Goro’s guide to success in medical school-v.2016

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Goro

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For those of you who have been accepted and are preparing at this point for matriculation and orientation, congrats! You did it! You WILL be doctors!!!:claps::clap::soexcited::highfive::banana::biglove:

So pull up a chair and grab another cold one; I was once asked by an SDNer about the big DOs and DON’Ts of being a med student. Here are my thoughts:

At this time a good number of you are heading to med school this fall. Good luck! You’ve earned it. As you know, you have along hard road ahead of you, but you can do it! Many of are probably still wondering “what have I gotten myself into?”

Well, for starters, that cliché of “drinking from the fire hose” is true. Actually, it’s more like “drinking from a fire hose while running after the fire engine.” We’re going to throw everything at you, in a very short period of time. I had a friend who was a graduate of U WV, and he told me that medical school “took him to his intellectual limits.”

Here are some tips that I have gleaned from my successful students, and helpful SDNers. In no particular order:

Identify your optimal learning style. Not everyone learns best by sitting on their butts for 6-8 hours a day. More importantly, what worked in college might not work in med school. The key thing here is go to lectures if you're struggling; conversely, if you really get nothing from being at lectures, then by all means, do something else in that time period (unless you're at schools with required attendance like LECOM).

Studying in med school isn’t merely adding more studying hours, but studying in a way that is best attuned to your learning style. Some people have to hear things, and so they may do best in study groups teaching their friends, or listening to lectures on video playback.

Others are visual learners and do best by making tables charts figures, writing out pathways, etc.

Merely reading and re-reading your PPT files to try to memorize them like you're learning the lines from Othello and Titus Andronicus, isn't going to work, because you have to be able to think and apply as well as memorize.

I have tons of students who have troubles in the first third of their first semester not only because the sheer overload of material clobbers them, but they find that what worked in college doesn't work in med school!

Every one of my clinician colleagues has told me that repetition is the key to learning. And don’t worry about not learning everything at once, you’re not radio actors with live air time tomorrow afternoon. We realize it takes time to get your material down. Yes, given the nature of the beast, some cramming will be impossible to avoid, but be aware if you cram, you don’t retain. And it’s not enough to memorize, you have to apply what you’ve learned.

You have taken and done well enough on the MCAT to have been accepted. However, some of you still have challenges with standardized testing. If you have test taking anxiety, get help for it NOW. And get a good night's sleep before exams, too. This helps retention and test performance.

Most of you are where you are right now because you love learning about the human body. Don’t ever lose that.

I post this all the time here, but this is important enough to repeat: your schools will have special resources to help struggling students. One is a learning or education center, to help you with time mgt, learning styles, test taking anxieties, mind mapping, etc.

Med school is stressful. I like to point out that it has broken even healthy students. The other resource to use, and this is just as important, is the counseling or therapy center. Med school can be soul crushing, a meat grinder, especially when you’re floundering. Don’t be afraid of losing face; don’t be afraid to seek out help. Don’t be a non-compliant patient. You’re going have plenty of these on your own!

Have or develop good coping skills in case family or relationship issues intrude. As a medical student you have to be somewhat selfish. This is especially pertinent for students who come from cultures where extended family is important. You can’t always run home if Uncle Joe gets sick.

In addition, it's best to have or develop a support group. Your fellow students are your family now. You can turn to them.

Yet another resource: Seek out your professors if you're struggling; they're there for you!


Always be look at the big picture. I have seen so many students get lost in the weeds trying to memorize every detail. You simply can’t do it. He who tries to learn everything will end up learning nothing. Use resources other than your PPT files, like Pathoma. High scorers on Boards tend to use more of the external resources than just than their lecture notes.


Bone up on what you're weakest in. This is why practice tests are so helpful. Qbank, Testweapon, USMLE World, ComBank, ComSAE, whatever the resource, make sure use to them. We and others find that our best students take lots of practice questions, and the weakest students don’t. If you feel you know particular material, it's OK to spend less time with it, and better to work on your weakest areas. But identifying those holes in your knowledge base is extremely important.


