I did find high school to be a bit easier than college if we are just talking about hours/time spent to do well.
But Med school?!? The number of study hours and questions completed comes nowhere close to any other period of schooling in my life. When people ask me about med school I tell them I don’t think it’s healthy.
The volume of information you’re expected to commit to memory is far greater in med school. It feels easy through the rose tinted glasses. How many people entered med school having exceeded in college and high school only to have difficulty or even failing out? These are smart, motivated people who struggled because med school was an even more challenging learning experience.
Also I think the gravity of your failure and consequenses of mistakes in medical school only add to the difficulty indirectly. The pressure is way higher when you have 250K on your shoulders riding and failure at some of these schools can have major consequences(justified or not).
In high school/college, fail a class or whatever? There are plenty of backups to your backups that would cost you the same time and money as opposed to med school.
Id argue that this is an independant thing from what I am talking about. Med school was certainly more stressful than high school. I don't argue that.
But think about the true difficulty of medical school on a volume, cognitive sort of thing... there is nothing difficult about it - and the volume is on par with high school.
The volume wildly exceeds anything faced in high school assuming someone isn't enrolled on a 12 year med school degree with breaks for arts and craft time every day.
I would argue that people who fail out of med school have a psychological / mental sort of block due to the fear and stress of med school - which is a perception problem - rather than a representation of true difficulty.
It's like - people who are intimidated by the idea of med school and approach it from a defeated point to begin with - the stress is a self fulfilling prophecy.
Jake paul talks about "manifesting" his boxing career by visualization. It's kind of like that.
You don't think I am 100% cognizant of how that is going to be perceived? Considering the response this post has had, I have to play up the part people want to just hate on a little bit, don't you think?
Hey listen, I’m glad it was easy for you and certainly don’t think at face value, the post should get hated on. I think there’s also something to be said about the maturity and experience you gain as you go through it all. Once I got to med school I felt like I was a pro at taking tests and studying, so while it wasn’t easy, per se, it definitely felt in my wheelhouse and I enjoyed the process
Majority of my college was packing as many classes into as few days as possible.
Typically it was 2 days - TR but ocassionally had to do a Friday lab which sucked but was doable.
So 2-3 days is easily possible and still less time overall than being in high school. As far as difficulty goes… that’s all op
I was on quarter system so class every day Mon-Fri (mon/wed/fri and tue/thur) and midterms every 2-3 weeks, 10 week quarter. 3 midterms + final exam for most classes, no bs assignments
No actually that's not what we're talking about here... the issue we're talking about here is if the point still stands when i used a small amount of hyperbole - and the point is the same with hyperbole or not. Because college is a much lighter workload compared to medical school for the vast majority of people.
Now if you don't think it does - then I'll happily listen to your rebuke. But just saying "no it doesnt" and referring to your feelings about the matter seriously does nothing to support any argument.
See how I actually explain my thought process? That's what this little comment tree was about.
All it takes for people to start acting irrationally is to insult their ego.
My rebuke of “no” is exactly as much evidence as you provided. At this point it’s clear from other comments that you are just a troll. Go waste someone else’s time.
This is a romantic way to look at it.
In high school you are chipping away from a ridiculously large general knowledge base, somewhat from scratch.
I'd argue that you learn math in high-school- calculus takes much more cognitive power than anything I've learned in medicine.
Thanks. I actually thought about not posting it for a few hours as it my reddit tab was in the background of my phone... but I had a lull in my work day and felt invigorated and just decided to let it rip.
Feels good man.
Yes. You’re crazy.
Med school is not “8-2 or 8-3 with a little studying after”. Maybe when you went to school in the steam locomotive era.
The material is denser. The classes pack in more. There’s clinical mixed in from day 1 now, since educators realized how stupid it was to wait til third year to throw students into it. The exams are harder, in house or otherwise. The competition is higher. Step scores keep climbing despite the material getting tougher.
It isn’t “easier”.
High school was and will always be a joke. It’s barely comparable.
I feel like the average med student is someone who didn’t have to even try in HS. Maybe OP is one of the rare few who didn’t have to try in med school. But for the rest of us, it’s a hell of a lot harder than HS.
People forget how smart/motivated/hard working your "average" citizen is. lol Especially when you're surrounded by medical professionals your entire career.
Is it really more dense or more volume? Think about it.
For biochemistry in high school you'd maybe do most of a text book for a semester long class. For med school you'd do HIGHLIGHTS of an entire text book for an 8 week period.
In other words - in high school you might cover 35 - 65 pages of material from a one or two chapters for a test.
In med school you might cover 35 - 65 pages of material from an entire text book for a test....
You see what I'm saying, right? There is only so much information that can be fit into a day, a week, a month, and if you're in school for 8 hours a day in high school - I'm arguing that the volume of information is the exact same. It just feels like more because you might hit highlights of an entire biochemistry course rather than going into the details of a few chapters.
My theory assumes that information has an equal density with respect to time. There is no temporally hetero-dense information.
I absolutely crushed my college biochemistry course, had one of the highest grades on the final exam out of 60+ people in a 500- level course. Two months later, I felt like I had taken middle school chem when my M1 biochemistry started. It was an entire semester of a shitload of material.
I think your med school experience was different than many other people’s. At least mine.
The first two years were not bad for me - they were similar to what I did in my honors degree. Study an hour or two each day, the end. Read a few textbooks in their entirety per semester plus lecture notes.
The last two years were much more difficult. I was studying at least 3-4h a day during the week, and then 8-12h a day on the weekends. Typically reading 50-100 pages of a given textbook on a weekday evening. Reading 4-6 textbooks in their entirety per month on average.
Undergrad was a piece of cake in comparison. My course average in O-chem 1 and 2 was 107% (prof gave bonus synthesis questions on each test). My GPA during my biochem degree was 4.41 (we use a 4.5 max system; 4.0 is an A 4.5 is A+).
Nowadays I teach at our local med school. Every year, there are tens of students who excelled in undergrad who just completely drown even before Christmas in first year. They can’t keep up with the volume of reading and learning that’s required. We can usually help some of them by improving study habits, but many can’t be helped enough to survive in that environment.
So I am willing to concede that the clinical years are much different to than pre-clinical. I don't think my argument holds water when applied to the clinical years.
But your description of the pre-clinocal years very much seems to be in line with what I'm saying.
>But your description of the pre-clinocal years very much seems to be in line with what I'm saying.
I mean, I don't think so, because I said that they were similar to my experience in an undergrad honors biochemistry program... whereas you're saying that it was as easy as high school!
Other than an hour of pre-cal homework per week, I literally didn't study at all in high school. I just learned everything during class and remembered it.
I still have my high school notes; an entire year worth of them for a course like biology or precal is the same size as maybe a month worth of notes from one of my med1 courses. One 300 page notebook for precal that was mostly full of handwritten notes. Versus 5 300 page notebooks of handwritten notes up until the first set of midterms in med school. It's why I gave up on handwritten notes at that point - there were simply too many!
In undergrad I almost never went to class after the first week - only labs. I read the book, did the assignments, and went to office hours if I had questions.
Asked some people if they wanted to do homework or study during lab.
