medical school

i'm not sure about the comparative intellectual challenge of law and medical schools - it might depend on the person - but it seems like the latter is generally more of an endurance sport

I get the impression there's more expectation that you're actually going to REMEMBER all the shit you learn in med school - or at least that you should

Early on (at least in our curriculum), there is a lot of like, biochemistry stuff, which we need to know for Step I of the Boards next year, but almost certainly won't need to know as a doctor unless you go into research on that specific thing. The basic pathways have some value, but even the instructors are mostly telling us that knowing the various structural differences of isoprene-derived molecules is not a particularly pressing clinical skill.

Knowing the biochemistry will help you understand some of the later, more relevant stuff. Understanding aids retention. So, presumably, you will have a better chance of recalling the more relevant stuff when you need it.

holy shit i'm tired

C-L: where are you going to school, again?

good luck dudes, are you doing medicine in the us?

i am, y

I go to Ge0rget0wn (I do not know why I feel the need to Googleproof that, but I do). Which is delightful! Especially last Tuesday, since we started Gross Anatomy, and then I got to join the mob at the White House after Obama got elected. It was basically all you could ask out of going to med school in DC.

We just converted to systems-based, and they opted to hold off Gross Anatomy for the first three modules (which were mostly biochemistry and cellular physiology and genetic stuff), but we finally put Genetics behind us and now it is time for Cardiopulmonary and cadavers and such.

I am also basically tired all the time, gbx. But yeah this still rules.

our curriculum is olde-skool, and i wish it wasn't. systems/organs and/or case-based would suit my temperament much better. we're doing biochem, histo, and just started genetics (all three salted with nutrition and a few other seminars now and then). biochem is great, but that's because i think that shit is cool. histo is, uh, a thing. genetics is complicated, but whatever.

good luck with anatomy. it's fascinating, and makes everything more immediate, for lack of a better word.

Oh man Nutrition was a minor scandal for us. It was like 95% self-directed learning, but the guy in charge of the exam kept on saying "Seriously, you don't have to put in that much time, the test is just going to be big concepts, not little details or numbers or anything". We had two other, bigger tests the same week so nobody really put any super-gunning energy behind studying for it. And then the exam had a bunch of questions about details and numbers and everybody did horribly.

Genetics was...not my thing. It was not bad or evil or anything, but there wasn't a lot that really caught my interest. But that is the thing about compressed, dedicated modules; I was a little disinterested for the past month, but now it is done. (The tradeoff is that we've never had longer than two weeks in between tests, which itself is kind of advantageous because all the tests are relatively manageable, and bad because everybody is really smart and the average score keeps on being like 85%.) I got weirdly fond of drawing structures and pathways in prep for med school, so I liked biochem, but signal transduction was probably my favorite.

I was not a science major, at all, so it is sort of funny to see how completely incapable med school is at any sort of non-quantitative assessment. They will find a way to graft a multiple choice exam onto EVERYTHING, no matter how awkward.

hey lamp are you applying right now?

yep! i had my first admissions interview yesterday. i have no idea how i did or what the hell i said. i spent at least ten minutes talking to a dude about living in toronto (?) and just kind of hoped not to sound like an idiot.

how much did you guys prepare for your interviews? most of the qns seem to be the sort of stuff in the supplementary apps but then again i've only had one. i'm actually pretty frustrated by how spread out the deadlines for schools are. some schools wanted everything a month ago and there are a couple of schools that don't have deadlines until december.

haha i also like the schools that want a photo of you in the application. and i ran across this when looking at prep for my application: Not only will we give you impartial feedback, but we can assess you in some of the same areas the med schools are assessing you in (ie. physical appearance) Emory University: no fatties plz!

Turn over your secondaries as quickly as possible, regardless of the deadline. For one thing, you'll get considered sooner (which, hopefully, will get you in sooner, which prevents you from spending the first eight months of next year completely losing your mind), and for another, rapid turnaround suggests more interest in that particular school. There was one secondary (Univ. of Chicago) that I got really early (I think they were one of the schools that sent it even before my AMCAS was verified) that I just sat on the entire time, because the questions were a pain in the ass (IIRC they were all like "Tell us why you think the University of Chicago is the best place ever" or something). I finally dashed it off on a whim, and they ended up being one of the first places to reject me. And with good reason!