If textbooks are required, buy them. Board review books are exactly that; do NOT use them in place of a required text. We’ve found that our weakest students always try to make do with just review books. Review books are for review, and that’s it. And BTW, First Aid for USMLE I has lots of errors in it!


Study with your friends, unless they’re too distracting. Otherwise, seek out the people in your classes who really impress you, and ask them “how they do it?” Even if you get a single tip that help, that’s worth it.


What makes medical students fail? The most common reasons at my school are mental health issues, especially depression, or poor work ethic; less seen is an inability to separate outside life issues from med school (ie, poor coping skills) or repeated failure on Boards. A handful lost interest in Medicine, or never were fully committed to the path in the first place.


But to quote Queen Victoria, “We are not interested in the possibility of failure!


And good luck to you all!

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For those of you who have been accepted and are preparing at this point for matriculation and orientation, congrats! You did it! You WILL be doctors!!!:claps::clap::soexcited::highfive::banana::biglove:

So pull up a chair and grab another cold one; I was once asked by an SDNer about the big DOs and DON’Ts of being a med student. Here are my thoughts:

At this time a good number of you are heading to med school this fall. Good luck! You’ve earned it. As you know, you have along hard road ahead of you, but you can do it! Many of are probably still wondering “what have I gotten myself into?”

Well, for starters, that cliché of “drinking from the fire hose” is true. Actually, it’s more like “drinking from a fire hose while running after the fire engine.” We’re going to throw everything at you, in a very short period of time. I had a friend who was a graduate of U WV, and he told me that medical school “took him to his intellectual limits.”

Here are some tips that I have gleaned from my successful students, and helpful SDNers. In no particular order:

Identify your optimal learning style. Not everyone learns best by sitting on their butts for 6-8 hours a day. More importantly, what worked in college might not work in med school. The key thing here is go to lectures if you're struggling; conversely, if you really get nothing from being at lectures, then by all means, do something else in that time period (unless you're at schools with required attendance like LECOM).

Studying in med school isn’t merely adding more studying hours, but studying in a way that is best attuned to your learning style. Some people have to hear things, and so they may do best in study groups teaching their friends, or listening to lectures on video playback.

Others are visual learners and do best by making tables charts figures, writing out pathways, etc.

Merely reading and re-reading your PPT files to try to memorize them like you're learning the lines from Othello and Titus Andronicus, isn't going to work, because you have to be able to think and apply as well as memorize.

I have tons of students who have troubles in the first third of their first semester not only because the sheer overload of material clobbers them, but they find that what worked in college doesn't work in med school!

Every one of my clinician colleagues has told me that repetition is the key to learning. And don’t worry about not learning everything at once, you’re not radio actors with live air time tomorrow afternoon. We realize it takes time to get your material down. Yes, given the nature of the beast, some cramming will be impossible to avoid, but be aware if you cram, you don’t retain. And it’s not enough to memorize, you have to apply what you’ve learned.

You have taken and done well enough on the MCAT to have been accepted. However, some of you still have challenges with standardized testing. If you have test taking anxiety, get help for it NOW. And get a good night's sleep before exams, too. This helps retention and test performance.

Most of you are where you are right now because you love learning about the human body. Don’t ever lose that.

I post this all the time here, but this is important enough to repeat: your schools will have special resources to help struggling students. One is a learning or education center, to help you with time mgt, learning styles, test taking anxieties, mind mapping, etc.

Med school is stressful. I like to point out that it has broken even healthy students. The other resource to use, and this is just as important, is the counseling or therapy center. Med school can be soul crushing, a meat grinder, especially when you’re floundering. Don’t be afraid of losing face; don’t be afraid to seek out help. Don’t be a non-compliant patient. You’re going have plenty of these on your own!

Have or develop good coping skills in case family or relationship issues intrude. As a medical student you have to be somewhat selfish. This is especially pertinent for students who come from cultures where extended family is important. You can’t always run home if Uncle Joe gets sick.

In addition, it's best to have or develop a support group. Your fellow students are your family now. You can turn to them.

Yet another resource: Seek out your professors if you're struggling; they're there for you!


