How to prepare for Medicine the Summer before starting?

Wouldn't bother tbh. Disorganised learning is a waste of time. Don't worry, they'll start easy to get everyone on the same level. Personally I'd spend the time doing whatever it is you enjoy doing in your free time, and seeing your friends before you all disappear off to different unis.

Oh god no. Please enjoy your summer. Even if you asked the faculty at your medical school, I'm sure they'd say use the summer to relax, spend time with friends and family etc. Once you start, they'll teach you the things you need based on their own course structure. Reading a medical textbook now won't be of much help as the material either won't make sense and you'll probably forget a lot of what you've read by the time you start uni as it will be very fragmented learning.

God willing, I will be starting Medicine this September/October depending on my results. Was wondering if I should read a bit ahead before I hopefully go, or if I just shouldn't bother? Any advice would be helpful.

Best Preperation you can do? Take a nice exciting holiday with lots of drinking. It'll help you prepare your liver for the vigourous lifestyle of medical student/doctors

Note: I'm obviously joking, but in all seriousness, you should just relax. If you try to learn anything now , you'll probably forget it by the time you start and i'd hazard a guerss that it wouldn't have been learn it well, it'll be disorganised, and you may have learnt the content incorrectly too- which causes problems down the line.

Lol, thank you! 😊 I don't even know which textbooks to use, so it'd definitely be disorganised. Thanks again


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Defintiely don't buy textbooks! For preclinical, I didn't use any textbooks , I just used lecture slides/notes. Becuase you will never be asked a question if it isn't on the learning objectives, and the lecture slides go through the learning objectives and contain all the information you need (yes you can read around, but in general if you learn what the school teaches, you can still deduce the correct answer for thigns you haven't been taught).

Buying textbooks is expensive and you'll probably rarely use them. If you need them, use the librarary. If you REALLY want to own your own though, perhaps the only one worth investing in for pre clinicals is maybe an anatomy book. I know people that bought their own... but really I don't feel like my friends used them enough to justify their price! personally I used a 3d anatomy atlas because it helped me visualise everything in relation to everything else (and didn't reauire me spending hours in the dissection room) and then back to the slides. Worry about it later, you'll eventually learn what works best for you

Defintiely don't buy textbooks! For preclinical, I didn't use any textbooks , I just used lecture slides/notes. Becuase you will never be asked a question if it isn't on the learning objectives, and the lecture slides go through the learning objectives and contain all the information you need (yes you can read around, but in general if you learn what the school teaches, you can still deduce the correct answer for thigns you haven't been taught).

Buying textbooks is expensive and you'll probably rarely use them. If you need them, use the librarary. If you REALLY want to own your own though, perhaps the only one worth investing in for pre clinicals is maybe an anatomy book. I know people that bought their own... but really I don't feel like my friends used them enough to justify their price! personally I used a 3d anatomy atlas because it helped me visualise everything in relation to everything else (and didn't reauire me spending hours in the dissection room) and then back to the slides. Worry about it later, you'll eventually learn what works best for you

Thank you for all the advice! I guess I'm used to using textbooks for a levels so I thought it'd be similar, won't bother buying anything then 😊
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I have to disagree with the owning your own textbooks thing here. If you go to a PBL/CBL med school where a lot of your learning is self directed then textbooks are a must. Often the lecturers who set the questions will have key details on their slides but they wont cover everything and then will reference a textbook for us to go and complete our learning outcomes. I bought 3 key core textbooks and I dont regret it at all, they got me through year 1 and hopefully will serve me well in year 2. Just make sure you get a feel for your study plan and your med schools way of doing things before you jump into buying expensive books because for us if we had just used the lecture slides we would never have passed our exams.

As for work over the summer to prepare, as others have said dont bother. You are more likely to confuse yourself or teach yourself something in the wrong context or just completely incorrectly that it may be more of a hinderance to you, also by the time you start your unlikely to remember any of it. There is a reason why you pay £9k a year to go to med school and why you cannot teach yourself medicine from a textbook, its just to hands on. Best of luck in everything!

oh well it depends on your med school. I'm assumign you go to a more pbl heavy school? imperial is traditional AF. Everythign is given in lectures, and as for past questions.. .We have a paper bank that we update yearly haha

I have to disagree with the owning your own textbooks thing here. If you go to a PBL/CBL med school where a lot of your learning is self directed then textbooks are a must. Often the lecturers who set the questions will have key details on their slides but they wont cover everything and then will reference a textbook for us to go and complete our learning outcomes. I bought 3 key core textbooks and I dont regret it at all, they got me through year 1 and hopefully will serve me well in year 2. Just make sure you get a feel for your study plan and your med schools way of doing things before you jump into buying expensive books because for us if we had just used the lecture slides we would never have passed our exams.

As for work over the summer to prepare, as others have said dont bother. You are more likely to confuse yourself or teach yourself something in the wrong context or just completely incorrectly that it may be more of a hinderance to you, also by the time you start your unlikely to remember any of it. There is a reason why you pay £9k a year to go to med school and why you cannot teach yourself medicine from a textbook, its just to hands on. Best of luck in everything!

I used textbooks a bit, but the university had pretty much a copy per student of the core texts in the library, or just an electronic copy for the newer ones. Didn't buy anything (plus those things are damn expensive).