In order to identify the relationship among social support networks, depression, life events, and student progress in medical school, 96 students completed a questionnaire. The results indicated good social support, a high number of recent life events, slight depression and a continuum of not quite passing to doing extremely well in medical school. The combination of variables from a step-wise regression analysis which best accounted for student performance were the depression scores, distance from home of origin, and life events. Data from this study can be used with potentially vulnerable students to avoid academic difficulty. (Author)