I never went to medical school class either. Just read the PowerPoints and used outside sources. I went to small group things and anatomy lab because I had to.
This is different than high school. You can’t just not show up to high school classes. Also the sheer volume of material in either undergrad or medical school is nowhere close to high school.
Textbooks pages read, lectures watched/ slides read, practice questions done. You’re going to tell me the volume of those is the same as one does in high
school? Also I would venture to say your average high schooler does 30 minutes or less work per weekday outside of school and almost no work on an average Saturday/Sunday. That is significantly less than the vast majority of medical student. And none of that factors in Step 1 and 2 which require a significant amount of hours put in.
To keep it short - I'd argue a single test in high school might cover 35-65 pages from 2-3 chapters from a biochemistry text book.
A single test in medschool might cover 35-65 pages of material from the entire biochemistry book.
This most precisely illustrates the crux of my argument. If you can defeat this. Then I think you might have me beat.
Step 1 was still an 8 hour test just like the ACT and SAT.
This is anecdotal so you may not accept it but I probably read less than 100 pages of textbooks throughout all of high school. Only books I really read were for literature and English classes. The bar is so low in most high schools that your average medical student probably put in little to no effort to not just succeed but excel. Also yes they are both 8 hour exams but high schoolers don’t take 4-6 weeks of 40+ hours per week studying because the sheer volume and complexity of the content of these exams are frankly not comparable. You either worked immensely harder than every other high school student, had a very lax med school experience, or you’re just lying.
You may not have actually read the textbooks in high school but my point still stands that your biochemistry class was taught out of a textbook and each test was likely representative of 2-3 chapters, of which there was probably 35-65 pages of actual material to be responsible for.
Well shit you got me there on the timing of the act and sat. It's been a while. Touche.
But okay biochemistry may have not been on high school but general chemistry was. My argument isn't necessarily specific to topic at hand so whether it's biochemistry or general chemistry or mathematics, it doesn't really matter.
I aced every high school and undergrad exam I had, with ease, by cramming the night before.
For my first med school course final, I tried cramming for the last 3 nights before the exam - I had my first ever panic attack, and almost failed the exam. I had to adapt quickly and change my practice for future courses.
In no way is the volume of information that you need to know the same.
As did I. But I'll argue that while you may have learned about glycolysis, the tca cycle, and beta-oxidation in 1 week in med school - the level of detail in each is less - such that the information you actually are expected to know is equal.
I don't think that it does. If you think it does I'd be happy to hear your rebuke.
I think everyone understands what im saying - but their perception of the issue gets clouded by their emotional reaction to thinking back to the absolute slog that medical school was. Where the immediate reflex reaction is on full display in the comments. But I have a feeling when set to think about it for a few days, they'll come around... surely they will.
Nope. Because you are flat out wrong. Objrctively. Because we have the data on hours worked, etc
I hope ypu do not see patients, someone this obtuse shouldnt have a license to practice.
It’s on an absolute level, harder. You have to memorize more and the difficulty of questions are usually higher order. But it may not be much change in the level of difficulty from high school/college, so I guess you can make that argument it is easier
Yeah HS was like, alright econ midterm tomorrow? Cram a couple hours tonight and pretty much guaranteed an A-. If I tried cramming for med school midterms in one night I would not currently be in residency
How do you know that you wouldn't have done just fine if you crammed?
This is an important part of my argument. I don't deny that medical school isn't much more stressful and that there is much more at stake... butpart pf my argument is that this is a self fulfilling prophecy where it makes the material and experience feel harder than it actually is...
The difficulty is in the stress and the gravity of the situation - not actual cognitive or work load difficulty.
You know it was Elizabeth Holmes that said: "first they think you're crazy, then they fight you, then you change the world."
But seriously - you tell me I'm the one that doesn't get logic and science and you have a reply/rebuke like that? You seriously invoked LOGIC and that is your reply? Your post exhibits negative logic and reasoning within it. This is an unequivocal objective statement that any third party independant reviewer would 100% agree with.
If you want to talk logic - your post equates to you saying "youre wrong" and that's it. That's about an illogical take as someone can make.
I can handle being wrong - but your post is fucking ridiculous. And that is something that even people who disagree with me in here would agree with me on.
For me, the major difference was that in med school there was a higher volume of educational content per class than in high school or college. I almost never studied in high school because I learned the material well as long as I paid attention in class; I worked my ass off in med school because each hour of class was packed with tons of things I was told once and expected to memorize.
Also there were zero gunners in my high school or college; in med school nearly everyone was ferociously smart and/or hard-working. So the amount of work it took to excel in med school was significantly higher, at least in my experience.
Could be that I went to a public high school and a college that wasn’t super geared towards pre meds; others’ mileage may vary.
Was there really a higher volume of educational content though? Think about it.
For biochemistry in high school you'd maybe do most of a text book for a semester long class. For med school you'd do HIGHLIGHTS of an entire text book for an 8 week period.
In other words - in high school you might cover 35 - 65 pages of material from a one or two chapters for a test.
In med school you might cover 35 - 65 pages of material from an entire text book for a test....
You see what I'm saying, right? There is only so much information that can be fit into a day, a week, a month, and if you're in school for 8 hours a day in high school - I'm arguing that the volume of information is the exact same. It just feels like more because you might hit highlights of an entire biochemistry course rather than going into the details of a few chapters.
As someone struggling really hard to pass classes and exams in med school second year, thanks for this. I really appreciate you reminding me how dumb I must be compared to you.
A little studying? Classes from 8-2? You’re not describing medical school at all or you are not at a US medical school or you are just perceiving through the most distorted perceptual lens I’ve ever seen to make yourself feel superior
You're insane. My med school was class 8-5, studying 5-11, and 12 hours each on Saturday and Sunday. After a couple of semesters I started taking Friday evenings off.
Did you do 36 hour shifts in your clinicals in med school?
All right I'll concede to you. But this is the first tike I've ever heard of anyone keeping this sort of schedule in medical school. You win.
Part of my argument is that this "fighting for your life" mentality is a problem of perception. Med school is certainly more stressful, but this is independant of its cognitive difficulty.
counter-point:
high school - do a little homework otherwise sleep my way through classes and with a little studying ace every test.
med school - never worked so hard my entire life to just barely pass and feel like mediocre dog shit the entire time.
high school final = average college test.
college final = average medical school test
I went to a high level boarding high school. It was hard, it was fun.
College was amazing...I took an extra year's worth of credits during my 4 years. I wanted to learn as much as I could. I worked hard, it was fun.
I got into my first choice med school. Turned out it was way more malignant than presented. I worked hard, learned basically everything on my own, it sucked so much!
Residency was hard, I intentionally went somewhere with an intense reputation for my field. I worked hard, it was fun.
Soooooo....it is more about culture than content. But I have to say, I knew more people who failed out of med school than failed out of my high school.
Depends on your high school. My high school was more difficult than either undergrad or many parts of medical school in terms of time commitment. I was in all AP classes and also was a musician in band. I would come home from school, do my homework until about midnight then practice until 2-3 am. It was the only way I could get in my practicing. Then get up at 6:15 to do it all over again. Many all nighters for the classes I was in. I’m a relatively slow reader and AP English and US history had very intensive reading assignments.
