School Load

[ZeaL6]

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Next semester is my last semester before graduation. I wanted to kinda make a transitional semester to get a small "taste" of a medical school workload to ease my way into it. Is this a bad idea? I'll be taking microbiology, immunology, vertebrate histology, pharmacology, and my senior capstone project.

 

[muddyduck7]

From personal experience, I don't think you can really prepare yourself for medical school. The pace, volume and level of detail is very different than in college. As in, you fly through an incredible amount of material in a superficial manner - rather than delving into minutiae. It's just different.

Sure you can expose yourself to many of the basic science classes covered in medical school, and it will probably make the corresponding medical school classes somewhat easier. Regardless, you will learn how to adjust to the pace of medical school. If you enjoy those types of classes, then go for it. Otherwise, I would recommend taking a courseload that will allow you to have some fun. To me, the marginal benefit of what you are proposing is not worth the cost...

 

[Microglia]

Next semester is my last semester before graduation. I wanted to kinda make a transitional semester to get a small "taste" of a medical school workload to ease my way into it. Is this a bad idea? I'll be taking microbiology, immunology, vertebrate histology, pharmacology, and my senior capstone project.

Honestly, that semester sounds a lot harder than med school. At least at my university, that would have been pure torture. Med school is a lot of superficial material, while, at least in my experience, undergrad was a lot of very in-depth material. I think taking that course load will have the breadth than med school at a greater depth.

My recommendation: take a lighter course load, get sleep, and have fun. You're only in college once, enjoy the freedom! Don't worry about med school's course load, it's extremely manageable (at least so far).

Edit: Should have read muddyduck's post, he said essentially the same thing haha. 🙂

 

[nemo123]

... You've already spent 3.5 years working your butt off to get into med schools and since you got into med school, schools definitely thought you were good enough academically to handle the workload and succeed in med school... There is no point in "practicing" what med school will be like. You'll have 4 years to do that when you get there.

 

[xffan624]

Next semester is my last semester before graduation. I wanted to kinda make a transitional semester to get a small "taste" of a medical school workload to ease my way into it. Is this a bad idea? I'll be taking microbiology, immunology, vertebrate histology, pharmacology, and my senior capstone project.

You don't want to burn out before you even start medical school. Enjoy a break from school and get ready to "bring it" when you finally get there. In some ways, medical school can be "easier" than a particularly tough semester of college. There's less stretch on your focus. You focus on maximizing your performance on test day (EC's fall by the wayside as well as any assignment or test that's weeks away) and that's it. Creating an artificially hard semester of college doesn't really simulate this as usually things fall together at the same time during college and time management is more of a skill.

Edited to clarify that I'm mostly referring to 1st year/ early 2nd year.

 

[Doctor Strange]

I took two semesters worth of pharmacology during senior year as a required part of my major, and it has actually come in quite handy, mostly because of becoming familiar with drug names/classes and MOAs that make learning (relearning) biochemical pathways easier. Other than another required science class, I picked up a bunch of fun classes to stay full time. I would recommend taking fun classes. They're fun. Pharmacology would be the most helpful in my biased opinion as a pharmacology major.