The social experience of stress as premedical students in the United States

Premedical students (premeds) are stressed. While the literature describes some of the reasons why premeds are stressed and the impact of stress on students' desire or ability to continue along the premed pathway, there is less of an understanding about how premeds understand, interpret, and metabolize stress. We draw upon in-depth interviews with twenty-seven first-year premeds from a large, public, metropolitan university in the United States to gain insight into their experiences and expectations. Our sample is split between insiders—that is, students who have at least one parent with a college degree—and newcomers—or, students who are first-generation college students. First, we show that first-year premeds arrive to college with different experiences with stress, depending on their insider or newcomer status. Insiders have social and cultural capital that has primed them to be at ease with stress, whereas newcomers arrive to college with less comfort with the competitive environment and valorization of stress. Then, we describe students’ perceived lack of formal guidance from the premed advising office and how it opens up space for peer socialization around stress. We conclude by showing how insiders are less flustered by the stress while newcomers are more likely to begin to doubt themselves and their ability to become physicians. Bridging the peer socialization and social reproduction of inequalities literatures, we argue that it is possible that social understandings of stress are a key mechanism to the reproduction of inequalities within the medical profession.