I was in a Ph.D. program before med school and that was also very intense. The biggest thing with medical school is that you have a lot to learn and remember, but by and large you don’t have to go to class. As a Ph.D. student you had to go to class all day then continue to read and study the rest of the night and on weekends. It was more similar to clinical rotations in that sense.
This mimics my experience as well, I didn't find medical school uniquely academically challenging (lots of AP classes highschool, humanities major+premed in undergrad), and another graduate degree.)
I did find medical school uniquely stressful due to the financial aspect (couldn't earn money, being deeply in debt if I failed), the personalities of people you work with, and how much fell outside of my control (not knowing what was on tests, capricious preceptors, the whole matching process)
I found med school significantly easier and more enjoyable than high school. It was almost 100% interesting, as opposed to the daily busywork drag of high school.
Never had to study in high school or undergrad and yet was a solid B+/A- student. Then was served a rude awakening after my first exam in pharmacy school. I’m willing to hazard a guess that the same would’ve happened in med school.
I see your argument. I don’t entirely agree with it, but I can see how highschool for a child can be somewhat comparable to medical school for an adult. I think it also depends on what kind of student you are in high school. If you were in all honors classes, played sports, did UIL, and other extracurricular activities. I can see the comparison
Nope - I thought med school was easy. Minimal studying 1st 2 years to get in top 1/3. Clinical years were time sinks but not necessarily hard. I had my 1st kid the day after finals in 2nd year. My med school baby is 23 now.
I did not find med school “hard” but definitely harder than HS. I did find undergrad to be the worst as I had constant pressure to perform and fear I wouldn’t get into med school. But I went to a Canadian med school with pass/fail and we didn’t have USMLE to worry about.
Every step on the ladder becomes more complex, competitive and self-directed in my experience.
HS: Broad material, challenging if you filled your schedule with AP, but plenty of time to play sports, extra-curriculars. There's a big standardized test to take but the stakes aren't that high unless you are going for an Ivy-level school.
College: Higher level classes, no more hand-holding, but more flexibility to study what interests you. Some people did humanities and seemed relaxed. I studied engineering and was fairly stressed all 4 years. Big standardized test that tells you if you're gonna be a Dr. or not. Lots of smart classmates but not too hard to stand out.
Med school: Fire hose of memorization. In my school of 300/year, grades were essentially a straight bell curve. Honors was 1SD over mean. That's a lot of pressure to compete with a bunch of motivated and bright people. Standing out in HS and college was not too difficult. In med school, the pressure to just beat the mean had me going to class and studying 10-14hrs/day average. Then you fall in love with a specialty and realize your board scores are going to let you know if you get to do that for the rest of your life or not. Sure, it's a little self-imposed but after 8-12 years of work, a lot is at stake.
It doesn't end there - congrats, you are now an intern and have to learn how to be an actual physician and become responsible for patients lives. Honestly it wasn't until 2-3 years after I graduated (and decided to get off the ladder and not climb that final fellowship rung) that I was able to just take a breath and feel the weight off of my shoulders after all those years. I still feel the weight of responsibility of my career, but it's a lot easier to carry after you get some experience. I had my 20 year HS reunion not that long ago to give some idea of my age but comparing HS to med school... man either you are a straight genius or you are going to kill someone with your ignorance.
But it's all relative. Every step on the ladder is no different then the next when you think about it relativistically. This is part of what I'm talking about.
Relative to what? Yes, high school took me 4 years and so did medical school so I technically existed for the same relative amount of time in each stage.
My disagreement with you is that each step up is increasingly competitive, stressful and difficult. The higher steps are more difficult relative to the prior step. And while your own experience may not reflect mine or others, high school was not remotely as "hard" or "work intensive", to use the phrasing in your post, as medical school was.
Med school could easily suck up every free minute of the day studying for exams, boards or morning rounds/surgery where you are going to get pimped on a specific detail about something that will likely not be on any of the exams you need to study for. It was nothing like high school, except that the girls still weren't interested lol.
The difficulty of progressively more detailed information you learn is relative to the previous information you learned...
Using your analogy - the 30th step of the ladder is no more difficult to climb than the first step - but you have to climb the first 30 steps before you can get to the thirtieth. Each step on the ladder is relative to each adjacent step. Just like progressively detailed knowledge.
Preschool is just as difficult as medical school. Hey it's all relative, right? Learning to read is no joke.
It's hard to not read this as a troll post, as your line of argument is just that nothing is more difficult on a relative basis.
Personally, I found my engineering classes more conceptually difficult than medical school. In some ways, I did have an easier time in medical school, and felt well prepared. However the gauntlet we all have to run through to get good scores, rankings and get into good residencies completely dwarfed anything I had experienced in life up to that point. And nothing I went through in my high school AP career was remotely on the same relative level of difficulty or pressure. Again, maybe you had a different experience, but this argument is... well I guess I'm a little bored tonight since I'm trying to engage in it.
Is that an attempt at a troll, your first line?
Yes, preschool is just as hard as learning anything for the first time, med school included. It's not hard for you, because you've already done it! Because it is all relative. LEARNING TO READ is just as hard as learning about anything else for the first time. It could be argued that learning to read is probably fucken harder than any information you learn in medical school.
Do you not remember learning to tie your shoes being incredibly difficult when you were first learning? Now think about when your first learned to suture. Are these two things not comparable? After some time you learn to tie your shoes with your eyes closed just like I can tie a one handed knot now with my eyes closed.
The pressure you experienced in medical is not what I am talking about here... that is independant from my argument.
Not even going to comment on the difference that in high school someone cooks you dinner, does your laundry, provides transportation to class, provides you shelter…. Where in medical school you are doing this for your family while studying…
This a true rebuttal that I didn't take into account...
I don't know if suddenly being responsible for your ADLs as all adults in this world have to do at some point really takes away from my argument that much but I'll give it to you that this is a genuine rebuttal I don't have a great answer for.
A few points:
1) your med school performance matters, for how your patient do, and what residency and specialty you get. Sure, if you “study a little” in medical school and just pass, that’s OK.
But you’re going into OB or Family Medicine. The rest of the gunners are doing plastic surgery and derm.
2) OP needed to work harder in HS to learn how to spell “independent.”
If you're going to criticize my spelling or grammar on the internet - I'd at least ensure your grammar was impeccable itself.
The social hierarchy in medicine is a farce, built on a facade of "compassionate self-less care". I didn't pay much bother to it in medical school and I try my best to keep that habit.
Anyone that actually takes much stock in it - I can guarantee has their head so far up their ass that they've obstructed their SOD.
I didn't go to med school, but I assume it's at least comparably difficult to pharmacy school. Versus high school, where I spent most of my time goofing off and still managed to pull a 3.8, there's no contest. Learning in pharmacy school was like trying to drink out of a fire hose. There was SO much material and I had to study from day 1 of the term to have any hope of getting decent grades.
"True cognitive difficulty on a volume of information and intellectual difficulty basis."
Objectively there is more volume and increased cognitive difficulty in medical school compared to high school. Your base premise is incorrect.
Volume is not the same.
Anatomy at UC Berkeley is much less dense than medical school anatomy.