I went light on interview prep; it took me a lot of soul-searching over a bunch of years to even decide to apply, so the answers to the basic "Why do you want to be a doctor?" type stuff I had basically been forced to lock down just to explain to everybody why I was doing what I was doing. I felt relatively comfortable treating interviews like casual (albeit extremely weird, stressed) conversations; it kind of screwed me at schools where the interview became an interrogation, but it helped at others, where the interview was repeatedly stressed to be "our opportunity to get to know you a little better". (In the same way, I was much more likely to get an interview from schools with open-ended secondary apps than school with fifteen boxes that all required 800-character-maximum statements about my most valuable research/volunteer/clinical experience.) My first interview went a little south early on, so I took the remainder of it as prep for the others I had coming up afterwards. That helped, too. I have also heard repeatedly positive things about the Interview Rating section on studentdoctor.net (although I would recommend avoiding the forums themselves for now. Reading SDN prior to the MCAT or interviews always made me more anxious, because it frequently lapses into insanity and gunner mentality).

The one thing I will say did me good was trying to pick up as much information about the school itself, and especially how it was different (or saw itself as different) from other schools. Like, G-Town matches a really high number of grads into orthopedics every year, and I want to be an orthopod; beyond that, I picked up an interest in medical education policy (and healthcare policy more generally) in grad school and the job I had after grad school, so I was able to push my interest in being in a place where I could get involved with DC political-type stuff. It is really an abnormally good fit. The big thing about reaching the stage of multiple interviews is that schools assume you will be (or have already been) accepted somewhere, and they do not want to offer one of their seats to someone who will bail on them if accepted somewhere "better" (or cheaper, if it's a private school worried about you staying with an in-state public school).

yeah u chicago is one of the december 1st deadlines. i'm not sure what the difference between 'what makes you a good candidate for u chicago?' and 'why u chicago?' qns really are. i kind of hate those qns and would much much prefer talking about research i've done or ways i've exhibited "strong intellectual curiosity". i like the more specific, anecdotal qns. i also really like the ones that are like going on oprah though like some real "tell me about a painful moment from your teenage years" stuff.

The one thing I will say did me good was trying to pick up as much information about the school itself, and especially how it was different (or saw itself as different) from other schools.

this is something i'm very comfortable talking about. all the schools i've applied to have strong immunology departments which is my main interest and i've got things i can talk about for each school. what threw me off was when, after a few minutes of pleasant chit-chat one of the interviewers turned to me and just said "so, why do you want to be a doctor?" and, i mean of course i was prepared for this question, but just having someone ask it so bluntly my prepared answer seemed awkward and forced and weird. i still think it went okay but it left me feeling unhappy afterwards, like i fumbled on my first possession.

also i've been purposefully avoiding SDN since the ppl there had all their secondaries done in like, august and were already getting interviewers when i was just starting my essays.

SDN can be dispiriting, no question. i avoided it pretty diligently, though it is useful for comparing residencies, i gather. like CL, i didn't stress too much about interviews; as a 27 year old post-bacc, i'd had plenty of time to consider my answers to the Big Questions. also, for someone with a background like mine (non-science major, older, non-traditional activities between college and med school), the interviews were a chance to explain myself.

w/r/t non-quantitative assessment: we just had to write a short paper on Mountains Beyond Mountains as part of a longitudinal Physician and Society course, and it was hilarious to see how some of my fellow students reacted. writing papers just isn't something biochemistry majors do. also, most are baffled when i tell them that i, like, READ BOOKS outside of school. like, quote, "wait, you read? like what?" astounding.

also: bang out those secondaries! i sat on a handful, and it definitely bit me in the ass later (ie - did not get interviews because i didn't send back some secondaries until like, now-ish).

i only have one left, which i'm working on right now. i sent the ones i was most hopeful/certain of out first which was probably the right strategy given that i'm still working pretty long hours at my actual job but it left my very unmotivated to finish the last two.

I was in a little group of non-trads back in LA, and I think we all tended to see interviews as our ace in the hole. I still am thankful every day that I didn't apply when I was 21 and straight out of college, because I just wasn't prepared at all. I had a reasonable idea of what I DIDN'T want to do, but not much of what I did. Even four years later, though, I had spent a lot more time sitting and thinking about exactly what I wanted to do and why. But even then I went into my first one thinking, "Alright, even if this goes bad, I have another one at a school I like more next week, so just get used to the rhythm." By the end I tended to be the only person in a dark, conservative suit who still thought interview days were really fun. (They are an anthropological gold mine, for one thing. Also I got to go to a few places I'd never been to before!)

