what kind of kids were you?

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naegleria brain

naegleria brain

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oftentimes a relative will bring their kid to me and ask me if they think their kid has a shot at medical school. it got me thinking, what kind of kids were all you guys?

i'm talking generally in the 7th-11th grade type. hardworking? joker who did well? hard worker who didnt mind letting a few B's slip? class comedian?

i have a theory that in order to make it this far, hard work cant be something your just willing to put up with, but rather an embedded part of your personality, so my proposed theory is that everyone on this forum was quite successful as a high school/junior high schooler. the college turn-around is a rare exception.

i'm not saying that high school *****s shouldnt go for their dreams. hell, there are always exceptions, so why not you? but when that kid with the 850 SAT 2.0 high school GPA in idiot classes asks me if he can one day be a doctor, i find myself really thinking...can he turn it around? you can't just motivate them, you really need someone on their ass constantly until hard work and success become a part of who they are.

what do you guys think, what are your experiences?
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damn, i worked harder in high school than i do now. national merit scholar, blah blah blah...wasn't planning on going into medicine, though.

nb: attended an uber-competitive prep school where slackers were obsolete, at least in the top portion of the class.
 
Interesting question. If you make a poll lots more people will respond and you will have the data all nicely analyzed for you :D
 
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I goofed off in high school because I knew I could and still get good grades, and I knew that I wasn't going to have that liberty in college and grad school (didn't know what type of grad school at that point). I showed up for 40 days total my senior year. I partied alot, worked on my art, slept late etc. Obviously my grades were fine because I got a full ride to UG so I don't know what to say about a kid who isn't still pulling the grades, but there's nothing wrong with being a slacker in highschool.
 
psipsina said:
I goofed off in high school because I knew I could and still get good grades, and I knew that I wasn't going to have that liberty in college and grad school (didn't know what type of grad school at that point). I showed up for 40 days total my senior year. I partied alot, worked on my art, slept late etc. Obviously my grades were fine because I got a full ride to UG so I don't know what to say about a kid who isn't still pulling the grades, but there's nothing wrong with being a slacker in highschool.
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i don't know how it is in the south (no offense, though), but in the north there are laws and rules stating that students in high school can only miss 9 days of school before they automatically fail. Not only that, my high school classes and teachers actually taught the students.
 
7th-10th grade I was at a college prep school where I'd have 17 hours of homework a weekend, and hours every night. Honor classes, honor roll, etc... Worked really hard, and forced to do sports.
11th-12th grade -- transferred to a public school, found out I could get the same grades without studying nearly as much, so I didn't. 12th grade, I had 3 academic classes, the rest were various band classes and TAs.

Absolutely no desire to go into medicine at that point. I wanted to do marine bio, then just some sort of bio research -- PhD.

In med school I've gone back to my prep school study habits.
 
I guess I worked hard at the things I cared about and not so much at the things I didn't like (history and finishing term papers). My guess is that this might be the minimum hard-workingness required ... you have to be willing and able to buckle down, but don't necessarily have to be all-around neurotic.
 
I've always been more of a slacker than a hard worker -- this was true in junio high, high school, college, law school, med school .... Working was eye opening, though, because I generally put my coworkers to shame, but lots of working people are lazy as hell.

Anyway, hard work is not an ingrained part of my personality, and I don't think making it into medical school is that huge of an accomplishment.
 
chocolate-e said:
I guess I worked hard at the things I cared about and not so much at the things I didn't like (history and finishing term papers). My guess is that this might be the minimum hard-workingness required ... you have to be willing and able to buckle down, but don't necessarily have to be all-around neurotic.
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good point. by the end of high school, i cared way more about my performance in math and chem (my favorite subjects) than in history, english, or bio (hated writing papers, memorizing, reading volumes of material). i was still somewhat neurotic all-around, though, due to the competitiveness around me.

the only recent point at which my high-school esque work ethic came through was in studying for the mcat. and i think that paid off.
 
Pretty hard-worker always. I'd say since I started school, possibly even first grade, I always wanted to get good grades. I guess I was well-known as a "smart-kid."

