How easy should college be?

Pre-Med & Medical School Pre-Med Topics
1

<p>Hey everyone. </p>

<p>I'm a highschool senior who recently got accepted to University of Pennsylvania and I want to be a doctor. I hear that premed is ridiculously difficult for even the smartest people, but that Med school is even harder. So.....say I struggle through premed and get into med school....if I had a hard time with pre-med, will it signal that i can't handle med school (since its supposedly so much harder)? </p>

<p>Basically i'm asking....what should be my average stress level in undergrad? I sincerely don't want to study every hour of every day, i wanna do extracurriculars, have fun, etc. What's the maximum hours of studying that I should be doing before I realize that i'm just not cut out for it? I don't wanna find out that i can't cut it after its too late! </p>

<p>perhaps i'll give you some insight into my study habits now......basically high school is a joke....despite the fact that i'm in the 53rd best school in the country and have a 4.0 gpa, i study ZERO hours per week, do everything at the very last minute possible, and i do everything on about 4 hrs of sleep per night because i'm up talking on the phone or procrastinating on the web. basically my study habits SUCK TREMENDOUSLY.</p>

<p>and i'm not trying to brag because personally i don't think i'm all that smart, there are some certified geniuses at my school haha it scares me actually, seeing what i'm gonna be up against at penn...</p>

<p>anyway, the only class i actually study for is AP Chemistry...we have a chapter test about every other week, so i study the entire chapter and do all the practice problems on a saturday or sunday (takes about all day, 6 or 7 hrs at my local library) and i'm usually good to go from there. and i only started doing that because my grade slipped to a B.</p>

<p>okay so i figure that me coasting thru school with minimal effort will soon come to an end, but i don't wanna have one of those "rude awakenings" when i start college, i want to make sure i go in fully prepared to kill those premed courses with maximum efficiency, aka studying a whole lot, but in a way that i absorb information easily and understand it without having to be all stressed out like everybody says pre-med students are.</p>

<p>so, any tips, info, stories, study hints from successful premeds (if you're out there)....i wanna know exactly what i'm up against, maybe i'll be motivated to change my study habits or something, who knows lol.</p>

2

<p>1) you will have to study more in college. But you probably knew that given you that you do nothing now.</p>

<p>2) There's no "perfect" level. And what stresses you out may not stress someone out who has had to work harder than you currently do (this is my situation vs several of my med school colleagues). </p>

<p>3) You're absolutely right that you should be involved in EC's and have fun. Pre-med is not worth sacrificing the college experience for.</p>

<p>4) The amount of study time is going to vary from class to class. You'll find a lot of things out there about spending 2-3 hours studying per hour of class time, but I find that ridiculous. One semester you may have a composition class that meets 2x a week where you only have 4 papers to turn in the entire semester paired with a stats class that meets 5x a week where you have homework problems every day. Obviously your time investment is going to vary a lot between those two classes. You might barely approach that 3:1 ratio in the comp class right before a paper is due, and will probably surpass it in the stats class every week. </p>

<p>5) My best advice is get involved on campus EARLY - don't even wait a semester. If you have things that are just part of your routine you'll be used to doing them as just a part of life when you get to really busy semesters. Plus it's helpful to have such a longstanding presence in an organization as a junior or senior when you're running for officer positions. Plus leadership positions beget leadership positions - I was voted to an executive position in one organization less about a month after joining as a first semester frosh - and on every subsequent application I put in for various organizations I got to list that position which I know helped me.</p>

3

<p>First of all, BDM's advice above is very good.</p>

<p>I was in pretty much the same situation you are describing when I entered undergrad (I'm a freshman right now). I also found high school to be a "joke", and thought that since I wasn't doing any studying my study habits would likely be poor and therefore I was pretty scared about getting destroyed my first quarter. However what I found was that (at least in my case) my lack of studying in high school was not a because I couldn't study, but because I didn't need to or want to. When I got to college, I was ready to be busy with work, and so I studied like crazy. I actually overcompensated and ended up with A+'s.</p>

<p>Ask yourself: does your 4.0GPA indicate that you are actually a very efficient learner? Maybe the fact that you don't study for long hours as a high schooler means you are a better studier than your peers, and come time for college you will just need to put in a little extra time for the same results. If this is the case, the deciding factor will be whether or not you want to put in that extra time and effort to keep getting A's. I think it's really up to you. Good luck!</p>

4

<p>Yeah, some of us really struggled in high school -- a few hours a night and not in the top half of my class -- and then found college easier...</p>

5

<p>i dont mean to sound like an elitist a-hole but it really depends on the school you go to as well...more competitive schools are significantly harder across the board and you might need to put in more work to get a good grade since you're competing with some of the best and brightest. It also depends on your major, for me the premed classes were among the easiest of my classes (i majored in biomed engineering) and honestly I feel that if you don't find the classes relatively straight forward and pull at least a B+ in most you should reconsider....I know it might sound a bit stringent and this by no means is like a rule of thumb or anything it's just the way I see it. HS was a "joke" for me too and college was quite the wake up call but i think after some hard work you'll find your groove and become a procrastinator again in no time (i say as i type on CC when I should be finishing cramming for this 9am exam)</p>

6

<p>
[quote]
I hear that premed is ridiculously difficult for even the smartest people, but that Med school is even harder.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Undergrad was harder than med school (so far), for several reasons.</p>

<p>1) Few(er) worries: I don't deal well with uncertainty. The uncertainty of "Am I good enough? Will I make it in? What will I do if I don't make it in the first time? What about the second time?" was a killer for me. Now that I'm in medical school, I'm not really worried about the future. </p>

