Get rid of Medical School, why not?

This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.
People have so many different ways of learning that the discussion is moot. I'm sure that there are many, many people who get a ton out of listening to lecturers, or going to lab. And the same goes for the flip side, it would be an utter waste of my time to go to lecture, or lab. Hell at this point I don't even watch them online.

Members don't see this ad.
 
And while we are at it lets open up more medical schools and lets keep Medschool to a year and a half since you get so much free time as a M4. Doctors should also only get paid like 25% more than what a PA makes too. That will decrease costs of health care because no one should have to pay that much money to see a doctor.

Also get rid of the college requirement just study for USMLE and that is it.
 
And while we are at it lets open up more medical schools and lets keep Medschool to a year and a half since you get so much free time as a M4. Doctors should also only get paid like 25% more than what a PA makes too. That will decrease costs of health care because no one should have to pay that much money to see a doctor.

New acronym I just learned in the "I hate honorary degrees!" thread:

YGTBSM
 
Members don't see this ad :)
Clinical rotations do not provide a good assessment of your basic science knowledge.

I don't know you, and I'll take your word for it that you would have been better off. I don't think the system would be better off this way though. We have a responsibility to make sure that physicians get appropriate training, and independent study + step I is not enough.
Step 1 is the current standard for assessing basic science knowledge, isn't it? How would eliminating the first two years change anything? I don't think tests during the first two years are any more representative of a student's knowledge than it is. In fact, I'd say they're considerably less appropriate for the task since you never know what kinds of questions your professors will throw at you. I'm not saying solo studying is the way to go for everyone, but there are enough people around who'd benefit from not having to burn a couple years pounding minutiae into their heads that it'd be a worthwhile option for schools to offer.
 
med school is important, helps you meet similar ppl who are goin through the same stuff as you. i would vote to use kaplan type resources for highschool and college, i feel like i could have learned all that in half ther time and not waste countless hours doin coloring book activities in highschool, and taking yoga and bs online music classes in college
 
people are seriously suggesitng cuttign out college? why would you ever do that....regardless of teh education
 
Yes college is worthless in my opinion. Especially all the BS required courses that supposedly make you a more "well-rounded" person. That's BS. It just made me hate humanities even more and confirm those subjects are soft subjects. I'd rather have college/grad school integrated so people that wanna do med just go into med.

And don't give me the "oh how will people know what they want to do so early?" BS. How many engineers do you see go into civil/biomech/industrial engineering majors that switch? Few. Of course this will shift the intensity down to high school and it will be super intense those years, but I'd rather have that than wasting away years of my life, not to mention hundreds of thousands of dollars.
 
The medical school curriculum is as antiquated of an idea as a bayonet charge against heavily entrenched machine gun fortifications.

I say, first 2 years online culminating in STEP 1. Then clinicals 3rd and 4th. If you need someone to spoon feed you then you can shell out 30k a year. All that money just to have someone hold your hand LOL

This method would significantly reduce the cost of training future physicians and lets not guess about all the positive effects that would have.

I would say about 5 percent of the human population are innovative thinkers but unfortunately that number goes down in medical school. I swear some medical students are so dogmatic that they would have an aneurysm if they saw a clinical deviation from what they read on some stupid power point slide.
 
Yes college is worthless in my opinion. Especially all the BS required courses that supposedly make you a more "well-rounded" person. That's BS. It just made me hate humanities even more and confirm those subjects are soft subjects. I'd rather have college/grad school integrated so people that wanna do med just go into med.

And don't give me the "oh how will people know what they want to do so early?" BS. How many engineers do you see go into civil/biomech/industrial engineering majors that switch? Few. Of course this will shift the intensity down to high school and it will be super intense those years, but I'd rather have that than wasting away years of my life, not to mention hundreds of thousands of dollars.


