Scared about Pre-Med.

[futureMD101]

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So I'm going to be attending a college ranked somewhere from the low 130's to the 170 range.

The course material there shouldn't be UBER difficult but I'm still scared like anything.

Basically my parents do everything for me, so I have no idea how to live by myself or have a study schedule while taking care of myself. Was the transition difficult for anyone?

Also, I absolutely suck at Physics & Math. I'm in Calculus AB this year, but that's been a hard course for me to maintain a B lol. Is college Physics even harder because there's no one-on-one ?



Majors....

Should I do a non-science major or a science major?



I don't even know how to explain how scared I am of college at this point 😕 🙁

 

[texahn]

be scared do good

 

[cyclone92]

cool out bro. I took calc AB senior year of hs and I didnt do awesome but so far the class has given me enough background knowledge to make Calc I and II a breeze. As far as majors go, at most universities you aren't required to declare any major until the end of your sophomore year so take the pre reqs for med school if youre sure thats what you wanna do in addition to a few classes you find interesting. Then decide based on which classes you enjoy the most. That's the point of major, to enjoy it.

Stay Frosty

 

[jc235693]

take a deep breath and relax bro. College classes are going to be way different that HS classes, just know that going in. Make sure to get on a good study schedule, meet with professors or TAs if you have questions and if you school offers it you can get 1 on 1 peer tutoring in many of your intro science classes.

As for learning to be independent you should get on that. Learn to do your own laundry and tell you parents to back off (maybe a little more eloquently than that). You'll get a hang of living independently when you get to college and you'll probably will like it so you'll wonder how you survived living under your parents all those years.

In any event its January, you wont be starting college for over half a year. Chill out and enjoy your senior year. Also, its way to early to be stressing about med school, worry about your grades, making friends and having fun, and getting good experiences (any shadowing or clinical experience, research, volunteering, sports whatever makes you happy).

 

[JustMeditate]

Relax. Take a deep breath.

Pre-med isn't any easy path to tackle, but it isn't anything to be afraid of. Realize that you can approach the application process at your own pace. That might mean starting off with a light course load. My first semester, I only took 12 credits, which gave me plenty of time to find out how I study best, and how to organize a schedule. It also enabled me to get straight A's, even when I occasionally slacked off. I gradually increased my course load, and am now taking 19 credits a semester without any major problems.

If you are really bad at math, physics won't be super easy. However, you don't need Calc based physics for med school, just algebra based, so it'll be easier than calc, in my humble opinion.

As for which major you choose...that should be up to you. As long as you have all the core science courses required for a pre-med, adcoms don't really care what your major is. Therefore, you should choose a major you enjoy, something that will make you happy, courses you can get excited about! For example, one of my two majors is philosophy, and I love it!

Some Additional Advice: If, early on, you find yourself slipping in a course, and are in the Low C-High D range, seriously considering dropping it with a W. W's do not get calculated into your GPA, and since MD schools have no grade forgiveness policy, retaking any failed courses won't make the original bad grade go away. You WILL be stuck with any and all bad grades you get (unless you are doing DO, they have a grade forgiveness policy). You don't want to have a ton of W's, but a W is always preferable to a D or F.

 

[deleted357625]

Don't worry about not knowing certain classes such as physics etc.

I entered college not really knowing biology and chemistry...i took the risk and took both in one semester, you WILL learn the material if you study and read, it is not difficult.

I was scared at first but if you suck it up you'll be fine, but besides that you will come to realize that the courses you THINK you might not do well in, you will.

Don't worry, i was in your shoes

 

[StudyShy]

Pre-med is just a lot of hard work and not letting minor things get you down. Puedes hacerlo! 🙂

 

[Political]

a word of caution, stay away from other pre-meds... rather dont go announcing that you are a pre-med. Most pre-med are pretentious snobs who generally dont have a clue about medical school applications. I suggest getting all your information from here or your premed advisor.

and just imo, you make better friends by saying you're just a bio major rather than saying you're a premed, people wont hold you to a standard if you say so,

 

[BoulderDash]

You just need one thing to be successful: discipline. The amount varies from person to person, but most of us are disciplined when we need to be.

Going to med school is there for the getting, and if you really do want it, you can get it. You just have to put in the time, effort, and frustrating-to-no-end nights that you need to get there. This is not to say you can't have a life, but you just need to carve out time to hit the books on a regular basis.

 

[Turbowned]

Let me tell you my personal story.

I was afraid to join the pre-med curriculum because I was scared of the science classes.

