Retention of content information over four months

[FCMike11]

I am using MCATJelly's schedule. I work fulltime so I am stretching this plan to four months. I am concerned about long-term retention. So basically my strategy has been to read the EK chapter once, underlying key ideas and information I plan to retain. Second time I pass over I read it again, typing the underlined material onto a document (material I consider significant are terms, formulas and concepts that I don't quite feel strong enough). I am them saving them to my google documents and opening them daily on my phone and reviewing.

I am not sure if this is realistic as I am into the first chemistry lecture second pass and halfway through I have 2 pages of material typed already. Has anyone else done something similar? Concerned that my content review will be too far away from test time and the practice exam portion of my studying (this is the best alternative I could come up with instead of re reading all the chapters).

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[jparsenal87]

I am using MCATJelly's schedule. I work fulltime so I am stretching this plan to four months. I am concerned about long-term retention. So basically my strategy has been to read the EK chapter once, underlying key ideas and information I plan to retain. Second time I pass over I read it again, typing the underlined material onto a document (material I consider significant are terms, formulas and concepts that I don't quite feel strong enough). I am them saving them to my google documents and opening them daily on my phone and reviewing.

Not a cure-all, as I too am worried about content retention a bit, but I would recommend maybe instead of or in addition to your google doc, make flashcards on Anki. This will keep the content continually cycling for you - and you won't have to look at however many pages at once and try to extract something out of them.

Also, I think as you transition from content review to practice exams/questions, make sure to spend considerable time reviewing the exams you take. If you pay attention to where you are missing points, you can then go and focus on that content.

 

[rsrs3739]

Anki all the way. It has helped me tremendously

 

[FCMike11]

Thanks for the responses guys. I already use anki some, but what I think I will do now is have a first pass on the EK chapter and do my writing then (all the things I'd normally write) and my second pass will be erasing all concepts/definitions out of my google doc to anki cards - will then just have a separate document for formulas and basically the rest on anki.

Have any tips on ways you test yourself with anki? I'm using image occlusion for tables (common sin/cos values, types of radioactive decay, nomenclature etc.). But I don't really know any other way to do terms/definitions other than just as a basic flashcard.

 

[Necr0sis713]

I find that frequently doing timed passages every day forces me to refer to my "mental bank" of content I have down. It works because you never know what question they're going to ask you, or how you're going to have to apply that knowledge.

For example...you know that glycogen breakdown can be activated when the body is needs glucose. But...theirs so many ways they can test what you know about glycogen metabolism: They can ask you what having elevated insulin would do to glycogen metabolism, what elevated cAMP or cortisol would do, whether or not their referring to MUSCLE or LIVER glycogen.

If you're at least somewhat "good at science" then you're most likely going to have good recall of bits of knowledge when you're provided with clues like in trivia questions. The problem with this is it kind of makes you skim things because your brain goes into auto pilot with the whole "I already know this" mentality.

Considering that, I'd say take a bunch of practice tests and passages from multiple sources to be exposed to all sorts of situations that would force you to use what you already know in different ways, to attack questions from different angles.

 

[yeezuswest]

Thanks for the responses guys. I already use anki some, but what I think I will do now is have a first pass on the EK chapter and do my writing then (all the things I'd normally write) and my second pass will be erasing all concepts/definitions out of my google doc to anki cards - will then just have a separate document for formulas and basically the rest on anki.

Have any tips on ways you test yourself with anki? I'm using image occlusion for tables (common sin/cos values, types of radioactive decay, nomenclature etc.). But I don't really know any other way to do terms/definitions other than just as a basic flashcard.

I haven't really used image occlusion except for memorizing amino acid structures. An example of a card I'll have for radioactive decay is:

During {{c1::alpha}} decay, the atomic number is lowered by {{c2::two}} and the mass number by {{c3::four}}

You can use basic cards for straight up definitions, but cloze can work just as fine in my opinion.

Free ions in a solution are called {{c1::electrolytes}}

To me this works just as well as if I had a double sided card with "electrolytes" on one side and "free ions in a solution". Switching between card types takes too much time for me and so I try and fit as many questions into cloze as I can.

 

[FCMike11]

I haven't really used image occlusion except for memorizing amino acid structures. An example of a card I'll have for radioactive decay is:

During {{c1::alpha}} decay, the atomic number is lowered by {{c2::two}} and the mass number by {{c3::four}}

You can use basic cards for straight up definitions, but cloze can work just as fine in my opinion.

Free ions in a solution are called {{c1::electrolytes}}

To me this works just as well as if I had a double sided card with "electrolytes" on one side and "free ions in a solution". Switching between card types takes too much time for me and so I try and fit as many questions into cloze as I can.

Thanks for the response, I am not even familiar with the cloze function. Looks like it'd more efficient in making cards and also have a better flow when studying. I just need to familiarize myself further with anki.

 

[yeezuswest]

Yeah with the cloze function I can essentially make three notecards from one sentence like the one above that has three cloze deletions.