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One memory that still makes me angry is that back during my undergraduate days I was taking an ochem lab with the president of this club called the American Med Student Association. This girl wasn’t understanding how to get this product at the end of her experiment and the TA was being so gentle and patient with her and she eventually hit him with “I don’t get why we’re doing this, it’s not like I’m going to do a PhD I’m gonna be a real doctor”
It still makes my blood boil
Knew someone in college, he was a chem major because he liked chemistry, not as a pre-med, and the chem department as jumping for joy to have an actual chemist as a major.
The pre-meds, regardless of major, were hated and feared by fellow students, TAs, and faculty. Grade grubbing, cheating, like the example in parent post, irritated with anything that they thought they wouldn't "need" for being a doctor.
Gotta love it when undergrad students act like they already have a career like this. Until you're actually in med school, which the chances are slim for anyone, then stfu. Same with nursing, engineering, basically any degree
At least with engineering or nursing you are in engineering/nursing school. So you are an engineering student.
If you really wanted to break down the engineering 'levels' (I wouldn't really call them levels) it would go:
Engineering student -> engineer (no PE or EIT, some people just do this and don't get their PE) -> Engineer in Training (EIT, half way to PE) -> Professional Engineer.
This is for the US, in Canada the final stage is also called 'Professional Engineer' but the abbreviation is 'P.Eng.'. In the UK the final term is Chartered Engineer.
In the US the only protected term is 'Professional Engineer' (in Canada they are more strict). So 'engineer' can refer to anyone. There are train and crane engineers that have no need for engineering school. There are also plenty of engineers working in that role with no engineering degree. So an engineering student saying, in normal conversation, 'I'm an engineer' is not a big deal.
I am a PE with a degree from an ABET accredited school.
I don't really understand, I'm not a software engineer. There also isn't a PE for 'software engineering'. There are PEs for control systems and then three different areas for electrical including 'computer engineering'. Computer engineering PE seem very rare based on the [pass rate stats](https://ncees.org/exams/pe-exam/).
Sure the money can be nice (I won’t be anywhere close to 500k), but it’s more than that. It’s about the life opportunities lost. You can’t be with your friends and/or family living in the moment in their 20s. You watch them start families knowing you have to keep pushing yours off. This profession takes and takes and takes.
While some days there are highs, it’s countered by a sea of stress and lows: Patients dying, fighting the uphill battle against insurance, becoming disenfranchised with not only the medical system, but people’s lives becoming a checklist of procedures/medicines. It loses its luster quickly.
The money can be nice, but it’s about more than the money. Living with that level of stress and disappointment and loss every day… it really gets to you.
They make decently more in my state plus I know some going over 400 for the system I worked at. Either way it's enough money to deal with shitty conditions for a few years
It’s tough man. It’s an unforgiving field. I got in because I wanted to help people, do right by the community, be involved in making the system better. But every step of the way, it’s a system designed to break you.
I lost my 20s to this field, I’m $250,000 in debt, I work 100 hours a week, I make less than minimum wage, I barely see my family, I can’t start my own family, administrators want me to see more and more patients every day for less time, providing less quality care for more quantity. I’m disenfranchised.
Fighting for my patients is an uphill battle. I spend hours working to get patients authorized for a procedure or image they need that may not even be approved. The system is broken and it affects people at every level.
Hello from nursing. Healthcare is rough. I've worked with and been friends with plenty of residents - y'all get the short end of the stick pretty often, and I hate how mistreated you all are. People can judge all they want, but you sound like you care, and you're allowed to feel multiple feelings about where you're at in life. You're doing great.
I lost my 20s to poverty, homelessness, low self-esteem (not believing I was worth anything, let alone going to college) and for reasons I'm not comfortable sharing just yet, being aimless and lost, wondering how the hell I was gonna get back on track to help my son live a better life. Took me until I was 32 to get my associates, and I'm working on my bachelors in cyber security now.
Keep at it. I know you can do it. I'm not in the medical field but I try to stand up for y'all whenever I get the chance. I think you're doing great, too :)
I know brother, I’m in medicine too. It’s tough, the lows are low and the highs are rare, but if you’re in it for the true love of medicine and care of others, even at its worst…it’s still worth it.
You’re doing great man, you got this. Keep your head up 👍🏾
That’s irrelevant, cause I’m not sitting here saying “it’s not worth it”. Instead of evaluating me, you should do some self-reflection as to why you even did it in the first place cause clearly for YOU it wasn’t worth it.
You forgot to add "wears their white coat from Chem Lab to strut around campus like they're auditioning for a medical drama." As a former biology major who went into medicine, I always found it hilarious—like, dude, you're mixing reagents to make soap. Calm down.
