Am I Smart Enough for Medical School?

Session 43

If you’re early on in your premed journey, or well on your way, you have probably questioned if you are smart enough to be a doctor. Let’s talk about that.

One of the common conflicts on your head right now is probably whether you’re smart enough to get into medical school. Or whether you’re smart enough to finish medical school. Are you smart enough to be a physician? Are you worthy enough?

That self-doubt hampers most students. I did a podcast on The Premed Years all about impostor syndrome, specifically back in Episode 269. And if you want to learn about everything premed, just check all the episodes on The Premed Years Podcast. Also, check out our Facebook page and like the page to be notified. Also, listen to our other podcasts on MedEd Media.

[01:01] Am I Smart Enough for Medical School?

To be a physician, you need to work hard and you need to be smart enough to pass medical school. You obviously need to do well on the MCAT and have good enough grades. You need to tell a good enough story in your application to get into medical school and do well in your interviews.

If you’ve shown that you can work hard enough, study hard enough, and grind hard enough. if you can put in the work to study and sacrifice, then you are doing what you need to do.

'The MCAT, your grades, getting into medical school, is not a test on how smart you are. It's a test of how hard you're working and putting that effort into getting good grades, getting a good MCAT score.'Click To Tweet

You do not need to be a genius to get into medical school. You do not need to be a genius to get a good score on the MCAT. You need to work hard. Put the proper study techniques in place to get good grades.

You may struggle with the subjects but it doesn’t tell you that you’re smart or not. It just tells you that you suck at Physics or Biology or whatever. Still, that’s not telling of how smart you are.

[03:00] Work Smart, Work Hard

How smart you are is really predicated on how much smart effort you’re putting into this. If you’re on social media doing stuff and studying at the same time, this is not working smart. You need to work smart. You need to work hard.

Medical school is hard. You don’t need to be a genius to get into medical school. You just need to put in your time and effort. And you need to adjust to that level of rigor in medical school. You don’t need to be smarter. You just need to change what you’ve been doing as you’re working harder.

'You need to learn how to learn in medical school.'Click To Tweet

Once you become a physician, you gain the skills on how to learn during medical school. Medical school prepares you to learn, how to learn, where to look up information, how to think. And once you’ve shown your competency on that, not on how smart you are but on how you think and gather information and work hard during your clinical years, then you get to your internship year or residency. Once you’re there, now it’s time to learn how to be doctor.

Again, no need to be smart. It’s more about talking to patients and how to gather information form them, how to look at lab results, what to think about and gather the differential. So it’s a process that you learn. And eighty hours a week in a hospital is hard work

[05:55] You Are Smart Enough!

You are smart enough to get into medical school. The question is, are you going to work hard enough to do it? Are you willing to put in the time and effort to prepare for the MCAT or to prepare your applications properly? Or to prepare for your interview? And do well on your first couple years of medical school or do well on the boards? Or to prepare for your residency interviews?

When people decide that this path isn’t right for them, they don’t decide whether they’re smart enough, but they decide on whether they don’t want to work as hard as they need to.

Again, you’re smart enough to get into medical school. The biggest question is – are you willing to work for it?