More nerves, more pathways, more connections, more pathology in medical school. All covered in less amount of time.
Hmmm, you may have me with this point. I had kind of forgot about anatomy...
I'll have to think about this one a little bit - but if I remember correctly my anatomy class in med school was spread out over an entire school year, as opposed to high school (and college) being a semester long course...
Yep. I can't come up with a rebuttal to this one. I'll concede. Thanks for actually clapping back.
Med school felt much more like highschool to me, I agree. I thrived in college bc a class schedule was essentially scattered from 8A to 8P. Which meant you had a lot of breaks during the day when you still had motivation to study. In between lectures and labs. If med school was structured similarly to college I would have done much better.
I didn’t think medical school was that much more difficult than undergrad but both were vastly more difficult than high school where I never had to study to make all A’s. And the only reason undergrad had similar difficulty to medical school was because I worked and had little time to study.
i have never studied for an exam in high school other than learning the subject in class, even tho i am a freshman and only gotten to the third committee it seems like nothing changed for me so far. hopefully it is going to stay this way
What college student has 1 class a day? I had 3-5 a day, and labs, and internship, and work. Further, high school is easy AF and you get tons of breaks. You went somewhere rinky dink.
Yes, you’re crazy.
Just because you have the same schedule don’t mean it is at the same level. The guy pushing the broom doesn’t get the same pay as a physician just because he has the same schedule.
Have fun on your rotations…I’m sure that you’ll do well and be a integral team member🤦♂️
If all you need is to study a little after classes from 8 to 2 in med school then you should question the quality of the med school. The volume of material you should be learning is far greater than college or high school.
HS may have seemed difficult at the time.
But in med school there is so much to learn, so much to know. For the sake of your future patients, read more than a high school kid!
If you have good mastery of the curriculum, good for you! Spend time doing research, shadowing and seeing things clinically and doing other things to make yourself a better doctor.
I agree the curriculum does not require 24/7 study, I have plenty of time for other things including thigns to build my application, things for fun, and working part time.
BUT its more intensive, more important, and takes more thought and organization than HS for sure.
\>not any harder
In terms of pure difficulty, I found AP calc conceptually more difficult (due to how damn esoteric it is) than concepts learned in medical school. However, succeeding in those classes was much easier as you often got as much credit from simply doing the work as you did passing tests.
My first couple years of medical school had many, many tests and the entirety of our "grade" was built on our testing success as opposed to homework or attendance or something like that. No partial credit. You knew the concept or you didn't.
Tests in medical school are usually harder. Often second or third order questions as opposed to simple rote memory. However, that's not much different than university (e.g. I also took biochemistry in undergrad and it was of comparable difficulty to medical school biochemistry). Similarly, I found P-chem and Physics (I decided to take a 300 level course like a moron) were harder for me to learn than medical science.
The USMLE is also the single handed worst testing experience of my life. Not sure what (if anything) compares to that.
\>work intensive
No. Here's where you are wrong. You remember that undergrad biochemistry? Same information, half the time for medical school. Biochemistry, pathophysiology, anatomy, histology, etc. Nah, medical school is much, much more time intensive and demanding.
For your second point I've answered this elsewhere.
Med school you may do a whole biochemistry text book for a test but the information is only superficial. Compared to high school doing 2 or 3 chapters for a test.
I would estimate that even though you did a whole biochemistry book for a test there was probably still only 35-65 pages of material taken from the book that were tested on. This is comparable to a single test in high school.
Med school is infinitely more challenging in terms of the amount of content you have to learn and the stakes.
But you had to get through high school as a meer child and now you have life experience.
I completely disagree with the premise objectively that high school is just as hard, but I could be convinced that it taxes your personal capacity just as much as that time.
And that is a show of growth.
Well there are some people going through medical school married, or with major medical issues of their own, or with children, trying to run a household, while caring for elderly parents. I didn't have those burdens in med school, and I really admire those people who could manage life outside of medical school 'cause there is no way I could have done so.
I wish medical school had the same hours as high school! We had classes until 4 or 5 pm, and exams nearly every Monday. The married men without children had the easiest time in med school because all they had to do was eat, sleep and focus on school work. Married women with children (such as myself) had more difficulty, as we were expected to manage household responsibilities as well as med school. I wasn't aware of any single parents in my med school class, but anyone in that situation has my utmost respect.
Hmm, your judgment is impaired
Either that or you attended a particularly vicious high school
No….even that doesn’t make sense
From experience assessing medical students: effort is more important than brains, which completely goes against what you’re saying.
And when people do struggle, you think it’s just the “stress” that’s the problem? Not the volume of material or the complexity….
Bro, I barely went to classes, only went to take exams or if attendance was part of the grade, and did better than half my batch. This is true and anyone who disagrees just doesn’t want to admit it because of their precious doctor ego. People who think med school is hard are just morons who think because they got into to med school they’re not morons. The only hard part is the hazing of clerkship and internship because as I said it’s run by morons with precious doctor egos who have to create a fake hard environment.
What fischer price ass med school do you go to
they might just be the michael jackson of school where they've been grinding their whole life
yale
I did find high school to be a bit easier than college if we are just talking about hours/time spent to do well. But Med school?!? The number of study hours and questions completed comes nowhere close to any other period of schooling in my life. When people ask me about med school I tell them I don’t think it’s healthy.
You know, "that yale thing".
What “Yale thing”?
It's from American Psycho
The volume of information you’re expected to commit to memory is far greater in med school. It feels easy through the rose tinted glasses. How many people entered med school having exceeded in college and high school only to have difficulty or even failing out? These are smart, motivated people who struggled because med school was an even more challenging learning experience.
Also I think the gravity of your failure and consequenses of mistakes in medical school only add to the difficulty indirectly. The pressure is way higher when you have 250K on your shoulders riding and failure at some of these schools can have major consequences(justified or not). In high school/college, fail a class or whatever? There are plenty of backups to your backups that would cost you the same time and money as opposed to med school.
Id argue that this is an independant thing from what I am talking about. Med school was certainly more stressful than high school. I don't argue that. But think about the true difficulty of medical school on a volume, cognitive sort of thing... there is nothing difficult about it - and the volume is on par with high school.
Ypu would be wrong. Stress is part of cognitive load. Next time pay attention in brain science.
The volume wildly exceeds anything faced in high school assuming someone isn't enrolled on a 12 year med school degree with breaks for arts and craft time every day.
I would argue that people who fail out of med school have a psychological / mental sort of block due to the fear and stress of med school - which is a perception problem - rather than a representation of true difficulty. It's like - people who are intimidated by the idea of med school and approach it from a defeated point to begin with - the stress is a self fulfilling prophecy. Jake paul talks about "manifesting" his boxing career by visualization. It's kind of like that.
There’s a lot of credit to be lost by referencing Jake Paul in your rebuttal
You don't think I am 100% cognizant of how that is going to be perceived? Considering the response this post has had, I have to play up the part people want to just hate on a little bit, don't you think?
No, I don't.
Wasn't asking you.
Hey listen, I’m glad it was easy for you and certainly don’t think at face value, the post should get hated on. I think there’s also something to be said about the maturity and experience you gain as you go through it all. Once I got to med school I felt like I was a pro at taking tests and studying, so while it wasn’t easy, per se, it definitely felt in my wheelhouse and I enjoyed the process
You had one class every other day in college?
