Hi everyone,
I have been accepted into TCOM and I was hoping someone here could provide more insight into their curriculum. I have heard it is 9-5 classes with mandatory attendance.
I am a little concerned because most of what I read on here makes it seem like students skip classes and learn the material at home. Do you think that TCOM's all-day schedule still allows enough time to re-read through the material to fully understand it? Or does it just information overload all day and it becomes impossible to piece together. OR is the reason for their long days (as opposed to schools with only half day lectures) because they repeat the information and teach it effectively so that not as much independent studying is required?
I still don't understand how some schools have half day schedules and some have full days. Is it that one school only teaches half as much info or that the other school takes twice as long to teach it?
Graduated from TCOM a few years ago and what people are telling you is generally true -- a few caveats tho --
1) You will be told that you have to do all of the reading, go to every class and then study about 4-5 hours a night plus preview lectures for the next day -- good luck with that.
2) Having said that, I was a pedantic schmuck back then (still am to a certain degree) and wanted to do everything I was told because I believed the lie that you might "miss something important". Not coming from a medical family, I had absolutely no guidance as to what the hell was important so I did EVERY reading assignment, even when I was reading just to check the box and say I had done it, rather than reading for education. I actually tried to memorize the reading at one point during anatomy.
3) I was the kind of guy that was always trying to find what worked effectively so I would ask others -- and learned what worked for them, but not for me. I was successful in undergrad because I read for understanding and took my time piecing things together -- why I abandoned that, I'll never know.
4) I had an upperclassmen give me a golden piece of advice but I really didn't get it -- but I do now, so here goes:
-- Get the most recent copy of First Aid for Step 1
-- Preview the section pertaining to the class you're in prior to that class starting.
-- Know that section of FA cold --
-- Go to Kinko's and have them remove the cover off the book, 3 hole punch it and then stick it in a binder so you can add PPTs/notes to this thing -- it will become your Step 1 study resource and exam study resource.
-- Bag going to class unless there's a quiz or exam -- or OMM - where you have to go to the lecture and lab that follows -- or anatomy labs
-- Listen to the lecture and take notes on the lectures covering the salient points in FA -- you will see those points again on an exam.
-- Add notes to enhance your understanding of the items outlined in FA that are explained in greater depth during the lecture.
-- Read around what you don't understand -- by that I mean, if you don't get something, then refer to resources that work for YOU -- not what the University recommends unless they happen to coincide.
-- Now -- only takes notes on what you don't already know, cold -- I didn't learn that and wasted precious time taking notes on things Ialready understood --
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Once you have this down -- and it will take a while to get a workable system -- then you should be able to:
1) Review FA at the start of class -- I would go to the first lecture for each class just to see if I could learn anything from the lecture style of the profs -- not likely though.
2) print the PPTs 6 to a page, double sided.
3) Listen to yesterday's lecture and take notes when you're the most productive.
4) When you find yourself drifting or getting mentally fatigued (usually after 4 hours or so) take a break and go workout, chase the opposite sex, do laundry, grocery shop, whatever for about 2 hours.
5) Come back and finish up the lectures and notes.
6) Break for dinner.....
7) Spend about 2 hours in the evening reading over the notes you took yesterday.
Wash, rinse, repeat -- towards the last few days of a major exam, I'd throw in practice questions daily from a good QBank (Kaplan has a good one for physiology - in second year, you purchase a Kaplan board prep with your tuition (at least you did when I was there) and have access to the QBank all year.....
You survive exam to exam. They tried pulling in exam questions from previous classes but it was all BS --
If you have to -- you can do this trick --
You can generally count on 2-3 questions per hour of lecture over a topic -- so do the math - X number of hours over anatomy, x number over phys, etc. and give a weighted score to what areas have the most test q's and thus the highest yield -- and focus your studying accordingly.....
Also, I benefited from a study partner on the weekends -- we just reviewed the material and tried to come up with likely test questions from each lecture...wish I had figured that one out earlier as we nailed a lot of the topics and even predicted a few of the questions.
Good luck ---