If the only benefit you see in going to college is the courses, you seriously missed out. There's a reason college is pretty commonly said to be the best time of your life. And im not talking about the drinking/parties...my college experience was worth every penny and i wouldnt change it for anything. I took some great courses (also some not so good courses), but more importantly I met so many amazing people, friends I will have for life, professors and mentors that have changed the path of my life in ways i couldnt have known back then....Ive changed so much since graduating high school its hard to really put in to words. You aren't just paying for the education, you are paying for the once in a life time college experience. Sounds like you didnt take advantage of that, and thats unfortuante.
 
Step 1 is the current standard for assessing basic science knowledge, isn't it? How would eliminating the first two years change anything? I don't think tests during the first two years are any more representative of a student's knowledge than it is. In fact, I'd say they're considerably less appropriate for the task since you never know what kinds of questions your professors will throw at you. I'm not saying solo studying is the way to go for everyone, but there are enough people around who'd benefit from not having to burn a couple years pounding minutiae into their heads that it'd be a worthwhile option for schools to offer.

No, Step I is not the standard for assessing basic science knowledge. As I said before, that is impossible in a couple hundred questions. Passing step I simply means you are eligible for licensure, not that you have mastered the material. It is a key distinction. It's a test in which a negative result is more significant, and does imply that not enough was learned.

Pounding the minutiae is kind of the point of the first two years of medical education. The test does not test all those finer points that you are supposed to have learned. Yes, you will forget a lot of the details as the time goes by, but at least you have seen it and known it at one time. Then when it comes up in practice, you can refresh your memory.

There's a lot of big talk on this thread, but I don't think the vast majority of medical students would be able to master the first two years' content through self study, especially on an abbreviated time course. Six months? Please, most people don't even get through all the required reading in 2 years. The course is already accelerated. It would be the rare individual who had the drive, commitment, and raw intellect to do this on their own. I think people realize this, because part of their argument is that much of the learning first 2 years is unnecessary. This isn't the case.
 
No, Step I is not the standard for assessing basic science knowledge. As I said before, that is impossible in a couple hundred questions. Passing step I simply means you are eligible for licensure, not that you have mastered the material.
I think just about every residency program in the U.S. would disagree with you on that one.

Six months? Please, most people don't even get through all the required reading in 2 years. The course is already accelerated. It would be the rare individual who had the drive, commitment, and raw intellect to do this on their own. I think people realize this, because part of their argument is that much of the learning first 2 years is unnecessary. This isn't the case.
Duke, anyone? I'm not seeing how you can claim that there isn't a lot of superfluous material in the first year. Huge chunks of anatomy, cell bio, and biochem are essentially wasted brain space.
 
There's a lot of big talk on this thread, but I don't think the vast majority of medical students would be able to master the first two years' content through self study, especially on an abbreviated time course. Six months? Please, most people don't even get through all the required reading in 2 years. The course is already accelerated. It would be the rare individual who had the drive, commitment, and raw intellect to do this on their own. I think people realize this, because part of their argument is that much of the learning first 2 years is unnecessary. This isn't the case.

I am sure that most medical students could self study their way through medical school, because most medical students already do. Unless you're unfortunate enough to go a TBL based school the structure of medical school for most students is: start a unit, do review books and practice questions for that unit while sitting in a coffee shop (unless you're shooting for AOA there's no reason to look at the actual lectures, since 90% of the test is from BRS/Goljan), and then take the scantron test on the unit. I am 100% sure I could do that if the tests were at a prometric center instead of in my school's lecture hall. If you don't think Step 1 is enough, fine, I'll take a test on every class instead. Or even units within the class. That still doesn't mean I need the school.

As for the 6 month thing, I'm not sure most students could do it in that short a time (I think 1.5 years would be closer to the average), but I do think it is ridiculous that we've decided that all medical students need the exact same amount of time complete the preclinical cirriculum regardless of whether they're AOA at Hopkins or in the bottom quartile of a fourth tier school. I think that there are probably at least a few medical students who could master the material in 3 months and there are definitely students who would be better doctors if they had three years to learn the meaterial. One of the other things I like about moving away from formal medical schools is that students could learn at their own pace. Looking back on my preclinic cirriculum there were definitely subjects I could have spent a more time with (microbiology, neuroanatomy) and subjects I wish I could have sped up (physio, parts of anatomy). It would have been nice if I could have tailored the schedule to my style of learning, rather than the other way around.
 
