effort vs smartness?

Burrell College of Osteopathic Medicine
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OpalOnyx

OpalOnyx

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Can I ask you guys a question

I'm wondering - getting As/honors in medical school.... is it a matter of how much effort or time or strategy someone puts in? (i.e. sacrificing social life etc for med school grades)... or do some people just have an inherent advantage regardless of how much effort/strategy other people put in?

because i definitely think other people are smarter than me, but i dont know how much of that i can make up for with hard work...


I'm wondering if there's a point I'm going to reach where I can't get an A no matter how hard I try. I'd like to believe that with enough strategy/efficiency/flexibility, anyone can start making As... even if they're not inherently "smarter".

what do you guys think?
 
OpalOnyx said:
Can I ask you guys a question

I'm wondering - getting As/honors in medical school.... is it a matter of how much effort or time or strategy someone puts in? (i.e. sacrificing social life etc for med school grades)... or do some people just have an inherent advantage regardless of how much effort/strategy other people put in?

because i definitely think other people are smarter than me, but i dont know how much of that i can make up for with hard work...


I'm wondering if there's a point I'm going to reach where I can't get an A no matter how hard I try. I'd like to believe that with enough strategy/efficiency/flexibility, anyone can start making As... even if they're not inherently "smarter".

what do you guys think?
Click to expand...

Intelligence is a complex thing. You cant simply say that you are smarter or dumber based on performance in a single discipline. That said maybe they are smarter than you in this particular discipline, maybe smarter in general, or maybe they have some other advantage such as better study skills or motivation. Nobody here can tell you.
 
I think the students that have an advantage are the ones who have developed the most efficient studying habits possible for themselves. They always have a good idea of how much time they need, never let themselves fall behind, review as much as they think is necessary, and use all the tools available to them and not just memorize from one source. It's more hard work than being smart in my opinion because the material itself isn't that conceptually difficult.
 
Success in medical school is a function of your natural abilities and the amount of work you put in. You are right, some people are simply gifted and success will come easier to them. They will achieve high scores with less effort, but they still have to put in some effort. On the other hand, the majority of your classmates will be reasonably gifted and make up the difference with hard work. You will find both types of students among the top of your class.

So yes, with enough hard work and discipline you can be successful even if you are not as naturally gifted as your classmates. But don't discount yourself either, you got to where you are based on ability and hard work, that counts for a lot.
 
Intelligence (I) + Work (W) = Medical School Preclinical Grade Index (MSPGI)

Relative to med school students:
Intelligence (I): Low=0, Medium=1, High=2, Genius=3
Work (W): None=0, Little=1, Moderate=2, Significant=3


MSPGI:
0-1=Fail
2=Conditional/D
3=Pass/C
4=High Pass/B
5=Honors/A
6=(N/A)
 
^A genius that puts in no work still doesn't pass. Much of medical school isn't about intelligence, it's about assimilating large quantities of information. A genius would be more efficient at the assimilation, but no matter how smart you are, you can't assimilate things you've never seen.
 
I don't consider lecture attendance work, though it seems the bulk of this board does...
 
pre-clinical years - you need to be book smart
clinical years - you need to be street smart
 
BigRedder said:
I don't consider lecture attendance work, though it seems the bulk of this board does...
Click to expand...

Lectures don't go through all the nit-picky details. Even if they did, someone who could do what you're describing isn't really a genius. They just have photographic eyes and ears.
 
I can tell you're a sucker for nit-picky details 😉
 
You implied the existence of photographic ears. Let's call the whole thing off.
 
OpalOnyx said:
Can I ask you guys a question

I'm wondering - getting As/honors in medical school.... is it a matter of how much effort or time or strategy someone puts in? (i.e. sacrificing social life etc for med school grades)... or do some people just have an inherent advantage regardless of how much effort/strategy other people put in?

because i definitely think other people are smarter than me, but i dont know how much of that i can make up for with hard work...


I'm wondering if there's a point I'm going to reach where I can't get an A no matter how hard I try. I'd like to believe that with enough strategy/efficiency/flexibility, anyone can start making As... even if they're not inherently "smarter".

what do you guys think?
Click to expand...

Study smarter not harder. So much information is thrown at you in med school and some people run into trouble when they think that when they are not getting the results they want they have to study longer without changing their strategy.

Unless one is gifted with a photographic memory, the people who do well in med school obviously work hard, just not necessarily the hardest. And working hard does not preclude one from failing

There are people who naturally better test-takers but one can become a better test taker through good strategy and repetition. Step 1 is a much more fair test than the MCAT IMO
 
Medicine is about two things: Logistics and Wit.

