How hard is simply PASSING in med school?

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surfguy84

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I'm not shooting for the bottom but I have no desire to work in a competitive field. I'd like to do family medicine or psychiatry someday.

I would also like to maintain a semblance of a life during school and not spend every day filled with anxiety about my grades. Frankly, I don't care about my class rank. For someone like me, is the amount of study time going to be vastly different?

I know medical school is difficult....but for someone who just wants to pass (please don't take this as slack off/not learn/etc) how bad is it?
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Depends on your ability to perform academically. The beginning of medical school notwithstanding, I was able to "just pass" or do better and still have plenty of free time to do with as I pleased. This is less true during the clinical years since you have minimal control over your time, but during the pre-clinical years your work-life balance is essentially what you make of it.
 
surfguy84 said:
I'm not shooting for the bottom but I have no desire to work in a competitive field. I'd like to do family medicine or psychiatry someday.

I would also like to maintain a semblance of a life during school and not spend every day filled with anxiety about my grades. Frankly, I don't care about my class rank. For someone like me, is the amount of study time going to be vastly different?

I know medical school is difficult....but for someone who just wants to pass (please don't take this as slack off/not learn/etc) how bad is it?
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It's not that bad for the majority of people but for some people they have to put in maximal effort just to keep from failing.

The complexity of material in medical scholl is not bad at all. The issue is the volume of material. What you would spend a week on in undergrad, often is covered in a single lecture in med school. However, if you put in the required work, you have >95% chance of passing.

The hours you spend studying will eventually lead to diminishing returns. The tough thing is finding the sweet spot between comfortably passing and where your diminishing returns start.
 
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surfguy84 said:
I'm not shooting for the bottom but I have no desire to work in a competitive field. I'd like to do family medicine or psychiatry someday.

I would also like to maintain a semblance of a life during school and not spend every day filled with anxiety about my grades. Frankly, I don't care about my class rank. For someone like me, is the amount of study time going to be vastly different?

I know medical school is difficult....but for someone who just wants to pass (please don't take this as slack off/not learn/etc) how bad is it?
Click to expand...

Well first, I get what you're saying about not wanting to do a competitive specialty, but by the same point you should also be mindful that the higher your board scores, the easier the opportunity for you to get a spot in a more competitive residency in your field (better location, higher pay, more prestigious).

Anyway, from everyone I've talked to it depends on how you study, so it depends on you lol.
 
NickNaylor said:
Depends on your ability to perform academically. The beginning of medical school notwithstanding, I was able to "just pass" or do better and still have plenty of free time to do with as I pleased. This is less true during the clinical years since you have minimal control over your time, but during the pre-clinical years your work-life balance is essentially what you make of it.
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Caveat: To be fair, you also went to a "true" Pass/Fail school.
 
surfguy84 said:
I'm not shooting for the bottom but I have no desire to work in a competitive field. I'd like to do family medicine or psychiatry someday.

I would also like to maintain a semblance of a life during school and not spend every day filled with anxiety about my grades. Frankly, I don't care about my class rank. For someone like me, is the amount of study time going to be vastly different?

I know medical school is difficult....but for someone who just wants to pass (please don't take this as slack off/not learn/etc) how bad is it?
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It's not too difficult, but in general, you don't want to shoot for passing. That might occasionally lead to not passing, which IMO is not worth the anxiety and extra attention from Admin it presents. Shoot for a good understanding of the material so you can be a good doctor regardless of specialty. That should get you a pass and keep you sane.

Also, in your application process, definitely consider the school you go to. For your mentality, a true P/F pre-clinical curriculum might be the right place for you as long as you can self-motivate yourself to be a good doctor and not just do the bare minimum.
 
There are some exams which you can study 2 days for and be good. There are some (like head/neck or abd/pelvis) which you'd be screwed if you started studying 2 days before the exam.