Last edited:
Members don't see this ad :)
people here seriously saying you can condense 2 year into three month?
 
I couldn't disagree more with what most posters here are saying. I too go to a school whose first two years consist of non-required lectures, lots of independent study, PBL, and infrequent, pass/fail tests. Because of the freedom given to me, I didn't study nearly enough. I bombed step I and when I get pimped on the wards, I don't know squat and more often than not just give the deer-in-the-headlights look. Yeah, yeah, I know people will say I should have just manned up and studied more, and maybe if I went to a more traditional school I'd be cursing my school for putting so much pressure on me, but I also know myself and know that with more external pressure I'd have studied a LOT harder and be much better prepared for where I am now.

If I could do it over... well, if I could do it over I wouldn't go to med school. But if I had to do it over and had to go to med school, I'd choose a school with a totally traditional curriculum. Entirely lecture-based, syllabi, lecture notes, graded tests every 2 weeks. Heck, give me a required lecture attendance policy to boot. (Oh, yeah, and get rid of all those useless clinical experiences during years 1 & 2. I needed to be memorizing my bugs and drugs, not practicing physical exams at a time when I had no idea what any of the findings meant.)

Maybe I'm just howling at the moon here because most people who gravitate toward medical school are type-A overachievers and they're going to do whatever it takes, but some of us slip through the cracks. And there has to be a reason the traditional curricula were the way they were for so long.
 
Last edited:
I couldn't disagree more with what most posters here are saying. I too go to a school whose first two years consist of non-required lectures, lots of independent study, PBL, and infrequent, pass/fail tests. Because of the freedom given to me, I didn't study nearly enough. I bombed step I and when I get pimped on the wards, I don't know squat and more often than not just give the deer-in-the-headlights look. Yeah, yeah, I know people will say I should have just manned up and studied more, and maybe if I went to a more traditional school I'd be cursing my school for putting so much pressure on me, but I also know myself and know that with more external pressure I'd have studied a LOT harder and be much better prepared for where I am now.

If I could do it over... well, if I could do it over I wouldn't go to med school. But if I had to do it over and had to go to med school, I'd choose a school with a totally traditional curriculum. Entirely lecture-based, syllabi, lecture notes, graded tests every 2 weeks. Heck, give me a required lecture attendance policy to boot. (Oh, yeah, and get rid of all those useless clinical experiences during years 1 & 2. I needed to be memorizing my bugs and drugs, not practicing physical exams at a time when I had no idea what any of the findings meant.)

Maybe I'm just howling at the moon here because most people who gravitate toward medical school are type-A overachievers and they're going to do whatever it takes, but some of us slip through the cracks. And there has to be a reason the traditional curricula were the way they were for so long.

you should have manned up and studied more.

nobody is going to force you to read anything in private practice, how do you plan to continually refine your knowledge and stay current?
 
people who don't read or have an aversion to books make me furious.

Textbooks are perfect lectures. Its all there in perfect prose, clarity, and detail. You could never hope to have something explained to you as well as it is in gold standard textbooks.
 
people who don't read or have an aversion to books make me furious.

then you should read a textbook on different learning styles...

come on guys, we all know there's endless amounts of bull**** in med school but you're all still gonna wax nostalgic about it thirty years from now. I definitely would not have studied as hard MS1 and MS2 if it weren't for the impending doom of upcoming exams and the unrelenting burden of colossal, ever-increasing debt.
 
I'm not sure I would want my physicians having the potential to take 5-6 year studying preclinical material before they finally take the test. Also, many students benefit from research opportunities in the first two years as well as interacting with peers/colleagues, etc.

