How does the amount of content in medical school compare to the MCAT?

[Doctoscope]

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Obviously you learn a ton more in med school, but the common phrase I often hear is that med school is like "drinking from a fire hydrant." But, I can't really conceptualize it.

The only metric that involves a lot of material within a short-ish timespan that I've experienced that is the MCAT. Is one block in med school around "one MCAT" worth of content? Is it more, less?

 

[TragicalDrFaust]

MCAT is, roughly speaking, more breadth and less depth but it's apples and oranges. When studying for a block in med school you're learning about things that are related. You don't have to shift gears mentally as much. If you're given 10 pages of grab bag MCAT material to learn versus 10 pages of cardiology, you may get through the cardiology faster because you don't have to refer back to acid-base laws and piaget's stages and remember which direction DNA is read in all in the same session. Wouldn't be a fair comparison. Also need to remember that your study skills aren't honed for the MCAT. I imagine after a couple years in medical school nearly every medical student could score better on the MCAT given the same amount of time to prepare because everyone has improved their study skills.

It may be easer to conceptualize as time spent studying. I believe that most people who did fine in undergrad and got a decent MCAT can pass studying around 40 hours per week. Someone aiming to be top in their class or someone who's struggles to keep pace (estimating bottom 5% of students) may need 50-60+ hours per week. Personally felt like undergrad (biochem major) was about a half time job whereas medical school is a full time job.

 

[Bored_Conscious]

I learned immunology over the course of 12-weeks in undergrad in addition to my other courses.

My girlfriend learned immunology in 2-weeks in addition to her other courses.

Another way to think about it is learning Organic Chemistry in 2-weeks rather than 12-weeks (typical semester length in UG)

That's probably the best way to conceptualize "drinking from a fire hydrant".

 

[vomitcom]

I would dare say until you get to it, you will not be able to conceptualize it

As an MS2, I have to say that it isn't really as bad as people make it seem to pre-meds. You are basically doing one block at a time and the material is internally consistent. I would go so far as to say I have an easier time with med school studying than I did with undergrad where I was taking 4-5 classes in disparate areas, where I had more daily lecture, and where I didn't have as much support from classmates who are also all taking the same classes. Med school is hard, but it is certainly possible to do well in it and have a life/hobbies.

 

[deleted1114112]

It also probably depends on the medical school you go to....some schools people can take exams at home whenever they want in a week long period, there are no monday quizzes/exams, you get pretty much a massive time slot reserved for boards studying time, you can request time off, there is no internal raking and obviously P/F. Some medical schools even allow multiple retakes (you can't fail) and have anonymous examinations (!!) not sure how that works but sounds extremely stress free.

Meanwhile I've seen medical schools that publicly denounce use of Anki and force students to read books or refuse to take student mental health/break time into consideration.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

It is basically like a semester of undergrad every 7 weeks. The material is not as difficult as my undergrad major (math), but there is a lot more of it. In a systems based curriculum, you are doing anatomy, micro, phys, path, pharm, biochem, embryo, and stats for each block. It’s easy to get behind, but if you treat it like a job, it’s not as bad as it sounds. I ended up putting in on average 40-50 hours a week in preclerkship, including anything mandatory. All bets are off for clerkships though. I worked 76 hours last week on IM, and that was just time I was in the hospital.

 

[Lifeblood_20]

Obviously you learn a ton more in med school, but the common phrase I often hear is that med school is like "drinking from a fire hydrant." But, I can't really conceptualize it.

The only metric that involves a lot of material within a short-ish timespan that I've experienced that is the MCAT. Is one block in med school around "one MCAT" worth of content? Is it more, less?

Current MS1 with just 3 blocks of med school under my belt. So far it is a lot of material in a very short amount of time (like doing a semester's worth of undergrad every 5 weeks), but I think I still had rougher times in undergrad and especially studying for the MCAT.
My school is P/F for preclinical, so that definitely takes off a lot of the pressure of needing perfection. In undergrad, I had to get good grades, and for the MCAT, I have to score as high as possible, but right now I just need to get the passing mark, which is not too hard.

 

[petomed]

It is basically like a semester of undergrad every 7 weeks. The material is not as difficult as my undergrad major (math), but there is a lot more of it. In a systems based curriculum, you are doing anatomy, micro, phys, path, pharm, biochem, embryo, and stats for each block. It’s easy to get behind, but if you treat it like a job, it’s not as bad as it sounds. I ended up putting in on average 40-50 hours a week in preclerkship, including anything mandatory. All bets are off for clerkships though. I worked 76 hours last week on IM, and that was just time I was in the hospital.

How might that number change if you had an average of 30 hrs mandatory in-person lecture each week?

 

[TragicalDrFaust]

How might that number change if you had an average of 30 hrs mandatory in-person lecture each week?

It depends on if you can learn from lecture of not. I'm thankfully an auditory learner, at least partially, so I attend most lectures. If I got to 6 hours of lecture one day, I might not study on top of that at all. Definitely not more than two hours after 6 hours of lecture. Then on the weekend days I study for 5-7 hours each. I refuse to believe the majority of students at lecture-mandatory schools are attending 6 hours of lecture per day then studying another 6 hours on top of that. Maybe the least academically inclined or those pursuing a top class rank would need to consistently put in 2-4 hours after lecture then full weekend days.

If you're not an auditory learner, it's worth practicing because that's how information will be transmitted on rotations. Some people say that doing a short skim of the lecture before hand makes the difference between whether they can follow along and retain during live lecture or not.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

How might that number change if you had an average of 30 hrs mandatory in-person lecture each week?

