How did you excel in your SMP?

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DomoKunMD

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What comes to mind: stalk the people who are on top of things and are having a good time.

Assuming the UMDNJ program has you in med school classes, you'll have lots of med students around you, asking legalistic pointless questions in class, complaining about exam questions, reciting whether question 23 was A or B, arguing with professors about whether things are fair, posting on facebook every half hour how many slides they have left to review before 2 am. Etc.

Ignore those people.

Find the ones who are enthusiastically focused on the content of the courses. How to find them: go join the crowd reviewing the freshly posted exam answers. Pay attention to the conversations around you. Somebody will say "how come foo6P isn't correct for #23?" and if you're lucky, somebody will answer with enthusiastic focus on the content. Not: "it's on slide 14". Not: "Smith said it in class". Not: "that was on the old exams". But: "it has to be foo6P because it's too early in the cycle to be a 3 carbon, and remember how the acylation on the previous step set it up for phosphorylation?" [completely fictionalized response intended to show a quality of interest and accuracy]

Like they care about having the right answer. Like they want to learn the content now, for reals, so that board prep doesn't suck.

These people: find them. Be like them. Get them to let you study with them.

Best of luck to you.
 
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Thank you for the response man, staying around positive, motivated people should create a strong environment.

As a current student in the program who was accepted into the medical school, I can comment that if you study hard, you will do fine. The key is to read ahead and study the lectures right after you learn them, and build off of what you learn. It can be a lot of material, especially in micro (I didn't take micro this semester, but I heard the class can be pretty time consuming). But it is possible to excel with determination, and the students in the program, at least this past semester, were very helpful and pretty intelligent!

Good luck!!
 
I just finished my first semester of an SMP.
1) STUDY AS SOON AS YOUR PROGRAM STARTS! Don't sit around the first two weeks thinking there's no exam coming up. Study every day!
2) Pre-read, Go over the material from the day, and then re-read the material from the day before.
3) Make a schedule, maybe every week, of what you want to accomplish each day.
4) Make a large bag of snacks and candy. Bring it with you to the library. trading candy with my class mates makes the library so much better (since we are there about6 hours a day).
5) have NO OTHER priorities!
6) When you do practice questions, figure out why every answer is right, and also figure out why ever alternative choice in wrong and what questions those could have been right answers too. This has been tremendously helpful.

Lastly, I absolutely agree with what everyone else has said. Get in with a good group who meets up frequently and is doing well. It is a major motivator to not embarrass yourself in your study group. And it is great to hear topics re-explained in a different way. 100% do this!
 
I just finished my first semester of an SMP.
4) Make a large bag of snacks and candy. Bring it with you to the library. trading candy with my class mates makes the library so much better (since we are there about6 hours a day).

lol brilliant
 
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