Putting more of this process online increases the ability of all those socially awkward, maladjusted people bombarding the process with their only social interaction coming from internet forums and chat rooms.

Also, I think it's hilarious that people are suggesting they could self study for the STEP on their own. I'm assuming you all also spent 2-3 years self studying for the MCAT as well before you took the prereqs? Perhaps began studying for each section immediately after you took the prereq and did not stop until you took the MCAT?
 
Putting more of this process online increases the ability of all those socially awkward, maladjusted people bombarding the process with their only social interaction coming from internet forums and chat rooms.
Here's a news flash: just about every school already has everything online. By "everything," I mean recorded lectures, PowerPoint slides, notes/syllabi, articles, quizzes, etc. The only things we were required to show up for were tests, gross lab, and SP encounters. Plus, you still have those 2 clinical years to shake off whatever awkwardness you're actually capable of escaping. In other words, things wouldn't really change.

Also, I think it's hilarious that people are suggesting they could self study for the STEP on their own.
The vast majority of my class did it. :shrug: If Arkansas can, you can, too.
I'm assuming you all also spent 2-3 years self studying for the MCAT as well before you took the prereqs?
Everyone who didn't go to class in college did.
 
I couldn't disagree more with what most posters here are saying. I too go to a school whose first two years consist of non-required lectures, lots of independent study, PBL, and infrequent, pass/fail tests. Because of the freedom given to me, I didn't study nearly enough. I bombed step I and when I get pimped on the wards, I don't know squat and more often than not just give the deer-in-the-headlights look. Yeah, yeah, I know people will say I should have just manned up and studied more, and maybe if I went to a more traditional school I'd be cursing my school for putting so much pressure on me, but I also know myself and know that with more external pressure I'd have studied a LOT harder and be much better prepared for where I am now.

If I could do it over... well, if I could do it over I wouldn't go to med school. But if I had to do it over and had to go to med school, I'd choose a school with a totally traditional curriculum. Entirely lecture-based, syllabi, lecture notes, graded tests every 2 weeks. Heck, give me a required lecture attendance policy to boot. (Oh, yeah, and get rid of all those useless clinical experiences during years 1 & 2. I needed to be memorizing my bugs and drugs, not practicing physical exams at a time when I had no idea what any of the findings meant.)

Maybe I'm just howling at the moon here because most people who gravitate toward medical school are type-A overachievers and they're going to do whatever it takes, but some of us slip through the cracks. And there has to be a reason the traditional curricula were the way they were for so long.

That's fine, I have nothing against medical schools continuing to exist. My problem is with a system that allows no other options to exist. There is no way to get a license other than to go through medical school. I would like to see cheap, self study models paired with standardized exams and journeyman clinical education COMPETE with private medical schools. If most people turn out to be like you, great, medical schools continue to thrive. If I'm right, however, they either need to innovate to survive or maybe we just switch to a cheaper, faster, and better model of education all together.
 
It'd be interesting if USMLE training could lead to non physician career paths. If med school really covered clinical training and anyone could take step 1, highest scorers could end up in clinics for residency or labs for thesis work, lower scorers can become teachers, nurses, PAs, etc.
 
You certainly would have once Step 1 started looming. If it's looming from the start, problem solved.


If anyone can take step 1 whenever they want, it's never looming.
 
people who don't read or have an aversion to books make me furious.

Textbooks are perfect lectures. Its all there in perfect prose, clarity, and detail. You could never hope to have something explained to you as well as it is in gold standard textbooks.

Then I guess I infuriate you. I don't learn a thing from textbooks. Never have. I attend lecture, listen, take notes, go over powerpoints, annotate, and then put all the lectures in my own words. That's how I learn. If I don't get something, I look it up, but I have never and will never learn a concept solely by reading a textbook. If you do, good for you! Not everyone is like you. Open your mind a little.

All that said, I agree with others about those of you putting on your macho pants and pretending you could breeze through two years of med school in 6 months or less. It's laughable.
 
