to find something that worked for me for the MCAT, just not sure if it would also work in medical school (because what I did for the MCAT wasn’t all that strenuous or crazy).

Either way I know I’ll figure it out, just curious about what it will entail.

I think you will find you will still need to put some work in like for the MCAT but it won't be crazy hard. Many of the people you meet in medical school had a relatively easy time in school as well. I'm sure you'll be able to pass easily without too much effort. For more competitive specialties if that's your goal, then high grades/step scores are the norm (and require more effort, but are achievable for smart students), but there are other elements that distinguish students like research/papers/presentations, clinical grades (which aren't just based on study skills), networking, etc..

 

[casperhater123]

I think you will find you will still need to put some work in like for the MCAT but it won't be crazy hard. Many of the people you meet in medical school had a relatively easy time in school as well. I'm sure you'll be able to pass easily without too much effort. For more competitive specialties if that's your goal, then high grades/step scores are the norm (and require more effort, but are achievable for smart students), but there are other elements that distinguish students like research/papers/presentations, clinical grades (which aren't just based on study skills), networking, etc..

Yeah this is kinda what I am expecting going in. Obviously will need to put effort in and of course there will be an adjustment, but it won’t be what I see people doing on TikTok waking up at 4:30am and studying to 11pm everyday lol.

And yes I wanna match into gen surg right now so I definitely plan to do more than just the bare minimum to pass.

I guess we will see!

 

[Hollow Knight]

Depends on the medical school.

I had to do 36 hour shifts on my surgery rotation.

If you don't have any class you have to attend, with your MCAT score you should be able to get As and Bs working like 60 hours a week and then just chill. Which I would call "easy" relatively speaking. If you have 40 hours a week of workshops on top of that, that 60 hours of studying gets less manageable.

 

[casperhater123]

Depends on the medical school.

I had to do 36 hour shifts on my surgery rotation.

If you don't have any class you have to attend, with your MCAT score you should be able to get As and Bs working like 60 hours a week and then just chill. Which I would call "easy" relatively speaking. If you have 40 hours a week of workshops on top of that, that 60 hours of studying gets less manageable.

36 hours is cruel and unusual punishment.

 

[xffan624]

Yeah this is kinda what I am expecting going in. Obviously will need to put effort in and of course there will be an adjustment, but it won’t be what I see people doing on TikTok waking up at 4:30am and studying to 11pm everyday lol.

And yes I wanna match into gen surg right now so I definitely plan to do more than just the bare minimum to pass.

I guess we will see!

If you're on surgery rotation, then 4:30 am could be a time that you're getting to the hospital. If you're a resident, that's 7 years of early mornings. Probably not 4:30 am, but most ORs start at 7 am and there's pre-rounding, etc. And then you're staying past 6 pm. That's a normal day, not a 36 hour shift like some places do. For some people, that 6-7 day a week grind is almost worse than long shifts. I'm just preparing you, that if you're a person that likes your free time, surgery residency is a tough slog to get through. People survive it and set their own schedule as an attending (to some extent), but it's a residency with a high attrition rate for a reason.

 

[casperhater123]

If you're on surgery rotation, then 4:30 am could be a time that you're getting to the hospital. If you're a resident, that's 7 years of early mornings. Probably not 4:30 am, but most ORs start at 7 am and there's pre-rounding, etc. And then you're staying past 6 pm. That's a normal day, not a 36 hour shift like some places do. For some people, that 6-7 day a week grind is almost worse than long shifts. I'm just preparing you, that if you're a person that likes your free time, surgery residency is a tough slog to get through. People survive it and set their own schedule as an attending (to some extent), but it's a residency with a high attrition rate for a reason.

Yeah all the research I've done has shown that surgical residencies (and really all residencies) are hell, which I'm preparing myself for. I know that sacrifice is necessary. My idea right now is to plan for gen surg or something similar, but keep my mind open during med school in case I decide I don't feel like giving up my life for however many years I'm in residency/fellowship.

