whats college workload for pre-law, or pre-med students REALLY like?

Student Lounge College Life
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<p>im kinda getting worried about how much work there really is in college...i mean, it doesnt seem like college classes take too much time since it seems like theyre block scheduled and all...but if uve got the rest of the day and all to complete your work, how is it that i hear about these monsterous loads of reading and all??</p>

<p>can someone tell me how a day in the life or week in the life of a pre-law or pre-med student is? i know these arent majors...i may want to major in international relations, bio, or english?</p>

<p>thanks</p>

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<p>Pre-med can be pretty rough from what I hear, with all the classes like Organic Chemistry and Calc 3 being HARD. Prelaw is basically a glorified English major, not being that rough.</p>

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<p>Since there's no "pre-med" or "pre-law" major, it really depends on what degree you pursue along with the "pre-x" requirements. Other factors should be considered as well, such as the school you go to, how many classes you take each period, and of course what professors you have for each class.</p>

<p>Worrying is natural. If pre-med or pre-law is your fancy, then go after it with everything you've got! If you believe in yourself and stay on top of things, it won't be as bad as it may seem.</p>

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<p>OMG i hate pre med, i hate chemistry now, i'm considering swiching majors cause my sophmore year is gonna kill me, analytical chemistry organic chemistry all are gonna kill my gpa, but i guess it depends on the school u go to</p>

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<p>unccadet08 - what school do you go to?</p>

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<p>If you can memorize stuff you'll be fine in orgo.</p>

<p>/had some orgo in HS, never touching chem again</p>

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<p>It really depends on what school you go to. At my school, a small women's LAC, pre-med can be really demanding. But it's mostly because the school overall is demanding. It's not a major like at some schools, but you have to complete certain standard required courses for medical school, including Bio, Chem, Calculus, etc. </p>

<p>Many people aren't sure they want to take all of those classes for med school. Taking them takes away a lot of your options for exploration during your undergraduate years what with all the required classes and labs.</p>

<p>If you're not sure about pre-med, I'd recommend you just major in something you like and then, later, if you want to go to med school, you can do a post-bac pre-med program. These are generally one-year programs during which you do your pre-med required courses AND get counseling and advice about applying to med schools. I know Bryn Mawr has one of the top programs, you can read about it here: <a href="http://www.brynmawr.edu/postbac/%5B/url%5D"&gt;http://www.brynmawr.edu/postbac/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p>

<p>"Pre-law" should be anything that sharpens your analytical skills. I've heard law schools love literature and foreign language majors, math majors, and economics majors. Go with something that makes you a good writer, and do something artistic on the side (that's always a plus for law school admissions).</p>

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<p>As a law student, I can assure you that there is no "pre-law" curriculum - law school's sole requisites are an LSAT score and a bachelor's degree. Some don't even require the latter (so called 4-2 programmes, where you do undergrad and law in 6 years). So the workload is basically whatever it takes to get a law-school-admissions-friendly GPA.</p>

<p>Pre-med is rough. I took organic chem for my engineering major, so I'll try to give you a snapshot of why it's so hard and you work so much. </p>

<p>Weekdays:
I probably had about four hours of class every day. They are spaced out though, which makes it tough; it's not like you work from 8:30 am to noonish, and then call it a day. You do lose some time walking to and from classes/dorms, and it's hard to get homework done in the 45 minutes you have between classes. </p>

<p>I took a bunch of lab courses. Some of them ran for about three hours, while organic could really go up to five hours. Writing the lab reports can be hard. The orgo ones probably took me about three hours to do, and there would be an orgo lab class (an hour and a half) and reading for it as well. So, all in all, orgo lab probably ate up about twelve hours of my week. (There's about 90-100 hours in a week that you'll have outside of sleeping, eating, dressing, and showering.) Physical chem labs were shorter in duration, but the lab reports took 10-20 hours to write, some more time to research, and there were a half-dozen over a semester. Ouch!</p>

