Math and med school

This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.
Does med school involve a lot of math, or is that confined to undergrad?

No. If you can perform basic arithmetic, you'll be fine. Medical school is not as hard as college from a purely intellectual standpoint, since there are fewer abstract concepts to learn and the level of understanding tends to be fairly superficial. What makes it difficult is the shear volume of information you have to integrate. In other words, you don't need to be particularly intelligent to excel in medical school; mere diligence will usually suffice. I'm talking about the first two years, mostly. The second two years involve learning clinical thinking, which is different from anything else you've ever done, most likely. It is challenging, but it's something that you mostly acquire through doing.
 
you may not even have all that much math in undergrad. it depends on your requirements and what classes you take. But overall, no med school has only very basic math. What strangeglove says is true as well. What is hard about med school is the sheer volume of information that you have to injest in a limited amount of time. And as a third year, you feel like the biggest failure. You are used to being on top of your game and suddenly you encounter a new way that you have to process information. You really bite it a lot util you get the hang of it. Not a fun process overall, but you get it in time and you really feel proud of yourself when you do.
 
If you can perform basic arithmetic, you'll be fine

A little more than that though I agree with the rest of your post.
You'll have to do statistics in medschool. Having it in undergrad helps because in medschool, you're crammed info--about 1 week's worth of college classes in 1 day. If you've had it before it'll come to you much faster.

All the other math is stuff which if you've done your undergrad requirements you'll be fine. E.g. during physiology, they'll go over a few equations to demonstrate certain activity such as circulation, and how viscosity affects it, but you only have to know a fundamental understanding of it. You won't have to know the physics anywhere to the level where you did in undergrad.

Medschool is more about having large amounts of data crammed down your throat.

Not a fun process overall, but you get it in time and you really feel proud of yourself when you do.

I hated medschool. It was the worst time of my life. However I'm a Myers Briggs ENTJ. I'm the type of guy that thrives in administrative positions and working in groups. I hate being forced to memorize large lump sums of info and not seeing the effects of it for years. I also was in a fraternity for 3 years and went from partying everyday with good friends and went from that to being in a medschool where 98% of the class were guys and these people seemed to have no problem dancing on a dance floor with a bunch of other men even though they were straight.

Other people I know liked or at least tolerated medschool much better than I did.
 
I also was in a fraternity for 3 years and went from partying everyday with good friends and went from that to being in a medschool where 98% of the class were guys and these people seemed to have no problem dancing on a dance floor with a bunch of other men even though they were straight.

I don't really understand how this fits in with the topic. 😕 :laugh: In fact the whole statement is even a bit alien to me. Could you clarify further? (Seriously, this has left me quite confused-is this just me? Maybe I just can't relate?)
 
I don't really understand how this fits in with the topic. 😕 :laugh: In fact the whole statement is even a bit alien to me. Could you clarify further? (Seriously, this has left me quite confused-is this just me? Maybe I just can't relate?)

:laugh: I thought it was a little off-the-wall, too. Yeah, Whooper, please explain.
 
:laugh: I thought it was a little off-the-wall, too. Yeah, Whooper, please explain.

If I may offer an interpretation, I think Whopper is commenting on why he (I assume he is a male because of membership in a fraternity) hated med school: there was not enough partying. It's funny, but I partied harder in medical school than I ever did in college. That's not saying much, though.
 
If I may offer an interpretation also, I think whopper is advising that one should ascertain the male to female ratio of any prospective medical school prior to applying 😉
 
If I may offer an interpretation, I think Whopper is commenting on why he (I assume he is a male because of membership in a fraternity) hated med school: there was not enough partying. It's funny, but I partied harder in medical school than I ever did in college. That's not saying much, though.

I think this is the line that got me: "and these people seemed to have no problem dancing on a dance floor with a bunch of other men even though they were straight. "

I'm not sure if he's trying to be funny, but everytime I read this it makes me :laugh:! I'm not sure I got the relevance to the OP and math....🙄
 
If I may offer an interpretation also, I think whopper is advising that one should ascertain the male to female ratio of any prospective medical school prior to applying 😉

So his point is that we should learn about ratios before starting medical school? :laugh:
 
Sorry

I type real fast & sometimes tend to write exactly what I'm thinking which turns out to be too wordy.

Yep you guys got the gist of what I meant. I went to SGU and when I went there it was about 98% guys to girls. I hear now its closer to 50-50. Anyways after an exam--you want to party hard. You're tired, you're spiritually dead & physically dead.

In college I always had a party to look forward to, Trust me I'm not some type of ladies man or anything like that, but any straight guy in the world wants to hang out with girls after a few weeks of no contact.

In medschool, the party after the exam week were a bunch of guys on the dance floor, all wearing cologne. What made it sad was that they were all straight. Hey, if they were gay, I could see why they'd all dance.

And since it was a foreign school, and the locals weren't exactly too friendly, it didn't make going outside the school an open & friendly thing.

After about 15 minutes of going to the party, I'd just go to my room and whine to myself. I'd have a better time doing nothing than dancing with a bunch of guys. If medschool there was 4 years instead of 2 years, I'm wondering if the prison guy on guy thing might've started. You're there 2 years, then you do clinical for 2 years.
 
Okay, this makes more sense. That was a very strange experience, trying to make sense of your post. I was confused by it, but on top of that, it was like my brain was not processing the information correctly. I wonder if that is what it is like to have a stroke and to have one of those weird deficiencies.
 
Top Bottom