 

[xffan624]

Yeah all the research I've done has shown that surgical residencies (and really all residencies) are hell, which I'm preparing myself for. I know that sacrifice is necessary. My idea right now is to plan for gen surg or something similar, but keep my mind open during med school in case I decide I don't feel like giving up my life for however many years I'm in residency/fellowship.

Not all residencies are created equal. Most are shorter than 7 years and have less inpatient time (which where the long days tend to accumulate) than surgical residencies. Pretty much all will have some time where you working long hours and weekends, but for the easier ones this will be the minority and most of the time will have periods where you're working shorter times around clinic hours or around 40-50 hours per work on inpatient.

 

[Mr.Smile12]

Yeah this is kinda what I am expecting going in. Obviously will need to put effort in and of course there will be an adjustment, but it won’t be what I see people doing on TikTok waking up at 4:30am and studying to 11pm everyday lol.

And yes I wanna match into gen surg right now so I definitely plan to do more than just the bare minimum to pass.

I guess we will see!

That's a reason why I posted the UMMS documentary. It doesn't look like these students were that exhausted.

Also, remember that TikTok posts aim to garner viral-level attention, not necessarily tell the truth.

 

[Goro]

I’m grateful to have been accepted to medical school, and I really am trying to figure out what the experience will be like for me. I'm one of those people who was blessed with a mind for school. I didn’t take a single note in college, played games on my computer all class, barely studied if at all, but still managed to get 99’s on my exams. School, specifically science and math, has always been my bread and butter. I don’t want to say that I have a photographic memory, but it’s close to it. And once I understand something, I rarely forget it. Science and math just kinda click for me is the best way to put it.

Point is: I know I am not the only one who school comes naturally to. So for people who have had a similar experience, what is/was medical school like for you? Did you get slapped in the face by reality, or was it just as easy as undergrad? I know that the sheer amount of information is much greater, and so studying in some capacity is a must (learned this during my MCAT experience). But studying 12 hours a day every day just doesn’t seem like something I would have to do. Am I wrong about that? I’m willing to do what is necessary to succeed so if I am wrong, then studying 12 hours a day every day is what I’ll do.

Given your success, I doubt that you will have to study 12 hours a day, but it is hard to predict if you will be in that tiny minority of outstanding students who Master the material and time management and dealing with stress to such a degree that they can actually do things like work part-time outside of medical school, foreplay World of War for a good chunk of time.

For the vast majority, medical students get out of medical school what they put into Medical school.

 

[Rachapkis]

Predicting how hard it will be for someone we don't know personally seems like an impossible task. Pay close attention to material, study hard, try to find study methods work for you (e.g., ANKI), don't cling to study methods that aren't working, and err on the side of doing too much, not too little. You can always reduce your effort level if you're crushing it, and begin to understand that you could dial it down and still succeed.

 

[AJS59]

I'll offer my 2 cents as someone a bit of ways into an MD school: I think I have been working harder than at any point in my undergraduate career, but the material itself is coming easier. Working through a case-based scenario to me comes more naturally than working through a complex organic chemistry mechanism question or tough physics problems (ironic as I was a chem major, but I digress).

A lot of it comes down to establishing a routine. For me, what that looks like thus far (as I approach the end of our basic sciences and start cardio next week) most days, is get up at 6:30, off to school by 7:20, morning small group sessions followed by lecture running from 8-12. Then lunch from 12-1.

Afternoons (with the exception of my 1 per week for our medical professionalism course) are primarily for digesting lecture material: I pick cards out of our shared Anki and then create my own cards on top of it for the lectures I saw to capture any missing information. Then the rest of the afternoon is for attending to research, meetings, volunteering on occasion or going to the gym.

