Work load in top 10 undergrad vs any medical school?
Started by hugh2012
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Huge difference. UG is probably as ubiquitous as med school, in terms of potential work load and depending on major. The busiest majors I know are engineering kids, and they still play video games most of the day. Med students I talk to go to class in the mornings and study in the evenings, often well into the night.
😆🤣Please don't be serious OP. Undergrad anywhere is a joke compared to med school.
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laughable comparison
Please don't be serious OP. Undergrad anywhere is a joke compared to med school.
I have a friend who went to a top 10 undergrad and says med is easier.
For me personally med school is alot more work.
We've got a few top 10ers at my school, all of them have said med school is the most difficult thing they've experienced in their lives.
Top 10 undergrad....that's way too general. It depends what you do at that top 10 institution. And I disagree that the beginning of med school is difficult for everyone simply because it's med school. Some of my M1 friends at my same undergrad institution (also a top ten med school), actually have more time in M1 than they did in undergrad and aren't finding the transition difficult. That's the minority of course, but the difficulty varies for everyone.
Lol, did DV hack into your account? The emoticons were appropriate though.
Please don't be serious OP. Undergrad anywhere is a joke compared to med school.
I think in most cases med school is harder, but it may be less challenging for the Princeton grad who double majored in engineering and chemistry.
None of the material is all that challenging. It's just the volume, volume, volume. That's why it takes so much work.Lol, did DV hack into your account? The emoticons were appropriate though.
I think in most cases med school is harder, but it may be less challenging for the Princeton grad who double majored in engineering and chemistry.
Pretty much, although some of it is challenging...like being colorblind and unable to see whatever the hell the pathologist is pointing out during lecture
. Basically, take the amount of material taught in an upper level undergrad science class and cover everything in 3-5 days. Do that for three weeks, then take an exam. Repeat. That's med school. Our dean says we're expected to study roughly 80 hours per week.
This depends how hard you're working yourself in undergrad. If you're one of the kids pulling 4.0 full credit load STEM major, part time job, research, volunteering, and clubs or athletics, etc and already doing 60 hrs/week then you will have a very different relative judgement than someone with half that much on their plate.
Undergrad is far from homogenous, and something as simplistic as the # US News gives an institution is not a predictor of workload or difficulty.
I know mimelim has said in the past he knows a number of people who have thought med school was easier than UG for them just for some perspective. This will vary tremendously from person to person is the bottom line but I myself know a number of people who would also say things differently than the general SDN consensus of how nothing in UG can come anywhere close to med school.
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Lol
Another "top 10 undergrad thread"
Gets me every. Single. Time.
Another "top 10 undergrad thread"
Gets me every. Single. Time.
I like these posts too.
Sure, it's easy to pass medical school and nab a primary care slot.
Is she saying this as a surgeon or derm resident? Nah.
I like these posts where people exaggerate how hard they work so that they sound cool on SDN.
What you study in undergrad matters. As an engineering major, I remember having to stay up some nights to solve just 1-2 homework problems. Whereas in med school, I am working to solve what seems like thousands of simple problems, i.e. memorization. I find med school has been less stressful though in terms of studying because of P/F and online exams (you take it when you feel ready) at my school. Whereas in undergrad, grades and exam deadlines added so much stress and pressure. But, the material volume of med school pretty much balances the stress factor I had in undergrad.
I personally find med school less stressful (so far), but harder
It's like people at these top 10 undergrads think other people actually care about their schools when in reality they're the ones bringing it up all the time.
It's easy to look back and forget what it was like. I look back and think oh anatomy wasn't so bad. Then I remember that I almost quit medical school over it because I felt like I couldn't keep up.
I think it was just kinda her personality. She was totally unflappable.
Who the hell asks all these meaningless questions each week? Is it the same person?
Hard is subjective. Is practicing your musical instrument for 16 hours a day hard? If you don't like/ are not good at memorizing, then why are you in med school?
To me, I would find working outside with a shovel a lot harder than sitting at my desk and studying something I find very interesting. It's good that our society values the later kind of work more.
To me, I would find working outside with a shovel a lot harder than sitting at my desk and studying something I find very interesting. It's good that our society values the later kind of work more.
Pls let's not do the manual labor v studying thing ever again. EVER. Please.
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Yeah pretty much but we can go simpler and say someone who has to work their rear ends off to pull a 3.9+ in an engineering/very hard science major in a severely grade-deflating university would find medical school to be a lot easier. Adding commitments like research and jobs seals the deal
Doesn't matter. Work load will be higher in medical school. Material difficulty will likely be substantially less than many difficult majors, even at non-top schools.
I know a couple people who've told me they actually have MORE free time in med school, but these are people who were putting up 4.0s at some serious schools (northwestern, duke) while doing research, ecs, etc.
Probably depends a lot on if you're at a top program where everything is unranked pass fail or if you're at a program where you're ranked against your peers and actually need to prove yourself.
Probably depends a lot on if you're at a top program where everything is unranked pass fail or if you're at a program where you're ranked against your peers and actually need to prove yourself.
Blanket statement though. You cannot seriously believe those triple major, internship kids at Stanford/Northwestern (quarter system) aren't taking on heavier workloads than a med student. Or the double major NCAA athlete.
Any single-major, non-athlete will find medical school to be more work. That's the vast majority of students.