My high school had a pre-pre-med program that gave the students custom scrubs for their internships and classes. But there were a handful of people who wore those outfits *everywhere,* and were very quick to tell you whatever classes you had were child’s play compared to their workloads. I can only imagine how “wonderful” their personalities are if they were that snooty back then lol
I remember people wearing the disposable lab coats from the microbiology lab, and then using them as conversation starters/excuses to brag about all of the “dangerous pathogens” they worked with in micro. (They obviously were not working with anything remotely dangerous in sophomore year micro lab.)
At my uni you were explicitly instructed not to wear a lab coat outside of practicals. The point is to prevent dangerous substances touching your skin and clothes (and make it obvious when some have). It’s bad practice to be trailing around random toxic chemicals and or pathogens post practical and obnoxious to wear one beforehand for no reason. Why even bring one if you don’t have a lab practical that day?
I’m a doctor, I knew two people that said they wanted to be a neurosurgeon even when they were premed, one ended up doing family medicine, the other actually is a neurosurgeon
For what it’s worth - I really do think the semester in undergrad before I applied to med school was one of the tough six month stretches of my life, including med school and residency
With that said yeah there’s a very large chunk of annoying premeds. Once witnessed a girl purposefully telling people around her the wrong answer on a clicker question so she’d do better by comparison on the curve
Im not in medicine but I’m a 40 year old guy with only the mcat, a biochem course and some clinical experience away from applying to medical school.
The last three years working full time and doing this has been absolutely soul crushing because of the doubt. Doesn’t help my job won’t exist in a couple months. I definitely feel like medical school although very difficult will be much better because you at least know if you keep grinding it will work out.
I majored in microbiology as an undergrad, so most of my classmates were premeds, and dear God, this starterpack gave me flashbacks. The only thing it’s missing is the outright insane sabotage some of them stoop to in order to take their classmates down a peg or make themselves look better. When I was in college, people were constantly feeding each other wrong information, fucking with each other’s labs, cheating on exams, trying to get other people in trouble for cheating on exams—you could probably learn a lot about game theory just by studying the bizarre cheating rings that emerged in basically every class. Everyone was cheating, but everyone wanted to report everyone else for cheating, so it was like a constant prisoner’s dilemma situation, with people coordinating and betraying each other to maximize their own success. These students were genuinely some of the most unhinged people I’ve ever met.
Funnily enough, the ones who introduced themselves as “future pediatric neurosurgeons” were always the ones who failed out of, like, biology 101.
Premed here and yeah you’re on point.
Everyone’s cheating in my classes, only a few don’t. Everyone has their own cliques and hate each other. Everyone is sabotaging each other. Doesn’t help that because we’re studying in a prestigious university, ego and pride issues are problems.
I actually got sad because this really wasn’t I thought what college would be since I keep hearing that college would be where people step out of that teenage angst phase and become more rational people. Nowadays, I find it better to just mind my own business and stick with a few good people.
Oh man, I can definitely relate to the feelings of disappointment. I was so excited to get out of my shitty rural high school, and then half of my college classmates ended up being crazy premed gunner types, lmao.
If it helps, I remember the hyper-competitive, cheating mentality dissipating a little bit by the tail end of my sophomore year. By then, almost everyone was finished with the stereotypical "weed-out" classes (organic chemistry, calculus, physics, etc), and people who couldn't handle the program (i.e. people who cheated on every assignment because they didn't know the material) had mostly left or failed out. I don't think I would ever describe my undergrad classmates as *chill,* but I do think some of the cutthroat gunner stuff came from a place of fear, and it lessened once the weed-outs were done and the remaining students weren't terrified of failing every class.
In general, though, minding your own business and sticking with a small group of friends is 100% the best way to get through it. You can avoid a lot of the craziness by refusing to engage with gossip, cheating rings, or petty inter-clique politics.
I'm a resident and you've nailed it lmao. A lot of these people don't get into med school, but even if they do, they don't become any less insufferable.
I dont really get what premed is, as a non-American, so can somebody explain it to me?
So, right know what I assume it is: high school students cant start studying at a medical university right away and need to go to college for a few years to study STEM more closely, right?
Premeds are basically people who aspire to be doctors but are majoring in bio/chem/biochem because their required classes most align with topics covered on the MCAT (medical college admissions test) as well as basic requirements for medical school. On top of that, they have to actually study for the MCAT, do volunteer work, clinical hours, research, and more personalized stuff to bolster their application because getting your foot in the door for medical school is stupid hard
As a result of all this work, some of them might form some sort of superiority complex perhaps as a way to justify them practically killing themselves to even get a taste of med school. Honestly I feel like there’s a lot of overlap between people who were on A2C and then moved to premed because that tends to attract similar personalities
Medical school is extremely difficult to get into and on top of that you have to get a good MCAT score and the MCAT is (arguably) the hardest graduate entry exam that exists. Along with keeping near top grades, medical schools expect you to be well rounded, have clinical experience, volunteering hours, shadowing, research, and also be a normal person with fun hobbies you can talk about.
It's also extremely expensive...just the process to prepare and apply gatekeeps lower income students from going down this path. If you get in, then you have $200-$400K of debt generally after 4 years unless you are fortunate enough to get financial assistance/scholarship.