High school wasn't too difficult, and I took all the AP classes I could (at the time not too many, now it seems like every subject offers AP). The one thing I don't know that I could do anymore is all the sports. In the Fall in particular I would wake up at 5 to swim, get to school at 730, school ends at 245, football practice from 3-630. I often left home before the sunrise, and got home after dark. College has been a breeze sometimes compared to that.
 
Doctor Bagel said:
Anyway, hard work is not an ingrained part of my personality, and I don't think making it into medical school is that huge of an accomplishment.
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The close to 25,000 people who won't get in this cycle all think it is.
 
naegleria brain said:
oftentimes a relative will bring their kid to me and ask me if they think their kid has a shot at medical school. it got me thinking, what kind of kids were all you guys?

i'm talking generally in the 7th-11th grade type. hardworking? joker who did well? hard worker who didnt mind letting a few B's slip? class comedian?

i have a theory that in order to make it this far, hard work cant be something your just willing to put up with, but rather an embedded part of your personality, so my proposed theory is that everyone on this forum was quite successful as a high school/junior high schooler. the college turn-around is a rare exception.

i'm not saying that high school *****s shouldnt go for their dreams. hell, there are always exceptions, so why not you? but when that kid with the 850 SAT 2.0 high school GPA in idiot classes asks me if he can one day be a doctor, i find myself really thinking...can he turn it around? you can't just motivate them, you really need someone on their ass constantly until hard work and success become a part of who they are.

what do you guys think, what are your experiences?
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I was a big-time screw-up in middle school, but I turned it around for high school.

I don't know if the question is "can he turn it around?", but rather, "will he?"

This kind of change cannot and will not come from the outside. It has to be a personal decision. If a parent comes up to me and asks if their kid has a shot, I'd say it's up to him/her, not us. Mentors can make a positive impact, but the individual is the one who actually has to put in the work.

I think the best answer you can give is, "Yes, it's possible. It'll be hard, but here's what you have to do..." Beyond that, there's nothing you can do.
 
I think almost anyone can get into medical school if they work hard enough...IF. To the OP, I think you pretty much got it right. High school isnt so much like medical school or even college (well, depending on your major...) If you worked hard, you did well. Everyone I know from high school that ended up going to medical school, or any other professional school for that matter, did very well in school, was in all honors/AP classes, ~1300 SAT or better, NHS...you know what kind of student I'm talking about. Even if you had that kid that got a 1600 SAT but never worked worth a damn, well, college will weed them out once they get to organic chem!
 
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I was always the kid who had ABSOLUTELY NO CLUE what she wanted to be when she grew up.

I was always 1st in my class growing up, but I was a pretty hyper kid at the same time (still am, kind of). I loved playing outside and I was in every extracurricular activity known to man.

I was pretty non-talkative among strangers but I don't think I was shy when it comes down to other things, because I was always pretty participative in all activities.

Anyway, I think if you would have asked my parents if they thought I was going to go to medical school they would have told you no, mostly because I never gave any indication of love for any particular career or path.

But I do agree about the "hard work" part. Hard work must be something to which you are used to, so much that you feel it is your responsibility to do so (guilt for watching TV anyone?). Among the "hard work" I would add persistence. This is the kind of road when you'll get discouraged many times, be it because you got a B in physics or because you didn't do very well on your practice MCAT or because o-chem is kicking your butt. The most important thing is that despite all the discouragement, we didn't quit in the middle of the road because we found it too hard or too long of a path.

I think a lot of the pre-meds freshman year of college that end up not making it to medical school is because they quit too early, and not necessarily because they couldn't cut it.
 
inside_edition said:
i don't know how it is in the south (no offense, though), but in the north there are laws and rules stating that students in high school can only miss 9 days of school before they automatically fail. Not only that, my high school classes and teachers actually taught the students.
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I went to high school in Connecticut. I had a doctors note because I was absent alot for medical reasons thruout highschool which made it so the max absence rule didn't apply as long as I was passing the course. Once I figured out that I still got As just reading a bit on my own, I definitely took advantage though (not saying it was right, but its what I did). My teachers taught too, but frankly the classes weren't that interesting and once I realized I could just read the book once and ace a test/essay it was very difficult to motivate myself to sit through those classes. Much like medschool, except I work alot harder while I skip class.
 