The logistics part is just plain hard work.

The wit part is slightly harder, but again can be achieved with--you guessed it-- hard work.
 
"Sucess is 1% inspiration, and 99% perspiration."

Don't remember where I got that from.
 
Me = no IQ test higher than 100 (dead normal). My medical school performance was #3 in my class and AOA. I am extremely efficient at learning quickly and thoroughly. I had always worked consistently in my undergrad work. This turned out to be an asset in both graduate school and medical school. I worked on my studies consistently and saw the results. I also didn't care much about grades which was the best thing that I could have done. The grades came with mastery of the material not angst about a class average.
 
Motivation is more of a guarantee for success than intelligence, though obviously you need a balance of both. I know a lot of highly "intelligent" people, who've done things like 1600 SATs and 40+ MCAT and Ivy League diplomas, etc. But then, when med school started, they were lost, because for the first time in their lives motivation was a determining factor. I'll take a highly motivated person of average intelligence over a lazy genius any day.
 
Marcus Brody said:
Motivation is more of a guarantee for success than intelligence, though obviously you need a balance of both. I know a lot of highly "intelligent" people, who've done things like 1600 SATs and 40+ MCAT and Ivy League diplomas, etc. But then, when med school started, they were lost, because for the first time in their lives motivation was a determining factor. I'll take a highly motivated person of average intelligence over a lazy genius any day.
Click to expand...

Dr. Ben Carson comes to mind, IIRC he struggled at the beginning of med school b/c he was so used to stuff coming easy to him
 
Marcus Brody said:
Motivation is more of a guarantee for success than intelligence, though obviously you need a balance of both. I know a lot of highly "intelligent" people, who've done things like 1600 SATs and 40+ MCAT and Ivy League diplomas, etc. But then, when med school started, they were lost, because for the first time in their lives motivation was a determining factor. I'll take a highly motivated person of average intelligence over a lazy genius any day.
Click to expand...
very right..i m practical example of that..
How to motivate one's self is a top secret i guess!!😕
 
There are 2 types of smart: street smart and book smart. Street smart is more important than hard work, book smart is practically useless in medicine. THE most important thing is the ability to suck up, sucking up can get you very very far in medicine, at least up here in Canada.
 
I don't really buy that straight up book vs. street smart stuff. I see it as more as a regurgitation versus application thing. Some people can memorize vast amounts of material to the smallest detail, yet they can't seem to integrate or apply it. Others are great at manipulating small amounts of information and applying it to a variety of things, yet they struggle with the tiny details. It is kind of like meticulously writing notes to a set format where everything fits perfectly versus a haphazard approach that makes sense, but has scattered errors or holes.

The biggest indicator of continuing success is consistency to me. You need time for the information to truly stick and be applicable. If it only took one time to get through, then we wouldn't see it those 6 other times from 6 different angles afterwards.

People lumped into the far ends of both of those groups I mentioned tend to be the ones that hit a wall at a point. I am one of them. As an application person, I am great with the big picture but the details I see as trivial never seemed to stick. I struggled horribly first year since all it is is memorizing and hammering small details.

The people who are great at memorizing every detail are often (not always) what I call "brute force studiers". These people have the focus and determination to spend ungodly amounts of time memorizing details. They write out millions of notecards, fill dry erase boards and paper like they are John Nash and send out some of the most obscenely detailed notes ever created. They do fantastic first year, but....second year rolls around. All of a sudden, you are staring down the barrel of twice the workload and no human way of covering it at the same level you did before. So, you hit a wall, freak out, and readjust your study habits accordingly.

It is a spectrum. The truly brilliant people, every class has them and it is rarely you, seem to have that ability to span the entire spectrum and do it efficiently. They also seem to be the ones that tell you it is no big deal to go out drinking and seem very relaxed all the time.
 
BigRedder said:
Intelligence (I) + Work (W) = Medical School Preclinical Grade Index (MSPGI)

Relative to med school students:
Intelligence (I): Low=0, Medium=1, High=2, Genius=3
Work (W): None=0, Little=1, Moderate=2, Significant=3


MSPGI:
0-1=Fail
2=Conditional/D
3=Pass/C
4=High Pass/B
5=Honors/A
6=(N/A)
Click to expand...

I quite like this, and agree with it. Although, I honored most of my MSI-II classes and I would consider myself I1W3, which would get me a 4. But who knows, maybe I'm a I2W3.
 
its a mix of both, the more of one you have the less of the other you need to excel
 
I do think some people have an ability to just naturally soak up information.

