At Stony Brook, it seems like most undergraduate students (including myself) are STEM majors and/or are planning to go to professional graduate schools after they finish. I’ve met a handful of people that are looking into medicine, PA, OT, PT, etc. as their future career. In this way, I think everyone shares the same struggle in taking difficult courses and trying to maintain a social life. I used to be on the pre-PA track, but just recently switched over to pre-med this semester entering my junior year. Switching has made me realize the countless number of hours that pre-med students have to put in in order to be successful. Junior year has proven to be the most difficult so far for pre-meds and here’s why.
We have to study for and take the MCAT.
The most important test we have to take in our undergraduate career is the MCAT and most pre-med students take it their junior year. It is the admissions test for medical school and a good score on it is a must. It is a 7 ½ hour test that asks questions across all science subjects such as chemistry, biology, and physics. (We do get breaks in between sections, but it’s still sooooo long.) Pre-med students either spend months studying for this test or cram in the weeks before. Overall, it is a lot of content that we have to review and remember!
We have to finish up our pre-requisites.
Medical schools require us to take a variety of courses as a basis for things that we will learn if/when we enroll at them. This includes a number of difficult science courses. The most infamous course that pre-meds have to take is Organic Chemistry and it definitely proves to be one of the harder courses offered at SBU. I personally struggle more with biology courses and am currently struggling with Biochemistry. Even though I am almost finished with my pre-reqs, that doesn’t mean the last few are going to be easy!
We have to complete volunteer hours.
Personally, I enjoy volunteering and have been doing it since high school. However, trying to make time for volunteering while simultaneously taking a lot of credits is stressful. Studying for the MCAT and the courses we are enrolled in already takes a lot of time and effort. It is difficult to volunteer because it means missing out on crucial studying time! Even so, pre-med students have to manage and dedicate time out of their week to help out somewhere. It’s not a requirement for medical school admission, but it is highly recommended to show that we are willing to help our community.
We have to find and do research.
Research is also not something that is required to get into medical school, but it shows medical schools that we are proactive and are actually interested in the science field. I feel like a lot of pre-med students have already found research positions by their junior year. However, there are pre-med students like me who waited until their junior year to find a position. Finding a research positions entails researching about faculty and the research they do in relation to what you want to study. Then, we have to reach out to them and hope that one replies with open arms. It’s stressful and can take a while for someone to take us in!
We have to find professors willing to write letter of recommendations.
Medical schools require letter of recommendations as a part of a pre-med student’s application. Asking for a letter of recommendation can be stressful and intimidating. First, it is hard to get to know a professor when we are taking classes that are in big lecture halls and have a couple hundred of students in them. If we don’t have any interaction with the professor, how will they write nice things about us? Another struggle is actually asking the professor for a letter because social interaction is hard!
Being a pre-med student takes a lot of dedication and motivation. It means pushing through hard science courses and taking on meaningful extracurriculars. Even though pre-med students are constantly in a state of worry, we know that our hard-work will pay off. That’s why we endure so much studying; so, we can study even more in medical school. Overall, I think junior year is the biggest hurdle to get over for pre-med students because it’s filled with cramming followed by a bunch of anxiety. After that, it’s on to actually applying to medical school, which is something I’ll discuss when I actually get to it.
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