What's with all the "Dropping out of Med"

[alpinism]

Someone else said it earlier but a few large public med schools have options for "decompressed" or 5 year MD degrees.

IIRC - UIC, UCLA, and UWSMPH off the top of my head as of a few years ago (might have changed since then).

http://chicago.medicine.uic.edu/dep...al_education/curriculum/decompressed_program_

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[DermViser]

What you're experiencing here is the "jerk mentality" that permeates throughout premeds, med students, and Physicians.

He was referring to circulus vitios, a well known SDNer, and has even stated himself here that he doesn't need help. He just wants to tell everyone how much med school sucks, "Other Health Professions Student".

 

[IlDestriero]

What you're experiencing here is the "jerk mentality" that permeates throughout premeds, med students, and Physicians.

Thanks for setting us straight.

 

[PIacebo]

We lost at least 5 people from our class already...and it's not even 3/4ths of the way thru 1st semester! Is this normal for other schools? (In DO)

 

[DermViser]

We lost at least 5 people from our class already...and it's not even 3/4ths of the way thru 1st semester! Is this normal for other schools? (In DO)

How big is your class?

 

[alpinism]

We lost at least 5 people from our class already...and it's not even 3/4ths of the way thru 1st semester! Is this normal for other schools? (In DO)

As a rough estimate:

If >200 then its probably around average.

If <150 then yeah that's a little high.

Usually schools lose 2-3% of the class during M1 although it varies from year to year. This includes people repeating a year, not just dropping out.

 

[IlDestriero]

My class had 1 person drop out right around the deadline to drop and still get a tuition refund. Rumor was he left because he never wanted to come and was pushed into it by his parents. He had been going to class, etc. The other one left between 3rd and 4th year. He didn't want to be a physician anymore. The more he learned, the less interested he became. I think he suffered through the first 2 years thinking it will be better, only to discover that it wasn't. He is in business now and works for himself.
I know of 2 more that don't practice clinical medicine and never did. One went back to finance and the other got an MBA after an ortho residency and works in the medical device field.

 

[DermViser]

My class had 1 person drop out right around the deadline to drop and still get a tuition refund. Rumor was he left because he never wanted to come and was pushed into it by his parents. He had been going to class, etc. The other one left between 3rd and 4th year. He didn't want to be a physician anymore. The more he learned, the less interested he became. I think he suffered through the first 2 years thinking it will be better, only to discover that it wasn't. He is in business now and works for himself. I know of 2 more that don't practice clinical medicine and never did. One went back to finance and the other got an MBA after an ortho residency and works in the medical device field.

I think this is an interesting thing you mentioned, and I'm glad you brought it up. Too frequently the advice given here is if someone hates the first 2 years, that somehow MS-3 will be better. I'm not denying that this is the case - there were people in my class who absolutely hated basic sciences, but when it came to third year, they got their mojo back and were clinical superstars both in terms of clinical evaluations and the shelf. But how do you know this in advance? Is the solution really to turn 5 figure debt into 6 figure debt to figure that out? How can a person know inherently in their first year that while MS-1/MS-2 is not their cup of tea, that suddenly they will love it when it's 100% clinical ward based?

Then you have the opposite where someone loves MS-1/MS-2 and aces everything (and in theory aces Step 1), but absolutely abhors MS-3 and starts faltering, when it's really too late to turn back - you know, the people who ace a shelf exam, but irritate and piss off the clinical team and are clinically clumsy? I guess in that case, they go more towards Radiology or Pathology, as they need a specialty option at that point. The common refrain is that it gets better - but I don't think that's the right word. It's different for sure, but not necessarily better for everyone.

 

[Ismet]

We lost at least 5 people from our class already...and it's not even 3/4ths of the way thru 1st semester! Is this normal for other schools? (In DO)

Dang. We only had 1 person completely drop out from my class, after anatomy. A couple had to repeat 1st year for various reasons.

 

[PIacebo]

How big is your class?

A little over 100

 

[DermViser]

A little over 100

That's pretty big then.

 

[DermViser]

Dang. We only had 1 person completely drop out from my class, after anatomy. A couple had to repeat 1st year for various reasons.