<p>2) Less hard: My hardest classes in undergrad were Biophysical Chemistry and my literature/culture/analysis classes. There hasn't been anything as hard to understand as how an NMR machine works or the writings of Heidegger. There's a lot to memorize, but with enough repetition (and there sure is a lot of it, what with lecture, lab, clinical correlates, and reinforcement from other classes) it all makes sense.</p>

<p>3) No competition: This varies from med school to med school, but my school is P/F the first two years. It's really P/F, which means that the only person who knows what your final numerical grade for a class is the class professor. Once I got over that gasping feeling of desperation that I got in undergrad when I was up against a bad curve, things were better. Studying became more about learning things well for the future rather than cramming for tomorrow and forgetting the day after that.</p>

<p>
[quote]
the maximum hours of studying that I should be doing before I realize that i'm just not cut out for it? I don't wanna find out that i can't cut it after its too late!

[/quote]
</p>

<p>It is NOT about how many hours you study. What is important is how WELL you study with the time that you have. Of course, no one thinks you can study for an Orgo final in 30 minutes, but the point is that you have to study smart. Too many students waste time doing things that simply don't benefit them for exams, and then when they get burned by the test, they wonder what went wrong.</p>

<p>
[quote]
i want to make sure i go in fully prepared to kill those premed courses with maximum efficiency, aka studying a whole lot, but in a way that i absorb information easily and understand it without having to be all stressed out like everybody says pre-med students are.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>That's not really possible because what works for one class may not work for another. Doing old exam questions might be sufficient to do well in one class, whereas another class might test you straight out of the lecture notes. Be flexible, and you should be okay.</p>

<p>
[quote]
basically my study habits SUCK TREMENDOUSLY.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>Start unsucking them. I went to one of the best public high schools in my home state, and first semester of undergrad was a bit of a shock.</p>

7

<p>The raw quantity of information you need to learn in medical school is vastly overwhelming compared to, say, organic chemistry. The psychological trauma of studying might be less in medical school than undergrad was for SC, but I don't think there's any doubt that the raw volume of material and the time spent to learn it will vastly trump anything that any undergrad ever goes through.</p>

<p>(It's not as hard as high school was for me, but it's pretty close.)</p>

8

<p>Thank you all for your great advice!</p>

<p>Now, don't get me wrong, I by no means intend to skate through college, but I want to minimize my study time so that I can devote as much time as possible to research/volunteer/extracurricular activities (and maybe get some partying in there every once in a while too hahaha). Taking only 12-15 hours sounds like a good plan.</p>

<p>I have no clue what the hell I want to major in. Another thing that factors into what I major in is the fact that Penn groups people together in dorms based on their major. If I major in something like biology or chemistry and am housed with a bunch of other premeds, what will life be like as opposed to me being the only premed living around other English majors? Are humanities majors easier than science majors? I'm the type of guy who can bull**** an epic paper hours before its due, btw....but this is highschool hahaha, i might not be able to get away with it in college.</p>

<p>And biology.....well it was so ridiculously easy the first time around that i didn't even bother to take the AP (had to choose either ap bio or ap chem) because all it was was reading the chapter and remembering what happened.....i might as well have been reading a novel but with a bunch of scientific vocab words lol. Bio tests were not too much more than reading comprehension tests. What's college bio like?</p>

<p>Oh, and another thing: I take AP Chemistry now, and I'm pretty confident that I am going to get a 5 on the AP test....now, if I do get a 5, then will I automatically get college credit for it or do I have the option to choose whether to apply that credit? I ask this because I hear that med schools do not take AP credit as a replacement for the prerequisites, so If I were to take the Chem AP test, then how would I fill the prerequisite in college? Take a higher level chemistry class? And if that is the case, will that be desirable? Or should I just not even take the chem AP test at all and re-take general chemistry (basically guaranteeing me an A)? I mean, I want to take the AP test because i feel like i have to prove that i can score well on college level stuff but i just don't want it to actually count for anything.</p>

9

<p>--Do not take less than a normal courseload
--What happens if you change majors? Can they boot you out? Can you declare an English major, not take any courses towards it and take a ton of bio courses, and then two years later declare a bio major, for example?
--Humanities majors are usually easier than science majors, but this does not affect medical school admission rates; either there's compensation going on or there are other factors that equalize them
--Penn is unlikely to force you to use your AP credits
--If they do, you can replace with biochem for most schools, or p-chem if you want to be really stringent about it (I would just do biochem)
--Biochem is probably good to take anyway
--AP stepdowns do NOT guarantee A's
--Wanting to prove something is not sufficient reason to take an AP exam</p>

10

<p>
[quote]
I mean, I want to take the AP test because i feel like i have to prove that i can score well on college level stuff but i just don't want it to actually count for anything.

[/quote]
</p>

<p>I know people(who pretty much coasted trough HS) that got 5s on the AP physics C test and still got Cs and Bs in a introductory mechanics class for engineers. I know this guy that got an 5 on the calc BC test and ended up with a B in multivariable calculus class and a C in differential equations. Also, I tutored someone that got a 4 on the calc AB test. She dropped the class in the first week because she noted that it went too fast(this is basic integration we're talking about). Surprisingly, all this took place at a community college. So think of how courses at penn would be like. Basically I'm saying that if one can't get at least a 5, he/she will have a very low chance of being successful in similar courses in college. However, getting a 5 guarantees nothing.</p>