Harder: med school or grad school??
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Med school is harder.
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Wizard of Oz
Yep, been to both. Med school requires A LOT more studying, but the financial rewards are supposedly better even though grad school is free and comes with a living stipend.
I would go so far to say that grad school is not hard at all if you are good at applying concepts to solving problems rather than just memorizing them. As a med student, I can easily get by without properly using the terms I've learned in a sentence. The main difference is that there are just a lot more concepts to know as a med student.
I would go so far to say that grad school is not hard at all if you are good at applying concepts to solving problems rather than just memorizing them. As a med student, I can easily get by without properly using the terms I've learned in a sentence. The main difference is that there are just a lot more concepts to know as a med student.
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Med school requires more stamina and hours in front of the books, but grad school is much more difficult, in terms of intellectual rigor and the concepts presented. It requires thinking on a deeper level. A lot of concepts in medicine repeat themselves, which makes things easier once you get into that way of thinking. Thinking independently, getting a thesis going, and defending that thesis in grad school isnt exactly trivial.
Grad school is more difficult because you don't know when it's going to end. Another experiment, another paper, another term, another year... it gradually erodes your soul like Coke dissolves the paint on a fender.
When it does finally conclude, what then? Two post-docs while waiting for an assistant professorship so you can write grants for the next 35 years?
Med school is just a series of very intense hoops you have to jump through. It's tough, but no matter how bad it sucks you can rest assured that you'll be done in 4. Residency likewise lasts a finite time, with virtually guaranteed six figure income waiting at the end.
That, in my mind, is what made med school a piece of cake compared to f****ing grad school. It's a shame that more med students don't appreciate the relative lack of uncertainty in their lives.
When it does finally conclude, what then? Two post-docs while waiting for an assistant professorship so you can write grants for the next 35 years?
Med school is just a series of very intense hoops you have to jump through. It's tough, but no matter how bad it sucks you can rest assured that you'll be done in 4. Residency likewise lasts a finite time, with virtually guaranteed six figure income waiting at the end.
That, in my mind, is what made med school a piece of cake compared to f****ing grad school. It's a shame that more med students don't appreciate the relative lack of uncertainty in their lives.
Based on the level of intellegence of my grad school friends, I'm going with med school.
I (and my girlfriend who was a PhD student in molecular and cell bio at Berkeley) couldn't agree more. Dont get me wrong, med school sucks ballz(particularly third year), but from start to finish I think grad students fare much worse overall; they have to deal with a lot more intangibles (ie ****ty PI, ****ty thesis committee, experiments that they repeat until their eyes bleed but still don't work) that could adversely impact getting a paper out and if they will graduate. If you are at least relatively motivated you can succeed in med school and almost certainlyfinish in 4 years. It takes a lot of luck in addition to hard work and intelligence to make it out of grad school.
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Wizard of Oz
The last sentence that I quoted above is why med school is "harder." The pace and required memorization make it so. I know people who've hung out as post-docs into their 40's with very little stress. They just don't make very much money. There's no doubt that the scientific route is more time-consuming and ambiguous as far as future is concerned, but I don't think that makes it "harder." Keep in mind you're getting paid the whole time you're a grad student while you are paying zilch in tuition (unless you are in a bad program).
Havarti did a Ph.D. I think that justifies his comments. The rigors are a little different from a masters.
Having earned a master's degree in neuroscience and currently being in med school I would say that med school is harder, but in a different way.
In grad school you would basically arrange your life around your thesis work. I did a thesis master's so I had to do lab work, and I had to arrange everything around my research project; when I had to come back to the lab and change the PBS wash doing immuno or collect samples from the PCR machine or whatever, which really sucked. Some weeks you had nothing to do (waiting for results that might have been sent for sequencing, etc) which was nice, but when you got your samples and they needed to be processed, it really sucked. You would be in the lab 24hrs, trying to make sure that you didn't have to come into the lab at 2am or whatever.
In med school, everything is scheduled. You know when you have your classes and you can schedule your time. Yes, there is a lot of material to master, but at least you can plan ahead, as in when you are in a lab and doing bench work you can't always predict whether your experiments are going to pan out and what the next thing is going to be based on your results (or lack there of).