I get so hard up for non-science stuff sometimes, I will go out of my way to find humanities/social science action elsewhere on campus. I think that part of my brain just gets cravings or something. I have taken to writing/revising my lecture notes as though they were an enormous, very technical essay.

Yeah by the end of secondaries I had actually gotten a couple interview offers, so the latecomers tended to slide, including one I just didn't do. Sorry Oregon!

okay done! also i read upthread C-L you applied to TWENTY schools???

There were 24 on my AMCAS, and I did 20 secondaries. Amongst the other applicants I was in contact with last year, 24's a bit lower than average; 30 seemed closer to average. But yeah that turned into about four thousand dollars right there, counting AMCAS and secondaries and airfare for my out of state interviews.

Most counselors promote applying anywhere you have a chance, within budgetary reason, which turns into all the in-states and whatever out of state schools are possible for OOS students with your numbers. Fifty's not uncommon, and I know of at least two anecdotal instances of cracking triple digits (at least one of which was a shotgun approach from a dude with a low GPA). But you'd probably have to take an extended vacation once the secondaries got above like, thirty. (I just gave up a lot of free time for a couple months.)

But that said, it was almost three times as many places as I'd applied to for undergrad and grad school combined, which is nuts.

ugh srsly these interviews

What's been happening?

i turn into a complete idiot, basically. upthread both you and gbx talk about having spent time considering the big questions and i guess i haven't really. im great with background questions or talking about the clinical research opportunites offered at penn but im second guessing my reasons for even applying they seem facile and just ridiculous when spoken aloud and i feel like an inarticulate douchebag. uh, moreso.

also i got my first rejection from lol harvard which isnt a surprise but still sux

FUCK. HISTO.

hate this garbage. normally i'm good at teasing out the inherent interesting-ness/practical applicability/whatever out of most subjects, but histo is just some str8 boring garbage, and is like the poster child of "shit from school you will forget and likely never used again w/o reference" that actual docs like to tell you so much about. i mean, yes, there's obvious merit to a lot of it, but I'm not planning on doing a lot of bench science in the future and mostly it's just sort of galling that I have to go around identifying various laminae >:(

also my final is on tues and i'm, uh, not as prepared as a person ought to be

what is my attitude = bad

Yeah I am really happy that our new curriculum seems to have signed histology away to the smallest possible role it can play. There is usually like one microanatomy lecture and one "lab" (we do not have to use microscopes or anything, we just get shown more slides) per module, surrounded by a dozen-plus physiology lectures.

Good luck, dude. I will give you the sage advice of one of my third-year roommates, given before our first exam: "It is really hard not to pass." It is still pretty sucky to work really hard and still end up getting killed on a test, though.

reading the sdn forums is almost enough to make you not want to be a doctor seriously

reading the internet in general is almost enough to make you want to just end it all, so I think that's just par for the course

WORD to Lamp. If you are applying now, avoid that site like the plague.

Are there any other medical students out there hating Histo like I am?

The law school and grad school threads got revived, so why not...

This is HARD, but awesome. So far medical school >>>> grad school. (I do not know how law school is. I would still guess >>>, though.) I have had nearly two months of being repeatedly reminded that I know basically nothing about medicine or medical science or how to be a doctor. But nobody else does yet, either!

― C-L, Saturday, September 27, 2008 12:43 AM (3 months ago) Bookmark

And so much WORD to this. I am really enjoying medical school, even though I have no idea how the hell I am going to learn enough material to actually become a doctor. But hey, we are all in the same boat!

histo was the worst

I kind of want to post to this every time the law school thread gets updated.

Our module system wedges two or three or four histo/microanatomy lectures into each unit of the body (along with some embryology and gross anatomy and a bunch of physiology), so it is always extremely tempting to dismiss the histo and spend 95% of the study time on the physiology because a) it is boring and b) the return on puzzling through the various slides for the eight or ten questions per test is usually not worth it. I would have really liked embryology to remain a cohesive unit instead of being broken up across modules, but I am pretty cool with microanatomy's dispersal.