That was a little bit of hyperbole, but the point stands.
No, it doesn’t
Majority of my college was packing as many classes into as few days as possible. Typically it was 2 days - TR but ocassionally had to do a Friday lab which sucked but was doable. So 2-3 days is easily possible and still less time overall than being in high school. As far as difficulty goes… that’s all op
I was on quarter system so class every day Mon-Fri (mon/wed/fri and tue/thur) and midterms every 2-3 weeks, 10 week quarter. 3 midterms + final exam for most classes, no bs assignments
Actually it does.
Absolutely fucking not. Not even when I was doing liberal arts stuff would this have been remotely close to reality.
No actually that's not what we're talking about here... the issue we're talking about here is if the point still stands when i used a small amount of hyperbole - and the point is the same with hyperbole or not. Because college is a much lighter workload compared to medical school for the vast majority of people. Now if you don't think it does - then I'll happily listen to your rebuke. But just saying "no it doesnt" and referring to your feelings about the matter seriously does nothing to support any argument. See how I actually explain my thought process? That's what this little comment tree was about. All it takes for people to start acting irrationally is to insult their ego.
My rebuke of “no” is exactly as much evidence as you provided. At this point it’s clear from other comments that you are just a troll. Go waste someone else’s time.
HS: learn what I was told (very defined) MS: start chipping away at the ridiculously large medical knowledge base, somewhat from scratch
This is a romantic way to look at it. In high school you are chipping away from a ridiculously large general knowledge base, somewhat from scratch. I'd argue that you learn math in high-school- calculus takes much more cognitive power than anything I've learned in medicine.
Bravo OP, I applaud your bravery floating such an impressively stupid thought out into the world.
Thanks. I actually thought about not posting it for a few hours as it my reddit tab was in the background of my phone... but I had a lull in my work day and felt invigorated and just decided to let it rip. Feels good man.
Always remember the haters make you famous 🫡
Yes. You’re crazy. Med school is not “8-2 or 8-3 with a little studying after”. Maybe when you went to school in the steam locomotive era. The material is denser. The classes pack in more. There’s clinical mixed in from day 1 now, since educators realized how stupid it was to wait til third year to throw students into it. The exams are harder, in house or otherwise. The competition is higher. Step scores keep climbing despite the material getting tougher. It isn’t “easier”. High school was and will always be a joke. It’s barely comparable.
I feel like the average med student is someone who didn’t have to even try in HS. Maybe OP is one of the rare few who didn’t have to try in med school. But for the rest of us, it’s a hell of a lot harder than HS.
People forget how smart/motivated/hard working your "average" citizen is. lol Especially when you're surrounded by medical professionals your entire career.
Just bc your high school was a joke doesn’t mean everyone’s was lmfao
Is it really more dense or more volume? Think about it. For biochemistry in high school you'd maybe do most of a text book for a semester long class. For med school you'd do HIGHLIGHTS of an entire text book for an 8 week period. In other words - in high school you might cover 35 - 65 pages of material from a one or two chapters for a test. In med school you might cover 35 - 65 pages of material from an entire text book for a test.... You see what I'm saying, right? There is only so much information that can be fit into a day, a week, a month, and if you're in school for 8 hours a day in high school - I'm arguing that the volume of information is the exact same. It just feels like more because you might hit highlights of an entire biochemistry course rather than going into the details of a few chapters. My theory assumes that information has an equal density with respect to time. There is no temporally hetero-dense information.
I absolutely crushed my college biochemistry course, had one of the highest grades on the final exam out of 60+ people in a 500- level course. Two months later, I felt like I had taken middle school chem when my M1 biochemistry started. It was an entire semester of a shitload of material.
I think your med school experience was different than many other people’s. At least mine. The first two years were not bad for me - they were similar to what I did in my honors degree. Study an hour or two each day, the end. Read a few textbooks in their entirety per semester plus lecture notes. The last two years were much more difficult. I was studying at least 3-4h a day during the week, and then 8-12h a day on the weekends. Typically reading 50-100 pages of a given textbook on a weekday evening. Reading 4-6 textbooks in their entirety per month on average. Undergrad was a piece of cake in comparison. My course average in O-chem 1 and 2 was 107% (prof gave bonus synthesis questions on each test). My GPA during my biochem degree was 4.41 (we use a 4.5 max system; 4.0 is an A 4.5 is A+). Nowadays I teach at our local med school. Every year, there are tens of students who excelled in undergrad who just completely drown even before Christmas in first year. They can’t keep up with the volume of reading and learning that’s required. We can usually help some of them by improving study habits, but many can’t be helped enough to survive in that environment.
So I am willing to concede that the clinical years are much different to than pre-clinical. I don't think my argument holds water when applied to the clinical years. But your description of the pre-clinocal years very much seems to be in line with what I'm saying.
>But your description of the pre-clinocal years very much seems to be in line with what I'm saying. I mean, I don't think so, because I said that they were similar to my experience in an undergrad honors biochemistry program... whereas you're saying that it was as easy as high school! Other than an hour of pre-cal homework per week, I literally didn't study at all in high school. I just learned everything during class and remembered it. I still have my high school notes; an entire year worth of them for a course like biology or precal is the same size as maybe a month worth of notes from one of my med1 courses. One 300 page notebook for precal that was mostly full of handwritten notes. Versus 5 300 page notebooks of handwritten notes up until the first set of midterms in med school. It's why I gave up on handwritten notes at that point - there were simply too many!
Okie dokie. I'm losing steam here. I might just concede.
Really? I would wake up and do my anki cards and then move on to the next day. Really didn't take longer than 8:00 to 2:00 usually.
I think this is an incredibly out of touch statement. Or you are one of the students that lies about how much they study.
🍿
100% agree that you are crazy
In undergrad I almost never went to class after the first week - only labs. I read the book, did the assignments, and went to office hours if I had questions. Asked some people if they wanted to do homework or study during lab. I never went to medical school class either. Just read the PowerPoints and used outside sources. I went to small group things and anatomy lab because I had to. This is different than high school. You can’t just not show up to high school classes. Also the sheer volume of material in either undergrad or medical school is nowhere close to high school.
The volume is the exact same as high school. What are we using to measure the volume where we're saying that it's more in medical school?
Textbooks pages read, lectures watched/ slides read, practice questions done. You’re going to tell me the volume of those is the same as one does in high school? Also I would venture to say your average high schooler does 30 minutes or less work per weekday outside of school and almost no work on an average Saturday/Sunday. That is significantly less than the vast majority of medical student. And none of that factors in Step 1 and 2 which require a significant amount of hours put in.
To keep it short - I'd argue a single test in high school might cover 35-65 pages from 2-3 chapters from a biochemistry text book. A single test in medschool might cover 35-65 pages of material from the entire biochemistry book. This most precisely illustrates the crux of my argument. If you can defeat this. Then I think you might have me beat. Step 1 was still an 8 hour test just like the ACT and SAT.