I feel that I have a lot more time to do things as a med student than I had as a grad student. There were weeks where you were exhausted (not like you aren't in med school), and didn't know whether your experimnets were going to be succesful or a waste of 3months of your life, just to find out that you have to proceed with another direction or research project.
Overall, I think med school is harder as far as the work that you have to put in to learn stuff, but grad school is harder in regards to man hours that you have to put in doing research, writing proposals, etc.
But I will most likely have another opinion once residency starts, so this is what I think now!
My 2 cents😉
In grad school you would basically arrange your life around your thesis work. I did a thesis master's so I had to do lab work, and I had to arrange everything around my research project; when I had to come back to the lab and change the PBS wash doing immuno or collect samples from the PCR machine or whatever, which really sucked. Some weeks you had nothing to do (waiting for results that might have been sent for sequencing, etc) which was nice, but when you got your samples and they needed to be processed, it really sucked. You would be in the lab 24hrs, trying to make sure that you didn't have to come into the lab at 2am or whatever.
In med school, everything is scheduled. You know when you have your classes and you can schedule your time. Yes, there is a lot of material to master, but at least you can plan ahead, as in when you are in a lab and doing bench work you can't always predict whether your experiments are going to pan out and what the next thing is going to be based on your results (or lack there of).
I feel that I have a lot more time to do things as a med student than I had as a grad student. There were weeks where you were exhausted (not like you aren't in med school), and didn't know whether your experimnets were going to be succesful or a waste of 3months of your life, just to find out that you have to proceed with another direction or research project.
Overall, I think med school is harder as far as the work that you have to put in to learn stuff, but grad school is harder in regards to man hours that you have to put in doing research, writing proposals, etc.
But I will most likely have another opinion once residency starts, so this is what I think now!
My 2 cents😉
As another veteran of grad school, I will have to echo the sentiments of the other people on this thread that actually know what they are talking about. I've only had one term of med school so far, but it's definitely easier than grad school. Sure, there is a lot more information to be dealt with, but none of it even scratches the surface of the level of detail and thoroughness of understanding that is demanded in grad school. And to those who argue that the med school time committment trumps grad school: I (and several of my more dedicated friends from grad school) spent far more time and late nights agonizing over experiments in lab over several years than I ever spend on anything in med school (with the caveat that I'm a first year and haven't hit the wards yet). And don't even get me started on the intellectual nightmare of writing a dissertation and defending it, not to mention having to write manuscripts to submit to journals. Grad school is far, far more intellectually demanding. That said, I'm in med school now because I craved the practical, utilitarian aspect of science applied directly to people, so I can't bash it too much.
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8744
Infantry Squad Leader School is harder. But it's only 2 months.
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8744
Well sure, graduate school seems harder because it seriously cuts into your Dungeons and Dragons time and occasionally you have to wash your Aerosmith T-shirt. And then there's the fact that you have to start paying for your own Cheetos and Mountain Dew.
"She should so totally dig me. I am a seventh level Elf-Warrior."
"She should so totally dig me. I am a seventh level Elf-Warrior."
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Right on for all of the reasons you cited. Ask anybody who does an MD/PhD in biomedical sciences program and I'd venture to guess 90%+ will say grad school is harder.
Now, Masters (which is grad school, just not the same type) is a whole another issue -- you're done in 2 years, you have a job/career with defined hours and responsibilities and a decent pay (though at a cost of less "glory" and responsibilities). The story may be different in physical sciences, math or comp sci. People with talents in those fields are more rare and hence in greater demand, graduate faster and aren't as reliant on experiments which require a lot of empirical (aka banging your head against the wall trying to make things work) experiments. Their skill set, ie being able to solve problems & do math really well, may not translate very well to what's useful in the clinic so they might find getting an MD harder. All of this, of course, is merely stereotypes and generalizations, though....🙄 Hate to use a cliche but everybody is different and what may be easy for one person may be difficult for another.
Dude, it was AC/DC and it never got washed.
I have an MD and a PhD. I agree with above posters that grad school is harder than medical school. However, as frustrating as it was at times, overall I found it to be a much more rewarding experience. The most miserable time was M3 year just being stuck on the wards holding up walls. At least in grad school I had some autonomy and was responsible for the progress of my own work (and of course the huge luck factor).
