Bartleby007

To clarify...

"DS" = son who wants to be a physician or is currently in med school
"DD" = daughter who wants to be a physican or is currently in med school

If the above is correct, what double-letter designation does one use when the son/daughter has already graduated from med school?

I apologize for asking such a basic question...

somemom

DD & DS are any of our children, in school or out

MiamiDAP

Bartleby007
D. graduated with BS in Zoology from public IS. It was extremely challenging and some Honors kids did not survive the very first Bio class (for comparison, the Honors accepted only top 200 who were top 2% of their HS class with ACT=31+, not exactly "average students" by my definition and many were from private HSs). I cannot compare D's UG to any other UG, but I can tell you that she did not need to prepare Chem. section for MCAT, she knew it from being SI. That and the fact that her MCAT was decent and balanced tells me that her academics were sufficient. I also was extremely impressed with her ability to speak Spanish after only one semester of college Spanish, if it tells anything about her UG. D. also mentioned that UG was much much more diffidult than her private prep HS where she has graduated #1 in her class.
Now, when I asked her to compare her Med. School rigor to UG rigor, she said that it cannot be compared, they exist pretty much in different universe in regard to difficulty level. She also has mentioned all along that it is difficult because of huge amount of data that has to be memorize. D. has also mentioned that every single student in her Med. School class thinks that academics is very rigorous and many form very top schools actually cannot keep it cool, so she tries to stay away from them. The most represented in her class is Berkeley, there many from Ivy's, there is PhD from Harvard, MS's (at least one from JHU that I am aware) and few lawyers, who I assume should have a superior memory.
So, here is my difficulty to understand how notion of "easy" academics can coincide with the notion of huge amount of memorization, while memorization is the hardest part of academics. What esle is hard if not memorization? She also said that she has advantage of having art background as visual recognition is he comfy zone in comparison to some others who completely freak out when any drawing is required. I do not know more than my D. tells me. She has pretty good memory, she is good with languages (3 foreign languages). I myself never had any, ended up an engineer, then switched to IT, as these fields are for people with amnesia more or less, for analytical type who (thank goodness) do not need to memorize anything. I admire every single Med. Student as superior beings....

mathsciencedude

"DS" or "DD" means "Dear Son" or "Dear Daughter", I thought.

Bartleby007

So the first "D" in "DD" or "DS" stands for "Doctor's." "DD" and "DS" have nothing at all to do with the daughter or son's career aspirations. Got it.

The chemistry section on the MCAT is a joke. That's not to say that your daughter's science undergrad education wasn't good.
In the Ivy grads, I think what your daughter is seeing is nothing more than people dealing with stress differently. Increased pressure brings out strange things in people. Med school classes are small (100-130), and they can get rather clique-ish. She should find a great study group and stick with them (regardless of alma mater).
UC kids typically do well in med school. In general, their undergrad science classes relied heavily on multiple-choice questions -- no change in med school.

From my experience, med students with other advanced degrees don't do any better or worse than those with only bachelor's degrees. We had a Harvard law grad in our med school class. He was a great guy, solid student, decent poker player, and crappy athlete. Each of us has his/her own talents. He gave great presentations. I wouldn't say that he had a superior memory in comparison to ours, though.
Really? I don't. I went to school with those guys. I continue to hear stories about some of them making "dumb" calls in the hospitals. By "dumb," I mean stupid by physician standards (commensurate with training and experience) not by legal standards. My nightmare scenario is getting hurt and regaining consciousness in a local hospital to see that one of those "idiots" is taking care of me. On the other hand, there are old classmates whom I'd trust with beloved family members. Hopefully, I'll be lucky enough to get one of them when I end up in the hospital. :-)

Based on what I've seen, it doesn't take a very bright person to get into (or graduate from) med school. It does require, however, a decent memory (nothing incredible), solid work ethic, decent organizational skills, and pretty good time management. Memorization is just...memorization. Any monkey that puts in the time can do that...

