Deciding to go to a medical school should be dealt with much thought, reflection, and preparation. If you’re a student who wants to pursue a career in medicine, this decision serves as one of your first important stepping stones. With this, specific preparations must be done to ensure that you are holistically ready for this decision.
Wondering what steps to take? Then read our guide on how you can be better prepared if you’re planning to go to a medical school.
Take Care Of Yourself
Taking care of yourself should be the first lesson you need to learn before you step inside a medical school. Remember that your profession ‘demands’ you to be happy, healthy, and strong because you’ll soon handle patients that need it the most.
If you give up these things easily inside the med.school, then you can easily throw these things away as you start your profession, and that is a disservice.
Train Your Mind For Daily New Contents and Deeper Topics
In medical schools, you will learn new content every day, rather than the ‘2 to 3 times a week’ kind of lecture you’re familiar with.
It means that you have more information to study and digest everyday. With this, you’ll have to overhaul your study schedule to keep up with these daily streams of information.
Also, general topics are already out of the way as you will now learn deeper and more specific topics.
Prepare For A Memory Marathon
You’ll surely have a lot of daydreams about helping countless people after you’ve finished your med school program, but the bliss of those daydreams may blow up quickly as you engage in memorization overflow in your first two years in med school.
If you’ve survived the hardest academic challenges in your undergrad school, wait ‘til you experience what ‘hard’ means in a medical school.
MCAT Exam Questions Shouldn’t Be Your Only Focus.
Your MCAT score is one of the biggest factors that will make or break your chances of being accepted in a medical school.
But aside from the MCAT exam questions, a piece of advice from Study Prep Lounge suggests that one should know “when” to actually take the exam.
Factors like readiness and when you want to finish your med school program all affect that “when” question.
It shows that by focusing on passing the MCAT exam alone may cause problems in other areas that you haven’t paid much attention to.
With Resources, It’s Quality, Not Quantity
The good news is you’ll have plenty of resources to choose from when you’re in medical school. The bad news is … it’s also a bad news!
Being bombarded with resources is a double-edged sword. You can have all the resources you want, but it may distract you into absorbing the lessons.
The secret here is to gather first all the resources you can get in your first week in school. As they are all laid out, test all these resources, and see what works best for you. Choose a maximum of two resources for every subject and do not exceed it.
Narrowing down on few but good resources will certainly lighten up your loads and put efficiency in your study.
Do Not Let Studying Eat Up Your Life
Too much of anything has never been good, and it includes studying. Your mind and body needs to breathe, so you should give yourself enough space for recreational activities, hobbies, or anything that really makes you happy.
Things that are not related to studying should not be part of your overall study plan – and these activities should be … non-negotiable.