Duke, anyone? I'm not seeing how you can claim that there isn't a lot of superfluous material in the first year. Huge chunks of anatomy, cell bio, and biochem are essentially wasted brain space.

I guess I lucked out then. At my school, 95% of what we've learned thus far (second semester of second year) has been useful in some shape or form. But then, I'm on a systems-based curriculum and we don't learn anything in biochem that isn't directly related to the system we're working on that block. Same with cell bio and anatomy. Perhaps it's the curriculum that needs tweaking, not getting rid of the pre-clinical years.
 
Then I guess I infuriate you. I don't learn a thing from textbooks. Never have. I attend lecture, listen, take notes, go over powerpoints, annotate, and then put all the lectures in my own words. That's how I learn. If I don't get something, I look it up, but I have never and will never learn a concept solely by reading a textbook. If you do, good for you! Not everyone is like you. Open your mind a little.

All that said, I agree with others about those of you putting on your macho pants and pretending you could breeze through two years of med school in 6 months or less. It's laughable.

I guess I lucked out then. At my school, 95% of what we've learned thus far (second semester of second year) has been useful in some shape or form. But then, I'm on a systems-based curriculum and we don't learn anything in biochem that isn't directly related to the system we're working on that block. Same with cell bio and anatomy. Perhaps it's the curriculum that needs tweaking, not getting rid of the pre-clinical years.

I agree with both of these posts.
If you find books to be the "perfect" lectures then I envy you, they certainly aren't for me.
 
I skimmed the last half of the thread so sorry if this has been touched on...

When I think of institutions of higher learning, from undergraduate study to professional schools to, to a lesser extent, PhD programs, I think of the people. In my undergraduate career I've taken classes at a community college, a third tier research university, and had a fellowship at a "public ivy". I don't think it was a given at any of those places that the quality of instruction was necessarily better. What WAS better were the students. It's like night and day being surrounded by people who are operating in the same mode. I got a BS in physics at the aforementioned third tier research university and spent a lot of lonely nights in front of the whiteboard while doing it - I can't help but think that at a place like MIT or a top notch state school the interaction with others who were doing the same thing would have been priceless.

Do you get nothing from knowing that you're in it together with a bunch of other people?
 
The discussion is academic anyways since there is a 0.000000000000000001% chance of it happening.
 
(Oh, yeah, and get rid of all those useless clinical experiences during years 1 & 2. I needed to be memorizing my bugs and drugs, not practicing physical exams at a time when I had no idea what any of the findings meant.)

Amen.

people who don't read or have an aversion to books make me furious.

Textbooks are perfect lectures. Its all there in perfect prose, clarity, and detail. You could never hope to have something explained to you as well as it is in gold standard textbooks.

Funny, I have an aversion to textbooks for much the same reason -- it's a whole lot of prose that may or may not be more simple than what the lecturer has distilled down in his slides and explains himself. For all but the very worst lecturers and lecture handouts, I always sort of felt that in-depth reading of textbooks would just amount to more time spent on the same material when I didn't need to spend that time there.

Not to mention that a textbook's level of detail may very well be overkill, depending on the book.
 
The discussion is academic anyways since there is a 0.000000000000000001% chance of it happening.

This is true.

I think one of the best things medical schools could do would be to implement shelf exams for all courses and get rid of school specific exams all together. This also has a shot at happening (granted a low one) since a lot of schools use shelf exams to some extent already. The following are my ideal changes:

1) Shelf exam changes (as mentioned above)
2) No mandatory lectures, labs, PBLs, TBLs, small groups, etc
3) Only mandatory attendance is patient based activities (H&P, tours of various hospital clinics, etc)
 
(Oh, yeah, and get rid of all those useless clinical experiences during years 1 & 2. I needed to be memorizing my bugs and drugs, not practicing physical exams at a time when I had no idea what any of the findings meant.)