I wonder though if it's bc by the time you enter med school -- most of us have traditional premed degrees that would be pretty much unmarketable, so you're for better or for worse, locked in, so dropping out is just not an option for many.

 

[Bryan O’Blivion]

Yep. And with $100K+ debt from for said premed degree, the only option is to go forward, like it or not.

 

[EMDO2018]

i will take this time to mention that less annoying people have gotten banned for less than the stuff you post

I've gotten PMs from people saying they think I should have been banned a long time ago, but what is just will always prevail.

 

[kalat]

it would be interesting to survey the people who are constantly complaining and find out if they have had any other life experiences such as testing the job market in today's economy and/or trying other areas of work, etc and then see if they would still be complaining. My feeling is a lack of perspective coupled with the entitlist attitudes of many med students leads them down a scary emotional road once they understand what med school really is

I actually wrote this on my secondary applications... the best way to prepare for medical school is to do things that aren't related to it. A lot of applicants spend four years of their undergrad doing nothing but 100% activities devoted to getting into the medical school. Walking around in a hospital and shadowing doctors for 1000 hours will give you a certain sense for healthcare, sure, but nothing will prepare you to actually be a physician (and the amount of things that entails) than being stuck in the middle of it. Get a sense for these things, sure, but don't have it be 100% of what you do.

I always laugh at how important shadowing is to admissions committees... I get they're working with a limited amount of quantifiable factors here, but come on, "So you followed someone around for some amount of hours.". It gives you absolutely no insight into the work they've already put in or the extra hours they're on call or what they have to do in their free time. More obviously, to prepare you to be a physician is the *entire* role of medical school. Why would anyone think what they've done before that is any indication of what to expect?

The sole purpose of an undergraduate education is to rule out everything else that isn't medicine while making sure you can meet a certain intellectual threshold to move forward. I wish they'd realize this and start taking more people that have done more unique things (and I'm not talking about more homeless native americans that treated cancer in the congo and then became Olympic athletes). Seems like when admissions committees say they want to take more "well-rounded applicants" it just gets hyper-competitive with the one thing you can't really control: your family background, parent income/socioeconomic factors when you were a kid, where you lived (rural/urban), etc.

 

[seminoma]

I actually wrote this on my secondary applications... the best way to prepare for medical school is to do things that aren't related to it.

You're not even a med student. There is nothing you can do to prepare for med school. There's nothing like med school.

Studying and working hard in college to go straight into med school doesn't make you less prepared than graduating from college and living in the real world for a few years. I spent two years working in a non-med field and I'm no better off than people in my class who followed the more traditional path.

 

[kalat]

You're not even a med student.

And yet I was still able to anticipate that reply...Come on, at least bash me for something with some substance to it! Or did I miss the ID check for this forum? There's other people in this thread that already said similar things...

I see the edit and you're taking it the wrong way. The whole point is to encourage people to do other things. How many people do you know or have you seen on this forum that put 100% of their effort into "medical school activities" and now have nothing to show for it? If it doesn't help, why not encourage people to do things that might be of some significance if they end up pursuing another path? It's no secret that the typical undergraduate biology major with the boxes checked isn't really starting out with stellar opportunities out of college if they don't get into medical school (or academia in some cases).

My opinion doesn't have to be as naïve as you make it seem, and I'm definitely not going to show up in a conversation of a bunch of medical students and residents and act like I know what the deal is with "what it takes to make it." Phrasing or not, I think you'd probably understand that's not what I meant.

 

[seminoma]

And yet I was still able to anticipate that reply...Come on, at least bash me for something with some substance to it! Or did I miss the ID check for this forum? There's other people in this thread that already said similar things...

That's the problem. I'm not bashing you, I'm pointing out that you have no experience from which to speak.

 

[kalat]

That's the problem. I'm not bashing you, I'm pointing out that you have no experience from which to speak.

When did I say "As a medical student, I know it definitively to be the case that..." Jeeze, I said secondary applications in the first sentence. Who am I tricking here? Everyone that is a medical student or resident or physician knows what that means and what it was like to be in that position. I'm not addressing a crowd of uninformed eavesdroppers.