I also think that there's more to "getting an A" than soaking up information.

If there's old tests floating around---odds are somebody somewhere reuses questions. Teachers drop hints, maybe someone is better at picking up on those hints. Maybe they skip something completely in lecture, and you decide if they didn't mention it, you're not going to spend time on it--and someone else decides they HAVE to know everything.
 
Most people miss the forest for the trees, whereas I miss the trees for the forest. I always study with the big picture in mind, and with the ultimate goal to integrate everything so it can be applied. I'm absolutely terrible with minutia so I end up getting anxious when I have to memorize without that comforting conceptual context. But I still get it done. I just don't do it with tons of note cards, lists, whiteboards and diagrams. I kind of just sit with my book and absorb. So it probably looks to an outside observer like I "don't study as much". The truth is I'm spending just as much effort, my brain just works differently. Thus, why anatomy sucks right now 😱
 
MossPoh said:
It is a spectrum. The truly brilliant people, every class has them and it is rarely you, seem to have that ability to span the entire spectrum and do it efficiently. They also seem to be the ones that tell you it is no big deal to go out drinking and seem very relaxed all the time.
Click to expand...

I don't think one has to be truly brilliant to have the ability to span the spectrum. IMO a large portion of succeeding in med school is the ability to adapt, one does not have to be brilliant to adapt, just cognizant of one's strengths and weaknesses and how to adjust studying strategy for different year's, different classes etc. Some things just aren't worth the time to learn and people aim to learn everything rather than learning the big picture and filling in the details with practice questions.

I have done very well in med school so far (MS3) and I do not consider myself brilliant, just another intelligent med student like everyone else - had a middling undergrad gpa and only a 33 MCAT.

It's no big deal to go out drinking as long as you've actually studied 😎
 
No expert here but.

So far achievement in pre-clinical medical school has proven to be a thourouly umimpressive endeavor.

It seems motivation on the one hand--you could also call it fear or stress-induced scurrying after details--is the ticket. Realizing this. Has kind of taken some shine off the whole thing for me. It seems far removed from the notion of taking care of patients. A natural motivating force for me.

Right now I'm trying to salvage motivation along the lines of I want a certain job at the end of this.

Otherwise the material is like doing my taxes. Again and again. And then being tested on it.
 
Nasrudin said:
Right now I'm trying to salvage motivation along the lines of I want a certain job at the end of this.

Otherwise the material is like doing my taxes. Again and again. And then being tested on it.
Click to expand...


😀 Being tested on your taxes. . .Is that like be audited again and again and again?
 
coralfangs said:
pre-clinical years - you need to be book smart
clinical years - you need to be street smart
Click to expand...

👍

Also, my answer to the OP's question after first year: Smartness
My answer to the OP's question after third year: Effort
 
nima123 said:
There are 2 types of smart: street smart and book smart. Street smart is more important than hard work, book smart is practically useless in medicine. THE most important thing is the ability to suck up, sucking up can get you very very far in medicine, at least up here in Canada.
Click to expand...

There exists no truer statement than this.

Only in Canada can you be a complete ***** and still match to derm.
 
I don't think medical school is really about being smart...it's about cramming information into your head and being able to regurgitate it for an exam. In my estimation, being smart is being able to think, and in my experience thus far, you don't really have to think in medical school.

I got through undergrad without studying much, and that shiz does NOT fly here. It's all about your study habits/effort.
 
BastardSonHGPRT said:
I don't think medical school is really about being smart...it's about cramming information into your head and being able to regurgitate it for an exam. In my estimation, being smart is being able to think, and in my experience thus far, you don't really have to think in medical school.

I got through undergrad without studying much, and that shiz does NOT fly here. It's all about your study habits/effort.
Click to expand...

That's a good pre-clinical observation. You'll see how things really are in medicine once you hit your clinical rotations.
As I said, as long as you can pass exams (really not so hard despite all the bitching), no amount of studying/book smartness would count for much.
 
Medical school is just memorization and understanding algorithms to solve problems that have been solved for you (to an extent, not every pt is the same). Some people can just memorize with greater ease and don't need to put in as much time. I wouldn't define "smart" as the ability to memorize massive amounts of material with ease. Solving problems that haven't been solved before yes...but memorizing problems and the answer...no.