It's a stressful process, and a lot of it does tend to self select for wealthy kids with type A personalities.
I’ll be a doctor in three weeks and I’m so glad I did not have to go through all this stuff just for a spot. I briefly worked alongside US students when I was in NYU Neurology dept. in April and they were very good, but the amount of stuff needed to get into the schools is just too much.
The American Medical Association lobbies very hard to keep the number of doctors in the US as low as possible to preserve the prestige and negotiating leverage of incumbent doctors. This is not the case in other countries who may have political motivations to have more doctors to better serve communities with the tradeoff of lower pay.
They also create a two-tiered system of MDs and DOs where MDs are very competitive and restricted whereas DOs are less competitive. They're also needlessly filled with a bunch of "Osteopathic" nonsense that they nevertheless have to keep in order to justify the differentiation. Most DOs therefore enter less competitive positions like family practice while your surgeons and specialists are almost always MDs. Some wiggle room, but not much, despite what DOs may say.
In the US, we don't really explore the prestige of Healthcare as a reason for the obnoxious cost of Healthcare for the public.
Fwiw check out the gatekeeping in this comment section.
List of things that’ll make you a standout applicant but will not guarantee your position and not in order:
1) High GPA (Science GPA, not cumulative)
2) High MCAT score
3) Research
4) Clinical hours
5) Volunteer Work
6) Personal stuff that makes you, you
7) Interviews
Keep in mind that the people even bothering to apply to medical school are people who have gone through the trials and tribulations of undergrad and you’re competing against a bunch of people who are at the same level or better than you. At most American medical schools 99% of applicants will get rejected and they are all more than qualified to attend
Damn, I am a medical student already but the process of applying in my country is far more different from yours than I thought it was.
My experience: (no idea why have I written all that, actually)
(WARNING! I am ESL, so please digress my butchering of english language)
We have an obligatory state exam — [USE (click for more details about in on wiki)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_State_Exam) after 11th grade in school.
(To apply to medical uni you need to have great results in Russian, Biology and Chemistry)
Since the university education is free here, thats technically all you need for success. However, thats just too good to be true,amiright, so in reality its a bit more complicated.
Since the salary of medical personnel is, um, rather low (lets say, 30000 rubles, or, like, 300 dollars) in state-owned [polyclinics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyclinic) not a lot of people really want to work there, so the higher-ups made it so almost every (like 95%) of free places in med universities are bought out by local piblic health ministries.
Why? Its done so that people would have to sign a contract with the ministry in order to be accepted, basically.
(+) Doing so guarantees you a place of work after graduation as a district physician (Its different from general practioners but I have actually NO idea how to explain the differences well enough).
(-) Salaries are **questionable**
Since the most understaffed polyclinics (well, calling those polyclinics is doing them a favor) are in distant small towns or actual villages you will most likely spend 3 years (as written in your government contract) in a russian equivalent of an Assfordshire (no idea how to better translate the original Russian idiom to English)
there is more to it, for sure, but i give up writing this, sorry, written english is not my best
Yeah no here in the US it’s vastly different. Becoming a medical student is way more competitive due to the culture the profession fosters as well as the much much better salaries and social clout being a doctor carries. I want to say it’s attributed to the privatization of healthcare here where you’re guaranteed a top 10% salary whether you work under an established hospital/healthcare provider or your own practice
Damn, 10% top salary sounds fantastic, blyat, ohuenno even
But yeah, I see why many people find med education in your country difficult, cause god damn
In most states it’s probably top 1% salary - the median physician salary is something like $350k/yr to give you an idea. US medical students have to take on considerable debt but any study on physician salary globally shows that American doctors end their careers with higher net worths than physicians anywhere else. I still think that the debt is a huge problem because it serves as a major barrier of entry to anyone who isn’t upper middle or upper class which then goes on to artificially block out low income individuals from accessing high pay careers, but that’s a conversation that could take days to complete in its entirety.
They’re the only tippity top paying career though that I’ll never complain about earning what they do. They study like crazy, make it through arguably the hardest academic path in the country, and then take on mountains of debt only to finally start making a strong wage over a decade after starting their studies. Anyone who goes in it for the money will hate themselves for it.
Number of factors such as those above but also how many applicants there are for spots. I’m starting med school this year. The school I’m going to received 16000 applications for an incoming class of 190…do the math.
This is the part that is nutty because this is totally true if you are talking about individual schools but about 40% of all applicants actually get in. Just goes to show you have to apply everywhere and go where you can.
True, but also there is no requirement that premed students study bio/chem/biochem. Premed does require some classes, but you can major in Art or Philosophy and still be premed.
You can also complete the premed requirement without ever intending to go to medical school. You can also apply to and be accepted to medical schools having not been technically premed at undergraduate; most medical schools require a certain set of courses to be completed (bio, chem, ochem, calc), but those do not always overlap with premed programs.