It's the commitments outside of school that I've found to be the key that have caused people I talked to to say med school was easier than college say such a thing, not being a quadruple major at UChicago or something. Working 30+ hours a week, being an athlete, spending enormous time on EC's, spending 30-40 hours in a lab a week, these are type things that make people say "Med school was actually easier for me when I could dedicate 8 hours a day to studying as opposed to 10-15 a week". Note individually, most people aren't athletes or don't spend 40 hours a week on ECs. But these individuals as a whole who "working 40 hours a week while in school" or "spending 35 hours a week in lab" or were athletes add up.
ORLY? YOU WOULD? I doubt you've done hard labor a single day of your life. Just look at circulus vitios, dude never stopped talking about how hard his job was and how easy medical school would be in comparison. Working 36 hour days on a ship in the hot sun or whatever it was he did. Went on about it in every other post. Didn't even last a single semester in medical school before he dropped out.
Outside commitments are obviously a no brainer but the actual academic schedule taken at a rigorous university is a key difference. It explains why engineers from killer universities like MIT and UChicago find medical school to be much easier even without loading themselves on ECs
@Mad Jack is right. The work load in medical school is more for those who didn't do much outside of school as an undergrad.
What, is that anecdote supposed to prove that med school is objectively harder than manual labor or something? They're two completely different kinds of "hard" work. I think allantois's main point was that what you find most difficult is subjective and dependent on how much you enjoy doing the work.
I agree--no doubt med school is much more challenging in terms of amount of content, but I think it will be nice not to have so many ECs or work in addition to the academics
I went to a top 15 non-Ivy League school and majored in economics. It felt like pre-school compared to medical school.
Medical school material itself isn't hard at all, save a few physiology concepts. It's the insane volume and minutiae that you're expected to memorize. That's what makes it so difficult.
Also the people who say medical school was a breeze on here are likely the minority, and are not representative of the general student population, which isn't on SDN.
Medical school material itself isn't hard at all, save a few physiology concepts. It's the insane volume and minutiae that you're expected to memorize. That's what makes it so difficult.
Also the people who say medical school was a breeze on here are likely the minority, and are not representative of the general student population, which isn't on SDN.
The major matters much more than whether it's a top 10 vs top 50
It's nice to not have these hoops to jump through, but unfortunately, many find that they don't have time to actually do things they are genuinely passionate about, like spending time with family and friends. Plus it seems like medical students still end up getting volunteer hours, but those are I'm guessing after second year. But these hoops are nowhere near as important as they are as a pre-med.
I think there's probably something to be said for each person's skill set also, rather than strictly comparing volume of work/responsibility.
We've all seen the person who thrives when they have to study hard/play hard/research hard/EC hard, but they'd go borderline postal if you required them to sit at a desk, study one thing, and have the rest of their life revolve around that commitment. Conversely, another person would consider it a dream to focus all their attention on one obligation, rather than being stressed about five.
We've all seen the person who thrives when they have to study hard/play hard/research hard/EC hard, but they'd go borderline postal if you required them to sit at a desk, study one thing, and have the rest of their life revolve around that commitment. Conversely, another person would consider it a dream to focus all their attention on one obligation, rather than being stressed about five.
Agree that it's much more major and person specific than the school. I was a music major at a school I don't even think is ranked and I found med school to be easier. Much easier. I probably studied less than I practiced, though not by much. Sure there's a large volume of info to learn in med school, but no individual concept I couldn't explain to a seventh grader. It's just that there are about 50,000 of those concepts... Add to that all multiple choice tests where every answer is literally right in front of you and it really wasn't all that bad.
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I went to a top 20 undergrad and I assure you, there is a huge difference. Contact hours about 3 times as much, then studying probably 4 to 5 times as much or so. Maybe more, I can't remember how much I was studying in undergrad as I was also working full time and had a family.
I also attended graduate school. It is probably still at least twice to three times the workload of my MS degree.
At my med school, I think it's like 30 credits for the first year, all graduate level.
My school requires M1s to get a certain amount of volunteer hours as well as M2s.
These statements sum up how I feel.
I stretched myself very thin in UG with work, EC's, research, etc. so it was very stressful finding extra time to study. The volume of actual class material in medical school is about 5x more than what I experienced in UG, but I don't have many other commitments beyond studying.
So I am spending much more time studying in medical school, but I also have more free time. I actually prefer it this way.
EDIT: I'm talking about the pre-clinical years, of course.
Integrated vascular surgery here... I found medical school to be easier than undergrad.
As others have said, this is a little silly of a question. There is nothing particularly conceptually difficult about medical school.
Pre-clinical is simply an extension of pre-med. If you have good study habits, and you keep on top of the material, you should not have trouble with classes. Given that pre-clinical grades are largely irrelevant for residency admissions (for 90%+ of residencies at least), most stress in these years is derived by the student, rather than the curriculum.
Clinical years is a different story. There are a lot of people that find them "harder", because things aren't as simple as, "learn this, regurgitate, if you did it right, you get an A." You have to learn the expectations. You have to learn to be a part of a team. You have to be proactive, rather than passive. Most people that have held jobs in the past or adapt to these types of circumstances shine, because frankly, that is how the real world really works.
*shrug* everyone is different.
I went to a top 20 and carried 20+ hrs every semester with a dual major physics/chemistry.
Med School is a lot more demanding and challenging. No individual thing is beyond a reasonably intelegent persons ability. But the pace, it's like going through hell week every week.
Med School is a lot more demanding and challenging. No individual thing is beyond a reasonably intelegent persons ability. But the pace, it's like going through hell week every week.