9th-11th: had about a 2.0 GPA. Went to summer school for algebra I after sophomore year. 12th: transferred to less demanding school so I could go home early due to my accumulated credits. Quit going after a couple of months and officially dropped-out a while later. Worked blue collar several years until I decided to go to college. Made a 21 on the ACT and got the GED and off I went. Made straight A's in college (and two damn B's) and a 35 on the MCAT. Majored in chemistry with a concentration in chemical physics and graduated in 5 years, including a transfer to the large state school that wouldn't have accepted me when I started. Took another year off after college and am now finishing my first year of med school. Got a little financial incentive to come here too.

Tell the kid to do what HE wants. Tell him not to go to college yet if he doesn't want to. He will end up wherever he wants to. Maybe it's not medicine but maybe it will be. Anything is possible.
 
my point, that I forgot to mention, is that high school is not for everyone. Many people have other interests that keep us from doing well in high school. Some people aren't interested in playing the game that they see HS as. Others of us feel like HS is a pointless exercise in behavior control and wanted to rebel against it. You just never know, the kid may or may not even know why he isn't doing well, I don't think I could've articulated it very weel at the time either.

I don't think your theory holds much water.
 
I hated high school, but I was good at it. I was valedictorian (though my class was small and school was easy). I don't remember ever taking homework home. I always got it done in study hall or class.
I had some social issues in high school and also grew up in a very conservative family. I stuck out and didn't really have a lot of friends or get invited out. I was always very studious and very self-motivated to do well in school and so thats pretty much all high school was for me. It was an easy education not a social thing, much to my own dissapointment. I really tried to fit in and form relationships in high school. I went out for most sports, was in band and choir, etc. It just didn't work for me. Finally I sort of gave up my senior year and actually ended up having more friends my senior year than other years.
I always had a string of boyfriends (from other schools, not mine) and was very good friends with a large group of people from my church, (again I went to church in a different town than my school) so I turned to them for my social needs.
College was pretty easy for me too. I definitely studied more but never found it difficult to be successful in college. (Other than physics and math :eek:). I definitely had more friends in college but was still more studious than social.
Med school isn't exactly easy, but its not terrible either. I feel like I'm constantly studying, and am not honoring my courses, but then again, I think if I had as much time as many of my classmates (i.e. if I didn't have kids) I might perform better.
I don't know if there is any way of telling who can make it in med school vs who can not. We're all so different. Even within my class there is a huge difference in studying styles and motivation levels. Obviously a person has to be able to work hard enough and be successful enough to get in, but I'm pretty sure that some of my classmates struggled all the way into med school and will struggle all the way through, while studying constantly, then there are some of my classmates who are extremely intelligent that can goof off all the time and still pull the grades that will get them into med school.
 
scoot--i agree with you, but i also think that someone has to be quite a bit smarter and more driven than average (and possibly on the more conventional side??) to rebel against the system and later get back into it. i think most people who walk away from the "game," for whatever reason, don't get back into it.

for a kid who is not performing well and still wants to become a doctor...those seem to be contradictory tendencies, and if the kid doesn't manage to step it up by the first year of college, i'd say it's not gonna happen.
 
I achieved in junior high (whatever that means), but slacked in high school. I got decent grades, no real honors until senior year. Even then, what motivated me the most was how others in my class performed. If so-and-so was getting good grades, I wanted them, too. To be quite honest, my high school education was quite boring. I had no real motivation to achieve at the time. It certainly wasn't the material. That $hit was useless! I never read a single book assigned for English/Lit class, and luckily got into a GT program, and never really had to write a term paper, either.

Point is, I find motivation in what is interesting. That's why I chose medicine- it interests me. I just happened to do well enough in high school beacuse I was smart enough, not because I worked.
 
Bertelman said:
Point is, I find motivation in what is interesting. That's why I chose medicine- it interests me. I just happened to do well enough in high school beacuse I was smart enough, not because I worked.
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Same.

I got straight As until freshman year of HS. Somewhere in there I fell in with a bad crowd, realized how much of a dork I was, and became a full-time slacker. I still got all As and Bs in my honor classes but stopped studying. Even so, I got AP credits, went to nationals for Ac Dec & History Day, and was a National Merit finalist. College I spent more time in the lab and partying than studying. I straightened out again in med school though.
 