DON'T BE THAT GUY.

I rocked all my pre-med classes in college despite being only average in HS. If you set your mind to something, you will be amazed at what you can do. Coming from someone who had a C+ in chemistry in HS to being top of my organic chemistry class, it takes a little work but it is by NO means impossible.

You miss 100% of the shots you don't take. Try your hardest and you will do well.

 

[Mace1370]

Major in something non-science related to pad your GPA. Take as many fluff classes as you can. Crush the MCAT. That's all I got.

 

[circulus vitios]

Major in something non-science related to pad your GPA. Take as many fluff classes as you can. Crush the MCAT. That's all I got.

This. If I had to do it all over again I'd do a liberal arts major. I spend much more time now taking 12-13 credits of math/science classes a semester than I did taking 15 credits of psych/soc/phil/etc. classes a semester (and getting higher grades.) A liberal arts degree would be worthless but it's not like a bachelors in bio, chemistry, physics, or math would be particularly useful right out of school. If you don't get in to med school right away, get a crappy fully time job and keep trying.

 

[BarcaBest23]

Anyone who starts a post with "I'm going to a college ranked b/w 130 and 170 etc." needs to get a life I'm sorry. Just go where you want to go, enjoy your freshman year, get drunk, chase girls, play video games until dawn, etc. You need to relax and stop being so uptight. You will have plenty of time to waste worrying about grades/work/academics etc. as you get into medical school and beyond.

Enjoy your youth!!! You don't get that **** back. The only way to prevent being the stereotypical attending who is cynical as **** and hates life, is to be able to enjoy the medical moment at hand because you have already done all the fun stuff in the past. (no mid life crisis). A lot of the reasons physicians are jaded about their work is because they feel like they sacrificed a lot of their youth which is def. true. However enjoy your college years and only nerd it up junior and senior year (always mantain 3.5+).

I for one enjoyed the hell out of my high school and college years dicking around and still got into top 20 schools. You don't have to be a major nerd to make a great applicant and future physician, if anything, it will make you a better doctor and help you build stronger relationships with patients as opposed to being a robot (many robotic applicants at top 10 schools that I interviewed at).

 

[slatermd]

Major in something non-science related to pad your GPA. Take as many fluff classes as you can. Crush the MCAT. That's all I got.

I recommend psych.

I would say psych + foreign language but it seems like you already pissing your pants and I don't want you to have to wear pull-ups to school.

You don't have to choose a major right away. For your first year, I recommend enrolling in something like:

Bio
Chem
Intro to Psych
Some other gen ed requirement (macro econ, freshman English, whatever)

Second semester
Bio 2
Chem 2
If you liked intro to psych, then Developmental Psych
Foreign language

Second year you can take organic chem, calculus, plus more gen eds or more psych classes. At the end of your second year, you can declare a major. In other words, you still have 2 years to figure things out.

Start off strong, protect your GPA, and figure out how you best deal with stress.

 

[NickNaylor]

...you really can't do anything by yourself? That's just sad.

 

[Myuu]

...you really can't do anything by yourself? That's just sad.

Neither can I...😏

 

[NickNaylor]

Neither can I...😏

Are we talking about basic life skills, or...

 

[gettheleadout]

I recommend psych.

I would say psych + foreign language but it seems like you already pissing your pants and I don't want you to have to wear pull-ups to school.

You don't have to choose a major right away. For your first year, I recommend enrolling in something like:

Bio
Chem
Intro to Psych
Some other gen ed requirement (macro econ, freshman English, whatever)

Second semester
Bio 2
Chem 2
If you liked intro to psych, then Developmental Psych
Foreign language

Second year you can take organic chem, calculus, plus more gen eds or more psych classes. At the end of your second year, you can declare a major. In other words, you still have 2 years to figure things out.

Start off strong, protect your GPA, and figure out how you best deal with stress.

Let's not turn this into a "psych is an easy major!"/"no its not!" thread...

 

[futureMD101]

Thanks for the replys guys, it makes me feel a bit better about college.

Don't get me wrong, I can do stuff like my laundry and make basic food for myself, but I actually really like my parents, and I don't want to be away from them as crazy as that sounds haha. They're supportive, and I feel like I need them....but I guess I'll have to get over that.

I might do a business major, I don't want to diss the major or anything but it doesn't seem overly difficult, plus it'd be nice to get away from the whole science-y type classes. I've never even thought of Psych as a possible major, but I will definitely enroll in a class and see how I like it.

