hey, wanted to see if there are any pre-meds who ride on here that would be willing to chat/offer advice. I’m entering school this year and my college doesn’t have an equestrian team, but horses have been a huge part of my life since age 5 and i’m not sure i’m ready or willing to give that up for school. Is it possible to ride, work, and do well in school or do i need to accept the dream-crushing reality? Thanks for any and all help !
Since pre-meds have been able to play D-1 variety sports and still make it into med school, I’m sure you ought to be able to budget your time so you have time to ride. (Now whether you’ll have access to horses in college is a whole other topic.) Part of being a successful pre-med is developing excellent time-management skills. You can be a successful pre-med without spending your Friday nights languishing in the library. In fact, if you are spending all your time studying, you’re doing something wrong.
Riding during med school is a whole other level of complexity because not only are academic burdens higher, you’ll also be working long hours and odd shifts during your clinical training. (Odd shifts includes overnights, weekends and whole weeks where you’ll be reporting to work at 4am.)
University of Minnesota - Morris is a small liberal arts college in rural Minnesota and has a horse barn and saddle club on campus. Students can bring their horse to college!
So does NMSU (has varsity equestian/rodeo and a horse club w/ stables on campus).
But since the OP has already registered for fall college classes, I’m assuming they’re not looking for college suggestions and more asking about time availability/time management.
Actually, riding is a great way to get away from the stress of school, both literally and figuratively. So there’s absolutely no reason you can’t be a pre-med and ride; in fact, since you enjoy it so much, it’s clearly a great idea to continue to do so in college.
Thanks for all your help. And yeah I already picked a school. Tried to find one that offered the type of riding I do (eventing teams are not very common unfortunately), but in the end it didn’t shake out. But I’ll definitely reach out to some barns in the area and hopefully it’ll work out. Thanks again, I really do appreciate all the help and advice 
I met a very accomplished woman from Colorado School of Mines (some kind of engineering/pre-med major) and she was on the riding team. In fact, since they have a team and most of the students at the school are STEM majors, I have to assume that they all somehow make time for it and still do their college work.
My daughter found the structure of sports helped her in school.
My daughter is a biochemistry/molecular biology major, in a sorority and on the equestrian team (in a leadership position in fact). She does just fine… you just have to be smart with your time management and other choices. She did have to pass up 1 weekend riding event in order to study (well didn’t “have” to, but chose to) because she wanted to make sure she got an A, but in general she is able to fit everything in and maintain a high GPA and has plenty of time to fit in whatever she wants to do.