I was way more willing to work hard in high school than I am now. I took all the AP and Honors classes I could, was in Student Government, ran a bunch of fundraisers and did a lot of volunteering. My days were so packed that I often didn't have time to get more than 5 or 6 hours of sleep. I got almost perfect on the SAT and SAT IIs, and was salutatorian of my class of 500, which was a pretty big feat considering most of my classmates were really neurotic too.

I got my first A- in college, and my world didn't come crashing down like I thought it would. I think that point was the start of my decline to the slacker I now am. :p

Oh, and I had no idea what I wanted to do. My career plans changed at least 20 times during high school and college, and I still didn't know what I wanted to do when I graduated.

(I wish like hell I could get my high school attitude back, though. It would make med school much easier.)
 
the hardest i ever worked was in high school. college and med school (at least the 1st year & a half) were way lighter work wise. Now that I'm in clinics the work load is about on par w. high school.
 
If my old self met my new self, he'd kick my ass.

I kinda had an eclectic group of friends. Some can't wait to get out of residency, several more are waiting a long time to get out of prison. Only joining the Army after HS put me in one group rather than the other...
 
Doctor Bagel said:
Yeah, but 25,000 people get in, too. We're not that special.
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I thought it was 17,000 spots for 42,000 applicants.

If you go through the numbers, starting with the kids who come into college as pre-med and then finishing with those that get accepted into medical school, I'd say the amount that get accepted of those that start on the path is maybe 10%.
 
RokChalkJayhawk said:
I thought it was 17,000 spots for 42,000 applicants.

If you go through the numbers, starting with the kids who come into college as pre-med and then finishing with those that get accepted into medical school, I'd say the amount that get accepted of those that start on the path is maybe 10%.
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No clue -- I'm too much of a slacker to look it up. :) All I know is that about half of all students who apply to allopathic schools get in. Of course, lots of students don't make it to the application stage. I'm still not too impressed with myself for being here. Getting a Ph.D. in physics probably requires a lot more aptitude.
 
Big time slacker. I'll always take the easy B over the tough A.

AFAIK, I'm the only member of my HS graduating class of 230 or so in medicine. I'm from rural Kansas, so it's no surprise. The kids of docs in my class (I can think of 3 off the top of my head) who were pre-med as college freshmen went on to do other things.

My career choice would probably be a surprise to everyone (including my parents who don't know I'm in med school), and I agree with Bagel that getting accepted where I am wasn't that big of a deal. When you are sitting on a 30-33 MCAT, you typically are confined to your state school system; and in my region a 30 is nearly a sure thing unless you get a sudden case of Kluver-Bucy during the interview. With that said, we have waitlist admits who can memorize tedious details with the best of 'em. I see definite evidence that you don't have to know what the words mean to excel on multiple choice exams.

I don't hear much of the "Does my kid have what it takes?" I'm more prone to hear kids say "Oh I'll go the PA route because it seems easy." That's when I clear my voice and reveal myself as a PA school reject. :(
 
Doctor Bagel said:
No clue -- I'm too much of a slacker to look it up. :) All I know is that about half of all students who apply to allopathic schools get in. Of course, lots of students don't make it to the application stage. I'm still not too impressed with myself for being here. Getting a Ph.D. in physics probably requires a lot more aptitude.
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I think it requires more of an interest in physics which most people don't have.
 
Critical Mass said:
rads/rad onc folks might disagree.
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Your logic is flawed. Rads/rad onc folks aren't exactly large in numbers. Again, very few people have a the strong interest in PURE physics that it takes to want to get a PhD in it.
 
High school was a joke for me. My senior year I missed nearly 60 days of a 180 day year. I still graduated in the top 20 students in a class of 700, with about 50 AP credits, and in the 99%tile on the ACT. I only ever did the work that I had to turn in, which took a few hours a week and rarely studied. I really hated high school, everything about it was a joke, the people, most of the teachers, so I didn't go. That was my take on high school, I was never one of those work really hard kids, in fact I used to resent them quite a bit. I'm a lot different than I was then, but high school was a rough few years for me.
 
