Biology study tips????

[ERMED]

Hi

I am currently a premed student at UC RIverside. I am going to take my biology requirement for med school starting this coming quarter. This is the bio you should take for the mcat, you know the year requirement. DO you guys have any tips on how to study for this class to learn the material really good? Any tips will be really appreciated.

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[brhill]

Well first, let me start out by saying I'm totally neurotic about my grades so adjust any suggestions accordingly. What *I* have always done in bio [have taken Zo, cell/molec, evol. ecology (upper div.) and evol,ecology and bio diversity] is go through the lecture notes, either pre-printed or taken in class, and made a flash card for every line of text that contains a concept. This takes about an entire day; however, once you have them done it's virtually effortless to learn them because you just keep flipping through til you've thrown out the entire pile (i.e., you know them all). The thing that makes this possible for me is that I use massive abbreviations so the cards can be made super fast and I write fast and messy. For example on the front of one card it would say, "Exp disruptive selection" or "Def disruptive selection" which means explain or define whatever the concept might be. Almost every card reads like this. I use "fr" instead of from and "E" for energy, etc. The trick to flashcards, in my opinion, is keeping them to one concept per card (hence the flash aspect) which means you'll have to manipulate the ideas a little in order to get a question that deals with just one aspect of a larger picture. Once I'm done I often times have like 400 cards but I can learn that amount of cards in less than a day so it actually turns out to be faster for me. The PROBLEM with this method is you can learn the individual ideas without a clear understanding of the big picture, which could kill you on an exam. To avoid this, I usually make a very brief outline of all the major points covered and *how they relate to each other*. Once you do this you not only know all the details from the cards but you can mentally connect those concepts in your mind. This has worked for me but I have been accused of "nazi like dedication" when it comes to studying so...