MD & DO Eternal Should I Pre-Study for Medical School Thread

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Syncrohnize said:
Template:

Years off:
Goals:
My Plan:
What differentiates yourself and your plan from the 1000s before you who wanted to pre-study and didn’t/couldn’t do it effectively?:
Click to expand...

I like dis
 
Mad Jack said:
Years off: 11
Goals: To be number one in my MD school class
My Plan: Complte DO school, complete psychiatry residency, then go back to MD school for maximum preparedness
Click to expand...
Technically, I'm still on the waitlist for a couple schools. I've done some stuff since I applied and am thinking about sending an update.
 
My uncle told me it would be a good idea to study some anatomy the summer before school started. He said it helped him ace his anatomy class, and he was AOA...
 
intubesteak said:
My uncle told me it would be a good idea to study some anatomy the summer before school started. He said it helped him ace his anatomy class, and he was AOA...
Click to expand...
Why don't you fill out the template, friend?

Years off:
Goals:
My Plan:
What differentiates yourself and your plan from the 1000s before you who wanted to pre-study and didn’t/couldn’t do it effectively?:
 
intubesteak said:
My uncle told me it would be a good idea to study some anatomy the summer before school started. He said it helped him ace his anatomy class, and he was AOA...
Click to expand...

Seconded. I took Anatomy with medical students in my masters program, and you bet your ass it helped like crazy when I retook it this past year while juggling all the other intro courses in first year. Lot of jokesters in this thread villifying prestudying: "Hurr hurr, you're a competitive nerd! hurrr hurr"

Guess what? We're all ****ing nerds.
 
parslea said:
Why don't you fill out the template, friend?

Years off:
Goals:
My Plan:
What differentiates yourself and your plan from the 1000s before you who wanted to pre-study and didn’t/couldn’t do it effectively?:
Click to expand...

Lol I'm already an M2 just thought I would stir the pot a bit. And no I didn't take his advice...but maybe I should have if I really wanted to be AOA
 
ParallelLines said:
Seconded. I took Anatomy with medical students in my masters program, and you bet your ass it helped like crazy when I retook it this past year while juggling all the other intro courses in first year. Lot of jokesters in this thread villifying prestudying: "Hurr hurr, you're a competitive nerd! hurrr hurr"

Guess what? We're all ****ing nerds.
Click to expand...

We're not villifying it because people are being competitive. We're villifying it because 99% of the time it's pointless. It doesn't give you an edge, and whatever you manage to pre-study on your own will be covered in one week of classes so all you'll have done is wasted vacation time. Taking the class in a formal setting before is not the same as pre-studying trying to get a leg up on anatomy by teaching yourself the month before med school starts.

I say this as someone who was unabashedly competitive and shot for honors in every class and was junior AOA. Don't pre-study.
 
treebeardette said:
We're not villifying it because people are being competitive. We're villifying it because 99% of the time it's pointless. It doesn't give you an edge, and whatever you manage to pre-study on your own will be covered in one week of classes so all you'll have done is wasted vacation time. Taking the class in a formal setting before is not the same as pre-studying trying to get a leg up on anatomy by teaching yourself the month before med school starts.

I say this as someone who was unabashedly competitive and shot for honors in every class and was junior AOA. Don't pre-study.
Click to expand...

Okay solid point. I definitely agree that formal setting >>> aimless unguided studying.

There are people from my class that came in after years of zero exposure to biological science aside from the MCAT, and I do feel that even a basic exposure to anatomy or metabolic biochemistry from a local college would have benefitted them greatly. It's entirely possible to take 1 or 2 courses and still be able to chill out in the last months before school.
 
treebeardette said:
We're not villifying it because people are being competitive. We're villifying it because 99% of the time it's pointless. It doesn't give you an edge, and whatever you manage to pre-study on your own will be covered in one week of classes so all you'll have done is wasted vacation time. Taking the class in a formal setting before is not the same as pre-studying trying to get a leg up on anatomy by teaching yourself the month before med school starts.

I say this as someone who was unabashedly competitive and shot for honors in every class and was junior AOA. Don't pre-study.
Click to expand...
That still doesn't mean prestudying is useless, just that it's hard to do. If you pull it off, that's great! But you probably won't.

I hate the whole "whatever you cover will be covered in 1wk of medical school" schtick, though. It's really not that fast, it really doesn't cover that much material, and it's really not that freaking hard. I honestly feel as if all of the prestudying threads are 90% just med students trying to convince everyone of how difficult med school is.
 
ParallelLines said:
Okay solid point. I definitely agree that formal setting >>> aimless unguided studying.

There are people from my class that came in after years of zero exposure to biological science aside from the MCAT, and I do feel that even a basic exposure to anatomy or metabolic biochemistry from a local college would have benefitted them greatly. It's entirely possible to take 1 or 2 courses and still be able to chill out in the last months before school.
Click to expand...

I'm not sure it makes financial sense for most people, but I actually don't totally disagree with this. A few undergrad classes might be helpful if your science background is limited or rusty. But "basic exposure from a local college" is very different than all the MS-0s who come here asking if they should independently pre-study Gray's Anatomy or review First Aid or do USMLERx questions before school starts.

Edited: grammar
 
Last edited:
mehc012 said:
That still doesn't mean prestudying is useless, just that it's hard to do. If you pull it off, that's great! But you probably won't.

I hate the whole "whatever you cover will be covered in 1wk of medical school" schtick, though. It's really not that fast, it really doesn't cover that much material, and it's really not that freaking hard. I honestly feel as if all of the prestudying threads are 90% just med students trying to convince everyone of how difficult med school is.
Click to expand...

