Five Things That You Never Expect From Medical School

Many things you may never expect in medical school or college. You must have incredibly thick skin and be prepared to face the harsh truths about life and death. There is no room for self-pity, avoidance, or denial. It’s a grind that will leave you feeling like you’re drowning and there isn’t anyone coming to save you. All of that being said though, it can also be one of the best things in your life as it will truly make a lasting impact on your life both professionally as well as personally. Oregon health licensing is a good example of the types of tests that you need to pass.

Five Things That You Never Expect On Medical School :

1. Financial aid.

You shouldn’t expect to receive any financial aid. It doesn’t matter how well you think you did on your AMCAS or whether you have outstanding grades and MCAT scores, if the school has received a partial or full payment from the government and decides to award your scholarship, they will not consider anything you do in your college career. It just doesn’t happen that way. The bad news is that it will most likely take 5 to 6 years of good grades and high scores as a medical student before they will even open the door to financial aid.

2. Clinical experience.

If you want something to do in clinicals, you will have to find it yourself. It is rare that anyone will ever ask a med student to help out or shadow them because they are short an extra pair of hands. If you need something done, you need to speak up and ask for it yourself because no one is going to offer it up on its own. 

Speaking up does not mean that you have a right to demand everything either! Medical school can be frustratingly frustrating at times and when people get frustrated, they don’t always have the most tactful way of dealing with things. If nothing is offered and you need more time in the operating room, then do something about it. Just don’t expect that people will offer it to you on their own.

3. Tuition.

People always say that a medical education is one of the best investments that you can make in your life and they are absolutely right, but not for the reasons that they claim it to be. It is because it teaches you how to negotiate your way around the system and obtain a well-paying job with a large signing bonus and other incentives instead of taking a mediocre salary with full benefits. 

You won’t appreciate this until after medical school, but don’t expect that any financial aid will cover all of your expenses throughout medical school either, especially if you have to live in an expensive city like NYC or San Francisco for example. All the financial aid that you receive is not going to be enough to cover living expenses and you will have to find ways to make ends meet. There is no way around it and there really isn’t anything that you can do about it either because even the most financially sound people have gone through something similar.

4. Money management.

If you’re like me, then you probably didn’t notice until after medical school that your money was dwindling very quickly, so beware of this beforehand if you can help it! The problem with this is that I had a GPA score of 3.86 in high school and that isn’t enough to get me a great job compared to people who also have 3.9 or higher combined GPAs. 

Medical school can be very expensive and you will find yourself scraping together every penny you make from a part-time job, loans, or even selling items on Craig’s list if you’re desperate for cash. I would definitely recommend starting out with a part time job after graduation if you want to graduate on time.

5. Research opportunities.

The amount of research opportunities offered to medical students are very limited and it requires an incredible amount of work to get accepted into any research opportunities. You will most likely be working late hours and staying up past midnight just to finish your experiments so you can submit them on time. You’ll also realize that the papers you write in medical school don’t really matter at all, but nobody will ever tell you this! If you want research experience, it is up to you to find it on your own because the people around you will give you the run around until your head is spinning.