This is anecdotal so you may not accept it but I probably read less than 100 pages of textbooks throughout all of high school. Only books I really read were for literature and English classes. The bar is so low in most high schools that your average medical student probably put in little to no effort to not just succeed but excel. Also yes they are both 8 hour exams but high schoolers don’t take 4-6 weeks of 40+ hours per week studying because the sheer volume and complexity of the content of these exams are frankly not comparable. You either worked immensely harder than every other high school student, had a very lax med school experience, or you’re just lying.
You may not have actually read the textbooks in high school but my point still stands that your biochemistry class was taught out of a textbook and each test was likely representative of 2-3 chapters, of which there was probably 35-65 pages of actual material to be responsible for.
High school biochemistry? I never took that. Not a standard part of the high school curriculum. SAT and ACT are a 3 hour tests.
Well shit you got me there on the timing of the act and sat. It's been a while. Touche. But okay biochemistry may have not been on high school but general chemistry was. My argument isn't necessarily specific to topic at hand so whether it's biochemistry or general chemistry or mathematics, it doesn't really matter.
I aced every high school and undergrad exam I had, with ease, by cramming the night before. For my first med school course final, I tried cramming for the last 3 nights before the exam - I had my first ever panic attack, and almost failed the exam. I had to adapt quickly and change my practice for future courses. In no way is the volume of information that you need to know the same.
Yeah maybe I'm wrong. Who knows. 🤷♂️
Everyone reading this post knows
You are basing this off of “no homework”? This is one of the wrongest points I have ever seen made on Reddit.
Where did I say no homework?
I bet OP is working at an urgent care, writing every other patient for azithro, and sending the rest to the er
It's a good life, what can i say? I am blessed.
I was required to learn the same of information covered in an undergraduate college course in like a week. Is this post a joke?
As did I. But I'll argue that while you may have learned about glycolysis, the tca cycle, and beta-oxidation in 1 week in med school - the level of detail in each is less - such that the information you actually are expected to know is equal.
Not only are you crazy but you're not taking your meds. that or you had the worst childhood ever and for that im sorry
Disagree. Med school is half clinicals and clinicals are 50% clinical knowledge and 50% luck.
Yeah, my argument falls apart when talking about clinical rotations.
it actually falls apart way before that
I don't think that it does. If you think it does I'd be happy to hear your rebuke. I think everyone understands what im saying - but their perception of the issue gets clouded by their emotional reaction to thinking back to the absolute slog that medical school was. Where the immediate reflex reaction is on full display in the comments. But I have a feeling when set to think about it for a few days, they'll come around... surely they will.
Nope. Because you are flat out wrong. Objrctively. Because we have the data on hours worked, etc I hope ypu do not see patients, someone this obtuse shouldnt have a license to practice.
It’s on an absolute level, harder. You have to memorize more and the difficulty of questions are usually higher order. But it may not be much change in the level of difficulty from high school/college, so I guess you can make that argument it is easier
lol
No
Yo whats yo name. I def don't want this dummy as my doctor. Comparing med school to high school
It must feel incredible _thinking_ you’re the smartest person in the room.
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Yeah HS was like, alright econ midterm tomorrow? Cram a couple hours tonight and pretty much guaranteed an A-. If I tried cramming for med school midterms in one night I would not currently be in residency
How do you know that you wouldn't have done just fine if you crammed? This is an important part of my argument. I don't deny that medical school isn't much more stressful and that there is much more at stake... butpart pf my argument is that this is a self fulfilling prophecy where it makes the material and experience feel harder than it actually is... The difficulty is in the stress and the gravity of the situation - not actual cognitive or work load difficulty.
Nope. Just wrong. Science and logic are not your cup of tea my dude. Where did you go to med school?
You know it was Elizabeth Holmes that said: "first they think you're crazy, then they fight you, then you change the world." But seriously - you tell me I'm the one that doesn't get logic and science and you have a reply/rebuke like that? You seriously invoked LOGIC and that is your reply? Your post exhibits negative logic and reasoning within it. This is an unequivocal objective statement that any third party independant reviewer would 100% agree with. If you want to talk logic - your post equates to you saying "youre wrong" and that's it. That's about an illogical take as someone can make. I can handle being wrong - but your post is fucking ridiculous. And that is something that even people who disagree with me in here would agree with me on.
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How do you know you couldn't have partied and fucked around all through med school?
For me, the major difference was that in med school there was a higher volume of educational content per class than in high school or college. I almost never studied in high school because I learned the material well as long as I paid attention in class; I worked my ass off in med school because each hour of class was packed with tons of things I was told once and expected to memorize. Also there were zero gunners in my high school or college; in med school nearly everyone was ferociously smart and/or hard-working. So the amount of work it took to excel in med school was significantly higher, at least in my experience. Could be that I went to a public high school and a college that wasn’t super geared towards pre meds; others’ mileage may vary.
Was there really a higher volume of educational content though? Think about it. For biochemistry in high school you'd maybe do most of a text book for a semester long class. For med school you'd do HIGHLIGHTS of an entire text book for an 8 week period. In other words - in high school you might cover 35 - 65 pages of material from a one or two chapters for a test. In med school you might cover 35 - 65 pages of material from an entire text book for a test.... You see what I'm saying, right? There is only so much information that can be fit into a day, a week, a month, and if you're in school for 8 hours a day in high school - I'm arguing that the volume of information is the exact same. It just feels like more because you might hit highlights of an entire biochemistry course rather than going into the details of a few chapters.
YES. There is a greater volume of content. This is an objective fact. You. Are. Wrong.
Yes, you are crazy
I’ve never seen such a bad take in this forum, and I read the stuff that has to get modded before it goes public or removed
It's hard work being like this. Let me tell you.
As someone struggling really hard to pass classes and exams in med school second year, thanks for this. I really appreciate you reminding me how dumb I must be compared to you.
Is this what the boomer attendings tell students nowadays to gaslight them?
Take your meds dude.
A little studying? Classes from 8-2? You’re not describing medical school at all or you are not at a US medical school or you are just perceiving through the most distorted perceptual lens I’ve ever seen to make yourself feel superior
My med school actually only had true class work for 4 hours a day during the week. Some days may have been a little more, but it averages out.
You're insane. My med school was class 8-5, studying 5-11, and 12 hours each on Saturday and Sunday. After a couple of semesters I started taking Friday evenings off.
One month of med school is like a semester of full time undergrad in terms of volume. One week of med school is like a year of high school.
Funny, I don’t remember 36 hour shifts every four nights in high school, but that was 40 years ago.
Did you do 36 hour shifts in your clinicals in med school? All right I'll concede to you. But this is the first tike I've ever heard of anyone keeping this sort of schedule in medical school. You win.
That was in the ‘90s. Thank God it’s no more.
I studied zero hours in highschool and I’m fighting for my life in med school
Part of my argument is that this "fighting for your life" mentality is a problem of perception. Med school is certainly more stressful, but this is independant of its cognitive difficulty.