 

[seminoma]

When did I say "As a medical student, I know it definitively to be the case that..." Jeeze, I said secondary applications in the first sentence. Who am I tricking here? Everyone that is a medical student or resident or physician knows what that means and what it was like to be in that position.

You're not tricking anyone. Hence my post.

 

[kalat]

You're not tricking anyone. Hence my post.

Dominance asserted. I'll hobble off back to my hole. Hope to be back soon.

 

[Psai]

I actually wrote this on my secondary applications... the best way to prepare for medical school is to do things that aren't related to it. A lot of applicants spend four years of their undergrad doing nothing but 100% activities devoted to getting into the medical school. Walking around in a hospital and shadowing doctors for 1000 hours will give you a certain sense for healthcare, sure, but nothing will prepare you to actually be a physician (and the amount of things that entails) than being stuck in the middle of it. Get a sense for these things, sure, but don't have it be 100% of what you do.

I always laugh at how important shadowing is to admissions committees... I get they're working with a limited amount of quantifiable factors here, but come on, "So you followed someone around for some amount of hours.". It gives you absolutely no insight into the work they've already put in or the extra hours they're on call or what they have to do in their free time. More obviously, to prepare you to be a physician is the *entire* role of medical school. Why would anyone think what they've done before that is any indication of what to expect?

The sole purpose of an undergraduate education is to rule out everything else that isn't medicine while making sure you can meet a certain intellectual threshold to move forward. I wish they'd realize this and start taking more people that have done more unique things (and I'm not talking about more homeless native americans that treated cancer in the congo and then became Olympic athletes). Seems like when admissions committees say they want to take more "well-rounded applicants" it just gets hyper-competitive with the one thing you can't really control: your family background, parent income/socioeconomic factors when you were a kid, where you lived (rural/urban), etc.

once you meet your fellow students, you'll see how many well rounded applicants there really are
there is no way you canprepare for medical school

 

[DermViser]

Yep. And with $100K+ debt from for said premed degree, the only option is to go forward, like it or not.

Agreed. It's even worse if you come in with undergraduate debt already.

 

[DermViser]

I've gotten PMs from people saying they think I should have been banned a long time ago, but what is just will always prevail.

Seriously, Ark is that you?

 

[DermViser]

I actually wrote this on my secondary applications... the best way to prepare for medical school is to do things that aren't related to it. A lot of applicants spend four years of their undergrad doing nothing but 100% activities devoted to getting into the medical school. Walking around in a hospital and shadowing doctors for 1000 hours will give you a certain sense for healthcare, sure, but nothing will prepare you to actually be a physician (and the amount of things that entails) than being stuck in the middle of it. Get a sense for these things, sure, but don't have it be 100% of what you do.

I always laugh at how important shadowing is to admissions committees... I get they're working with a limited amount of quantifiable factors here, but come on, "So you followed someone around for some amount of hours.". It gives you absolutely no insight into the work they've already put in or the extra hours they're on call or what they have to do in their free time. More obviously, to prepare you to be a physician is the *entire* role of medical school. Why would anyone think what they've done before that is any indication of what to expect?

The sole purpose of an undergraduate education is to rule out everything else that isn't medicine while making sure you can meet a certain intellectual threshold to move forward. I wish they'd realize this and start taking more people that have done more unique things (and I'm not talking about more homeless native americans that treated cancer in the congo and then became Olympic athletes). Seems like when admissions committees say they want to take more "well-rounded applicants" it just gets hyper-competitive with the one thing you can't really control: your family background, parent income/socioeconomic factors when you were a kid, where you lived (rural/urban), etc.

Completing volunteering establishes that you are ok with working in healthcare settings or hospitals (since by the time you practice most people will be employeed physicians who work for a corporation...I mean hospital). Don't blame your medical school bc you racked up easy medical volunteering in quaint surburbia and are now mad that you have to work with actual very sick, non compliant, sometimes unappreciative patients in academic medical centers which is where you will do clinical rotations and where you will do your residency. Depending on the state you go to medical school in, your medical school may be the only academic medical center in the entire state so you will truly see what medicine is like there. That is the time to establish that you are ok with seeing blood/feces/urine, the smells, dealing with the sick and dying etc. Don't blame your medical school bc you waited till MS-3 to show you that experience.