Always be look at the big picture. I have seen so many students get lost in the weeds trying to memorize every detail. You simply can’t do it. He who tries to learn everything will end up learning nothing. Use resources other than your PPT files, like Pathoma. High scorers on Boards tend to use more of the external resources than just than their lecture notes.


Bone up on what you're weakest in. This is why practice tests are so helpful. Qbank, Testweapon, USMLE World, ComBank, ComSAE, whatever the resource, make sure use to them. We and others find that our best students take lots of practice questions, and the weakest students don’t. If you feel you know particular material, it's OK to spend less time with it, and better to work on your weakest areas. But identifying those holes in your knowledge base is extremely important.


If textbooks are required, buy them. Board review books are exactly that; do NOT use them in place of a required text. We’ve found that our weakest students always try to make do with just review books. Review books are for review, and that’s it. And BTW, First Aid for USMLE I has lots of errors in it!


Study with your friends, unless they’re too distracting. Otherwise, seek out the people in your classes who really impress you, and ask them “how they do it?” Even if you get a single tip that help, that’s worth it.


What makes medical students fail? The most common reasons at my school are mental health issues, especially depression, or poor work ethic; less seen is an inability to separate outside life issues from med school (ie, poor coping skills) or repeated failure on Boards. A handful lost interest in Medicine, or never were fully committed to the path in the first place.


But to quote Queen Victoria, “We are not interested in the possibility of failure!


And good luck to you all!
Thank you for your advice!
And really, it does?! From my stalking on here and YT, it seems most people use the first aid as the only source of studying! Is that a bad idea?
 
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FA is the bare-bones minimum you need to know. It's also a crappy resource that even after multiple editions, still has errors and key omissions in it, at least in my discipline. There are better review resources out there.

An example of "minimum" means that if you look at, say, heart murmurs, and the pattern for aortic stenosis is completely foreign to you, there's something you need to bone up on, stat!

Thank you for your advice!
And really, it does?! From my stalking on here and YT, it seems most people use the first aid as the only source of studying! Is that a bad idea?



My students love Pathoma and Dr Najeeb. Goljan is also high on their list

I've heard pathoma is a godsend.
 
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For those of you who have been accepted and are preparing at this point for matriculation and orientation, congrats! You did it! You WILL be doctors!!!:claps::clap::soexcited::highfive::banana::biglove:

It feels real when Goro says it.
 
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After finishing the first year of med school, I totally agree with everything that was said. DO NOT CRAM. I have a classmate that did this in the beginning and it did not work out well.
 
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For those of you who have been accepted and are preparing at this point for matriculation and orientation, congrats! You did it! You WILL be doctors!!!:claps::clap::soexcited::highfive::banana::biglove:

So pull up a chair and grab another cold one; I was once asked by an SDNer about the big DOs and DON’Ts of being a med student. Here are my thoughts:

At this time a good number of you are heading to med school this fall. Good luck! You’ve earned it. As you know, you have along hard road ahead of you, but you can do it! Many of are probably still wondering “what have I gotten myself into?”

Well, for starters, that cliché of “drinking from the fire hose” is true. Actually, it’s more like “drinking from a fire hose while running after the fire engine.” We’re going to throw everything at you, in a very short period of time. I had a friend who was a graduate of U WV, and he told me that medical school “took him to his intellectual limits.”

Here are some tips that I have gleaned from my successful students, and helpful SDNers. In no particular order:

Identify your optimal learning style. Not everyone learns best by sitting on their butts for 6-8 hours a day. More importantly, what worked in college might not work in med school. The key thing here is go to lectures if you're struggling; conversely, if you really get nothing from being at lectures, then by all means, do something else in that time period (unless you're at schools with required attendance like LECOM).

Studying in med school isn’t merely adding more studying hours, but studying in a way that is best attuned to your learning style. Some people have to hear things, and so they may do best in study groups teaching their friends, or listening to lectures on video playback.

Others are visual learners and do best by making tables charts figures, writing out pathways, etc.

Merely reading and re-reading your PPT files to try to memorize them like you're learning the lines from Othello and Titus Andronicus, isn't going to work, because you have to be able to think and apply as well as memorize.

I have tons of students who have troubles in the first third of their first semester not only because the sheer overload of material clobbers them, but they find that what worked in college doesn't work in med school!

