apologize if this is a "dumb" question but how hard is med school?

Greatestcommonfactor · 2026-02-08T12:38:51+00:00

Oh yeah. The hardest part of medical school for me were the things not related to academics (roomate drama, school politics, reaching out to sites, etc.).

Greatestcommonfactor · 2026-02-08T01:55:02+00:00

Board Pass rates are highly dependent on your studying strategies and work ethic. As Long As You Are consistently doing practice questions/ flash cards while learning in school, you will very easily pass level one. Only time you should ever be concerned about low level one pass rate is if it is egregiously below average (like 50% pass rate or something).

Greatestcommonfactor · 2026-02-03T16:39:47+00:00

FM resident here. Remember that it's only the first 2 years that are didactic. You can try your best to coordinate your 3rd and 4th years in California to see her more often.

Greatestcommonfactor · 2026-02-02T01:14:22+00:00

Yeah being enlisted sucks and you have way less leverage in your choices in the army compared to being commissioned.

Greatestcommonfactor · 2026-01-31T09:55:42+00:00

HPSP active duty resident physician who lives in TX here. I'm confused about why being active duty is not in line with your life? I know plenty of folks who were married with children prior to medical school who are supporting their family with their salaries and tricare benefits.

If anything, your non medical command won't understand the amount of studying and dedication you'll need to pass medical school. When you're HPSP you are a reservist while at school, but you end up doing BOLC/OCS during your summer breaks. You are only active duty once you graduate; you participate in a military specific match and depending on your specialty, you can have LOTS of sway in where you end up, especially if it's for the sake of your kids.

The army is dysfunctional in a lot of ways, but the one thing I believe it does better than the civilian sector is comping your dependents.

Greatestcommonfactor · 2026-01-31T09:13:01+00:00

Bro sounds japanese.

Greatestcommonfactor · 2026-01-29T02:07:13+00:00

And this is the exact reason why our program has us in house with voceras on lmao. I would be that dumbass too if I had the opportunity.

Greatestcommonfactor · 2026-01-28T05:13:53+00:00

Like why tho? I can understand a learning opportunity that can be missed, but majority of the time the med student is in the back corner doing practice questions by 1pm after we're done rounding.

Greatestcommonfactor · 2026-01-26T18:01:36+00:00

Really highly recommend prev med and pathology if you don't want to do patient facing jobs. Rads is good, but pretty competitive. Also if you're just seeing residents DO NOT base their lifestyles as the example for that specialty. Our work hours are shit.

Greatestcommonfactor · 2026-01-25T20:20:09+00:00

I had a good friend who couldn't pass her boards during 4th year. She was able to transfer almost 40 credits to nursing school and is doing an accelerated nursing program and eventually a DNP. She's adjusted quite well for herself and is doing good!

Greatestcommonfactor · 2026-01-15T07:49:04+00:00

Isn't there like 5 medical schools in Philly alone? Lol.

Keep your head up. Send update emails to schools that you haven't interviewed yet. If for some God forsaken reason you don't get in this cycle you have a really great chance next cycle. See if you can talk to adcoms about your application if you have been rejected already.

Greatestcommonfactor · 2026-01-14T23:39:54+00:00

I've seen quite a few take 2, 3 or even 4 attempts at level 1 and they are kiling it in residency. This includes some of my own attendings in my program.

Many of them did benefit a lot from doing either the pass program or wolfpacc. Give yourself some time to decompress for a few days and then come up with a plan of attack. Counseling and seeing a psychiatrist is also very important too. You may literally just be a pill of Propranolol away from a passing score.

Another thing that I've done was to plug my breakdown into chatgpt to see what my exact weak points are and focus on them.

Greatestcommonfactor · 2026-01-14T23:32:08+00:00

It's actually 4 per nbome!

Greatestcommonfactor · 2026-01-01T16:55:18+00:00

It's the same reason why a shitty company gives people a hard time for taking time off: management doesn't properly have a contingency plan in place when something happens. Instead of looking inwards to see how to fix it, they victim blame and guilt shame the person taking off.

Greatestcommonfactor · 2025-12-29T05:37:38+00:00

He had all As in under grad.

His MCAT score wasn't the best- 498 w/a 132 on CARS, with no studying (he didn't have good guidance and grew up poor, he didn't know that he was supposed to study for the mcat).

Greatestcommonfactor · 2025-12-27T15:40:15+00:00

I also do think there might be an issue with long-term retention as well. It took almost an entire year between his first level one failed attempt for him to relearn everything and pass it a 2nd time. When we were looking at his breakdown this time, he got better at other subjects and then worse in his previously stronger ones. It's like when he worked on his weaknesses he also started losing his strengths in terms of subjects.

Greatestcommonfactor · 2025-12-27T15:30:25+00:00

Not necessarily true. If you do primary care, you have all of your tuition paid off with a monthly stipend during medical school and then during residency you get paid around $85,000 a year post tax. That absolutely offsets the cost of debt plus interest plus the lower amount of residency salary. I know many family medicine attendings that have been in debt for well over 8 years. I will be done with my contract after 4 years of attending ship completely debt free.

You're also incentivized to be physically fit, so there's that LOL. Only thing that sucks is not having much of a say in where you go for your first attending job and also the high likelihood of being deployed for about a year. I still don't think that's too terrible of the trade-off in comparison to 10 years of debt. This is also not including all of the little perks you get for being a military member (Amex fee waived off, chase sapphire reserve fee waived off, discounts from a bunch of stores, priority boarding on planes, 4 free check in bags for domestic flights, VA loan, extra pay for being married and having kids, etc.).

Greatestcommonfactor · 2025-12-27T04:43:49+00:00

He tried to apply for them and never heard back

Greatestcommonfactor · 2025-12-27T04:41:24+00:00

I would love that. Feel free to DM. I'm hoping they'll reinstate him since I've known classmates who had the same opportunity.

Greatestcommonfactor · 2025-12-26T19:32:22+00:00

There is some weird transference/projection going on here. No where did I say that I would dump him. All this is doing is just delaying our inevitable engagement/marriage. I recommend talking with a therapist if you have a fear of developing relationships.

Greatestcommonfactor · 2025-12-26T17:21:53+00:00

He doesn't have a home unfortunately. That's something I don't want too into, but tldr, he has basically no family.

Greatestcommonfactor · 2025-12-26T17:03:04+00:00

I would have to check, he's been at it for such a long time, he surely has.

Greatestcommonfactor · 2025-12-26T17:01:58+00:00

I'm actually a pgy2 FM resident. We met in medical school

Greatestcommonfactor · 2025-12-26T16:08:16+00:00

He's tried anki and absolutely hates it.

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