Premed programs may also require students to submit additional materials like a thesis or have volunteer hours in the medical field. Since premed status is granted by undergrad universities and not medical schools themselves, there are a lot of discrepancies between undergrads.
Source: was premed at 4 different undergrads. Did not apply to med school :D
Pretty much. I’d add that medical school in America is a postgraduate program. So it is required that you have a university/college degree before you can apply. Premed itself is not a major, but more so refers to a set of common required classes needed to apply to medical school.
I hated these guys in orgo. “Is this gonna be on the test?!!” “Ugghhh this is so annoying why do I have to learn the difference between 1,4 and 1,2 addtions anywayssss?”
Shut up, some of us legitimately enjoy this and wanna make molecules for a living over here.
Uses the buzzwords they learned from last nights reading to describe something basic to make themselves smart.
"Dude I just worked out, I can feel the micro subdermal lacerations on upper pectorals."
I’m sorry you mean your Abs are sore?
NPs are a serious threat to healthcare quality in the US. I’ve met way too many who attempt to give patients the impression they are physicians when in reality they’re a nurse that has taken an extra online degree.
PAs are typically less dangerous. PA school is no joke and it actually prepares them for the extra roles they’re expected to take on unlike NPs. The recent move to calling them “physician associates” though is a bit worrisome since they lack most of the training and education of doctors but as long as they maintain their actual role they don’t pose a threat to patient security.
And then you have NPs that get their doctorate (so not an MD or DO, but a DNP - a Doctor of Nurse Practitioning), and wear a white coat around the hospital or wherever they work, intentionally misleading patients into believing they are physicians.
And for good reason...I've met some truly scary NPs who shouldn't be anywhere near patients. PAs tend to know their limits and provide much better care, love a good PA.
Here I am trying to major in Psych trying desperately to steer myself into the psychologist track instead of medicine...but those medfluencers and their funny skits ooh man.
Seems the whole damned system is designed only to be accessible to children of the elite and a few token hoop jumpers included to hide the aforementioned exclusivity.
I'm pretty sure I want to go to grad school and work a job where I'm *working* working and probably on my feet all day. Trying to make some long term good in a handful of clients/patients lives. Coming from a service background where every day is the exact same and any sort of progress I make in a day is reset the second the workplace opens the next day.
Are there any other careers where there's at least a chance of making a modest living and having meaningful long-term impact on the local community? Without as much as the insane bootstrapping and hoop jumping?
I mean I’m UK so might be slightly different, but construction industry - im training to be a plumber after wasting 3/4 years at uni doing a course that would end up in me sitting behind a desk or sat commuting on a train - doing the plumbing is actually so great, im working hard, I’m not looking at screens all day and the pay is decent, plus there have been stuff in the local news papers across the country about plumbers/other construction industry firms giving people such as those who are terminally Ill or genuinely struggling reduced prices etc
I work in a research lab with about 1% of my countries neurosurgeons. They all have 4.0 engineering degrees instead of premeds.
You don’t plan to become a neuro, neuro finds you in an alley.
I thought starterpacks were supposed to be a little cynical? This just seems like somebody who desperately wants to be associated with the people in the starter pack, but doesn’t rate yet. Sad!
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How many premeds does it take to screw in a lightbulb? "Ugh, why do we need to learn this? I'm never going to use this in clinic"
“Who cares, that’s the nurses job anyways”
Man, I really hate this statement because I lived by it when I was in school.
One memory that still makes me angry is that back during my undergraduate days I was taking an ochem lab with the president of this club called the American Med Student Association. This girl wasn’t understanding how to get this product at the end of her experiment and the TA was being so gentle and patient with her and she eventually hit him with “I don’t get why we’re doing this, it’s not like I’m going to do a PhD I’m gonna be a real doctor” It still makes my blood boil
Knew someone in college, he was a chem major because he liked chemistry, not as a pre-med, and the chem department as jumping for joy to have an actual chemist as a major. The pre-meds, regardless of major, were hated and feared by fellow students, TAs, and faculty. Grade grubbing, cheating, like the example in parent post, irritated with anything that they thought they wouldn't "need" for being a doctor.
If as student said that to me as a doctoral candidate I don't even know how I would react lol
Something tells me you’d be giving some sort of oral presentation either way
I taught premeds and this is exactly what they're like
Gotta love it when undergrad students act like they already have a career like this. Until you're actually in med school, which the chances are slim for anyone, then stfu. Same with nursing, engineering, basically any degree
I knew a premed girl who already has “doctor” in her instagram bio, as far as I know she hasn’t even been accepted to med school yet
oof
That would be illegal in Quebec. The professional Order cracks down on that.