Evenings (typically getting home around 6-6:30ish) the first stuff I do is complete any extraneous assignments and get dinner going - either takeout or cooking (PRO TIP: Meal Prep saves so much time!). Then I buckle down to finish up whatever remaining Anki I have left (I haven't been good about keeping up with reviews from past units, looking to change that as first formative NBME-style exam is approaching on the horizon in a few weeks time). Then I have a few hours to chill, watch sports, catch up on emails/other stuff, doomscroll (lol, etc.)

Weekends are also similarly busy. I give myself time to wake up later and regenerate sleep but Saturdays are often packed with volunteering and/or social stuff, and I still get my Anki done. Then Sundays, on top of the other stuff, are for grocery shopping and laundry.

All in all you just have to find a method and flow that works for you. My approach is wildly different from my roommates and some of my other classmates. That being said, the common denominator is we all put in work every day (case in point: Was at a wedding for college friends a few weeks ago and got scolded for being on my laptop doing Anki before the ceremony lol). But even if you find things hard most med schools provide ample resources for you to succeed and pass — unless you go to the Caribbean or particularly shady DO schools, they WANT you to succeed.

 

[@#Frogthejam#@]

I don't think many people would say medical school is easy by any stretch of the imagination. However, for me, It's a lot more manageable than I imagined. I envisioned the worst experience of medical school, and for a time, I heavily considered not going because of it. Once I started, I realized that it's not nearly as bad as I thought it would be. Sure, it's stressful at times, but since starting, I've never been in a situation where I worried about not passing. The only things I stress/ed about are inching out a slightly higher score or not getting above a 90 on an exam.

I don't think I'm "smart" or anything like that. In high school, I finished with a 2.6 GPA, and I got a 501 on my MCAT(Partly because I didn't know how to study), but I'm not a world-beater where school comes easy. However, I've noticed that the sucky things about medical school that most people complain about and can't stand are on average less sucky and more tolerable for me for a variety of reasons ranging from how I'm naturally wired and from my environment growing up.

For example, the hardest and most grueling thing about medical school isn't how much information they're throwing at you. It's about how consistently they're doing it. It's a whole lot different from college where you're probably not learning something brand new in a particular class every single day. In medical school, it's like clockwork every day, and you're expected to keep up to an extent. You're not expected to take everything in the first time you see it, but the base expectation is that you're taking in something every day.The daily grind can wear people down or make people who push that grind off in favor of cramming burn out or fail out. If the monotony doesn't bother you or you have a high tolerance for it, then you'll be fine.

The most important thing you can do is develop good study habits and a discipline for studying that is very hard to compromise. I attribute my success partly to having gotten to the point where I don't have to think about studying. It's just something that's automatically part of my day-to-day. During my preclinical years, my Saturdays and Sundays were without compromise. I woke up, showered, grabbed some caffeine, and headed straight to my study spot in the library. There was no thought about what I'd do on those days, and I didn't compromise them for anything. I'd be done most days by 4 pm or 6 pm at the latest and would have the next 6-8 hours to myself to do whatever.

I finished M1+M2, averaging a 95+ on all the exams I took in both years, and I finished several classes with a 99% average. I scored an 89 on CBSE in March, 9 weeks out from STEP 1, and pretty much stopped studying from that point until I took STEP in early May. I enjoyed a very long summer where I read nearly two dozen 1000-page books, spent time with my family, wrote a bunch, and just did whatever at home (I'm a homebody). I just got inducted into AOA as a junior. In the third year, with less time to study, I'm still applying that discipline, especially at the start of a rotation. I'm finding that despite studying less, I'm still doing well. I think it's because of the strong foundation I laid during my preclinical years by being disciplined about studying and making it a habit. Even now, as a third-year student, I still have time to research on the side and tutor, even if it's not as much as I did during preclinicals.


TLDR; Medical School has been less sucky than I Imagined, and for that reason, I've thrived more than most. Most of that was with how terrible I thought medical school would be so when it wasn't as bad, it was a pleasant surprise. And most importantly has been because of my study discipline.