When an exam is every 5 days or so, that still amounts to most of your time being spent studying. Sorry. 😛
 
Pacna said:
There are some exams which you can study 2 days for and be good. There are some (like head/neck or abd/pelvis) which you'd be screwed if you started studying 2 days before the exam.

When an exam is every 5 days or so, that still amounts to most of your time being spent studying. Sorry. 😛
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Not every school has a test every 5 days or so. A block, integrated systems approach can have them every 3 weeks or so like my school. This usually gives me a golden weekend or couple of days where you can rest and rejuvenate before jumping back in the fray. 2nd year they kind of discourage it by putting tests on Mondays, but 1st year it was nice. 🙂
 
Pacna said:
There are some exams which you can study 2 days for and be good. There are some (like head/neck or abd/pelvis) which you'd be screwed if you started studying 2 days before the exam.

When an exam is every 5 days or so, that still amounts to most of your time being spent studying. Sorry. 😛
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Which schools have exams every 5 days?
 
Passing isn't that hard but even then you'll still have to put time in studying. Just passing the tough subjects requires an awful lot of preparation. Getting those As requires so much more effort than just passing.
 
Mad Jack said:
If you don't really give a damn about class rank, it doesn't matter whether your school is P/F so long as you don't fail. For a lot of specialties, class rank isn't all that important.
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No school is entirely "true" Pass/Fail all 4 years. Stanford used to be, as was UCLA. Your MS-3 year grades are also very important to residency program directors. Your exact ordinal class rank is not important. However, which segment of the class you fall in will play a factor in which specialties are reasonably still open to you.
 
DermViser said:
No school is entirely "true" Pass/Fail all 4 years. Stanford used to be, as was UCLA. Your MS-3 year grades are also very important to residency program directors. Your exact ordinal class rank is not important. However, which segment of the class you fall in will play a factor in which specialties are reasonably still open to you.
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I'm assuming anyone asking this question is referring more to the preclinical than clinical years. If you're not willing to work your butt off in the clinical years, you shouldn't be a doctor. Skating by in preclinical seems to be reasonably easy.

I'm also making a bit of an assumption about the op- that they don't want to be in a competitive specialty, since they're asking about how hard it is to skate by.
 
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DermViser said:
No school is entirely "true" Pass/Fail all 4 years. Stanford used to be, as was UCLA. Your MS-3 year grades are also very important to residency program directors. Your exact ordinal class rank is not important. However, which segment of the class you fall in will play a factor in which specialties are reasonably still open to you.
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3rd or 4th quartile, you are basically screwed for the ultra competitive specialties regardless of your step scores!
 
Mad Jack said:
The kind of guy wondering about "just passing" probably isn't gunning for dermatorectal neurosurgery, as was stated in the OP.
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You are probably right... You can reasonably do well in med school studying 4-5 rs/day, but it seems like to get As, you almost have to double that amount of hours...
 
W19 said:
You are probably right... You can reasonably do well in med school studying 4-5 rs/day, but it seems like to get As, you almost have to double that amount of hours...
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I don't know how your class lecture days are scheduled, but if you're only studying 4-5 hrs. in one day, 5 days a week, that's only 25 hrs. a week max. That's usually not enough when it comes to mastering such a huge volume of information.
 
DermViser said:
I don't know how your class lecture days are scheduled, but if you're only studying 4-5 hrs. in one day, 5 days a week, that's only 25 hrs. a week max. That's usually not enough when it comes to mastering such a huge volume of information.
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On weekend, I usually study 10+ hrs.... I have exam every two weeks and 4 days before exam, I probably do 12+ hrs... I am getting mostly Bs and Cs, and occasionally As when I crank it up to 8+ hours/daily, but can't keep this intensity on a consistent basis.
 
W19 said:
On weekend, I usually study 10+ hrs.... I have exam every two weeks and 4 days before exam, I probably do 12+ hrs... I am getting mostly Bs and Cs, and occasionally As when I crank it up to 8+ hours/daily, but can't keep this intensity on a consistent basis.
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Wow. What else do you do with all that TIME?! <earnestly jealous>
 
I want to give you a warning. My students who just barely pass are most likely to fail Boards.