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Wizard of Oz
Scottish Chap! I haven't picked a fight with you in months.
BTW I was a Ph.D. student for many years. I took a Master's when I left because I shooting for mudphud at the time in which I could get med school free--basically a quarter mil in exchange for a couple of years w/o a Ph.D. after my name. I later changed my mind.
Actually the rigors were not different at my school. I did the entire Ph.D. curriculum complete with multiple publications and a qualifying exam. The only thing that I didn't do was defend.
BTW Masters at medical institutions are very rare because nobody wants to give Masters' degrees in the biomedical sciences anymore. It doesn't do much for the student and just wastes PI time.
I don't understand what "time-consuming" has to do with "hard." I do agree that med school is far less intellectual stimulating, but being pimped by a surgeon day in and day out is a much more frightening scenario to me than defending a dissertation. In general, scientists want you to learn (even if it is only their research that they want you to understand), but docs (in my experience) are more likely to be simply mean while pimping.
Take home message in my case--top Ph.D. student in my department with almost no study time whatsoever. Easily an "average" med student now with about ten times as much studying.
We can spend hours debating what "harder" means. It's just too subjective of a word (like "pretty" or "a lot"). Do I think that grad school requires more thinking? By all means yes. Does it require more time to prepare for exams? Not at any of the schools I've been to. The didactic component for grad school is different from the research component (which is more time-consuming), but painting one broad stroke with a work like "harder" in the thread question makes this impossible to debate reasonably.
OP--tell us what you mean by "harder?"
Perhaps the best point.
SDN would be so much more organized if we had simpler sections--what do I need to take before med school, is my MCAT too low, how can we bash non-MD's providers, is X harder/better/faster than Y.
I don't recall reading anything about you before, but if that's what you feel you did or are doing....whatever gets you through the day, I guess. I've worked at several good U.S. medical institutions that offer a separate M.S. so I'm not sure why you think it's rare. In fact, all of them offered two tracks: one by instruction only (you take only classes), and one by research (classes + thesis). The latter is quite clearly an asset to the lab since a publication is almost certain - if this quality is there. Since all of the 'stand-alone' M.S. students I know were paying tuition, this extra motivator can make them quite productive so I'm not sure why you think it wastes the P.I.'s time. Peace.
I have a PhD in physical chemistry. It definitely bent my mind. Med school is more simplified, conceptually (we can't be experts on every subject!), but the volume of material to be learned is outrageous. I honestly can't say which is harder...for me, it's an apples & oranges comparison. Also, I'm a lowly M2, so I don't know what I'll think later on.
Medical school education/training is fairly uniform, whereas graduate work is not. There were people in my dept who worked extremely hard and were brilliant, yet worked with the laziest dude alive. "It's your thesis" is what my advisor used to say.
I will say that the uncertainty in graduate school was not fun and made my life harder. But then again, the medical student's pressure to "know everything" can be frightening, too.
They are both pretty darn hard.
Medical school education/training is fairly uniform, whereas graduate work is not. There were people in my dept who worked extremely hard and were brilliant, yet worked with the laziest dude alive. "It's your thesis" is what my advisor used to say.
I will say that the uncertainty in graduate school was not fun and made my life harder. But then again, the medical student's pressure to "know everything" can be frightening, too.
They are both pretty darn hard.
You forgot about the perpetual pre-med/med students b!tching about how hard their lives are compared to the rest of the world threads and the who's the bigger gunner pissing matches...
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Wizard of Oz
QofQuimica
Seriously, dude, I think you're overreacting....
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All of which is irrelevant, because the OP explicitly asked for input from people who had experience in PHYSICAL science grad programs plus medical school to compare the difficulty of the two.
OP, I'm also a chemist now in med school, and I'd basically second what Bozo said.
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Wizard of Oz
Well I'll specifically speak about my school right now, the one where I got my Masters, the twenty or so where I applied for Ph.D. programs, and the other one where I worked. PI's only took thesis M.S. students when they couldn't get Ph.D. students. Some of said schools have added back their thesis M.S. programs in recent years both because they were not getting enough Ph.D. students and because they have found ways to offer degrees for the non-academically oriented.