That so embarrassing
At least with engineering or nursing you are in engineering/nursing school. So you are an engineering student. If you really wanted to break down the engineering 'levels' (I wouldn't really call them levels) it would go: Engineering student -> engineer (no PE or EIT, some people just do this and don't get their PE) -> Engineer in Training (EIT, half way to PE) -> Professional Engineer. This is for the US, in Canada the final stage is also called 'Professional Engineer' but the abbreviation is 'P.Eng.'. In the UK the final term is Chartered Engineer. In the US the only protected term is 'Professional Engineer' (in Canada they are more strict). So 'engineer' can refer to anyone. There are train and crane engineers that have no need for engineering school. There are also plenty of engineers working in that role with no engineering degree. So an engineering student saying, in normal conversation, 'I'm an engineer' is not a big deal. I am a PE with a degree from an ABET accredited school.
software engineer. lol
I don't really understand, I'm not a software engineer. There also isn't a PE for 'software engineering'. There are PEs for control systems and then three different areas for electrical including 'computer engineering'. Computer engineering PE seem very rare based on the [pass rate stats](https://ncees.org/exams/pe-exam/).
I was making a joke in agreement with your point about 'engineer' being used loosely in the united states. sorry if I wasn't clear.
Custodial Engineer. Yeah Engineers needs to be a protected term. (I’m a Chemical Engineer - rather was until I switched fields - who had an EIT).
That’s why I prefer my country’s system: the entry test is crushing, but you know you’re in or not just a couple months after the end of high school
If you go to one of those schools OP included in the post, your chances of getting into med school is 90+%
Nursing normally has placements and you can work right after uni. With the insane demand you’re pretty likely you get a career.
After becoming a doctor tells kids who aspire to be doctors that “it’s not worth it” lol
Bruh... Both my parents are doctors and they always tell other ppl's kids don't do medicine but pushed me into it lol
Tryna reduce competition
Resident here: it’s not worth it lol
And then you finish residency and make 500k a year if you've picked anything mildly competitive don't be a weenie
Sure the money can be nice (I won’t be anywhere close to 500k), but it’s more than that. It’s about the life opportunities lost. You can’t be with your friends and/or family living in the moment in their 20s. You watch them start families knowing you have to keep pushing yours off. This profession takes and takes and takes. While some days there are highs, it’s countered by a sea of stress and lows: Patients dying, fighting the uphill battle against insurance, becoming disenfranchised with not only the medical system, but people’s lives becoming a checklist of procedures/medicines. It loses its luster quickly. The money can be nice, but it’s about more than the money. Living with that level of stress and disappointment and loss every day… it really gets to you.
Wym it's not close to 500k like the top 6 or 7 specialties are all well over unless you picked internal medicine or pediatrics or something
OB/GYN averages around 250
They make decently more in my state plus I know some going over 400 for the system I worked at. Either way it's enough money to deal with shitty conditions for a few years
Then you’re in it for the wrong reasons lol
It’s tough man. It’s an unforgiving field. I got in because I wanted to help people, do right by the community, be involved in making the system better. But every step of the way, it’s a system designed to break you. I lost my 20s to this field, I’m $250,000 in debt, I work 100 hours a week, I make less than minimum wage, I barely see my family, I can’t start my own family, administrators want me to see more and more patients every day for less time, providing less quality care for more quantity. I’m disenfranchised. Fighting for my patients is an uphill battle. I spend hours working to get patients authorized for a procedure or image they need that may not even be approved. The system is broken and it affects people at every level.
Hello from nursing. Healthcare is rough. I've worked with and been friends with plenty of residents - y'all get the short end of the stick pretty often, and I hate how mistreated you all are. People can judge all they want, but you sound like you care, and you're allowed to feel multiple feelings about where you're at in life. You're doing great.
Strength and power; appreciate you, friend
I lost my 20s to poverty, homelessness, low self-esteem (not believing I was worth anything, let alone going to college) and for reasons I'm not comfortable sharing just yet, being aimless and lost, wondering how the hell I was gonna get back on track to help my son live a better life. Took me until I was 32 to get my associates, and I'm working on my bachelors in cyber security now. Keep at it. I know you can do it. I'm not in the medical field but I try to stand up for y'all whenever I get the chance. I think you're doing great, too :)
Thank you for sharing, friend!
I know brother, I’m in medicine too. It’s tough, the lows are low and the highs are rare, but if you’re in it for the true love of medicine and care of others, even at its worst…it’s still worth it. You’re doing great man, you got this. Keep your head up 👍🏾
So what's *your* reason?
That’s irrelevant, cause I’m not sitting here saying “it’s not worth it”. Instead of evaluating me, you should do some self-reflection as to why you even did it in the first place cause clearly for YOU it wasn’t worth it.
Let’s step back a minute. Are you even a doctor/physician? Can you even say that when you haven’t experienced what we had?
I am pal, it’s not easy I understand. But at the end of the day, if it wasn’t worth it for you, then idk what to tell you.
As a licensed physician, I say "it's not worth it" wholeheartedly
You forgot to add "wears their white coat from Chem Lab to strut around campus like they're auditioning for a medical drama." As a former biology major who went into medicine, I always found it hilarious—like, dude, you're mixing reagents to make soap. Calm down.