Every one of my clinician colleagues has told me that repetition is the key to learning. And don’t worry about not learning everything at once, you’re not radio actors with live air time tomorrow afternoon. We realize it takes time to get your material down. Yes, given the nature of the beast, some cramming will be impossible to avoid, but be aware if you cram, you don’t retain. And it’s not enough to memorize, you have to apply what you’ve learned.

You have taken and done well enough on the MCAT to have been accepted. However, some of you still have challenges with standardized testing. If you have test taking anxiety, get help for it NOW. And get a good night's sleep before exams, too. This helps retention and test performance.

Most of you are where you are right now because you love learning about the human body. Don’t ever lose that.

I post this all the time here, but this is important enough to repeat: your schools will have special resources to help struggling students. One is a learning or education center, to help you with time mgt, learning styles, test taking anxieties, mind mapping, etc.

Med school is stressful. I like to point out that it has broken even healthy students. The other resource to use, and this is just as important, is the counseling or therapy center. Med school can be soul crushing, a meat grinder, especially when you’re floundering. Don’t be afraid of losing face; don’t be afraid to seek out help. Don’t be a non-compliant patient. You’re going have plenty of these on your own!

Have or develop good coping skills in case family or relationship issues intrude. As a medical student you have to be somewhat selfish. This is especially pertinent for students who come from cultures where extended family is important. You can’t always run home if Uncle Joe gets sick.

In addition, it's best to have or develop a support group. Your fellow students are your family now. You can turn to them.

Yet another resource: Seek out your professors if you're struggling; they're there for you!


Always be look at the big picture. I have seen so many students get lost in the weeds trying to memorize every detail. You simply can’t do it. He who tries to learn everything will end up learning nothing. Use resources other than your PPT files, like Pathoma. High scorers on Boards tend to use more of the external resources than just than their lecture notes.


Bone up on what you're weakest in. This is why practice tests are so helpful. Qbank, Testweapon, USMLE World, ComBank, ComSAE, whatever the resource, make sure use to them. We and others find that our best students take lots of practice questions, and the weakest students don’t. If you feel you know particular material, it's OK to spend less time with it, and better to work on your weakest areas. But identifying those holes in your knowledge base is extremely important.


If textbooks are required, buy them. Board review books are exactly that; do NOT use them in place of a required text. We’ve found that our weakest students always try to make do with just review books. Review books are for review, and that’s it. And BTW, First Aid for USMLE I has lots of errors in it!


Study with your friends, unless they’re too distracting. Otherwise, seek out the people in your classes who really impress you, and ask them “how they do it?” Even if you get a single tip that help, that’s worth it.


What makes medical students fail? The most common reasons at my school are mental health issues, especially depression, or poor work ethic; less seen is an inability to separate outside life issues from med school (ie, poor coping skills) or repeated failure on Boards. A handful lost interest in Medicine, or never were fully committed to the path in the first place.


But to quote Queen Victoria, “We are not interested in the possibility of failure!


And good luck to you all!

To the sticky this goes! :soexcited::soexcited:
 
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What would be your suggested studying schedule for med school? I've heard of people studying 6-12 every night to not studying at all until 2 weeks before an exam.


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Exercise so you don't get fat.
 
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Thanks @Goro !

You've been a beacon through this whole process, I swear.
 
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This will depend totally upon what works for you. The typical number bandied about is 4 hrs/night.

What would be your suggested studying schedule for med school? I've heard of people studying 6-12 every night to not studying at all until 2 weeks before an exam.


Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile app
 
Thanks so much @Goro for sharing all your wisdom and advice during this challenging process. The application process is so stressful. As an average stats, middle class, ORM, acceptance often seemed a Herculean task I could not control. I was a late follower of SDN but was grateful for your calming consistent posts. So, thanks for doing it, thanks for your time, thanks for your patience, thanks for sharing your knowledge, hope you feel the appreciation from another cycles worth of applicants:)
 
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Your guide to interviews was extremely helpful during the application process so I was elated to see this thread pop up :)
 
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This will depend totally upon what works for you. The typical number bandied about is 4 hrs/night.

