Running in College and Medical School

You can do both, but without a super-human level of grit you will end up slacking off on one or the other as both (collegiate athletics and pre-med studies) take up a lot of time if you want to both run well and get into a top tier medical program.

If you want to do well in running and end up at a low-tier med school or if you want to do mediocre at running and end up at Hopkins, then go for it.

My advice would be to pick one or the other. That will allow you to have the full college experience (parties, friends, spring breaks, etc.) without feeling overloaded or that you're always slacking off on something.

My further advice would be to go the pre-med route and scrap running on a team (unless you are scholarship level). You can run your whole life. You only experience college once.

Current D3 runner, and dude you can have good grade and take internships and still run, it's not that hard. Honestly, I think Athletics will help your grades more because if I have too much free-time I end up dicking around because I have that much free time. If I know I only have 3 or 4 hours for homework at night then I'm going to be more serious and actually get sstuffdone. Your parents are freaking out over nothing. If you think running in college is going to be fun, do it.

PcRunner wrote:

I am a high school runner and looking at doing medical school after college. I want to run in college, but my parents think it would be better to focus on school, labs, and internships instead of being on the cross country/ track team. Has anyone gone through this process and what do you think is the best thing to do in this situation.

Unless you're superhuman and a whiz at organic chemistry and physics, you'll need your full attention on getting into med school, IE grades and volunteer work at your local hospital. Once your actually in med school its a different story. It gets worse.

I ran D1 in college at a top 5 public school and was fairly successful but felt that I spent way too much time at it. My time would have been better spent hanging out with some talented people in the Math/Physics department (my major) rather than with some admittedly great guys who viewed P.E. and industrial relations as real college subjects. Perhaps it is different at a D3 school and the few guys I met who ran D1 times from D3 schools seemed like a lot better students than the hard-core running guys, but I have no first-hand knowledge. Two guys from my team did enter medical school-they never ran in any but the smallest of meets and were essentially training partners, but since we had a laid back approach we let almost anyone come out. Frankly, we needed these guys to boost our academic standing.

One of the problems with going D1 is that most schools are public and public schools have way better students today than in the past. For instance, it is hard now to get into University of Florida (where I live now). Most of your teammates might be great people, but you will be hanging out with students who really are in over their head and got in only through running. The whole set-up defeats the purpose of going to a rigorous school.

An anecdote: a good friend of mine on the team wrote a freshman paper and footnoted every sentence. His footnotes were longer than the paper. He was so thrilled to be at the place, so poorly educated, and so scared of getting kicked out over plagiarism that he felt that this was a good solution.

Plenty of students thrive on athletics in their academic career. Most majors (or required medical school prerequisites) that would lead towards medical school have significant lab time. That often interferes with meets or team training. Each coach/team/school is different.

Plenty of successful students have significant outside interests or employment. It's up to you to optimize your time and not to procrastinate.

I did better at my academic pursuits by being busy. The more idle time I had, the worse I performed academically.

Medical school has plenty of time to run. Maybe not peak performance. But, a good base can be maintained easily. Post graduate residency training was the most time consuming part of medical education for me. Some things have changed in hours worked by residents since I trained though.

FWIW, given two similar medical school applicants, the team athlete would often get the nod from the admissions committee. Tell your parents

A lot of it depends on the individual, how driven they are, and whether they require... sleep. Take, for example, Jordan Tropf. That guy seems to be able to thrive off of five hours of sleep, while completing his residency and competing at a very high level in both triathlon and marathons. Many would crash and burn trying to maintain that insane schedule.

CurrentD3 wrote:

Current D3 runner, and dude you can have good grade and take internships and still run, it's not that hard. Honestly, I think Athletics will help your grades more because if I have too much free-time I end up dicking around because I have that much free time. If I know I only have 3 or 4 hours for homework at night then I'm going to be more serious and actually get sstuffdone. Your parents are freaking out over nothing. If you think running in college is going to be fun, do it.

+1.

Doesn't take that much time to run....and helps promote time management.

Anyone remember this guy:

https://www.si.com/vault/1993/11/22/129935/bob-kempainen

Alan

It can be done. Just remember to keep things in the proper perspective, running is just one part of your life. Roger Bannister ran faster than most of us ever will (65 years ago!), while attending medical school.

Bannister always said he was more proud of his contribution to medicine than his running career. In 2014, Bannister said in an interview: "I'd rather be remembered for my work in neurology than my running. If you offered me the chance to make a great breakthrough in the study of the autonomic nerve system, I'd take that over the four minute mile right away. I worked in medicine for sixty years. I ran for about eight."

PcRunner wrote:

I am a high school runner and looking at doing medical school after college. I want to run in college, but my parents think it would be better to focus on school, labs, and internships instead of being on the cross country/ track team. Has anyone gone through this process and what do you think is the best thing to do in this situation.

Several of my d3 teammates went to med school. They all managed to run and study; none of them was much of a partier. One went off the deep end once or twice; he later thought that he did better during the seasons because he had something to do every day other than fret about getting into med school. With one exception, none of them was particularly talented academically, but they were disciplined and worked hard and consistently.

Our school offered organic chemistry during summer school, and some of my teammates (and quite a few other pre-med types) did that. Since organic is a make-or-break course for pre-meds, this would be something to look into.

So you need to decide what you want to do, and whether you're willing to do what's needed to get there.

I had a teammate in college who maintained a 4.0 all through college while running cross country at track at a DI university. She was a chemistry and biology double major and went on to medical school. She is now an orthopedic surgeon... and still runs.

Being Pre Med is fairly common at some private universities.