Bartleby007

**double post**
My apologies.

i_wanna_be_Brown

Miami,

I don't understand why thread after thread you come back to this. Some students can memorize things extremely quickly and easily, some are better at tackling concepts quickly and therefore might say that memorizing stuff is harder. While everyone is different, it is really not hard to imagine someone being able to say that med school is incredibly easy if that person is good at memorization. Just as I said, writing out the numbers 1 to 10000000000000 is not difficult but is time consuming. If for example, someone had exceptional hand writing ability and could somehow write 10x faster than the average person, this task would become comparatively "easier" because it would take less time. Or, probably more accurately. If you were given one week to do this task, the student who could write for 20 hours straight without stopping would get done faster than the person who could only do 10 hours before needing a break. While I don't think truly photographic memory exists, in theory, if one could instantly look at a page and memorize it, the first two years of med school would be a ludicrously easy as you are tested on your memory much more than your analytical skills.

I was under the impression it stood for "darling" not "dear" but it doesn't really matter.

And I agree with Bartleby. As I progressed through Med school, it became clear the real factor that separates super stars from scrubs is work ethic, not intelligence.

bigreddawgie

Bartleby007, are you a resident now?

Bartleby007

@i_wanna_be_Brown: Nice to know that your experience was similar to mine. Perhaps we aren't outliers?

@bigreddawgie: Nope.

somemom

the 1st D is traditionally darling ro dear and the 2nd D or S is daughter or son.

Not a big deal, but just so it is not confusing for Bartleby

Bartleby007

@somemom: I stand corrected. Thanks for clarifying that. I'm fairly new here.

i_wanna_be_Brown

other than the claim that you have more time in med school for non school related things than you did in undergrad I think our experiences are very similar (even down to the fact that the MD/PhDs are more blase about classes than the MDs). Interestingly enough, in a post on the Brown forum I describe that there are a few students in my class who say that med school is better than college. They are also from Harvard. I don't know what you guys were doing up there but god it must be miserable

I'll also throw out here a little speech one of the admins gave us, which is that med school is like a bunch of hurdles up the face of a mountain. As you progress, you look at these hurdles and think "oh my god, how am I going to get over this?" But then, once you've cleared it, you turn around and look at the hurdle behind/below you and think "my god, that is so easy, why does anyone complain about this thing? I mean look at it, it's not even that high. It's certainly not as high as the hurdle ahead of me." This leads to the one thing I really hate about med school: older students telling you not to complain about your work because of how much harder theirs is because odds are, they were complaining just as much if not more than you are when they were in your position.

Bartleby007

@i_wanna_be_Brown: For the record, I never said that I had more time in med school for non-school related things than I did in undergrad. Perhaps you're confusing me with someone else in this thread?

To clarify, the M.D./Ph.D. students in my med school class took class very seriously. We just didn't feel the need to "flex" by asking ridiculous questions.
Funny stuff. [sarcasm] Yeah, life in college was absolutely horrible. I never learned anything useful, the professors were idiots, and my classmates were tools. I couldn't wait to get out of that hellhole known as Cambridge, MA. [/sarcasm]

But seriously, I had lots of fun during both phases of education. Both featured lots of work. Med school featured more tedious studying -- not hard, just tedious. Somehow I always had time to pursue my extracurricular interests. *shrug*

i_wanna_be_Brown

What you're describing is what I meant by blasé. We had higher scores for everything, we just werent asking Qs all the time or complaining non stop.

No one ever said we didn't have time. Just that we have less. *shrug*

MiamiDAP

"The chemistry section on the MCAT is a joke"
-Does it matter it is a joke or not? It is enough for Med. School. It is most likely not enough for Chem. engineering, but MCAT is an entrance exam for Med. School, not anything else. We are talking about complexity level of UG vs Med. School and not any other fields. Chem. as a joke on MCAT was pelnty during Med. School, D. was very happy whenever she could use her Chem background as it meant less memorization, which meant easier.
BTW, yes, much less time does not mean not time at all. D. just came from visiting her UG for couple days and is visiting home for her Thanksgiving break (yes, longer than in her UG, whole week in Med. School vs. few days in UG. I am sure that she would bring her books to study during her break, she always does).
Congrats to those who had easy time in Med. School. They are truly blessed!! It is NOT the case at D's school, not for her, not for any from Elite and Ivy UG, not for the ones with advanced degrees, not for the single classmate.
I also believe that arguments are futile, they do not produce any conclusive answers to anything. there are geniuses out there and it simply does not apply to majority with various backgrounds. As backgrounds of D's classmates vary significantly I can safely say, that background has very little to do with challenges at Med. School of course keeping in mind the fact that background of each student was determined sufficient based of college GPA and MCAT score.