I did spend time as a chemistry grad student as well. The didactic content was different from the biomedical stuff, but the research emphasis and thesis process was not noticeably different.
What does Iowaboy's story have to do with anything? What he experienced would make any schooling difficult.
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Wizard of Oz
It adds another dimension in that with most of the advice he's getting on his thread, it appears that medical school would be unforgiving of his circumstances even though a) he has a 41 MCAT and b) he has never failed USMLE.
However, if he had gone through a divorce during the research phase of his Ph.D., I think that he would have been met with a lot more support and leeway. Whether or not this is reflected in his recent Ph.D. success is not known to me, but if he is now a single parent, it seems like the hardship would not cease after his leaving medical school.
Again, we are at odds over exactly what "harder" means. This whole question is a Loki's wager which seems to arise from an undergraduate mentality and creates conflicts which can't lead to direct clash. The best answer is that it is an apples/oranges debate.
My point is to validate the apples/oranges nature of it by pointing out differences between both paths without specifically giving the sort of black/white answer that the OP thinks might exist.
His school was understanding - they gave him two chances. His 41 MCAT was only earned after he left med school, and he was never allowed to sit for the USMLE.
Maybe. As a PhD student you are a "independent" researcher, so you guide your own progress (similar to what other PhDs have written before in the thread). Generally nobody's watching over your shoulder to make sure you're progressing in your thesis, and absence of negative reinforcement =/= support or leeway. Or, depending on the PI and the lab culture, they could have booted him from the program. They wouldn't officially ask him to leave, but his projects would be given to someone else and he'd have to start everything over again when he got back.
Again, regardless of program, any student's training would be disrupted by what Iowaboy went through.
If you feel that way, then don't revive the thread.
The caliber of those programs or timing may be an issue. I'm not sure. What you've experienced is not consistent with what most good graduate schools have offered in the past eight years. I do appreciate that it's easy to see only what you want to believe, though.
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Wizard of Oz
Alas, what I seek to do is encourage people to ask questions that DON'T use a Loki's wager, i.e. STOP making posts asking if something is harder or better. That's the only reason I'm reviving. Some form of this thread has popped up at least three times on Allo alone in the last few months, so whether or not I revive a particular one, the debate seems to continue without actually asking the question in the proper way.
Okay, I'll let him do the talking then. I only repost because his grad school experience mirrors mine exactly. Again, "harder" is a word specific to its user. I just want people to understand that med school and grad school are difficult for independent reasons so that they'll stop asking these poor questions.
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Jesus Christ, dude, give it a rest. The OP asked a very nebulous, open-ended question in very generalized terms. He was likely just seeking some different perspectives on an inherently nebulous topic. I don't see it as too different from asking open ended questions in a patient encounter. I gave him my opinion, some folks agreed with me, you might not, others chimed in, he can do with the information what he wishes. End of story.
Grad school is tough and a grinding experience. But I get so stressed during exam week...like an impending doom. Maybe grad students go through this when having to defend their thesis.
But I'm going to say grad school is harder.
But I'm going to say grad school is harder.
I feel like a lot of the uncertainty in graduate education is self fabricated and really, it is similar to the uncertainty of choosing to only aim for the most competitive of specialities. Yea, you may not know if your experiment works out and have to redo it a bunch but you do know the average length of time for a science graduate degree is pretty damn common across the board, unlike many non-science degrees.
I don't get where this certainty is with med school. At my school we do rotations in different cities from our school, so I had no idea where I'd be for third year. I have no idea where I will get rotations at programs of interest during 4th year. I have no idea where or if I will match in my specialty of choice, nor do I know the length of time it will take. I have no idea where I may be during a fellowship, if I decide on that. I have no idea about how to distinguish between various job offers (which usually don't last long) after all that residency. Yes, I know that if I work hard it will end in 4 years but I didn't know if I'd even get accepted my first time trying. A bunch of my grad school friends are going on a 14 hour road trip and I can't because we have so many mandatory things to attend. They have a hard day with the lab stuff, but somehow end up at the bars nearly every weekend that isn't crunch time.