This is why I like that my school is systems-based. We learn the physical exam relevant to each system (i.e. during cardiopulmonary, we learned how to do heart and lung exams; during neuro, neuro exams, etc.). So we do know what the findings mean and we can relate it to what we learn in class.
 
This is true.

I think one of the best things medical schools could do would be to implement shelf exams for all courses and get rid of school specific exams all together. This also has a shot at happening (granted a low one) since a lot of schools use shelf exams to some extent already. The following are my ideal changes:

1) Shelf exam changes (as mentioned above)
2) No mandatory lectures, labs, PBLs, TBLs, small groups, etc
3) Only mandatory attendance is patient based activities (H&P, tours of various hospital clinics, etc)

don't you take the shelf exam during third year? how many times are you planning on taking it?

self-study is certainly possible, but not for the majority of medical students; most need more structure. one of the nice things about not having an attendance policy is that it allows you to customize your learning experience to your strengths.

What's beautiful about a preclinical curriculum <2 years long is that it exerts huge selective pressure on what is taught. a lot of the b******t gets squeezed out as you shorten the length of time they have to present it. One dean of admissions at a "top ten" school that i spoke to said that the next big move in curriculum development was going to be toward the Duke model and even shorter preclinical time.
 
don't you take the shelf exam during third year? how many times are you planning on taking it?

self-study is certainly possible, but not for the majority of medical students; most need more structure. one of the nice things about not having an attendance policy is that it allows you to customize your learning experience to your strengths.

What's beautiful about a preclinical curriculum <2 years long is that it exerts huge selective pressure on what is taught. a lot of the b******t gets squeezed out as you shorten the length of time they have to present it. One dean of admissions at a "top ten" school that i spoke to said that the next big move in curriculum development was going to be toward the Duke model and even shorter preclinical time.


shelf exams are given during 3rd year, but some schools also have them during the first two years....at my school we take a shelf for histo, physio, micro, pharm, and path.
 
nobody is going to force you to read anything in private practice, how do you plan to continually refine your knowledge and stay current?
Why, by attending lavish, all-expenses-paid conferences hosted by pharmaceutical companies in 5-star hotels, of course.

Besides, you have to continue taking CE credits to maintain your license, and you have to take board recertification exams every 10 years.

That's fine, I have nothing against medical schools continuing to exist. My problem is with a system that allows no other options to exist. There is no way to get a license other than to go through medical school. I would like to see cheap, self study models paired with standardized exams and journeyman clinical education COMPETE with private medical schools. If most people turn out to be like you, great, medical schools continue to thrive. If I'm right, however, they either need to innovate to survive or maybe we just switch to a cheaper, faster, and better model of education all together.
Fair enough. And I actually think your system would work, since the vast majority of medical students are type-A, ambitious overachievers who are going to do what they need to do no matter what. Maybe it would be for the best; people like me would never make it through and probably wouldn't even bother trying. You're going to have to have more of a hurdle than just Step I, though. For example, as you know, there's almost no anatomy on Step I, except for a handful of frequently-tested points you can easily glean from USMLEWorld before taking the exam. But you're certainly going to get pimped on anatomy during 3rd year, and will need to know it well if you decided to go into surgery.
 
This is why I like that my school is systems-based. We learn the physical exam relevant to each system (i.e. during cardiopulmonary, we learned how to do heart and lung exams; during neuro, neuro exams, etc.). So we do know what the findings mean and we can relate it to what we learn in class.

Yeah I like that system as well. It helps to correlate things as you said. And then at the end everything can be integrated.
 
Gotta say, I'm digging this whole thread. As future physicians we have a duty to transform and enhance a system that is obviously far from perfect, and if this dialogue is any indication I think we have reason to hope for the future.