As far as the rankings, I was just trying to say how hard they are, it's not like I'm going to a Top 20 school, I would be ten times as scared then haha.

But yeah, I'm just going to try to mentally prepare myself for moving away at this point 😳

 

[slatermd]

Let's not turn this into a "psych is an easy major!"/"no its not!" thread...

Ha! I already addressed that recently in another thread. It isn't "easy" but it typically requires fewer credit hours than other majors.

Of majors like psych, business, sociology, communications, history, English, whatever, I prefer psych for premeds over the others because:

1. A basic understanding of clinical psych (especially listening/counseling skills, but also behavior disorders, health behavior, and behavior change) will make you much better with patients than you would be without this background.
2. psych curriculum usually has a heavy emphasis on research methods...very useful for premeds.

 

[Evergrey]

If I had to do it all over again I'd do a liberal arts major.

If I had to do it all over again, I would have been a science major. My science GPA is 3.9, my liberal arts GPA is 3.6. I'm tired of silly science majors thinking their disciplines are "tuff as ballz."

Major in something that keeps you awake at night, because you're excited about something you learned. Don't major in science (or nonscience) just because somebody said it was easy to get a good GPA in.

 

[circulus vitios]

If I had to do it all over again, I would have been a science major. My science GPA is 3.9, my liberal arts GPA is 3.6. I'm tired of silly science majors thinking their disciplines are "tuff as ballz."

Major in something that keeps you awake at night, because you're excited about something you learned. Don't major in science (or nonscience) just because somebody said it was easy to get a good GPA in.

Does your science GPA stop at the pre-med curriculum? I guarantee you that upper level science and math classes (e.g., physical chemistry, modern physics, real analysis, etc.) are a LOT more difficult than your upper level liberal arts classes.

 

[Evergrey]

Does your science GPA stop at the pre-med curriculum? I guarantee you that upper level science and math classes (e.g., physical chemistry, modern physics, real analysis, etc.) are a LOT more difficult than your upper level liberal arts classes.

Meh, biochem was easy (because I liked it). That's the extent past the pre-med curriculum, but I did do kinetics/analytical research. I'm just a science-minded person. Writing a good paper with a cogent, well-articulated argument --that is hard to me. Understanding the semantics of UV-vis spectroscopy during spontaneous bond formation, or the complexities of mammalian metabolism, is far easier to me.

Edit: Anyway, I don't understand why it matters to you. Something can be difficult, but it doesn't mean that the other thing has to be defined in opposition as "easy." That's simplistic logic. I have been in upper div classes in both disciplines, and I think there are immensely challenging aspects to each. For me though, writing/conceptualizing arguments is much more difficult.

 

[clinicallabguy]

a word of caution, stay away from other pre-meds... rather dont go announcing that you are a pre-med. Most pre-med are pretentious snobs who generally dont have a clue about medical school applications. I suggest getting all your information from here or your premed advisor.

and just imo, you make better friends by saying you're just a bio major rather than saying you're a premed, people wont hold you to a standard if you say so,

I experienced this in undergrad, too. I had never considered medicine until my third or fourth semester, and all the pre-med kids I had met that were juniors or seniors talked about how hard classes were and about how difficult it is to get into medical school. So I started out thinking that maybe I couldn't hack it, but being a PA sounded interesting, too. A year or two later I found out that while pre-med courses are challenging, all the rumors I had heard were exaggerated to some extent.

OP, You don't need to hide that you're a pre-med. But don't drive yourself crazy by talking with pre-meds all the time about medical school apps and whether so-and-so really knows anything about getting in. At your position you don't even need to definitively know if you're pre-med, yet. At least, I don't think so. Go for it and see what happens. Studying as hard as you need to in order to be competitive for medical school can set you up for more successes than matriculation into medical school. So I say work as if you're sure, but get some shadowing experience in to determine if it's a definite thing.

Also, I would major in something that you're interested in. If it's a toss up between two or three, then do the easier major. Don't major in something just because it's easy, because it won't be easy if it's torture to study it.

 

[gettheleadout]

Does your science GPA stop at the pre-med curriculum? I guarantee you that upper level science and math classes (e.g., physical chemistry, modern physics, real analysis, etc.) are a LOT more difficult than your upper level liberal arts classes.

lol I have a science major and I won't have to take any of those.

 

[raltima07]

lol I have a science major and I won't have to take any of those.

+1 and I never will take those classes

 

[Mbeas]

college is easy. don't fret.