<p>I am a junior and I had wanted to be a doctor since I was young, however I am starting to dislike school and studying. I have been doing pretty well i am in the top 4.7% of my class but I do not like school. I really want to enjoy college is premed hard? I mean I most certainly don't want to spend the next four years of my life studying and thinking about grades.</p>
<p>u need a 2400 SAT</p>
<p>Ignore idiot poster above.</p>
<p>Yes, premed is a hard road to take. However, you shouldn't really be worrying about that yet. By the time you start college, you may have very different feelings.</p>
<p>
[quote]
I mean I most certainly don't want to spend the next four years of my life studying and thinking about grades.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Pre-med is a good four years of "studying and thinking about grades," and to a certain extent, so is medical school. If that's how you truly feel, forget about going to medical school - it doesn't sound like it's for you.</p>
<p>It's not hard as much as it requires a solid work ethic. You don't have to be a genius to become a doctor (not that being a genius won't help in pre-med classes) but you gotta be able to put forth the effort. Give it a shot. If the idea of becoming a doc isn't enough to motivate you to work hard in school, then you might want to find something else that will provide you with motivation.</p>
<p>I'm also a high school student, so I don't have any personal experience, but it seems to me that premed isn't really the issue. If you want to be a doctor, you have 4 years of premed, 4 years of med school, 4 years of residency, and possibly another 4 of fellowship. That's 12-16 years of studying.</p>
<p>Generally speaking, residency is more like 3-7 or 3-8 years, and fellowships are 1-2 years.</p>
<p>shades is right, residencies vary from a 3 yr family practice to an avg of 4 yrs for most, and few go to 8, maybe something like neurosurgery.</p>
<p>Only neurosurg followed by a fellowship actually goes to 8.</p>
<p>Internal Medicine, ER, FP and Pediatrics are all three years in length. Major fellowships (cards, pulm, endocrine, GI, rheum, infectious disease etc) coming out of Medicine and Peds are all 3 years. Only when you get into very specialized fields - ie interventional cards or electrophys cards, which are essentially post-fellowship fellowships, do you get to 7 from these primary care residencies (as USNWR tabulates it, even if you end up in cardiology, you went to a primary care residency). </p>
<p>As for the original question - what makes pre-med tough isn't necessarily the classes but the competition. Engineering coursework certainly is more difficult for most people but there's less pressure - getting a 3.0 isn't such a big deal. Being pre-med is stressful because there is a distinct possibility (greater than 50%) that you could complete all the requirements, take the MCAT, apply and still not get in. </p>
<p>Being pre-med doesn't preclude you from having a social life. If it does, you're doing it wrong. Even being in med school, which is awful, doesn't stop that (as my friends and I can showcase). Will you be able to go out Thursday, Friday and Saturday night every single week? Probably not, but you should be able to be able to go out 3x a week pretty frequently (heaven knows I did) if you work hard during the week. Of course your idea of a social life might be less than that, and so it might be even easier.</p>
<p>Finally, remember, kiddos, you get paid in residency - there's "readings" but there's really not as much "studying" - even preparing for USMLE Step 3 and Board Certifying exams is referred to as "board prep". You learn a lot more by doing and by talking with supervising residents and attendings about your patients than you do by reading text books. Even third and fourth years are geared much more in this direction. (I'm on my Medicine rotation at the moment - the most academically heavy 3rd year clerkship at most schools and I barely read an hour a day - compare that to multiple 8-10 hour days I'd study during first and second year).</p>
<p>Surgical residencies (5 years), when at major academic centers, generally have research built into them, adding two years to push them to 7. In that case, a fellowship of any kind (trauma, cardiothoracic, transplant, pediatric, others) will push you to eight or even sometimes nine.</p>
<p>The ER residency at the hospital here is now 4 years - they've added a research year. I assume this kind of thing is happening with other traditionally 3-year residencies, as well.</p>
<p>EM residencies are available in both 3 and 4 year varieties.</p>
<p>NCG: At any given hospital, I think it's one or the other.</p>
<p>While there are some programs moving towards two additional years dedicated to research, and several that require only 1 year, it should be noted that according to FREIDA - the AMA's registry of residency and fellowship programs - only 29 residencies out of about 250 general surgery residency programs in the entire country require 6 or 7 years.</p>
<p>For EM - it's 22/143 that require more than 3 years, LSU is 5...
For IM 0/384 that require any extra time
For Ortho 12/152 requiring extra time.</p>
<p>Point is, you can avoid the year of research pretty easily if you want to.</p>
<p>yes, it's hard...but it's this hard road that helps you decide if that's what you really want to do.</p>
<p>good luck to you though!</p>
<p>Most doctors weren't the best and brightest of their high school class. Yes, you need good grades but you also need social skills that many people with a perfect gpa and SAT score lack.</p>
<p>Not a logical post. Maybe what you meant to say was:</p>
<p>Most of the best and brightest of a high school class wouldn't be suited for medicine. This is true.</p>
<p>Why would they not be suited for medicine?</p>
<p>[ul]</p>
<p>[<em>] Don't like blood
[</em>] Don't like talking with people all day, every day
[<em>] Aren't great at science
[</em>] Don't have the motivation to stay in school for 4 more years after college, then follow that up with 3-7 years of residency (which a lot of HS students think is still school for some reason)
[<em>] Prefer Law or engineering or teaching or any other career field
[</em>] Don't like the possibility that they'll do all that work as a pre-med and might not get in.
[<em>] Don't want to help people
[</em>] Want to make more money
[li] Want to have more time to spend with their friends and family</p>[/li]
<p>[/ul]</p>
<p>This is just a small sample, but there are definitely more reasons out there.</p>