Actually the weirdest thing right now, though, is that the most bothersome part of the schedule is all the non-hard-science classes they are throwing at us (like Ethics and such). It is all material founded on really good intentions, but between the blocks of time it eats and the didactic approaches they use, it all comes across like "OK, we should promote ethics, and service, and etc., so let's just schedule some of that and then they will learn about ethics and service and etc." without a lot of effort into justifying its existence beyond explaining how vital ethics and service and etc. are, and really, all it is doing is making ethics and service and etc. an annoying obstruction. I am from a non-science background and even I am kind of longing for the point in March where the rest of the syllabus is all lecture and anatomy through the end of the year.

Also yeah, seriously, SDN is the gaping maw of hell. There is probably an incredible anthropology/sociology article that could be written comparing posts from SDN with posts from JD Underground, though.

Actually the weirdest thing right now, though, is that the most bothersome part of the schedule is all the non-hard-science classes they are throwing at us (like Ethics and such). It is all material founded on really good intentions, but between the blocks of time it eats and the didactic approaches they use, it all comes across like "OK, we should promote ethics, and service, and etc., so let's just schedule some of that and then they will learn about ethics and service and etc." without a lot of effort into justifying its existence beyond explaining how vital ethics and service and etc. are, and really, all it is doing is making ethics and service and etc. an annoying obstruction.

^^^ this. we've got a similar set-up

Same. Don't they know that we have physiology to study? ;).

haha reading these posts is putting a serious dent in my "i just have to get in and then its all smooth sailing" mindset

ha. but no, seriously medical school applications are ridiculous. However, you will make your future a hell of a lot easier if you decide to go to a school that is "pass/fail" in the first year.

And I mean a true "pass/fail", not the foolishness that is honors = A, high pass = B, pass = C, etc.

Haha we have that. We also have a "Low Pass" that is a D, but at least it shows up on transcripts as a regular pass.

Really what bothers me about obligatory service is that the couple of times I have done actual volunteer service, it's been amazing. I am way more handy with a needle than I ever imagined myself being in first year.

btw guys what do you think about immunology? it's fascinating!

that's one of the main areas i'm interested in studying/practicing - i agree it's totally fascinating.

I kind of regret not double majoring in Microbiology/Immunology/Molecular Genetics back when I was an undergrad. But we haven't done very much of the immune system yet; I think it is all part of a big 2nd year curriculum blowout. I am pretty amped. Although I don't think I would do infectious disease, though.

I spent this morning in the anatomy lab studying gastrointestinal structures alone and listening online to the radio show I used to listen to in LA when I was driving to do my Sunday morning ER volunteering back in the day.. It was really about as relaxing as being the only living person in a room full of half-destroyed bodies can be. A+++.

Immuno rocks! Studying it right now, it definitely matches my expectations of what I expected to learn in medical school much more than does histo (ugh).

Also, I loved going to study in the anatomy lab in the mornings when it was quieter and not every single person in my class was freaking out about an upcoming test. Very relaxing, yes.

Yeah, histo was my bete noir, mostly because it had a similar informational volume compared to anatomy, but little of the innate "this is RAD"-ness. I've since learned that we do histo way more comprehensively than other schools??

But yeah, immunology is way more intrinsically interesting and, well, "medical." There's something fascinating to me about how the human immune system, as distributed across the whole species, acts as a massively parallel computational array---like, the problem of producing antibodies/TCRs that actually *work* is being solved by brute force by a bazillion cells across billions of individuals, over hundreds of millions of years. I hadn't really considered ID or immunology as possible specialties, but I'm definitely considering it now.

plus i got props in class on friday from my immuno prof for saying someting 'very clever.' this is a first for me and a much needed morale boost, since i was struggggglin last semester (90% due to old, bad study habits)

http://www.mpg.de/bilderBerichteDokumente/multimedial/bilderWissenschaft/2004/02/Zychlinski1/Web_Zoom.jpeg

keep it up guys. on the new york city heirarchy, doctors always trump lawyers. especially when they're 8 inches taller than you.

keep it up guys. on the new york city heirarchy, doctors always trump lawyers. especially when they're 8 inches taller than you.

― burt_stanton, Sunday, January 25, 2009 10:31 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark

ugh