Being in med school and running is rare.

If you were to miss school for a meet (while in med school), they would kick you out.

I'm currently in my first year of med school. I didn't run for my school's team when I was in undergrad, but I'll try to offer some advice and perspective.

Don't feel like you have to major in something extremely difficult or even something in the sciences. You have to complete your prereqs, and I'd also advise taking a few upper-level bio courses beyond the minimum requirements, but you can do this while majoring in anything you want. It's way better to be an English or economics major with a 3.8 GPA than a biochem major with a 3.5 GPA. Med school admissions is a numbers-driven process, and they don't give as much credit as you might expect for completing a tough major. If you want to major in something challenging and you can handle it along with athletics, go for it, but don't feel like you have to.

If you run collegiate track, you might just want to go in with the plan of taking a gap year between college and med school. Volunteering, research, shadowing, and MCAT prep will be difficult to balance with athletics and school. If you need to put some of that off until after you finish, you should. The last thing you want to to is to sacrifice your GPA or do worse than you should on the MCAT because you were trying to juggle too many things. It's a long journey, and taking a little bit of extra time to put together the best application possible will not be a mistake.

Use your summers wisely. If you can knock some coursework out over the summer, that will really help to lighten your in-season load. Especially good if you can get some of the more time consuming lab courses out of the way. Summer is also a good time to do some research.

All in all, I think running in college and getting into med school will be tough but doable if you're reasonably smart and you have good time management. I'd expect your social life to take a hit, but I don't think you'll be completely unable to go out ever. You'll also have to be pretty disciplined about studying on road trips, which can be difficult if your teammates are hanging out and relaxing. But I think it will be doable if it's what you really want.

PcRunner wrote:

I am a high school runner and looking at doing medical school after college. I want to run in college, but my parents think it would be better to focus on school, labs, and internships instead of being on the cross country/ track team. Has anyone gone through this process and what do you think is the best thing to do in this situation.

If I had a nickel for every high school kid who thought they would go to medical school who didn't even come close, I would be a rich person, and that's considering people who don't do a sport. You have to be outrageously exceptional academically to pull this off, and that is with taking 5 years to get through undergrad. If you aren't a great student now, don't assume you will suddenly become one in college, because you won't.

You need to be as close to a 4.0 student as possible, learn a lot, and do well on the MCAT. Helps also to be at a good college.

Good luck.

If you are truly exceptional at running, then you should continue in college. Even so, my opinion is that academic pursuits must take precedence over anything else. Major in something you're genuinely interested in, and be as curious as humanly possible about every single course that you take. Question everything. The intellectual reward is a gift in and of itself. Focus on the MCAT as soon as you can, and nail it. If you want to be a doctor, for whatever reasons, then consider your first day in college the beginning of a long run. Aim for excellence in everything that you do, but don't kick yourself for small failures along the way. They will humanize you. Be kind respectful to everyone you encounter, especially pre-meds who may not treat you as nicely, seeing you as a competitor. They probably have their own issues that will hopefully be worked out. Minimize the party scene, as much as you can. Despite its allure, it isn't all that interesting and can take its toll on you. I wish you the best. Being a physician is an extraordinary privilege.

@DoctorGrubHub

I would estimate half of the guys I ran with in college went on to be doctors, ophthalmologists, or dentists. One of them continued to run with the college team associated with his med school. He remained in good enough shape that he definitely could have run for them. You can always quit if it doesn't work out for you. I ended up not running my last year of eligibility.

CurrentD3 wrote:

Current D3 runner, and dude you can have good grade and take internships and still run, it's not that hard. Honestly, I think Athletics will help your grades more because if I have too much free-time I end up dicking around because I have that much free time. If I know I only have 3 or 4 hours for homework at night then I'm going to be more serious and actually get sstuffdone. Your parents are freaking out over nothing. If you think running in college is going to be fun, do it.

Former D3 guy here and I had the same experience pretty much. Without running in the way, forcing me to study before/after practice, I would have dicked around and procrasinated on school work. Its pretty easy to get good grades in under grad if all you do is xc/track, letsrun, and study. Actually the more prestigious the school you get in, oftentimes the easier it is to get good grades (though the harder it is to have a high class rank). I had a very good class rank at a low tier school and all I did was the minimum to complete assignments and sometimes studied.

OP, on paper, sure without sports, you have more time for school work. However, nobody is an automaton who can just study all waking day (save before exams). Med school and residency are going to be stressful enough with their 80-100 hour work weeks. You should enjoy undergrad as much as you can before you get there. If anything, I'd say sports gave me a reason to get good grades (all academic and all that) to stay on the team. Running isn't that time consuming a hobby, except when you travel to meets (you can study while away btw, its not like you're driving the team van). I know I would have probably picked up video games or something else as a hobby, not used the extra time to study if I didn't run in college. How to convince your parents of this, idk. Some people are just nuts. Most med students are really bright, they found undergrad fairly easy and had time for plenty of hobbies. They'd have to as med school is so much harder. You should go into college with a goal of getting into med school, but if you expect to 100% get in, even if all you do is stress yourself out and study, its not guaranteed. I hope your parents have realistic expectations of this. Point out that you make good grades and balance track with studying now and with even more free time in college can continue to do so. College isn't any harder than a good high school (harder than an average public school for sure though), its just that most 18-22 year olds SUCK at time management.

Jaysker wrote:

Being Pre Med is fairly common at some private universities.

Being in med school and running is rare.

If you were to miss school for a meet (while in med school), they would kick you out.

False. Med school isn't that rigorous that you can't run. Stop spreading lies.

Source: In med school.