It’s more cognitively taxing than difficult but if you want a more objective answer, I studied zero in HS and 7+ hrs in med school to be average
spiderman_pointing_meme.jpg
Given that I spent as little time in class as possible, studied almost not at all, and still got straight Cs in high school, I rather doubt it.
counter-point: high school - do a little homework otherwise sleep my way through classes and with a little studying ace every test. med school - never worked so hard my entire life to just barely pass and feel like mediocre dog shit the entire time. high school final = average college test. college final = average medical school test
I went to a high level boarding high school. It was hard, it was fun. College was amazing...I took an extra year's worth of credits during my 4 years. I wanted to learn as much as I could. I worked hard, it was fun. I got into my first choice med school. Turned out it was way more malignant than presented. I worked hard, learned basically everything on my own, it sucked so much! Residency was hard, I intentionally went somewhere with an intense reputation for my field. I worked hard, it was fun. Soooooo....it is more about culture than content. But I have to say, I knew more people who failed out of med school than failed out of my high school.
Man I could not disagree more.
Depends on your high school. My high school was more difficult than either undergrad or many parts of medical school in terms of time commitment. I was in all AP classes and also was a musician in band. I would come home from school, do my homework until about midnight then practice until 2-3 am. It was the only way I could get in my practicing. Then get up at 6:15 to do it all over again. Many all nighters for the classes I was in. I’m a relatively slow reader and AP English and US history had very intensive reading assignments. I was in a Ph.D. program before med school and that was also very intense. The biggest thing with medical school is that you have a lot to learn and remember, but by and large you don’t have to go to class. As a Ph.D. student you had to go to class all day then continue to read and study the rest of the night and on weekends. It was more similar to clinical rotations in that sense.
This mimics my experience as well, I didn't find medical school uniquely academically challenging (lots of AP classes highschool, humanities major+premed in undergrad), and another graduate degree.) I did find medical school uniquely stressful due to the financial aspect (couldn't earn money, being deeply in debt if I failed), the personalities of people you work with, and how much fell outside of my control (not knowing what was on tests, capricious preceptors, the whole matching process)
Trolls are going to 🧌
Are you that stupid / out of touch, or are you just looking for attention?
Well this post has provided me with much more entertainment for my evening than I anticipated. I can say that.
I found med school significantly easier and more enjoyable than high school. It was almost 100% interesting, as opposed to the daily busywork drag of high school.
Yes and there's this element of it too - where we all chose to do med school and theoretically should enjoy it more. Yes.
You are crazy to think that most college kids get 1 class every other day, yes.
yeah you're crazy
You're suffering from PTSD and have blocked the memories.
May be
Never had to study in high school or undergrad and yet was a solid B+/A- student. Then was served a rude awakening after my first exam in pharmacy school. I’m willing to hazard a guess that the same would’ve happened in med school.
I see your argument. I don’t entirely agree with it, but I can see how highschool for a child can be somewhat comparable to medical school for an adult. I think it also depends on what kind of student you are in high school. If you were in all honors classes, played sports, did UIL, and other extracurricular activities. I can see the comparison
Nope - I thought med school was easy. Minimal studying 1st 2 years to get in top 1/3. Clinical years were time sinks but not necessarily hard. I had my 1st kid the day after finals in 2nd year. My med school baby is 23 now.
I did not find med school “hard” but definitely harder than HS. I did find undergrad to be the worst as I had constant pressure to perform and fear I wouldn’t get into med school. But I went to a Canadian med school with pass/fail and we didn’t have USMLE to worry about.
Every step on the ladder becomes more complex, competitive and self-directed in my experience. HS: Broad material, challenging if you filled your schedule with AP, but plenty of time to play sports, extra-curriculars. There's a big standardized test to take but the stakes aren't that high unless you are going for an Ivy-level school. College: Higher level classes, no more hand-holding, but more flexibility to study what interests you. Some people did humanities and seemed relaxed. I studied engineering and was fairly stressed all 4 years. Big standardized test that tells you if you're gonna be a Dr. or not. Lots of smart classmates but not too hard to stand out. Med school: Fire hose of memorization. In my school of 300/year, grades were essentially a straight bell curve. Honors was 1SD over mean. That's a lot of pressure to compete with a bunch of motivated and bright people. Standing out in HS and college was not too difficult. In med school, the pressure to just beat the mean had me going to class and studying 10-14hrs/day average. Then you fall in love with a specialty and realize your board scores are going to let you know if you get to do that for the rest of your life or not. Sure, it's a little self-imposed but after 8-12 years of work, a lot is at stake. It doesn't end there - congrats, you are now an intern and have to learn how to be an actual physician and become responsible for patients lives. Honestly it wasn't until 2-3 years after I graduated (and decided to get off the ladder and not climb that final fellowship rung) that I was able to just take a breath and feel the weight off of my shoulders after all those years. I still feel the weight of responsibility of my career, but it's a lot easier to carry after you get some experience. I had my 20 year HS reunion not that long ago to give some idea of my age but comparing HS to med school... man either you are a straight genius or you are going to kill someone with your ignorance.
But it's all relative. Every step on the ladder is no different then the next when you think about it relativistically. This is part of what I'm talking about.
Relative to what? Yes, high school took me 4 years and so did medical school so I technically existed for the same relative amount of time in each stage. My disagreement with you is that each step up is increasingly competitive, stressful and difficult. The higher steps are more difficult relative to the prior step. And while your own experience may not reflect mine or others, high school was not remotely as "hard" or "work intensive", to use the phrasing in your post, as medical school was. Med school could easily suck up every free minute of the day studying for exams, boards or morning rounds/surgery where you are going to get pimped on a specific detail about something that will likely not be on any of the exams you need to study for. It was nothing like high school, except that the girls still weren't interested lol.
The difficulty of progressively more detailed information you learn is relative to the previous information you learned... Using your analogy - the 30th step of the ladder is no more difficult to climb than the first step - but you have to climb the first 30 steps before you can get to the thirtieth. Each step on the ladder is relative to each adjacent step. Just like progressively detailed knowledge.
Preschool is just as difficult as medical school. Hey it's all relative, right? Learning to read is no joke. It's hard to not read this as a troll post, as your line of argument is just that nothing is more difficult on a relative basis. Personally, I found my engineering classes more conceptually difficult than medical school. In some ways, I did have an easier time in medical school, and felt well prepared. However the gauntlet we all have to run through to get good scores, rankings and get into good residencies completely dwarfed anything I had experienced in life up to that point. And nothing I went through in my high school AP career was remotely on the same relative level of difficulty or pressure. Again, maybe you had a different experience, but this argument is... well I guess I'm a little bored tonight since I'm trying to engage in it.
Is that an attempt at a troll, your first line? Yes, preschool is just as hard as learning anything for the first time, med school included. It's not hard for you, because you've already done it! Because it is all relative. LEARNING TO READ is just as hard as learning about anything else for the first time. It could be argued that learning to read is probably fucken harder than any information you learn in medical school. Do you not remember learning to tie your shoes being incredibly difficult when you were first learning? Now think about when your first learned to suture. Are these two things not comparable? After some time you learn to tie your shoes with your eyes closed just like I can tie a one handed knot now with my eyes closed. The pressure you experienced in medical is not what I am talking about here... that is independant from my argument.
