How difficult is your medical school?

This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.

How difficult is your medical school?

  • I'm a P student and it's worse than I expected

    Votes: 14 12.5%
  • I'm a P student and it's not that bad

    Votes: 26 23.2%
  • I'm a HP student and it's worse than I expected

    Votes: 7 6.3%
  • I'm a HP student and it's not that bad

    Votes: 27 24.1%
  • I'm an H studet and it's getting to be too much

    Votes: 8 7.1%
  • I'm and H student and I can handle it.

    Votes: 30 26.8%

  • Total voters
    112

rachmoninov3

Senior Member
15+ Year Member
Joined
Dec 15, 2004
Messages
895
Reaction score
24
Since the thread discussing the current suicides at baylor and ku has mentioned this, I thought it be good to discuss how difficult/stressful your medical school is.
Now of course this is just a matter of opinion and goals. Many people have said it's easy to pass med school, but stupidly hard to ace it.

I'm a HP type of student myself, and so while I try for the H, I'm generally happy with 80%. I personally found my med school to be much easier than I had expected. Rarely is a final worth more than 60% of our grade, and we only have three concurrent classes: 1. organ-based block including path, and pharm. 2 Clinical skills, and 3. Clinic. With only the first 2 classes having "grades" going to our transcripts. Even with as easy a course load as this is, I still know of a few people who have suffered from MDD during the first and second years.

Therefore, I'm not sure how making the curriculum easier would prevent MDD and suicides.

Now if we actually were treated like something other than grader schoolers by our professors, perhaps that would help.

Anyway, please describe how tough/easy you think your school is and vote in the poll.

Members don't see this ad.
 
Last edited:
I am not surprised by agreeing with the addage that everyone said before I started school: "Med school isn't hard; it's the volume of information that makes it hard." For me, it's just been the massive amount of material that I need to comb through. And I've never been fantastic about being able to figure out what the really important material is from what isn't. So I find myself spending a lot of time either learning useless details or knowing all the big stuff and not knowing enough of the details. I ended up getting through the first semester with a high pass (or the equivalent of that since we're still on a grade based system :mad:) but I felt like I lost a lot of my life in doing that. So this semester I'm trying to spend a little mroe time being social and taking time out for myself and see if I can achieve the same or better.....

I also have personal issues with my family and sig other that haven't made the transition all that much easier. So I have to buffer my stress by either having a good network of friends and sometimes I actually see a professional on the side and work through some of my stress that way. Either way, I find med school stressful and often struggle to maintain my motivation. But I'm trying to find healthy ways to get through it and keep the bigger picture in view.
 
Agreed that there's large volume but not necessarily large difficulty with med school.
I will also echo the sentiments that it is important to take care of youself as much as it is about taking care of your grades. In a group of highly competitive students, getting that H will likely take disproportionately more time and effort. Do it if it makes you happy and it is important to you. Otherwise, go for the HP and use that time to contribute to "you" in anyway that you want. Picking and choosing your battles is so key to how hard med school becomes.
 
Members don't see this ad :)
It's interesting that in each category (P/HP/H) the "handlers" outnumber the "strugglers" by 3-4:1. I think the bottom line is that most people settle into whatever level is most comfortable for them, irrespective of med school "difficultly."

The high proportion of H/HP students also indicates that SDN is the hangout of overachievers, liars, or both...
 
I've settled on Ps and HPs since it just requires way too much of a time commitment to get mostly HPs and Hs. If I studied any more than I already do I'd piss off my wife probably twice as much, and nobody wants that!

So I'm just content with the P and occassional HP for now, and when step 1 comes around I'll just have to commit three months to rape it.
 
My medical school isn't too bad. I live in Ireland so medicine is six years so I'd say it's more spread out - we do our basic sciences/pharm/path/micro in 2.5 years rather than 2. And we also have a pre med year which is meant to be basic science where we just do genetics, chemistry, biochem, and physics.
 
School is definitely not hard, especially if you just want to pass, unless you hate to study. The hardest part of medical school is getting past the adcom, nothing can compare to that.
 
^ I agree. My old Kaplan MCAT instructor once said "Getting into medical school is the easy part." I can't think of anything that is farther from the truth.
 
I'll third that motion, with the caveat that getting straight Hs is definitely not a walk in the park and takes probably 3-4x the time commitment as getting straight Ps.
 
Are all of you who said the hardest part is getting into med schools first years? If so, your minds may change.
 
That's definitely a possibility I guess. I've had people tell me anatomy is the hardest thing they had in med school, and thus far I'd say it's definitely easier to study anatomy and go to lab than it is to get into med school. But I guess they're different beasts.

We'll see what tune I'm whistling in the middle of my surgery rotation.
 
Funny- my neighbor (a 4th year) says 3rd and 4th year are a joke compared to the first 2.

I think it must really depend on what school you're at. For instance the curriculum at my school is not a traditional 1st year/2nd year. We do block schedules, so for all practical purposes 1st and 2nd year are basically the same. Just different organ systems.
 
We'll see what tune I'm whistling in the middle of my surgery rotation.
It's totally individual. I had a much better time on rotations than in the classroom, with the notable exception being surgery. And studying for step 1 is not my idea of a good time either.
 
Top