<p>Is it possible to graduate Med School in 3 years? If so , how? Summer classes or just lots of hours a semester. thx</p>
<p>No, it is not possible. Outside of the summer between your M1 and M2 years, you're not going to have a free summer anyway. You already take "lots of hours" in med school. You have minimal control over your schedule outside of choosing electives. Everyone in the class takes the same courses at the same time.</p>
<p>At my school, through the first two years, we had absolutely zero choice about when, where, and what we learned. I mean, nothing. Your only choice was whether you went to class or not, and even then there was plenty of things with required attendance. </p>
<p>In third year, my school requires clerkships in Family medicine, pediatrics, surgery, internal medicine, psychiatry, and OB/GYN. We got to state our preferred order, but only could rank one of four possibilities based on when you wanted to take Internal Medicine which is our only 12 week clerkship (4 options because our semesters are set up to be FP/Peds/Surg in one and IM/OB/GYN/Psych in the other). However preffing an option #1 was no assurance that you would get it, and many people (including myself) had to take rotations in an order different than the one they wanted. My ex-girlfriend goes to another medical school where all their clerkships are the same length, so they had a little bit more freedom in their order, but they have less chance to do selectives during third year. </p>
<p>For Family, b/c ours is a rural rotation, we were given the opportunity to name our top three locations. One of my roommates didn't get to go to any of the three she wanted. (I chose my site because I knew the hospital had a nice gym)</p>
<p>For Peds, we were given the option of doing a university track or a community (again, mainly rural sites) track. On the University track we were able to pref our top three choices for a one week stint on a sub-specialty service. (I ended up with GI, though my #1 choice had been NICU)</p>
<p>For Surgery, we were again given the chance to preference two surgical sub-specialties (I chose and got ENT and Pediatric Orthopedics).</p>
<p>For Medicine, we are given the option of being at the University hospital or the VA hospital, again only a chance to preference. I preffed and received the VA. We also got to pref a 3 week sub-specialty/selective. My first choice (which I got) was also at the VA doing admitting/transfer receiving (good for learning initial management according to my friends), but I could have done a subspecialty (neuro, pulm, rheum or community clinic). My ex, her school told her that she would be doing a month of cardiology with no input from her.</p>
<p>For psych, during our inpatient portion, we get the option of being on the crisis team (doing in-patient psych) or the psych consult team (dealing with psych issues in patients who are in the hospital for other reasons). The other 4 weeks are dictated to us.</p>
<p>For OB/GYN, there are no options, they place everyone into whatever.</p>
<p>In 4th year, you get to select what you do and the order you do it, even doing rotations at other institutions, but there are a minimum number of rotations that must be completed. For my school, you must do 9 rotations in 10 months - 1 must be a basic science rotation, and you get one month for vacation. But every clerkship is 4 weeks long, and there is no way to double up on them.</p>
<p>You could become a fictional character on ABC's Television Show Lost, where it is apparently possible to do so at Columbia.</p>
<p>Otherwise, no.</p>
<p>You could be like Paul Farmer. That guy was crazy (in a good way - sort of).</p>