I have never seen this except during white coat ceremonies
You know the lab coats people have to use in Chem lab? Well , some people would just walk around campus with theirs on after class. No need to do so.
I just did this cuz im lazy bruh i dont think anyone cares
My high school had a pre-pre-med program that gave the students custom scrubs for their internships and classes. But there were a handful of people who wore those outfits *everywhere,* and were very quick to tell you whatever classes you had were child’s play compared to their workloads. I can only imagine how “wonderful” their personalities are if they were that snooty back then lol
I remember people wearing the disposable lab coats from the microbiology lab, and then using them as conversation starters/excuses to brag about all of the “dangerous pathogens” they worked with in micro. (They obviously were not working with anything remotely dangerous in sophomore year micro lab.)
People who strut around wanting to look like a physician by constantly wearing a white coat don't know how hot those fuckers get when you do rounds.
At my uni you were explicitly instructed not to wear a lab coat outside of practicals. The point is to prevent dangerous substances touching your skin and clothes (and make it obvious when some have). It’s bad practice to be trailing around random toxic chemicals and or pathogens post practical and obnoxious to wear one beforehand for no reason. Why even bring one if you don’t have a lab practical that day?
I’m a doctor, I knew two people that said they wanted to be a neurosurgeon even when they were premed, one ended up doing family medicine, the other actually is a neurosurgeon For what it’s worth - I really do think the semester in undergrad before I applied to med school was one of the tough six month stretches of my life, including med school and residency With that said yeah there’s a very large chunk of annoying premeds. Once witnessed a girl purposefully telling people around her the wrong answer on a clicker question so she’d do better by comparison on the curve
Also in medicine and would like to agree that getting into medical school and the stress of that process is absolutely worse than medical school.
Im not in medicine but I’m a 40 year old guy with only the mcat, a biochem course and some clinical experience away from applying to medical school. The last three years working full time and doing this has been absolutely soul crushing because of the doubt. Doesn’t help my job won’t exist in a couple months. I definitely feel like medical school although very difficult will be much better because you at least know if you keep grinding it will work out.
Man I am so glad I jumped off the pre-med train when I did...
What did you pivot to?
Post-med
I majored in microbiology as an undergrad, so most of my classmates were premeds, and dear God, this starterpack gave me flashbacks. The only thing it’s missing is the outright insane sabotage some of them stoop to in order to take their classmates down a peg or make themselves look better. When I was in college, people were constantly feeding each other wrong information, fucking with each other’s labs, cheating on exams, trying to get other people in trouble for cheating on exams—you could probably learn a lot about game theory just by studying the bizarre cheating rings that emerged in basically every class. Everyone was cheating, but everyone wanted to report everyone else for cheating, so it was like a constant prisoner’s dilemma situation, with people coordinating and betraying each other to maximize their own success. These students were genuinely some of the most unhinged people I’ve ever met. Funnily enough, the ones who introduced themselves as “future pediatric neurosurgeons” were always the ones who failed out of, like, biology 101.
Premed here and yeah you’re on point. Everyone’s cheating in my classes, only a few don’t. Everyone has their own cliques and hate each other. Everyone is sabotaging each other. Doesn’t help that because we’re studying in a prestigious university, ego and pride issues are problems. I actually got sad because this really wasn’t I thought what college would be since I keep hearing that college would be where people step out of that teenage angst phase and become more rational people. Nowadays, I find it better to just mind my own business and stick with a few good people.
Oh man, I can definitely relate to the feelings of disappointment. I was so excited to get out of my shitty rural high school, and then half of my college classmates ended up being crazy premed gunner types, lmao. If it helps, I remember the hyper-competitive, cheating mentality dissipating a little bit by the tail end of my sophomore year. By then, almost everyone was finished with the stereotypical "weed-out" classes (organic chemistry, calculus, physics, etc), and people who couldn't handle the program (i.e. people who cheated on every assignment because they didn't know the material) had mostly left or failed out. I don't think I would ever describe my undergrad classmates as *chill,* but I do think some of the cutthroat gunner stuff came from a place of fear, and it lessened once the weed-outs were done and the remaining students weren't terrified of failing every class. In general, though, minding your own business and sticking with a small group of friends is 100% the best way to get through it. You can avoid a lot of the craziness by refusing to engage with gossip, cheating rings, or petty inter-clique politics.
I'm a resident and you've nailed it lmao. A lot of these people don't get into med school, but even if they do, they don't become any less insufferable.
I dont really get what premed is, as a non-American, so can somebody explain it to me? So, right know what I assume it is: high school students cant start studying at a medical university right away and need to go to college for a few years to study STEM more closely, right?