It depends far more on the person and how they view things than anything else.
I don't get where this certainty is with med school. At my school we do rotations in different cities from our school, so I had no idea where I'd be for third year. I have no idea where I will get rotations at programs of interest during 4th year. I have no idea where or if I will match in my specialty of choice, nor do I know the length of time it will take. I have no idea where I may be during a fellowship, if I decide on that. I have no idea about how to distinguish between various job offers (which usually don't last long) after all that residency. Yes, I know that if I work hard it will end in 4 years but I didn't know if I'd even get accepted my first time trying. A bunch of my grad school friends are going on a 14 hour road trip and I can't because we have so many mandatory things to attend. They have a hard day with the lab stuff, but somehow end up at the bars nearly every weekend that isn't crunch time.
It depends far more on the person and how they view things than anything else.
What compelled you to bump a 3 year and change-old thread?
Didn't feel like making a new one.
I know some med students that dont know how to think very well. haha.
Having been through an MD/PhD program that took me nine years to complete, I'd say that grad school is harder due to the uncertainty factor.
Here's the comparison. When you get together for Match Day celebration in March of your fourth year of med school, it's a foregone conclusion that you will graduate within a couple of months. Not so with a PhD program. At a roughly equivalent time point to Match Day, the PhD candidate presents the Public Defense of the Dissertation. Based on my reviews, about 95% of grad students pass their public defense, but that's still not 100%.
Imagine if five out of 100 med students attending match day, with family and friends in attendance went to get their envelope, and instead of getting their match choice they instead got a note from the Dean of The School of Medicine informing them that they would need at least one more year of schooling to be polished enough to graduate. How's that for a bummer.
Here's the comparison. When you get together for Match Day celebration in March of your fourth year of med school, it's a foregone conclusion that you will graduate within a couple of months. Not so with a PhD program. At a roughly equivalent time point to Match Day, the PhD candidate presents the Public Defense of the Dissertation. Based on my reviews, about 95% of grad students pass their public defense, but that's still not 100%.
Imagine if five out of 100 med students attending match day, with family and friends in attendance went to get their envelope, and instead of getting their match choice they instead got a note from the Dean of The School of Medicine informing them that they would need at least one more year of schooling to be polished enough to graduate. How's that for a bummer.
I would say grad school in the physical sciences. I have done both a Ph.d in Geophysics and an MD. The coursework was harder for my discipline, having to understand advanced physics, math, and geology and be able to teach it among other things.
As far as time consumption, I would say grad school. We had to teach. So, being a junior faculty member meant having office hours for students and not just being responsible for your curriculum. Then, the coursework was time consuming because it was very difficult and homework went on forever. There is also research and forming a dissertation committee, working on the dissertation, and defending it.
As an aside, even students in a clinical psych program have it hard. They have challenging coursework, teach classes (I remember at our university they taught regular psych lecture courses.), see patients, conduct research, do a dissertation, have the match to worry about among other duties. Because this is not a hard science, it doesn't mean that they get it any easier.
I would definitely say that grad school was harder. Although, we weren't training to save lives, we were not only responsible for completing our difficult curriculum, we were responsible for other people and other duties.
One other thing: In a grad physical science program, one can't just understand the material and apply it and do well. You have to be creative to be in a doctorate program. Because of this, there were many that have been kicked out of Ph.d programs in the sciences and had to leave with a Masters degree instead. At our local community colleges, there were quite a few math instructors with master's degrees who had done extremely well in ugrad and a masters program, but were not creative enough to get the doctorate in math or physics.
As far as time consumption, I would say grad school. We had to teach. So, being a junior faculty member meant having office hours for students and not just being responsible for your curriculum. Then, the coursework was time consuming because it was very difficult and homework went on forever. There is also research and forming a dissertation committee, working on the dissertation, and defending it.
As an aside, even students in a clinical psych program have it hard. They have challenging coursework, teach classes (I remember at our university they taught regular psych lecture courses.), see patients, conduct research, do a dissertation, have the match to worry about among other duties. Because this is not a hard science, it doesn't mean that they get it any easier.
I would definitely say that grad school was harder. Although, we weren't training to save lives, we were not only responsible for completing our difficult curriculum, we were responsible for other people and other duties.