This is about right, and just want to add that this is on top of the time it takes you to watch/attend lecture.

For anyone interested, this evening schedule has worked well for me:

4:00pm - come home, exercise, shower, free time
5:00pm - briefly review yesterday's material (go through all the slides as a "refresher")
6:00pm - cook dinner, eat, relax
7:30pm - study today's material (go to outside resources for vague concepts)
9:30pm - break
10:00pm - review tomorrow's slides (I reserve the full hour but usually this only takes me 30-40 minutes)
11:00pm - sleep (the most important part of studying, in my opinion)

I like this schedule a lot, as it allows me to pass through the material 4 times over 3 days (once the night before, twice the day of, and once the day after lecture). I don't do any studying on Friday night or Saturday, unless I'm behind or there's a cluster of exams the following week -- but even this is very rare. Sunday afternoon I go through the whole week's material again relatively briefly (my fifth pass through), and Sunday night I continue the above schedule.

Most days I'm home before 4:00pm, in which case I usually use that as free time. I'll probably have to adjust as Step 1 approaches, but this has worked very well for me thus far.
 
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But to quote Queen Victoria, “We are not interested in the possibility of failure!

Thanks for the encouragement! You helped me a lot over the last year. We all appreciate your wisdom :)
 
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Can I recycle my mcat study style ? Are there resources that test you in a similar way that boards do?
 
There are a lot of Boards resources. Our school likes COMAT and COMSAE and their ilk. Testweapon, UWorld are also big among my students. There are others too, but I'm drawing blank on them now.

EDIT: I also want to add that the clinical thinking that we test you on in Boards is different than that on the MCAT. While data analysis is always important, a lot of Boards questions are second and third order thinking.

Can I recycle my mcat study style ? Are there resources that test you in a similar way that boards do?
 
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There are a lot of Boards resources. Our school likes COMAT and COMSAE and their ilk. Testweapon, UWorld are also big among my students. There are others too, but I'm drawing blank on them now.

EDIT: I also want to add that the clinical thinking that we test you on in Boards is different than that on the MCAT. While data analysis is always important, a lot of Boards questions are second and third order thinking.
do you think board and mcat correlations are related to test taking abilities or thinking overlap?
Also should I walk into medical school and immediately incorporate looking at board tests in my studying or leave that for year 2 ?
 
Standardized MCQ tests do reward people who are good at pattern recognition. Test taking is a skill, like throwing a curve ball, after all.
The MCAT IS a predictor for success on Boards.

Save Board studying for MSII please.

do you think board and mcat correlations are related to test taking abilities or thinking overlap?
Also should I walk into medical school and immediately incorporate looking at board tests in my studying or leave that for year 2 ?
 
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What would be your suggested studying schedule for med school? I've heard of people studying 6-12 every night to not studying at all until 2 weeks before an exam.


Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile app
I'm sure you've heard this before but don't worry, you will figure it out. My schedule varies a bit. We have anatomy lab three times every two weeks and is the last part odds the day. Sometimes I'm tired after that and just take the night off. Sometimes I skip class and study from noon until 8 or 9. You figure out what you need to do to get the material down, then you figure out how long that takes.

I'm almost three months in and only recently figured out how to do things effectively and efficiently.I'm almost three months in and only recently figured out how to do things effectively and efficiently. I spend between 20 and 25 hours per week outside of class. That includes watching lectures at 2x since I rarely go to those. There's a lot of variation within the class and that's ok. You do you and you'll be fine.
 
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FA is the bare-bones minimum you need to know. It's also a crappy resource that even after multiple editions, still has errors and key omissions in it..

When I was first told about FA in my first year, I asked, "why does a new edition get published every year?"
No one seems to take exception to that salient fact, even if scores of contributors make "corrections" year after year.
 
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For those of you who have been accepted and are preparing at this point for matriculation and orientation, congrats! You did it! You WILL be doctors!!!:claps::clap::soexcited::highfive::banana::biglove:

So pull up a chair and grab another cold one; I was once asked by an SDNer about the big DOs and DON’Ts of being a med student. Here are my thoughts:


I went and grabbed a corona specifically because you said this @Goro before I continued reading.
 
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