Depends. Can you just put headphones on and do your own thing during lecture? Do you actually learn from the lectures? If neither of those are true, I suspect it will increase a bit. We had about 10 hours of mando stuff per week max.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

If you're not an auditory learner,

The concept of different types of learners has been debunked. Everyone is primarily a visual learner (obviously the blind excluded).

 

[Isoval]

I learned immunology over the course of 12-weeks in undergrad in addition to my other courses.

My girlfriend learned immunology in 2-weeks in addition to her other courses.

Another way to think about it is learning Organic Chemistry in 2-weeks rather than 12-weeks (typical semester length in UG)

That's probably the best way to conceptualize "drinking from a fire hydrant".

We did my entire biology degree in four weeks.

The entire degree.

Biology 1, Biology Lab, Biochem 1 and 2, Biochem lab, Genetics, and Cellular Biology.

And we're not talking just surface. We're talking all three DNA repair mechanics with every enzyme involved in the order it works. We're talking knowing specific protein folding interactions. We're talking all of the types of RNA/DNA polymerase and all of their subunits. We're talking the entirety of glycolysis, TCA, and ETC with every enzyme, intermediate, and the things that break the cycle.

Four weeks.

The entire amount of material covered by the MCAT is something you would learn in a couple weeks of medical school and be expected to perform at an 80% or higher level on that material (my school's pass is 78).

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

And we're not talking just surface. We're talking all three DNA repair mechanics with every enzyme involved in the order it works. We're talking knowing specific protein folding interactions. We're talking all of the types of RNA/DNA polymerase and all of their subunits. We're talking the entirety of glycolysis, TCA, and ETC with every enzyme, intermediate, and the things that break the cycle.

Yeah that’s really stupid.

 

[Isoval]

Yeah that’s really stupid.

Tell me about it.

 

[Matthew9Thirtyfive]

Tell me about it.

My school gave us those diagrams and then told us to only worry about the clinically relevant ones.

 

[TragicalDrFaust]

The concept of different types of learners has been debunked. Everyone is primarily a visual learner (obviously the blind excluded).

I agree and I reject the framework of each person being one "type" of learner. The last study I read said that the vast majority of people learn by a combination seeing and doing. I'm directing my comments towards a specific type of person, though not specifically OP, who can't pick things up just by listening and would prefer to read the lectures at their own pace. So I would say, there's no such thing as a true auditory learner (or they're very rare) but there ARE people who have trouble learning by listening.

 

[jambro]

So far as an m2 id say its like youre studying for the MCAT/finals everyday. Its not too bad as long as your school doesnt make you show up to too many mandatory things and leaves you alone. Also a big plus if your school works well with third party resources

 

[Cornfed101]

It is basically like a semester of undergrad every 7 weeks. The material is not as difficult as my undergrad major (math), but there is a lot more of it. In a systems based curriculum, you are doing anatomy, micro, phys, path, pharm, biochem, embryo, and stats for each block. It’s easy to get behind, but if you treat it like a job, it’s not as bad as it sounds. I ended up putting in on average 40-50 hours a week in preclerkship, including anything mandatory. All bets are off for clerkships though. I worked 76 hours last week on IM, and that was just time I was in the hospital.

I second this. My UG major was mechanical engineering which was way more difficult conceptually. Med school is just a TON of information. There is not enough time to learn it all so you almost have to pick and chose what is the most important. I never felt like I needed to do that in undergrad. I could learn everything my professors expected of me. I would have to study 100hrs a week to do that in med school. But my classes are P/F so I don’t need to learn all of it

 

[deleted899789]

For me, the MCAT/undergrad was harder than med school. Maybe thats because what I'm learning now is actually interesting/relevant

 

[oldman]

Obviously you learn a ton more in med school, but the common phrase I often hear is that med school is like "drinking from a fire hydrant." But, I can't really conceptualize it.

The only metric that involves a lot of material within a short-ish timespan that I've experienced that is the MCAT. Is one block in med school around "one MCAT" worth of content? Is it more, less?

I found the amount of material to be a big jump from classes in undergrad. The big key was a modification of my study habits. In college I could still do more of a cramming style to learn material. For medical school it turned into a daily regular schedule. I went to lectures every day and would then study for several hours every day until about 10 PM. I would take an hour or two off for eating and exercise. I did some extra-curricular/volunteer work to break up some of that monotony. The key was the regularity of the schedule. Looking at my transcript my classes came in at 30 credit hours. Compared to college where I did engineering I carried about 15 credit hours. Since I stopped cramming though I felt the material was more manageable.

As far as the volume of material an exam of how much though is I remember we were required to get lots of textbooks for the classes and one lecturer went through an entire textbook in a one hour lecture.

 

[bigdawg45]

The medical school grind is comparable to the MCAT grind in my experience. Don’t remember how many hours a day I studied for the Mcat but it was a consistent 6+ hours every day. At my school we have a mandatory 2 hours of class to attend each day and then I probably study for an average of 5 hours on top of that. Some days it can be substantially more, though. Even with this consistency, you can never learn or know all the testable material. Compared to undergrad, it’s significantly different. I could take off a week or 2 in undergrad and catch up and get As on exams. In medical school, you can get away with taking 1 day off per week, more than that and you’ll pay for it. Medical school is just about consistency…and it is like drinking water from a fire hydrant