Many students who are either considering applying to PT school or who have just been recently accepted into a PT program often wonder what the most challenging courses are that they’ll likely face throughout their schooling.

The quick takeaway for this article

While every student is different, there tend to be two courses that are often considered to be the most challenging courses for PT students. Current PT students as well as individuals who have successfully graduated from their respective PT programs tend to agree that the two most challenging courses in PT school are gross anatomy and neuroscience (also often referred to as neuroanatomy or simply neuro).

Additional challenges often arise within other curricula or outside of school, which can make PT school demanding for the student. It’s therefore important to realize that it’s not just coursework or academic load that can create the biggest challenge within PT school.

Don’t be frightened! There are great resources that can help!

Before we dive into elaborating on each of these two courses in order to help you better understand what can make each respective course so challenging, it may comfort you to know that I have a great blog post I’ve written on Six Critical Tips to Help You Crush Gross Anatomy in PT School. I’ve also have written a post on The Best Free Resource for Neuroanatomy Courses in PT School, which gives you a link to an amazing, free online animated neuroscience textbook developed by the University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston.

What makes gross anatomy and neuroscience courses so hard for PT students?

Many students likely wouldn’t have a terribly tough time with gross anatomy and/or neuroscience if each of those two courses were the only course to take each semester. The content can indeed be challenging for each of these courses, but many students feel that it’s both the volume of content within each course along with the relatively short time frame they have for learning it that makes it rather challenging. (Each course has a very high level of content to learn within a single semester.)

This is because students typically have a full credit-load of courses to take each semester in conjunction to either gross anatomy or neuroscience (institutions typically don’t put gross anatomy and neuroscience together within the same semester).

What topics are covered in gross anatomy?

Gross anatomy is a course in which PT students take a full semester to fully and completely dissect a cadaver (a deceased individual who has donated their body to the institution for research or teaching purposes). Throughout the semester the students dissect each part of the body to learn and understand every part and feature within that area of the body.

Nothing is off limits for needing to know when it comes to gross anatomy. If it’s a muscle, tendon, ligament, nerve, bone or feature of the bone, its fair game on the test. This also includes (at most institutions) visceral organs (organs in the abdomen such as the intestines, spleen, etc. and all the major arteries to these organs). The brain is also dissected and all its contents and physical features are fair game as well.

What tends to make gross anatomy so challenging?

The concept of gross anatomy is pretty simple – memorize all the structures and identify them on exams. The challenge with this is two-fold: The first is that there is an absolute plethora of information to learn and memorize about the human body and very little time to do so. Covering the entire body and every anatomical feature within a single semester means that the course has to move at a quick rate, which can leave many students in the dust and trying to play catch-up all semester long.

The second challenge (as briefly mentioned earlier) is that students often have three or four other classes to stay on top of throughout the semester, and those courses often involve a hefty amount of information, topic and concepts to cover as well.

Staying on top of other courses can really be challenging since gross anatomy involves a rather high number of hours spent in the dissection lab each week as part of the course requirement, leaving less available time for the student to focus on other coursework.

Despite the challenge, gross anatomy is an amazing experience

Just because gross anatomy can be quite challenging is not to say that this course is all doom and gloom. Far from it! Gross anatomy is a course that is truly amazing and really gives you first-hand insight as to how amazingly designed, complex and fascinating the human body really is. You just need to make sure you stay on top of all the material and do what it takes to learn all the material.
Don’t be scared about taking gross anatomy. Just know that you’ll likely need to take it rather seriously in order to avoid trouble down the road later on in the semester or later on in your PT program.

What topics are covered in neuroscience?

Neuroscience can be thought of as the sister to gross anatomy in that it is very similar, but yet uniquely different in key ways. It covers extensive amounts of material, which most often includes:

• Overview of the nervous system
• Blood supply & brainstem anatomy
• Spinal cord overview
• Neurons, neuronal networks & neuroplasticity
• Motor units & muscle receptors
• Motor cortex & descending pathways
• The basal ganglia
• The cerebellum
• Ocular motor systems
• Somatosensory systems
• Pain classification & pain modulation
• The vestibular system
• The visual system
• The limbic system
• Cognition, learning & memory
• Aging of the nervous system

Each of these topics contain numerous subtopics, with some going into more depth than others.

What tends to make neuroscience so challenging?

Neuroscience is much like gross anatomy in that there is a lot of material to cover and little time to do so. Like gross anatomy, it also carries a lab component, which adds on to the weekly time spent pouring over material and its related concepts.

Students sometimes find one of the main challenges of this course to come from an inability to actually see the anatomy, pathways or structures that they are being taught.

As one of many possible examples, neuroscience has a heavy curricular component placed on learning about different neurological tracts or pathways that are present in the brain, the spinal cord (or both), along with their key features and functions.

These particular tracts and pathways can’t really be seen on a cadaver within the gross anatomy lab, so students who like having real, visual examples in front of them can find this frustrating at times.

As with gross anatomy, there’s no reason to be terrified of taking your neuroscience course, provided that you take it seriously right from the very start. Again, as with gross anatomy, you can really develop a true appreciation for the complexity of the human body, especially since you will spend a semester spending a lot of time learning about the most complex structure known to exist within the universe…the human brain.

It’s really fascinating to think that all semester long you will use your brain to learn about the brain.

Remember: Not every student finds gross anatomy or neuroanatomy difficult

It’s important to remember that every student’s challenges within PT school will be different. Many students do well with courses that involve heavy memorization but may have challenges with other courses (such as research-based courses) or other aspects of their curricula (such as clinical hands-on skills).

As well, remember that every institution may do things slightly differently in terms of how many other courses (and which courses) their PT students take during their semester of gross anatomy or their semester of neuroanatomy. As a general rule though, the material and topics covered in each class (gross anatomy and neuroanatomy) will largely be the same across each institution. There may however be some differences though.

Remember: It’s not just the courses that can make PT school challenging

PT school can be challenging in regards to staying on top of your coursework while still needing to manage the rest of your life outside of school. Dealing with financial stressors, family or relational issues and other factors unique to each student will arise during their time in PT school. Dealing with any (or all) of these issues while simultaneously dealing with demanding courses and a full-time academic load can truly test a PT student. After all, just because you’re in school doesn’t mean that life outside of it will put itself on hold until you graduate.

But fear not, PT school and all of its courses are indeed very doable! You will need to be smart with time management and have some discipline for putting in some long hours, but if you do it right, you can have a fun time along the way while crushing your courses!

Concluding remarks

If you’re considering applying to PT school, know that the program will bring plenty of challenges throughout its duration, not just simply gross anatomy and/or neuroscience. You may not even find either of these two courses to be all that challenging for you. Perhaps you’ll find other courses to be more challenging instead. Or, you may perhaps find other aspects of PT school more challenging than any of the coursework itself.

Regardless, it would be prudent of you to take all of your courses seriously and keep your dream goal in mind as you make your way (or sometimes grind your way) through school. Remember, you have greatness within you and can persevere with the best of them!

Grind hard. You got this!