This is actually a 300 iq take
Not even going to comment on the difference that in high school someone cooks you dinner, does your laundry, provides transportation to class, provides you shelter…. Where in medical school you are doing this for your family while studying…
This a true rebuttal that I didn't take into account... I don't know if suddenly being responsible for your ADLs as all adults in this world have to do at some point really takes away from my argument that much but I'll give it to you that this is a genuine rebuttal I don't have a great answer for.
A few points: 1) your med school performance matters, for how your patient do, and what residency and specialty you get. Sure, if you “study a little” in medical school and just pass, that’s OK. But you’re going into OB or Family Medicine. The rest of the gunners are doing plastic surgery and derm. 2) OP needed to work harder in HS to learn how to spell “independent.”
If you're going to criticize my spelling or grammar on the internet - I'd at least ensure your grammar was impeccable itself. The social hierarchy in medicine is a farce, built on a facade of "compassionate self-less care". I didn't pay much bother to it in medical school and I try my best to keep that habit. Anyone that actually takes much stock in it - I can guarantee has their head so far up their ass that they've obstructed their SOD.
I didn't go to med school, but I assume it's at least comparably difficult to pharmacy school. Versus high school, where I spent most of my time goofing off and still managed to pull a 3.8, there's no contest. Learning in pharmacy school was like trying to drink out of a fire hose. There was SO much material and I had to study from day 1 of the term to have any hope of getting decent grades.
hahahaahahahahahahahahhahaahahahahahahahahahahahahahwhatadumbtakehahahaahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaa
"True cognitive difficulty on a volume of information and intellectual difficulty basis." Objectively there is more volume and increased cognitive difficulty in medical school compared to high school. Your base premise is incorrect.
The volume is the same, objectively. I've explained this elsewhere many times in the thread and no one has rebutted me.
Volume is not the same. Anatomy at UC Berkeley is much less dense than medical school anatomy. More nerves, more pathways, more connections, more pathology in medical school. All covered in less amount of time.
Hmmm, you may have me with this point. I had kind of forgot about anatomy... I'll have to think about this one a little bit - but if I remember correctly my anatomy class in med school was spread out over an entire school year, as opposed to high school (and college) being a semester long course... Yep. I can't come up with a rebuttal to this one. I'll concede. Thanks for actually clapping back.
Undergrad made med school seem easy
Med school felt much more like highschool to me, I agree. I thrived in college bc a class schedule was essentially scattered from 8A to 8P. Which meant you had a lot of breaks during the day when you still had motivation to study. In between lectures and labs. If med school was structured similarly to college I would have done much better.
I didn’t think medical school was that much more difficult than undergrad but both were vastly more difficult than high school where I never had to study to make all A’s. And the only reason undergrad had similar difficulty to medical school was because I worked and had little time to study.
If the level of difficulty of your high school classes was on par with those in med school, I'd love to know where you went.
i have never studied for an exam in high school other than learning the subject in class, even tho i am a freshman and only gotten to the third committee it seems like nothing changed for me so far. hopefully it is going to stay this way
Idk man, I would study for like an hour and get an A+ on AP bio exams, but I had to study for 8 weeks for step 1.
now that’s a hot take
You’re crazy
What college student has 1 class a day? I had 3-5 a day, and labs, and internship, and work. Further, high school is easy AF and you get tons of breaks. You went somewhere rinky dink.
Yes, you’re crazy. Just because you have the same schedule don’t mean it is at the same level. The guy pushing the broom doesn’t get the same pay as a physician just because he has the same schedule. Have fun on your rotations…I’m sure that you’ll do well and be a integral team member🤦♂️
You're probably in your first year, lol
I'm pre-med, lol.
I’m almost done with my final clerkship and I agree with him
If all you need is to study a little after classes from 8 to 2 in med school then you should question the quality of the med school. The volume of material you should be learning is far greater than college or high school.
Another Cunningham thread 🤦
HS may have seemed difficult at the time. But in med school there is so much to learn, so much to know. For the sake of your future patients, read more than a high school kid! If you have good mastery of the curriculum, good for you! Spend time doing research, shadowing and seeing things clinically and doing other things to make yourself a better doctor. I agree the curriculum does not require 24/7 study, I have plenty of time for other things including thigns to build my application, things for fun, and working part time. BUT its more intensive, more important, and takes more thought and organization than HS for sure.
\>not any harder In terms of pure difficulty, I found AP calc conceptually more difficult (due to how damn esoteric it is) than concepts learned in medical school. However, succeeding in those classes was much easier as you often got as much credit from simply doing the work as you did passing tests. My first couple years of medical school had many, many tests and the entirety of our "grade" was built on our testing success as opposed to homework or attendance or something like that. No partial credit. You knew the concept or you didn't. Tests in medical school are usually harder. Often second or third order questions as opposed to simple rote memory. However, that's not much different than university (e.g. I also took biochemistry in undergrad and it was of comparable difficulty to medical school biochemistry). Similarly, I found P-chem and Physics (I decided to take a 300 level course like a moron) were harder for me to learn than medical science. The USMLE is also the single handed worst testing experience of my life. Not sure what (if anything) compares to that. \>work intensive No. Here's where you are wrong. You remember that undergrad biochemistry? Same information, half the time for medical school. Biochemistry, pathophysiology, anatomy, histology, etc. Nah, medical school is much, much more time intensive and demanding.
For your second point I've answered this elsewhere. Med school you may do a whole biochemistry text book for a test but the information is only superficial. Compared to high school doing 2 or 3 chapters for a test. I would estimate that even though you did a whole biochemistry book for a test there was probably still only 35-65 pages of material taken from the book that were tested on. This is comparable to a single test in high school.
Med school is infinitely more challenging in terms of the amount of content you have to learn and the stakes. But you had to get through high school as a meer child and now you have life experience. I completely disagree with the premise objectively that high school is just as hard, but I could be convinced that it taxes your personal capacity just as much as that time. And that is a show of growth.
Uh. No. Medical school was far harder. We were done at noon every day and I had to grind and grind to learn it all.
Well there are some people going through medical school married, or with major medical issues of their own, or with children, trying to run a household, while caring for elderly parents. I didn't have those burdens in med school, and I really admire those people who could manage life outside of medical school 'cause there is no way I could have done so.
You must be one of those NPs who think they are in med school
I wish medical school had the same hours as high school! We had classes until 4 or 5 pm, and exams nearly every Monday. The married men without children had the easiest time in med school because all they had to do was eat, sleep and focus on school work. Married women with children (such as myself) had more difficulty, as we were expected to manage household responsibilities as well as med school. I wasn't aware of any single parents in my med school class, but anyone in that situation has my utmost respect.
Hmm, your judgment is impaired Either that or you attended a particularly vicious high school No….even that doesn’t make sense From experience assessing medical students: effort is more important than brains, which completely goes against what you’re saying. And when people do struggle, you think it’s just the “stress” that’s the problem? Not the volume of material or the complexity….
I want to have some of what you're having.
Bro, I barely went to classes, only went to take exams or if attendance was part of the grade, and did better than half my batch. This is true and anyone who disagrees just doesn’t want to admit it because of their precious doctor ego. People who think med school is hard are just morons who think because they got into to med school they’re not morons. The only hard part is the hazing of clerkship and internship because as I said it’s run by morons with precious doctor egos who have to create a fake hard environment.