How you do is up to you. You get out of med school what you put into it.

surfguy84 said:
I'm not shooting for the bottom but I have no desire to work in a competitive field. I'd like to do family medicine or psychiatry someday.

I would also like to maintain a semblance of a life during school and not spend every day filled with anxiety about my grades. Frankly, I don't care about my class rank. For someone like me, is the amount of study time going to be vastly different?

I know medical school is difficult....but for someone who just wants to pass (please don't take this as slack off/not learn/etc) how bad is it?
Click to expand...
 
Goro said:
I want to give you a warning. My students who just barely pass are most likely to fail Boards.

How you do is up to you. You get out of med school what you put into it.
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Exactly, Goro. If you're just passing every class, passing being 70%, that means you probably learned even less than what you needed to for the boards. Pass/Fail grading is more to alleviate (well as much as possible) the neuroticism between someone who quibbles about a 90 (H) vs. an 85 (HP), and bc when it comes to residency program directors, preclinical grades don't have as much correlation with residency performance. It doesn't mean you aim only for the P and coast along.
 
W19 said:
Mandatory attendance from 8am-3pm... Lol...
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Homie.... people include class time in the "time spent studying per day" equation...
 
DermViser said:
Exactly, Goro. If you're just passing every class, passing being 70%, that means you probably learned even less than what you needed to for the boards. Pass/Fail grading is more to alleviate (well as much as possible) the neuroticism between someone who quibbles about a 90 (H) vs. an 85 (HP), and bc when it comes to residency program directors, preclinical grades don't have as much correlation with residency performance. It doesn't mean you aim only for the P and coast along.
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For some it might not worth the extra effort... Like for myself, 5o hrs/wk get me Bs (50%), As (25%), Cs (25%). However, in order to get As consistently, I almost have to double that amount (80+ hrs/wk)... I tried that a few times and I basically felt like sh1t...
 
W19 said:
For some it might not worth the extra effort... Like for myself, 5o hrs/wk get me Bs (50%), As (25%), Cs (25%). However, in order to get As consistently, I almost have to double that amount (80+ hrs/wk)... I tried that a few times and I basically felt like sh1t...
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If you're studying 50 hours per week, and getting Bs and Cs, then it's DEFINITELY your efficiency that you need to work on. That's the problem. It is nowhere necessary to do EIGHTY hours per week to get an A.
 
DermViser said:
If you're studying 50 hours per week, and getting Bs and Cs, then it's DEFINITELY your efficiency that you need to work on. That's the problem. It is nowhere necessary to do EIGHTY hours per week to get an A.
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I got Cs occasionally, it is mostly Bs and some As... And when I got a C, I try to balance it out with an A because I don't want to have C on any final grade in med school...
 
W19 said:
I got Cs occasionally, it is mostly Bs and some As... And when I got a C, I try to balance it out with an A because I don't want to have C on any final grade in med school...
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Um, that's not exactly how med school works.
 
W19 said:
Ok.. I don't want to have any final grade less than 80... I don't want to be in the last quartile in my class.. period!
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My point is that if you're putting in 50 hours per week -- realize that's 7 hours everyday of independent studying, and getting B's and C's then it's your efficiency that greatly needs work. I'm assuming of course, you're actually studying and not just being at a desk Internet surfing, whatever.
 
DermViser said:
My point is that if you're putting in 50 hours per week -- realize that's 7 hours everyday of independent studying, and getting B's and C's then it's your efficiency that greatly needs work. I'm assuming of course, you're actually studying and not just being at a desk Internet surfing, whatever.
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I probably do some Facebook more than I should... Lol
 
DermViser said:
If you're studying 50 hours per week, and getting Bs and Cs, then it's DEFINITELY your efficiency that you need to work on. That's the problem. It is nowhere necessary to do EIGHTY hours per week to get an A.
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Not everyone is capable of successfully regurgitating A-level material efficiently, regardless of their study methods.
 
