Pre-clinical years

Pre-Med & Medical School Pre-Med Topics
1

<p>I recently read an old book called "Survivng Medical School" by Robert H. Coombs. For the pre-clinical years, one third-year medical school student told the first-year students that they should: "Learn it, regurgitate it, and then forget about it. Then you will be fine." He also said many professors (who are career researchers) may try to teach the students some highly-specialized materials that other professors may not even know it, and most of the covered materials tend to be not clinically relevant.</p>

<p>I also read from somewhere else that a lot of research done by medical school students, with the exception of those who intend to go into the academic medicine, tend to be "mickey mouse research."</p>

<p>One of the medical schools is rumored to just "teach to the test", that is, only cover the materials that are relevant to the board exam and never force the students to learn the highly-specialized materials that the professors are dealing with on a daily basis (they are in academic medicine.) The average STEP 1 score of their students is higher than that of other comparable school. (given the same caliber of students.)</p>

<p>Is there any truth in these?</p>

2

<p>The truth is that the direct application of 1st year knowledge can be pretty low in medicine. All schools attempt to cover essentially the same material. While researchers will often put emphasis on their research focus, the fact that they are giving a lecture on it at all suggests that the curriculum committee saw value in such a lecture. All schools claim to teach in a way to prep for the USMLE, it’s just buzz. Medicine isn’t about doing well on the USMLE, and ultimately your own self studying is going to be vastly more important. The only valuable things that a school can do is give you access to free review materials (and ultimately you are probably paying through your tuition in the end). When you only have 2 months in one summer to research, it shouldn’t be surprised that the research medical students do is mostly just a niche of a larger project. This is due to the time limit not the academic atmosphere.</p>