I spent 7th grade overseas at a British school. Consequently when I returned for 8th grade I knew no one and was definitely not part of the social scene (as it turns out, this was a good thing). I did gain some notoriety for writing a satire for the student newspaper about the women's PE dept. I was just trying to talk about my daily life in a funny way, but apparently they were doing something wrong, and it became this huge drama that ended with me taking First Aid instead of PE. I think they weren't giving us enough time to dress, or something stupid like that. I've always been pretty low-maintenance, so I didn't particularly care. But lots of other girls did, and my little newspaper article opened a whole can of worms about it.

Then I got to high school and joined the drill team, but was still pretty much a geek. Once I learned how to put on makeup and pick clothes that looked good on me, I ended up having a pretty fun time for most of the rest of high school. But despite my rabble-rousing satire in junior high, I wasn't much of a rebel. Instead I just hung around with people who did crazy things, and made my mistakes vicariously.

I still did well in class and was Honor Society, National Merit and all that. It was expected of me. I assumed I would go to college and grad school, but academically I wasn't driven at all. I excelled in high school because it was easy, but there were many people at my school who were smart AND driven, so I wasn't at the top of my class.
 
I think I worked hard in high school, but that was 15 years ago. I do know my work ethic dropped in college, especially after doing a transfer semester at West Point (Naval Acad grad). I still was an engineering major, but that is a completely different skill set than you need your first two years (which I can say having started my second year). I study much more than I did in college, still knowing full well that I am goofing off far too much, hence this post. This is a break from neuroanatomy, which we are learning gross anatomy of, so taking a break from looking at it for the fifth time seems like a good thing to do, until this Friday.

Do they ask for your SAT scores on the application, yes. Do they ask for your high school grades, no. So I would say, your college GPA (especially in sciences) and MCAT are much more important than your SAT scores, which you had to call your mom to make sure what you thought you had was right, cause it's ten years later. However, I'd say the TREND is, that everyone worked harder in high school, and devoted energy in college to courses they cared about. The difference in med school is that you may not care about all your courses, but you care about all your courses, since step 1 looms over us all. Plus if you don't at least get acquainted with it first year, it will revisit you in some shape second year, and then rear it's ugly head on boards.

Then it seems you dump a lot of it to the basement, and remember how to talk to someone so you can dig whatever you need out of the basement. Plus whatever new stuff you need to learn that is coming in the front door. Full house.

So, to answer your question of "can my son/daughter turn it around," yes. But it's up to them, not mom or dad.
 
I was a jock. (You'd never know it to look at me now :laugh: ) I never studied (ever). I made pretty good grades (top 5% of my HS class but it was a small town and the HS was pretty easy). I was nat'l merit, won the local scholarship to college but that stuff wasn't my identity - everyone thought of me as a basketball player (I even got accused of cheating on my SATs because everyone just assumed I was a dumb jock). Even now, people meeting me in any kind of social situation always assume I'm of average intelligence.
 
ranked 36th in my graduating class, not a super SAT, went to a pretty middle-class high school that didn't have the clout to send kids to top privates. Worked hard, but didn't have the attitude to take all (or even most) of the AP classes.

It was amazing during orientation when we did an exercise that says "stand if you were the valedictorian in your high school". Like 1/3 of my class stood.
 
Middle school: It wasn't cool to be smart at my school so I purposely tried to get bad grades. This only lasted one quarter with my parents. I then started getting good grades.

High school: Went to a private school, had to work VERY hard in every subject to get the grades. On top of that I swam in the morning and afternoon every day during the week.

Overall, I have realized that I am extremely internally motivated. For a long time I thought everyone was like me, but I have soon realized this is not the case. I do have to say that everything I study takes me twice as long to study than most people. I will be starting med school in the fall and I am interested on how long it will take me to get all the material. We will see......
 
thanks for the replies guys, i had a feeling this was the general trend. here's my experience:

i have a strong familial component on getting good grades ever since they started giving us report cards (3rd grade?). went to top NJ high school, consistently did well with a lot of effort. i was also an idiot though; teachers hated me because i constantly started political debates in science class, ran my own clubs with my own rules, started businesses in-school to raise money for them, etc.
college was a lot less work. the part of town i lived had the school bus coming in at 615 am every freakin' day, and i couldnt afford a car. so after getting a daily 5-6 hrs of sleep a day, college was awesome; constantly slept at least 9 hours, did some work for few classes, partied a lot.
medical school is like high school again, except i dont pull stunts like in high school and i'd like to think i'm a bit more efficient.
if i wasnt used to hard work in high school, there's no way i would have made it here.
dr. bagel, i agree getting to medical school isn't a huge accomplishment, but i do believe that the overall allopathic acceptance rate is far fewer than 1/2. furthermore, as someone else stated, thats not including all those people who went in, couldnt handle it, and switched majors to something else. so not everyone can do it, as opposed to various other career-related 'accomplishments'.
 
