<p>Title says it all. List any and all helpful pre-med websites that you have.</p>
<p>SDN - make sure you search and read before posting a question on there.</p>
<p>I’d be very careful with SDN. The information there is very good – better than CC, from what I’ve seen – but the vitriol and neuroticism is likely to do much more harm than the good advice you’ll see there. It’s a vicious, ugly place.</p>
<p>Of course, some of the pre-law forums make SDN look like angels sitting on raindrops.</p>
<p>Yeah, after a while you learn to filter which threads you will read. Any URM thread goes downhill fast.</p>
<p>
Ugliest place on the web.</p>
<p>heed this advice: STAY AWAY from SDN until you u start actually applying to med school</p>
<p>if you spend too much time there you will feel like you should be studying 24/7 in lieu of having any fun and you’ll think that to get into med school you have to have a 3.9 GPA with a 36+ MCAT. A lot of the advice on there consists of “just get straight A’s” and “just murder the MCAT” as if people wouldn’t shoot for these things if some stranger on the internet didn’t tell them to. </p>
<p>this thread for instance literally made me sad: [Did</a> anybody NOT party their Freshmen Year? - Student Doctor Network Forums](<a href=“Did anybody NOT party their Freshmen Year? | Student Doctor Network”>Did anybody NOT party their Freshmen Year? | Student Doctor Network) as did this one: [how</a> many hours should i except to study during undergrad? - Student Doctor Network Forums](<a href=“how many hours should i except to study during undergrad? | Student Doctor Network”>how many hours should i except to study during undergrad? | Student Doctor Network)</p>
<p>on the other hand the thread about entering your Work/Activities in AMCAS is excellent, the secondary threads are really helpful sometimes, the interview feedback is essential …so there are alot of things that are great but the site is extremely detrimental if you aren’t in the midst of applying to med school</p>
<p>I’m in medical school, and SDN still gives me nightmares.</p>
<p>100% agreed with ginnyvere. I hate SDN.</p>
<p>It’s an excellent resource to have for applying and answering certain questions, but yes, you have to be careful not to let it feed your neurosis.</p>
<p>SDN is like the obnoxious kid in your biochem class who asks questions just to show off how much he knows about xypathway, and loudly chats with his friend about how much higher his exam grade was than the average, and talks about how he’s TOTALLY getting published this year, and how ZOMG I hope that one W on my transcript doesn’t hurt my application but whateves I’m sure I’ll score over 35 on the MCAT. And you just want to punch him and tell him to chill out and have a beer or something.</p>
<p>I once learned from some article in which it is said if a person is in an overly worried/intense/neurotic mode for a long time, he or she can not learn very well (like losing 30 percents of his/her learning capacity.)</p>
<p>My college-age child once said that in addition to his friends he met in the premed classes, he always tries to make some friends who are not premed/prelaw/i-banker-to-be, that is, those who do not care so much about their grades. He said this will generally keep him more sane and happier. I wonder whether he has some wisdom here.
(e.g. his roommate is not a premed; he is big on humanity and plans to go to a graduate school; his parents tried but failed to convince him to apply to the law school in the future. My child said he rarely meets a person who is so intellectually smart, knows so many words and is such a good reader. He probably will “own” LSAT if he is willing to take that test.)</p>
<p>Admissionsboard.com is helpful.</p>
<p>Guys, it’s definitely not that bad. While there are plenty of neurotic, stereotypical premeds on that site, there are plenty of chill people too. It is a great resource for learning anything whatsoever about pre-medical and medical education. Moreover, by browsing the allopathic threads, it’s a great way to see what your getting yourself into, and what the daily life of a med student is actually like.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>i disagree… i would argue that a typical med student wouldn’t be browsing SDN while in med school. it would be even more atypical to regularly post on the site. so the people you see on there are in no way representative of the general population of med students</p>
<p>I don’t think anyone is arguing that it’s not a good resource. It is, definitely. But some of those people just live on those boards. It can’t be healthy to think about pre-med-dom THAT much. </p>
<p>Browsing threads now and then to get advice can help you figure out how to best go about your undergrad career. But obsessively reading the threads all day long is not going to help you get into medical school. Going out and actually doing stuff will. I just find it a bit overly neurotic.</p>
<p>
Would that also be the case for med students on CC? (BDM, NCG, shades, BRM)
What do typical med students regularly do instead?</p>
<p>I didn’t go on SDN before I started the application process. I was on SDN a lot during apps. I haven’t been on SDN since I started med school.</p>
<p>So, what do med students do? I think you’ll find a spectrum from people who study all day to people who go out every week. I’m probably somewhere in between. </p>
<ol>
<li><p>My biggest time commitment outside of school is my girlfriend. She sees me twice a week (typically Friday and one of the weekend days) so two days out of the week I do almost no studying. Is it tough? Sure. But, I just have to make sure to study extra hard the other days.</p></li>
<li><p>The next biggest thing are my extracurriculars. I mentor two kids, volunteer at free clinics, am on the AMSA board at my school, president of the radiology interest group, and fulfill my obligations for the Schweitzer Fellowship. Fall and spring I play intramural ultimate frisbee.</p></li>
<li><p>I hang out with my classmates. Admittedly, I don’t spend as much time with the rest of the class as I should. But, when there’s time, we’ll have a party or go out to a bar or, as was the case yesterday, go to a baseball game. </p></li>
</ol>
<p>Unless you are a robot (and we have a few of those in our class), you probably won’t be able to study all day and all night. So, it’s good to find other things to amuse yourself with.</p>
<p>NCG: You seem to have quite a lot of commitments.</p>
<p>
Are you doing that as part of a formal mentorship program in your med school or community, or as just informal volunteering?</p>
<p>
What do you exactly do? </p>
<p>
Is being a president of a club at med school as time-consuming as it is in undergrad? How big is your responsibility? How many hours weekly does it take for you to do your part as a president?</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>One is as part of an established program and the other is part of a mentoring organization I co-founded (that’s what I was awarded the Schweitzer for).</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>AMSA at the med school level is divided into many different committees (like minority health, global health, humanistic medicine, etc.) so AMSA actually sponsors quite disparate activities, although all of them are related to medicine in one way or another. The other thing AMSA at my school does is a lot of the student services stuff. For example, we host a big book sell at the beginning of the year where the M1’s get their books. We are also responsible for organizing the sale where students buy their physical exam equipment. We also host the sale where students buy their gowns and dissection equipment for anatomy.</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I wasn’t a president of a club in college so I can’t really compare. Due to the difference in schedules, I’m guessing that clubs at the med school level are not as active as clubs at the undergrad level. We host different speakers to talk about different aspects of radiology and applying for residency. We also recruit radiologists that students can shadow. We also alert med students to summer research opps, etc. Things like that. </p>
<p>The amount of time you spend on EC’s will vary quite a bit from week to week depending on how busy you are. For example, my gf knows not to even attempt to talk to me during test week but she pretty much stays with me the entire weekend following the test because I don’t have anything to study that weekend. In other words, you take what you can get and you squeeze out time whenever possible. Everything is usually secondary to academics.</p>
<p>
Did you found the radiology interest group as well? It sounds like the club is a bit like a med school version of undergrad premed club in that both involves inviting speakers in medicine, informing students about relevant medical opportunities, etc.</p>
<p>
Those two kids are lucky to have you as their mentor. XD</p>