Anyway, going along with the primary argument through the thread, I wonder if the (to my mind, obvious) deficiencies of undergraduate education could be rectified. Imagine a pre-med major in which the students actually learned things useful for being a doctor. Instead of all that self-study one could have the option of being a pre-med major, essentially taking all of the knowledge self-learned in the pre-clinical years of med school and TEACHING them. Undergrad institutions tend to have better profs and could probably prepare students nicely for the USMLE and any other, new standardized subject tests, teachings what needs to be taught while weeding out the fluffier aspects of MS1 and 2.

Beauty is, I think if you adopted such a system as Perotfish and his ilk imagine, undergrad institutions would naturally create such pre-med programs because there would be a huge market for them. If you didn't major pre-med you could still take all the tests by self-study... but there are those for whom self-study is not ideal. I learn best from a combination of self-study and lecture myself. The whole thing seems pretty viable from where I stand... just gotta fight the med schools tooth and nail, along with everyone else who profits from the status quo.
 
Yeah I like that system as well. It helps to correlate things as you said. And then at the end everything can be integrated.

Well, my school was systems-based too, but it didn't work for me. I think the old system (physiology, anatomy, histopathology, etc. all taught separately) would work better.
 
Well, my school was systems-based too, but it didn't work for me. I think the old system (physiology, anatomy, histopathology, etc. all taught separately) would work better.

Why would that work better for learning physical exams?
 
shelf exams are given during 3rd year, but some schools also have them during the first two years....at my school we take a shelf for histo, physio, micro, pharm, and path.

oh. my condolences.
 
oh. my condolences.


i think its a good thing. These are the only well written exams we get. Its nice to study hard and take a well written test that actually tests tests your knowledge. And its cool you get to see how you compared w/ other students in the country who took the same test.
 
It wouldn't. It would work better for learning the basic science material, which I would be much more concerned about.

I disagree. Learning medicine in a systems-based curriculum, IMO, is much better. Why would learning a random biochem pathway without clinical relevance help you? That doesn't make much sense to me.
 
I disagree. Learning medicine in a systems-based curriculum, IMO, is much better. Why would learning a random biochem pathway without clinical relevance help you? That doesn't make much sense to me.

It would have made it easier for me to learn. In an "integrated" curriculum, there were too many distractions. I feel it would have been easier for me to study if we had just focused on one subject at a time. Then, once that subject had been learned, we could move on to the next, instead of always having 10 different (sometimes unrelated) topics to worry about.
 
:thumbup:. I wish we could just have self-study and just prepare ourselves for Step 1 with a list (long) of topics that we have to understand. If we are confused about a topic, then we could consult with the professor.


people who don't read or have an aversion to books make me furious.

Textbooks are perfect lectures. Its all there in perfect prose, clarity, and detail. You could never hope to have something explained to you as well as it is in gold standard textbooks.
 
Its fine that you like live lectures, but that is the beauty of self-study--you have to find what works for you. Why couldn't we just study for a greater number of mini board exams and each individual has to find a study plan that works for him/her? For people so inclined, they could get tutors or take classes. For others that learn from books, they could do what they prefer...


Then I guess I infuriate you. I don't learn a thing from textbooks. Never have. I attend lecture, listen, take notes, go over powerpoints, annotate, and then put all the lectures in my own words. That's how I learn. If I don't get something, I look it up, but I have never and will never learn a concept solely by reading a textbook. If you do, good for you! Not everyone is like you. Open your mind a little.

All that said, I agree with others about those of you putting on your macho pants and pretending you could breeze through two years of med school in 6 months or less. It's laughable.
 
i think its a good thing. These are the only well written exams we get. Its nice to study hard and take a well written test that actually tests tests your knowledge. And its cool you get to see how you compared w/ other students in the country who took the same test.

concur. Definitely gives you a more realistic idea of your knowledge base.
 
Here is why we should get rid of this hell hole they call medical school: it ****in sucks. And I want to apologize to any moderator for my language, but **** it. It sucks the life out of us, turns us into bitter creatures and takes away our best years. Depression and feeling like i'm not worth crap is a constant from day one. So there it is... I, that should be training to heal others, cannot even take care of myself. So oh well.
 
Top