2.4 GPA in High School. I did manage to graduate. I Worked Blue Collar for a while and then went to community college. I then transferred to UF to finish college (I did keep up the blue collar work until I started med school).

There are more of us than you think. I know more than one in my own class.
 
I did buy my first car with a black market candy business in high school, so you could say that I was an overachiever in that respect.
 
Scoot said:
Tell the kid to do what HE wants. Tell him not to go to college yet if he doesn't want to. He will end up wherever he wants to. Maybe it's not medicine but maybe it will be. Anything is possible.
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Exactly! I had a terrible HS GPA, probably 2.0. I didn't care because it was stupid, petty, busy work. I was in the gifted program from elementary on and used that to account for my poor grades (i.e. I thought I was smart enough to not need to turn in assignments or go to class). I spent a good portion of hs sneaking out with friends to play hooky. When I had to take the ACTs, I scored at the very top of my class. EAT IT.

In college, I worked much harder, but not that hard. I was generally able to pull decent grades with minimal effort (by picking math+philosophy as majors, I was able to get by mostly by reasoning). I ended up with around a 3.6.

Medschool has required me to study a lot more than ever before. But still, I don't think I am a very hard worker - at least not in comparison to a lot of people. I do well, but could probably do 10X better if I would quit slacking.

Point: HS is mostly a waste of time. Getting good grades in it means JACK****. I had a lot of premed classes with these guys who were Valevictorian of their classes and I smoked them score wise. If someone wants to be a premed, you should encourage them, not act like the all knowing medstudent and say "you aren't smart enough".
 
baylormed said:
Your logic is flawed. Rads/rad onc folks aren't exactly large in numbers. Again, very few people have a the strong interest in PURE physics that it takes to want to get a PhD in it.
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The majority of domestic grads in grad school I knew didn't really have the strong interest in pure physics (or chemistry or biomedical sciences for that matter) that it takes to want to get a PhD in it either, but they finished their degrees anyway because they felt like they had to.

In the middle of the country, you don't even need an aptitude in physics to get a Ph.D. in it, you just have to be interested. There are so many programs in my neck of the woods that are dominated by non-citizens that all you really need is a 3.0 and desire if you are from the US.

Medical students interested in radiology are large in number because of the lifestyle and salary (and it is a competative specialty), but you have to have some interest in physics to want to do it. You've gotta love eyes a little to want to do ophtho, and urology, well let's not go there.

In any case, I believe that medicine is the perfect career for someone heavily interested in physics but is also person-oriented and wants to make a direct impact on people's lives. There is plenty of physics on the boards for radiologists, and the residency length is considerable for radiology in part because of the necessary knowledge of physics.
 
I was painfully shy, to the point of having no friends for years at a time. I wasn't a loner by choice though... I really wanted friends, but I didn't know how to go about breaking into cliques and talking to people I didn't know. Lesson to y'all: be nice to the quiet kids! They might truly appreciate it, and you might end up with a good new friend!

Anyway, I always loved biology best out of all my classes, but I didn't know what I wanted to do with it. Straight A's through middle school and high school, with 9 APs and a bunch of honors classes. I was always good at tests (but I always felt that SATs and AP tests were more about test-taking skills than an honest evaluation of knowledge). I finally forced myself out of my shell in college, made some friends, but still managed good grades. I finally decided on med school my junior year of college, so I definitely don't think you need to have a "calling" from birth to be a doctor. Explore the possibilities, and do what feels right.
 
Critical Mass said:
In any case, I believe that medicine is the perfect career for someone heavily interested in physics but is also person-oriented and wants to make a direct impact on people's lives. There is plenty of physics on the boards for radiologists, and the residency length is considerable for radiology in part because of the necessary knowledge of physics.
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Interesting. I loved Physics, and kind of wished I'd majored in it (or at least done a double major) - so if I do Radiology I get to study it again? :idea: It'd definitely have to be IR, though. I'm unhappy if I don't get a lot of human contact.
 