Premeds are basically people who aspire to be doctors but are majoring in bio/chem/biochem because their required classes most align with topics covered on the MCAT (medical college admissions test) as well as basic requirements for medical school. On top of that, they have to actually study for the MCAT, do volunteer work, clinical hours, research, and more personalized stuff to bolster their application because getting your foot in the door for medical school is stupid hard As a result of all this work, some of them might form some sort of superiority complex perhaps as a way to justify them practically killing themselves to even get a taste of med school. Honestly I feel like there’s a lot of overlap between people who were on A2C and then moved to premed because that tends to attract similar personalities
Are the medical schools THAT difficult to get to cause of exams and general subject difficulty or is it the good ol' pricing problem once again?
Medical school is extremely difficult to get into and on top of that you have to get a good MCAT score and the MCAT is (arguably) the hardest graduate entry exam that exists. Along with keeping near top grades, medical schools expect you to be well rounded, have clinical experience, volunteering hours, shadowing, research, and also be a normal person with fun hobbies you can talk about. It's also extremely expensive...just the process to prepare and apply gatekeeps lower income students from going down this path. If you get in, then you have $200-$400K of debt generally after 4 years unless you are fortunate enough to get financial assistance/scholarship. It's a stressful process, and a lot of it does tend to self select for wealthy kids with type A personalities.
(ಠ_ಠ)
I’ll be a doctor in three weeks and I’m so glad I did not have to go through all this stuff just for a spot. I briefly worked alongside US students when I was in NYU Neurology dept. in April and they were very good, but the amount of stuff needed to get into the schools is just too much.
The American Medical Association lobbies very hard to keep the number of doctors in the US as low as possible to preserve the prestige and negotiating leverage of incumbent doctors. This is not the case in other countries who may have political motivations to have more doctors to better serve communities with the tradeoff of lower pay. They also create a two-tiered system of MDs and DOs where MDs are very competitive and restricted whereas DOs are less competitive. They're also needlessly filled with a bunch of "Osteopathic" nonsense that they nevertheless have to keep in order to justify the differentiation. Most DOs therefore enter less competitive positions like family practice while your surgeons and specialists are almost always MDs. Some wiggle room, but not much, despite what DOs may say.
In the US, we don't really explore the prestige of Healthcare as a reason for the obnoxious cost of Healthcare for the public. Fwiw check out the gatekeeping in this comment section.
What is DO?
Dr. of Osteopathic medicine
List of things that’ll make you a standout applicant but will not guarantee your position and not in order: 1) High GPA (Science GPA, not cumulative) 2) High MCAT score 3) Research 4) Clinical hours 5) Volunteer Work 6) Personal stuff that makes you, you 7) Interviews Keep in mind that the people even bothering to apply to medical school are people who have gone through the trials and tribulations of undergrad and you’re competing against a bunch of people who are at the same level or better than you. At most American medical schools 99% of applicants will get rejected and they are all more than qualified to attend
Damn, I am a medical student already but the process of applying in my country is far more different from yours than I thought it was. My experience: (no idea why have I written all that, actually) (WARNING! I am ESL, so please digress my butchering of english language) We have an obligatory state exam — [USE (click for more details about in on wiki)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unified_State_Exam) after 11th grade in school. (To apply to medical uni you need to have great results in Russian, Biology and Chemistry) Since the university education is free here, thats technically all you need for success. However, thats just too good to be true,amiright, so in reality its a bit more complicated. Since the salary of medical personnel is, um, rather low (lets say, 30000 rubles, or, like, 300 dollars) in state-owned [polyclinics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polyclinic) not a lot of people really want to work there, so the higher-ups made it so almost every (like 95%) of free places in med universities are bought out by local piblic health ministries. Why? Its done so that people would have to sign a contract with the ministry in order to be accepted, basically. (+) Doing so guarantees you a place of work after graduation as a district physician (Its different from general practioners but I have actually NO idea how to explain the differences well enough). (-) Salaries are **questionable** Since the most understaffed polyclinics (well, calling those polyclinics is doing them a favor) are in distant small towns or actual villages you will most likely spend 3 years (as written in your government contract) in a russian equivalent of an Assfordshire (no idea how to better translate the original Russian idiom to English) there is more to it, for sure, but i give up writing this, sorry, written english is not my best
Yeah no here in the US it’s vastly different. Becoming a medical student is way more competitive due to the culture the profession fosters as well as the much much better salaries and social clout being a doctor carries. I want to say it’s attributed to the privatization of healthcare here where you’re guaranteed a top 10% salary whether you work under an established hospital/healthcare provider or your own practice
Damn, 10% top salary sounds fantastic, blyat, ohuenno even But yeah, I see why many people find med education in your country difficult, cause god damn
In most states it’s probably top 1% salary - the median physician salary is something like $350k/yr to give you an idea. US medical students have to take on considerable debt but any study on physician salary globally shows that American doctors end their careers with higher net worths than physicians anywhere else. I still think that the debt is a huge problem because it serves as a major barrier of entry to anyone who isn’t upper middle or upper class which then goes on to artificially block out low income individuals from accessing high pay careers, but that’s a conversation that could take days to complete in its entirety. They’re the only tippity top paying career though that I’ll never complain about earning what they do. They study like crazy, make it through arguably the hardest academic path in the country, and then take on mountains of debt only to finally start making a strong wage over a decade after starting their studies. Anyone who goes in it for the money will hate themselves for it.