One other thing: In a grad physical science program, one can't just understand the material and apply it and do well. You have to be creative to be in a doctorate program. Because of this, there were many that have been kicked out of Ph.d programs in the sciences and had to leave with a Masters degree instead. At our local community colleges, there were quite a few math instructors with master's degrees who had done extremely well in ugrad and a masters program, but were not creative enough to get the doctorate in math or physics.
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Grad school was a joke compared to medical school. In grad school, you design your own projects, have somewhat flexible timelines and schedules, and you don't have to take the same load that we have. The more difficult aspect of graduate school is a failed experiment, which worked the previous time that you did it. So frustrating when you have 1 month of work in growing the tumors, inoculating the mice, giving iv treatments, etc... only to have the tumors not take, or even worse- to have the treatment not work.
My work was in Cellular and Molecular biology.
When it does work.. Does flow work? negative!
My work was in Cellular and Molecular biology.
When it does work.. Does flow work? negative!
Not true at all. There were medical students that have had extreme difficulty with calculus, even with trying hard. I taught some of these students. With this much difficulty they could not have done well or even passed an ugrad program in math, physics, engineering, let alone a grad program in it. FORGET IT!
Because someone can go through medicine, it doesn't mean that they would be good at any field. My cousin did not do well as a philosophy major (very low GPA). He found the coursework to be really really difficult. He is just not an abstract thinker. He went back to school and did a degree in Biology and did very well. He is a veterinarian now. And veternarian school is harder to get into than med school.
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PH.d programs are more rigorous than masters programs. That is obvious. This is more so with physics and math. so we can't just lump them all together. Again, many people with masters degrees in math, physics who have done very, very well attempted doctorate programs and got dropped because of not being creative or having the ability to finish. And these were very good students in ugrad and at the masters level.
Ph.d programs in physics and math are the most difficult. Even though you are not saving lives, you have more to deal with. As a junior faculty member I have taught large lecture courses along with doing REALLY HARD COURSEWORK, research, dissertation, and everything else. I didn't even have the time to be on a message board like this.
Ph.d programs in physics and math are the most difficult. Even though you are not saving lives, you have more to deal with. As a junior faculty member I have taught large lecture courses along with doing REALLY HARD COURSEWORK, research, dissertation, and everything else. I didn't even have the time to be on a message board like this.
These courses even in med school were much easier than my ugrad courses in geophysics.
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What's difficult for one person is going to be easy for another. With that said, my graduate work was in immunology and cancer- both of which are cutting edge science fields.
I made A's through Calc 1, 2, and 3. I didn't take any advanced physics classes, so I can't really speak to that side of the world.
BTW, cell biology in medical school is a joke. They cover the material in about two weeks. Do you really think that is a comparable to doctorate work? That's like saying physics 1 was a joke, so astrophysics must be as well.
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Haha. I know people in phd physics and math. They are about 300 times smarter than me or any pre med I know. These people see a problem and it just "works" in their head.
In my MD program And Ph.D program, I remember doing all of these things. MD program was demanding. But, I still found my Ph.d program to be more.
In the ph.d program, I was also responsible for teaching students and everything that comes with teaching. Aside from that, there were tutoring duties where all grad students were responsible for helping any student that walks into the physics tutoring lab. And these included your students and any student that needed help.
There was also comp exams to pass in order to get to the dissertation phase after the really demanding coursework was completed.
As I said in my other post, this meant completing difficult coursework, preparing for comp exams (oral and written), and conducting research. If you pass your comp exams, you become abd and begin working on your dissertation. If you don't pass, you are dropped from the program. Then, you need to form a dissertation committee. While you are doing your dissertation, you still teach, conduct research, tutor in that lab, attend scholarly activities and the list goes on and on. Also, when you teach, you are teaching more than one class per term.
You are not only responsible for getting yourself through the program. You are responsible for many many students, doing research which effects everyone else, and other duties.
Now, if you are a clinical psych student, expect that you must see patients along with the aforementioned duties.
Just because you are not saving lives, it doesn't make the curriculum and your other responsibilities any easier.
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Any reason in particular that you decided to use a very large font?
