Does anyone know what the drop out rate is for first year med students? I have a friend who keeps asking and all i can do is shrug.
Very few people actually drop out and never come back-- I'm not even sure if this happens every year. There are a handful of students every year, though, who go AP-- Alternate Pathway is the decelerated program where you stretch out MS1 into 2 years. People do this for all sorts of reasons-- babies, finishing masters degree, health crisis, what-have-you.
And someone mentioned something about a medical dictionary-- I found wikipedia/google to be sufficient any time I had to look up a word.
Textbooks-- I'll do my best to jog my memory and think of what was essential...
Gross Anatomy: Netter atlas and Moore's Clinical Anatomy. Rohen atlas has the actual cadaver pictures-- personally I hated it, but lots of people live by it. Oh and there's a shelf exam at the end for your final-- a shelf exam is written by the board people. It's like 125 step 1 questions pertaining to anatomy. As with all shelf exams, use the BRS (board review series) book. (There's a BRS book for every subject.)
Developmental Anatomy: There's a paperback textbook where most of the pictures in the syllabus come from. I think it's written by Moore & Persaud. I'd say it's helpful, so that you can look at the actual color pictures in the textbook and read the corresponding paragraphs if things get confusing. Also, there's a workbook that goes along with the textbook-- I'm not sure how helpful this is (back before my day, people said test questions came from that book, but I don't think that's true anymore). No shelf exam, at least when I took it.
Biochemistry: The syllabus is dense but has everything. If you get confused, I guess you could use a textbook. Shelf exam for this one-- get the BRS.
Histology: There's a color atlas, forgot what it's called. It's helpful, but if you memorize all the images on the website, that'd be sufficient. There might be a textbook too...totally don't remember. No shelf exam.
ICM: The recommended textbook is the Bates book (like "Guide to Physical Examination" or something). You can honor the class without it, but it is a good resource to have throughout med school. Might as well buy it now.
YAY