W19 said:
I probably do some Facebook more than I should... Lol
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So then you're not really doing 50 hours per week of studying. This might help you: http://selfcontrolapp.com/ (there are others as well)

It's an app that blocks your acces to websites so that you don't get tempted and distracted.
 
Mad Jack said:
Not everyone is capable of successfully regurgitating A-level material efficiently, regardless of their study methods.
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Never said it was. However his efficency is quite poor if he's putting in 50 hrs. per week (which he's not really) and getting the results he's getting, and thinks that getting Honors in a preclinical course requires 80 hrs. of studying per week.
 
Mad Jack said:
Not everyone is capable of successfully regurgitating A-level material efficiently, regardless of their study methods.
DermViser said:
Never said it was. However his efficency is quite poor if he's putting in 50 hrs. per week (which he's not really) and getting the results he's getting, and thinks that getting Honors in a preclinical course requires 80 hrs. of studying per week.
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I could be more efficient and stop surfing the internet or watch TV sometime, but I am happy with my B average on all the exams I have taken so far... I can't keep the intensity of 8+ hours/day and 12+ hours on weekend like some of my classmates.

I told one my classmates that I study 5 hrs/day and he basically told me I was going to fail when I have been getting Bs. I then kept my mouth shot and keep wondering how many hours that guy studies per day...
 
W19 said:
I could be more efficient and stop surfing the internet or watch TV sometime, but I am happy with my B average on all the exams I have taken so far... I can't keep the intensity of 8+ hours/day and 12+ hours on weekend like some of my classmates.
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It's not necessary to put in 64 hrs per week of studying to get an Honors in a preclinical course. It's not the number of hours that matters. It's the efficiency. You're putting in 25 hrs. per week and still getting a B. That's pretty darn good for such a low number of hours.
 
DermViser said:
It's not necessary to put in 64 hrs per week of studying to get an Honors in a preclinical course. It's not the number of hours that matters. It's the efficiency. You're putting in 25 hrs. per week and still getting a B. That's pretty darn good for such a low number of hours.
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I put more than that... You forgot sat-sun which I put 10-12 hrs.... But out of these hours, I probably waste 7+ hours on Facebook and TV. Give or take, I study 40 hrs/wk... I am not interested in Honors, I just want to be in the 2nd-3rd quartile in my class and score 230+ in step1 so I can be competitive for FM or psych... I will also have some research under my belt...
 
W19 said:
I put more than that... You forgot sat-sun which I put 10-12 hrs.... But out of these hours, I probably waste 7+ hours on Facebook and TV. Give or take, I study 40 hrs/wk...
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So then your situation is not as dire as you're making it out to be. If out of 10-12 hrs. on a weekend day you're wasting 7+ hrs. then you're only getting a max of 5 hrs. You're not studying 10-12 hrs. just bc you're sitting at a desk.
 
DermViser said:
So then your situation is not as dire as you're making it out to be. If out of 10-12 hrs. on a weekend day you're wasting 7+ hrs. then you're only getting a max of 5 hrs. You're not studying 10-12 hrs. just bc you're sitting at a desk.
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I never said my situation was dire... I was saying that not everyone is capable of putting 8+ hours consistently... I tried that a couple times and I was in the top 10 in my class for these exams, but I just can't do that consistently...
 
W19 said:
I never said my situation was dire... I was saying that not everyone is capable of putting 8+ hours consistently... I tried that a couple times and I was in the top 10 in my class for these exams, but I just can't do that consistently...
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Correlation is not causation. And if you say you're putting in 8 hrs+/day consistently, then you're probably not, based on what you have said previously.
It's not necessary to be in the top 10 people of test scores anyways.
 
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