I agree that med school isn't as hard as most people claim. The problem with pre-studying is that pre-meds don't know what to study, so they just aimlessly wander through the textbook with no context, most of which is not at all useful (I feel like it's a universal policy to make the first chapter of every medical textbook full of worthless fluff). Or they try to pick up first aid and decipher it, but it's like a foreign language with no explanations, so it takes 15x as long to go through than it would if they used first aid the way it's meant to be used. So yes, it does end up being covered in the first week, or sometimes day, of class.

I say 99% pointless because I'm sure someone somewhere once found it useful. But pretty much guarantee that person would have been just fine without it.

I'm not opposed to taking some community college classes to kick start the brain cells if you've been out for a while. But I still don't think it's at all necessary. I was out for 3 years between undergrad and med school, was just fine.
 
Prestudying is garbage time. At best you will learn vocab.
Taking a class for money/grades is way better because it gives you incentive to learn and study. Med school still gonna fly through any course you take as undergrad.

My advice don't do it.

Years off: 1.5
Goals: Smash the boards
My Plan: Bring vaseline
 
Ehh, I also highly disagree with the whole 'they have no idea what matters'. It's pretty damn self evident. Med school is not a super esoteric, hard-to-decipher code. There are resources and resources out there dedicated to telling you what matters and how to read into it. And college classes, in my experience, covered far more than med school covers. I've learned very little in med school beyond what I'd already covered by doing a DIY postbacc in upper level Bio and physio courses. And far less clinically than I learned scribing (though we'll see how third year goes, but the preclinical sim stuff and short clinical assignments for note writing purposes pale in comparison to a good scribing job imo).

Is prestudying necessary? No. Is it hard to motivate yourself? Yeah, sure. Is it impossible or harder than the self-studying you'll be doing in med school in a few months? Not really.

Taking upper level Bio classes in my postbacc let me turn med school into the best social life and most free time I've ever had. Is that worth it to most people? Probably not. But I loved it.
 
ParallelLines said:
Okay solid point. I definitely agree that formal setting >>> aimless unguided studying.

There are people from my class that came in after years of zero exposure to biological science aside from the MCAT, and I do feel that even a basic exposure to anatomy or metabolic biochemistry from a local college would have benefitted them greatly. It's entirely possible to take 1 or 2 courses and still be able to chill out in the last months before school.
Click to expand...

ortnakas said:
I'm not sure it makes financial sense for most people, but I actually don't totally disagree with this. A few undergrad classes might be helpful if your science background is limited or rusty. But "basic exposure from a local college" is very different than all the MS-0s who come here asking if they should independently pre-study Gray's Anatomy or review First Aid or do USMLERx questions before school starts.

Edited: grammar
Click to expand...

I can only relate my own experience:

I took a human anatomy course my senior year of college. It even had a practical (pre-dissected specimens, we did not actually dissect anything). I got an A. I felt cool.

In med school, anatomy STILL ****ed me in the ass.
 
All you SDN gunners are just trying to trick newcomers into believing prestudying is useless, while you go prestudy and get that junior AOA (and of course, subsequently, happiness) because of it.

Don't listen to the gunners trying to keep you down from greatness. Go get Big Robbins the day you get accepted.
 
ParallelLines said:
Seconded. I took Anatomy with medical students in my masters program, and you bet your ass it helped like crazy when I retook it this past year while juggling all the other intro courses in first year. Lot of jokesters in this thread villifying prestudying: "Hurr hurr, you're a competitive nerd! hurrr hurr"

Guess what? We're all ****ing nerds.
Click to expand...

People can do what they want, but taking the class for your masters program and then retaking it in med school is completely different from cracking open a Netter's in the summer before classes start.
 
mehc012 said:
That still doesn't mean prestudying is useless, just that it's hard to do. If you pull it off, that's great! But you probably won't.

I hate the whole "whatever you cover will be covered in 1wk of medical school" schtick, though. It's really not that fast, it really doesn't cover that much material, and it's really not that freaking hard. I honestly feel as if all of the prestudying threads are 90% just med students trying to convince everyone of how difficult med school is.
Click to expand...

You should sit in on the first month of my school then. Started with 1.5 weeks of biochem (which covered everything), then 2 weeks of immuno (again, covering everything). I took two separate biochem classes before med school and I still thought our pace was ridiculous. Probably why our class averages were so awful for those sections. Not all sections were that bad, but we had a couple that were legitimately worse than what you're claiming (10 chapters of big Robbins in 3-4 weeks without lectures is not a reasonable demand).
 
Stagg737 said:
You should sit in on the first month of my school then. Started with 1.5 weeks of biochem (which covered everything), then 2 weeks of immuno (again, covering everything). I took two separate biochem classes before med school and I still thought our pace was ridiculous. Probably why our class averages were so awful for those sections. Not all sections were that bad, but we had a couple that were legitimately worse than what you're claiming (10 chapters of big Robbins in 3-4 weeks without lectures is not a reasonable demand).
Click to expand...
Then idk what our med school is doing or how we do well on boards, because I've never had an experience like that here. But then, I also started ignoring lecture ages ago and just teach myself at my own pace using whatever materials I like best.
 
Yes.

Get through FA and Sketchy micro atleast once before first year.
 
QueenJames said:
Yes.

Get through FA and Sketchy micro atleast once before first year.
Click to expand...

I agree, the prevailing notion on SDN of not studying anything before med school starts is pretty stupid. Thumb through first aid, watch some sketchy, and look at Rohen's a month or two before med school starts
 
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