 

[TheTao]

65% of our class have either one or both parents as physicians.

I've gotten PMs from people saying they think I should have been banned a long time ago, but what is just will always prevail.

The problem here isn't with what you've said, the problem is that it's true in most cases, ROTFL!!!!!

 

[EMDO2018]

The truth hurts, people don't want to see it, they rather live in Politically correct land.

 

[DermViser]

The truth hurts, people don't want to see it, they rather live in Politically correct land.

Your truth is very distorted and warped. That's probably what they don't like. They don't need you to "see" for them, esp. since you have been negative and with a chip on your shoulder, even before you started med school.

 

[Birdstrike]

Yeah. Fancy is done. Let other people who want to work like crazy, work. I have other stuffs to do, like not turning into the hunchback of NY

I heard that job is available, though.

 

[fancymylotus]

I heard that job is available, though.

That would not be a cute look for me. Do not like!

 

[TheTao]

The truth hurts, people don't want to see it, they rather live in Politically correct land.

Looks like the "pot" has met the "kettle" with a "dysplastic nevis" thrown in for good measure, LOL!!!

 

[anbuitachi]

i believe ~5 ppl dropped out in my first yr... one of my friends dropped out in 3rd year. though i can honestly say a lot of people are not happy in med school, but are staying to get that degree, and also b/c theres just too much loans

 

[evilbooyaa]

TheTao and EMDO2018 - You guys are both just dumb to the point that I can't even. I'm not going to try and explain to you why you are dumb, because you are too dumb to understand that you are dumb.

And no, this is not because you're black. It is because you are so egotistical in yourself that you believe the majority of people around you are pretentious idiots. Unfortunately, when one has a problem with > 50% of people, the problem is usually with that person, not the people around him.

There is a ton of true racism still out there in the world, and your race-baiting in this forum only diminishes the true racism that still exists.

 

[Mad Jack]

We lost at least 5 people from our class already...and it's not even 3/4ths of the way thru 1st semester! Is this normal for other schools? (In DO)

We're down 3 here. Supposedly it's normal to lose 5-8 people in the first year, when the reality of med school hits people and they have to decide whether to stick it out or cut and run. After that the attrition grinds to a near halt. All but one of the 8 people who left last year came back this year and none of the repeat students have failed out or left yet.

 

[Mad Jack]

I wonder though if it's bc by the time you enter med school -- most of us have traditional premed degrees that would be pretty much unmarketable, so you're for better or for worse, locked in, so dropping out is just not an option for many.

The ones that I know of that have left have been nontrads with lives to go back to. The traditional students don't even really consider failure an option, or any path aside from medicine. Not yet anyway.

 

[Mad Jack]

TheTao and EMDO2018 - You guys are both just dumb to the point that I can't even. I'm not going to try and explain to you why you are dumb, because you are too dumb to understand that you are dumb.

And no, this is not because you're black. It is because you are so egotistical in yourself that you believe the majority of people around you are pretentious idiots. Unfortunately, when one has a problem with > 50% of people, the problem is usually with that person, not the people around him.

There is a ton of true racism still out there in the world, and your race-baiting in this forum only diminishes the true racism that still exists.

EMDO ironically thinks he's better than every single person on here because we're all arrogant and think we're better than everyone, and he's good enough to know that we're not, which makes him better than us. Or something like that

 

[Mad Jack]

We lost 1 in four years (*not counting people who took years off to get MPHs and do research to be more competitive for a radonc residency or whatever else).

It should be noted that only one of them failed out, the rest all left for personal reasons. Also our class size is 175, if that means anything.

 

[circulus vitios]

Anyone else absolutely hate MS1?

 

[Southplains]

Anyone else absolutely hate MS1?

I miss MS1.. So much room for activities.

 

[circulus vitios]

I miss MS1.. So much room for activities.

Every day is a fight to motivate myself to slog through a few hundred slides of **** I mostly don't care about. I'd rather be pulling 12+ hour days on rotations.

 

[circulus vitios]

Like, I hate this **** so much I've found myself browsing job search sites.

 

[Serous Demilune]

Like, I hate this **** so much I've found myself browsing job search sites.

Yes I hated it as much as you do. It only gets better as you go through it, at least until you have to start studying for the boards.