Worked my tail off. Won awards in Chemistry. Had an easy time in Biology. Learned a lot. Studied daily. Had fun in EC's (Speech & Debate particularly). I would guess that most would-be physicians were excellent students in high school.
 
surebreC said:
Point: HS is mostly a waste of time. Getting good grades in it means JACK****. I had a lot of premed classes with these guys who were Valevictorian of their classes and I smoked them score wise. If someone wants to be a premed, you should encourage them, not act like the all knowing medstudent and say "you aren't smart enough".
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largely agree. and i never discourage anyone; well, kids anyway. i'm a big fan of keeping their eyes wide open for as long as possible.

but there's a difference between wanting something, and being willing to work for it. these kids may want to do medicine, but may not have the drive. so what is the thing that'll kick em in the ass and get to it.

my theory - if theyve been getting 2.0's consistently, disappointments aren't anything new, and a disappointment in not getting what they want is just part of the cycle. not for everyone, but a very substantial percentage, IMO. how would you break that cycle?

if you were a parent, whose kid wanted to be a doctor, but didnt cut the grades needed, he's in adolescence during that golden time of "personality formation" and you're noticing habits of laziness that continue well into his senior year of high school. what do you do so he turns it around in college and realizes that he really can go for the dream if he changes every thing about himself that he's lived as for the past 6 years?

that's a HUGE change which is why i think its quite rare. how do you make it less rare?
 
Miami_med said:
2.4 GPA in High School. I did manage to graduate. I Worked Blue Collar for a while and then went to community college. I then transferred to UF to finish college (I did keep up the blue collar work until I started med school).

There are more of us than you think. I know more than one in my own class.
Click to expand...

Yes there are more of use around then people might think. I know of 5 people who I have taken college classes with that sucked at high school (very low GPA) and have above 3.0 GPA's in college.

I had a very low GPA in high school. I have since become smart enough to realize why I did so bad in high school. But that is the past and I don't care to take time writing about it since it is the past and not the present.

I'm now in the process of applying to graduate schools and finishing up a college degree (I was not expected to go to college ever, lol, lol, all of my old high school classmates can suck it, lol, lol, lol). Of the top 3 students in my high school class, one is getting a masters degree in secondary education, one only got a B.S. in engineering, and other I can tell does not like the fact that he is becoming a doctor...he is having a really hard time finding something that is interesting to him (his is an M3 right now).

Guess what the most athletic kid in my graduating class is doing (7 years out of high school)? He is an EMT, lol.

I was this little runt who people teased and hated on. In three more years I should have two graduate degrees finished up and making 100+k a year and having my own private pratice, lol.

Some of you need to realize that it is not how much you know that makes you successful. It is your ability to be a good communicator, critical thinking skills, etc.
 
naegleria brain said:
what do you do so he turns it around in college and realizes that he really can go for the dream if he changes every thing about himself that he's lived as for the past 6 years?

that's a HUGE change which is why i think its quite rare.
Click to expand...


It's only a "huge change" if you are driven to excel in high school, which is quite a bit before many of us had any idea what we were excelling for. Working your ass off for the expectations others have set for you, and working your ass off for what you, the adult, know you want, is apples and oranges.

Many people in my school and on this thread were high achievers, but many were not, and you seem to be ignoring the part of your sample that fails to affirm your hypothesis.

My experience; Cs to Fs from 8th grade to 10th, dropped out, GED. 39S MCAT, accepted by my first choice. Another data point.

It stands to reason that people who work hard in school, for whatever reason, are over-represented in doctoral programs of whatever kind. However, I am skeptical of both of your inferences from this: a) That a person's capacity for hard work is strongly corrolated with academic success in high school. There are a lot of things going on in high school. Also b) That the capacity for hard work manifests early and is relatively fixed and unchanging. I'd be more likely to conclude that high achievers in high school and med school admissions corrolate with one another because both are corrolated with well-off, educated, type-A parents. There's your common thread, maybe -- the hard work is effect, not cause.
 
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