Don't worry too much. Just make a study plan that fits you. It could be something as simple as attending class and reviewing the ppts only (no note taking) that evening or something like making flashcards and study guides and studying around the clock. 1st year is about finding the right study pattern and then 2nd year is really when you need to use it. Not much room for error in 2nd year to keep changing your study habits.
 
nima123 said:
You'll see how things really are in medicine once you hit your clinical rotations.
Click to expand...

I cannot wait for clinical rotations! The hours don't sound too terribly fun, but at least I'll get to think again...hope I'm not too rusty.

But this gets me to thinking (I'm punny)...how flawed is our system that we have a conversation like this? I understand the need for basic science knowledge, but there's got to be a better way...
 
OpalOnyx said:
Can I ask you guys a question

I'm wondering - getting As/honors in medical school.... is it a matter of how much effort or time or strategy someone puts in? (i.e. sacrificing social life etc for med school grades)... or do some people just have an inherent advantage regardless of how much effort/strategy other people put in?

because i definitely think other people are smarter than me, but i dont know how much of that i can make up for with hard work...


I'm wondering if there's a point I'm going to reach where I can't get an A no matter how hard I try. I'd like to believe that with enough strategy/efficiency/flexibility, anyone can start making As... even if they're not inherently "smarter".

what do you guys think?
Click to expand...

How about SMART effort?

Discuss.
 
BastardSonHGPRT said:
I cannot wait for clinical rotations! The hours don't sound too terribly fun, but at least I'll get to think again...hope I'm not too rusty.
Click to expand...

Hope you won't be disappointed like many of us. There's not much thinking going on either. It's not like research (the world of PhD is a totally different kind, if that's what you think it'll be like).
Just play the game and pass the exams, no need to be smart or work extra hard [PERIOD].
 
BigRedder said:
Intelligence (I) + Work (W) = Medical School Preclinical Grade Index (MSPGI)

Relative to med school students:
Intelligence (I): Low=0, Medium=1, High=2, Genius=3
Work (W): None=0, Little=1, Moderate=2, Significant=3


MSPGI:
0-1=Fail
2=Conditional/D
3 (Balanced) =Pass/C
3 (Unbalanced) = Fail
4=High Pass/B
5=Honors/A
6=(N/A)
Click to expand...

Fixed, sideways?
 
High success in medical school is multifactorial, resulting from a particular constellation of characteristics, and seldom emerges if any of these characteristics is missing.
 
shopsteward said:
Fixed, sideways?
Click to expand...

I applaud the creativity, but no. You can't get by with "little" work in medical school, no matter how smart you are. If anything, being too smart is a detriment to you in medical school, because you've gone your entire life not having to work hard academically, and now all of a sudden that no longer works. So that leaves our hero not only having to deal with the stress of medical schol, but having to learn how to work hard - simultaneously.

You can't smart your way into memorizing a ton of ****. It takes effort.
 
sideways said:
I applaud the creativity, but no. You can't get by with "little" work in medical school, no matter how smart you are. If anything, being too smart is a detriment to you in medical school, because you've gone your entire life not having to work hard academically, and now all of a sudden that no longer works. So that leaves our hero not only having to deal with the stress of medical schol, but having to learn how to work hard - simultaneously.

You can't smart your way into memorizing a ton of ****. It takes effort.
Click to expand...

I was going to come up with a method that multiplied the two factors together so any 0 would equal failure, but it got complicated so I decided it wasn't worth the... effort.

(Sorry)
 
I'd have to say it's
Intelligence + Effort + Efficiency

I'm not just talking time management here. If you keep reading over concepts you already know, you're just wasting your effort.
 
The people that make A's at my school work their ass off. Anyone who tells you otherwise is full of it. There's no way to learn 2 inches of notes, every two weeks, other than sitting down and devoting the time to the material.

Will some people never get A's? Sure..
 
Factors for success:

1. Putting in the time to memorize all the information.

2. Being efficient about how you put in your time (different for different people, for me that just means reading the syllabus and going over things in my head, for others that means study guides and flashcards)

3. Being good at memorizing information. For some people it takes looking at a fact 3x to have it committed to memory. For others it might take 6-7x. 3x person has a big advantage.

As a side note, I will say that while effort>intelligence, the ability to see the big picture is important (intelligence and problem solving), as a good test isn't simply regurgitating facts but involves applying them to clinical situations.
 
Raw intelligence is definitely nowhere near the top five skills you need to do well in medical school. Does it help with all the other stuff, absolutely.

In order of importance I'd say it's hard work, hard work, hard work, priorities and efficiency.
 
One of Isaac Newton's school reports said he was "inattentive and lazy".

I don't think he was ever a med student, though.
 
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