I’m going into college next year and would like to waste no time preparing for med school and possibly neurosurgery. I get it, I’m likely going to change my mind along the way, but as it stands I’m passionate in neurosurgery. I’ve read that in order to get into a top 20 med school, you must have a shitload of extracurricular activities. Is it all too difficult to balance school and these activities and eventual MCAT preparation. Id like to get involved in research, shadowing, pubs, work etc. I hear that on the med school application there are 15 slots. This seems like a ton of room for activities, especially considering i had a rough time filling in 10 spots on my common app for college. Stay safe everyone.
Starting out is all about a slow taper upward while learning how to be independent, you can always get extracurriculars later but you can't change a grade that goes on your official transcript. Recommend starting with the required amount of full time credits (was 12 at my university) and maybe one small extracurricular such as hospital volunteering for a couple hours a week while focus on getting straight A's your first semester. Then semester by semester you add on more extracurriculars.
Let me summarize the advice you're about to receive, before people start dumping on you.
It's good that you're motivated, but keep in mind that it's very early. You still don't even know what medicine is, much less what it's like to treat a patient, spend time in an operating room, or study neurosurgery. Keep an open mind. You don't want to end up in neurosurgery and realize you hate it. That will be a LONG road to nowhere.
Whatever you do (and it doesn't really matter what you choose to study right now), do a good job. Your GPA matters.
For your neurosurgery application, your undergrad "extracurriculars" mean very little unless you are truly exceptional. Athletics being the major exception, because some neurosurgeons go nuts for college athletes. "Exceptional" means publishing a bunch of high-quality papers with research or reaching some sort of high level of influence that you can parlay into neurosurgical skill (technology, coding, business development)
Med school quality has some influence on where you can train as a neurosurgeon - but much less than you think. Good students who make good surgeons come from anywhere. You should focus on schools that do have a neurosurgery department, if you can.
Focus on building good habits for studying, test taking, thinking, and writing rather than worrying about which classes you're taking and which extracurriculars you're a part of. Those will take you much farther.
Good for you. I agree with the first response. College life and demands are very different to what you're used to in high school. Get accustomed to everything and slowly increase your extracurriculars. It seems that, while you're quite far away from the goals you describe, you're aware of that and not just some freshman who saw grey's anatomy. It's good to be aware of some goals early on. There are many things that you can do, that won't hurt you if you decide to follow a different path. I always got told I should focus on school, that it's too soon to focus on neurosurgery, but aside from taking too much on too soon, this brought a lot of benefits with it as well. One thing I want to warn you about though, is that, if indeed you'll stick to neurosurgery throughout the next decade, it will be very hard to keep up the motivation to study for all the materials in medical school. The more you dive into neurosurgery, the harder it will be to stay focused on doing well with every other subject in medical school. The last two years where hell, as I just wanted to start focusing on my future as a neurosurgeon. Stay humble and good luck.
To add to what I just wrote in the above comment, I do have regrets about how much time I spent worrying about the best possible path towards neurosurgery. College life is a very unique experience to grow as a person, undergrad more than medical school - I think medical school molds you in a way that you have little control over. Don't underestimate this. Even Cushing had a blast during his undergraduate studies, saying about himself how little effort he put into academics at Yale and how he only really remembers and cherishes his extracurricular activities, mostly athletics. Something to keep in mind
Getting into a top 20 med school is a reasonable goal but more people are taking time off between college and med school to buff up their application.
Perhaps doing clinical research for 1-2 years before applying to med school after getting your BS/BA would help.
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There are very few things that you can pick up during undergrad that will directly affect your life as a resident. Research skills would be a plus. Coding and statistics even more (can't stress this enough). Learn another language - preferably Spanish.
College is the one time you can study anything from an expert without reservation or plan. Some of the best classes I took were random literature or art history classes. Lot of people are going to make fun of those pursuits, but if Zuckerberg had taken some philosophy or read some Kant before he dropped out then Nazis might be banned from Facebook.
It just seems like it’s so difficult to compartmentalize all of those aspects