 

[DermViser]

Yes I hated it as much as you do. It only gets better as you go through it, at least until you have to start studying for the boards.

Stop saying that. Not everyone has that experience. There is a reason the phrase "hidden curriculum" is well known in the literature.

 

[circulus vitios]

Stop saying that. Not everyone has that experience. There is a reason the phrase "hidden curriculum" is well known in the literature.

I know what that means, but how does it apply here?

 

[DermViser]

I know what that means, but how does it apply here?

Do you really know what that means? That term was in reference to the above person saying it would definitely get better. The hidden curriculum during the clinical years proves that this isn't always the case and to say that it will definitely get better for everyone, or even a majority of students isn't accurate.

 

[circulus vitios]

Do you really know what that means? That term was in reference to the above person saying it would definitely get better. The hidden curriculum during the clinical years proves that this isn't always the case and to say that it will definitely get better for everyone, or even a majority of students isn't accurate.

I dunno, I think it will get better if I can make it through the preclinical years. I like doing things, even if it's something banal like writing notes that no one will ever read or even doing the most hardcore of scutwork. It beats sitting at my desk and watching lectures for 3+ hours a day, and then studying them for however long I can bare before I dream about jumping off a tall building.

 

[Eppur Si Muove]

Graduating pharmacy school this May. Going to medical school next fall. Everyone has their own opinion, but pharmacy is absolutely bogus from my experiences. Expect salaries to decrease. Jobs are already extremely difficult to get (look at how many pharmacy schools have opened up over the past few years) and retail pharmacy will drive a sane mad mad. The majority of your time spent in school will be pompous preceptors and professors justifying the importance of a pharmacist, trying to make a "doctorate" seem necessary in their titles (pharmacy was a two year bachelor's degree not all that long ago). By all means, if you really think you will love it, then pursue it but DEFINITELY get your shadowing in so you are not surprised by what the nature of pharmacy entails. I rashly switched from pre-med to pharmacy without any exposure in the field, and paid for it down the road as I am unhappy in this career. Better hours, less intense training and less responsibility than a doctor? Yes. But it all comes at a price. Pharmacy is great for someone who doesn't care about how meaningful their job is and just wants to make a decent paycheck without working too hard (for hospital pharmacists that is. In retail pharmacy, you get worked like a dog, similar to a fast food worker). Healthcare is a demanding field in general, in one way or another. All jobs have pros and cons to them; the difficult part is figuring out which career has the better pro:con ratio in terms of your goals and lifestyle. A shocking proportion of my 150 person class wishes they went medicine/vet/dental or just regrets pharmacy in general. Many students even claim they went pharmacy because they knew they couldn't get into medical school. It seems many people are dissatisfied in healthcare fields regardless of title. Whether it's mid-level practitioners constantly justifying their equality to doctors, disgruntled pharmacists or burnt out physicians, the grass always appears greener. Good luck with your pursuit of pharmacy, just make sure you get some good exposure to it first so you can really compare it to your path in medicine.

My best friend is doing the same thing graduating with his pharmD then going to med school. He told me the same thing- screw pharmacy.

 

[alpinism]

As much as I hated all the pre-med BS (bachelors, pre-reqs, ECs, LORs, AMCAS, secondaries, interviews, etc...), I can't help but think that if it wasn't for those things the med school attrition rate would be well over 10% or even 25%.

 

[Psai]

I dunno, I think it will get better if I can make it through the preclinical years. I like doing things, even if it's something banal like writing notes that no one will ever read or even doing the most hardcore of scutwork. It beats sitting at my desk and watching lectures for 3+ hours a day, and then studying them for however long I can bare before I dream about jumping off a tall building.

Calling it right now, in two years this kid will be whining about writing notes and mean residents and saying how good first year really was

 

[Wordead]

I dunno, I think it will get better if I can make it through the preclinical years. I like doing things, even if it's something banal like writing notes that no one will ever read or even doing the most hardcore of scutwork. It beats sitting at my desk and watching lectures for 3+ hours a day, and then studying them for however long I can bare before I dream about jumping off a tall building.

It's funny that you think the downside of M3 year is writing notes and scutwork.