Number of factors such as those above but also how many applicants there are for spots. I’m starting med school this year. The school I’m going to received 16000 applications for an incoming class of 190…do the math.
This is the part that is nutty because this is totally true if you are talking about individual schools but about 40% of all applicants actually get in. Just goes to show you have to apply everywhere and go where you can.
Yeah. I’m one of the lucky ones where I managed to get into my top choice off of the waitlist, a lot of people don’t have that luxury
True, but also there is no requirement that premed students study bio/chem/biochem. Premed does require some classes, but you can major in Art or Philosophy and still be premed. You can also complete the premed requirement without ever intending to go to medical school. You can also apply to and be accepted to medical schools having not been technically premed at undergraduate; most medical schools require a certain set of courses to be completed (bio, chem, ochem, calc), but those do not always overlap with premed programs. Premed programs may also require students to submit additional materials like a thesis or have volunteer hours in the medical field. Since premed status is granted by undergrad universities and not medical schools themselves, there are a lot of discrepancies between undergrads. Source: was premed at 4 different undergrads. Did not apply to med school :D
Pretty much. I’d add that medical school in America is a postgraduate program. So it is required that you have a university/college degree before you can apply. Premed itself is not a major, but more so refers to a set of common required classes needed to apply to medical school.
I see, thanks!
I hated these guys in orgo. “Is this gonna be on the test?!!” “Ugghhh this is so annoying why do I have to learn the difference between 1,4 and 1,2 addtions anywayssss?” Shut up, some of us legitimately enjoy this and wanna make molecules for a living over here.
Premed here and organic chem was actually pretty fun. One of my easiest As in college.
LMAOOO
Lol, I went to UCLA and this was every person I met
Classmates like this aren't the only reason I picked veterinary medicine over human medicine, but they were the biggest contributing factor by far.
Uses the buzzwords they learned from last nights reading to describe something basic to make themselves smart. "Dude I just worked out, I can feel the micro subdermal lacerations on upper pectorals." I’m sorry you mean your Abs are sore?
Funny, nurses hate NP’s too.
NPs are a serious threat to healthcare quality in the US. I’ve met way too many who attempt to give patients the impression they are physicians when in reality they’re a nurse that has taken an extra online degree. PAs are typically less dangerous. PA school is no joke and it actually prepares them for the extra roles they’re expected to take on unlike NPs. The recent move to calling them “physician associates” though is a bit worrisome since they lack most of the training and education of doctors but as long as they maintain their actual role they don’t pose a threat to patient security.
And then you have NPs that get their doctorate (so not an MD or DO, but a DNP - a Doctor of Nurse Practitioning), and wear a white coat around the hospital or wherever they work, intentionally misleading patients into believing they are physicians.
And for good reason...I've met some truly scary NPs who shouldn't be anywhere near patients. PAs tend to know their limits and provide much better care, love a good PA.
Doesn't make it into med school and still has to be the smartest person in the building wherever they go.
Replace Rice with Stanford and it’d be super accurate
people who aspire to be neurosurgeons either REALLY love their job or they're totally clueless of the sacrifice they're about to do in the future
You forgot the subscription to Chegg so they can cheat on their homework, labs and tests.
Here I am trying to major in Psych trying desperately to steer myself into the psychologist track instead of medicine...but those medfluencers and their funny skits ooh man. Seems the whole damned system is designed only to be accessible to children of the elite and a few token hoop jumpers included to hide the aforementioned exclusivity. I'm pretty sure I want to go to grad school and work a job where I'm *working* working and probably on my feet all day. Trying to make some long term good in a handful of clients/patients lives. Coming from a service background where every day is the exact same and any sort of progress I make in a day is reset the second the workplace opens the next day. Are there any other careers where there's at least a chance of making a modest living and having meaningful long-term impact on the local community? Without as much as the insane bootstrapping and hoop jumping?
I mean I’m UK so might be slightly different, but construction industry - im training to be a plumber after wasting 3/4 years at uni doing a course that would end up in me sitting behind a desk or sat commuting on a train - doing the plumbing is actually so great, im working hard, I’m not looking at screens all day and the pay is decent, plus there have been stuff in the local news papers across the country about plumbers/other construction industry firms giving people such as those who are terminally Ill or genuinely struggling reduced prices etc
Johns Hopkins 🤤
I work in a research lab with about 1% of my countries neurosurgeons. They all have 4.0 engineering degrees instead of premeds. You don’t plan to become a neuro, neuro finds you in an alley.
I thought starterpacks were supposed to be a little cynical? This just seems like somebody who desperately wants to be associated with the people in the starter pack, but doesn’t rate yet. Sad!
found the PreMed