<p>As for classes, your schedule will really determine how much class time you have. Orgo was four hours per week (plus lab class). I usually spent about four hours a day, 7 days a week, doing orgo homework (I was also a crazy over-achiever). That's roughly 30 hours, 34 with class time. So, of those 90ish free hours you have in a week, orgo took up about 40+ of them. That's a normal workweek right there! </p>

<p>That is why pre-meds try to make their schedule really, really light when they have organic. Theoretically, if you have three other classes, that's an additional 12 hours of classtime, plus 24 hours of homework (roughly 2 hours of h.w. for every hour of class).</p>

<p>168 hours in a week - sleeping, eating, etc = 95 or so hours.<br>
95 hours - 40 for orgo = 55 hours
55 hours - 36 (12 in class, 24 for hw) for other courses= 19 hours. That's about two hours a day that you have to not do homework, sleep, or eat. Take all of a Saturday off, and you'll have to work non-stop for the rest of the week to make it up. </p>

<p>As I recall, in high school, you have six or seven classes in a day but only about a half hour of homework for them. Some will have up to an hour, but that's rare... I mean, you can usually get all of your work done in about four hours (if you work efficiently).</p>

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<p>You are an idiot if it actually takes you 40 hours a week to study for OChem</p>

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<p>Just think, if your worst class is organic chem, you’re still having an easier time than bio, chemistry, physics, math, CS, and all engineering majors.</p>

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<p>Jeparlefrancais, while the pre-med requirements don’t seem like a lot in terms of time spent in class, there are a lot of factors you have to take into consideration. First of all, you may not always be able to schedule back-to-back morning classes (many professors prefer afternoon teaching times). Second, even if you could schedule all morning classes and be done by noon, never underestimate the power of persuasion. Your friends will ask you to spend time with them, and unless you’ve got a will of steel, you won’t always say no. Plus, you don’t want to devote your life to being pre-med (although that is the stereotype); you should also join some clubs and get involved on campus. Third, workload for an individual class will depend on the professor, your motivation, and your own abilities. Just a couple of problems can take several hours if you’re struggling to understand the material. Finally, science classes tend to have several midterms (usually 2-4) throughout the semester, so you may have due dates that coincide in different classes. Of course, there are other factors, but just be warned that your current impressions aren’t very realistic. </p>

<p>You’ve probably heard this a million times already, but time-management is important for college students and especially for pre-med students. I took six classes first semester of sophomore year including bio, general physics, physics lab, and three humanities classes (I’m a bio and English double major). Even though physics and the accompanying lab turned out to be pretty easy, the lab was still 3 hours a week and required prep time, and I had weekly problem sets for physics.</p>

<p>What really helped was knowing all my due dates from the very beginning. I think science classes are usually better about this, although all of my humanities classes also had set due dates from the beginning. That way, I knew right away when my toughest weeks were, so I could budget accordingly. I forced myself to get work done early so that I wouldn’t go crazy studying for three midterms and writing a paper at the same time. It was still hard, though, because I would only have one or two week lulls when I didn’t have papers or midterms, so I was constantly looking forward to the next big assignment. </p>

<p>It’s hard for me to do a breakdown of all the time I spent, but I often got up at 5:30 am to study, and my social life was severely restricted that semester. On a weekly basis, I’d say I spent about 15 hrs on intro bio (which is notoriously difficult at my school), 5 hrs on physics, 2 hrs on physics lab prep, and 15 hrs on my humanities classes. I also worked in a lab and was involved in a couple of other campus activities. </p>

<p>My workload was drastically reduced when I went back to taking five classes this semester. But I’m back to taking six next semester (including orgo, but not orgo lab), so I anticipate a lot of 5 am alarms. I should also mention, though, that my school has a lot of graduation requirements, which is why it’s necessary for me to take six classes. Your experience will depend a lot on your school and eventual major.</p>

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<p>Demeter & Ariesathena</p>

<p>If you guys wouldn’t mind, could you provide more info to put your posts into perspective.
What school do you attend now?
What was your high school course load like and how much work did you put in?
Did you take AP Chem, Bio, Calc or Physics and how did you do.</p>

<p>Thanks in advance</p>

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<p>Pre-law is a joke dude.</p>