personally, i think studying 5+ hours every day in undergrad is incredibly inefficient. back when i was in the prime of my pre-med classes, i wouldnt study til 3-4 days before the exam, and then it was on average of only 3-4 hrs. in my toughest class i studied close to 30 hrs over the course of 3 days for exams.
now in my senior year, im lucky if i study 2 hours for a test the night before. granted im taking really easy gen ed classes.
obviously some people need to study more, but at some point daily studying gets excessive.
get out and live life, youll have plenty of time to study in med school
also, my undergrad is consistently top 25
Well I guess the concern is about getting into med school in the first place lol.
The question wasn't how much time do you spend writing notes (which, by the way, I only write in class... so thats in class time), or labs to write, or spend on homework. I consider "studying" the time your memorizing/learning material. Not working on homework or writing a lab. But even with my labs and homework, don't spend more than 2 hours a day average. Some days I'll spend 3 hours, but there's some days I don't do anything. So average would probably still be 0-2.
Which is good... because between my class, labs, internship, travel time (between everything), clubs, volunteering, eating, sleeping, I don't have more than a few hours to study everyday lol and stay sane.
I couldn't change the title of the thread but the title of the poll said total work and so did the post.
I mean sure just the actual studying really is only about 3-4 days before exams....most of the time that I'm talking about is all the note taking for bio and chem and then all the projects/homework/write ups for all of them
I went to class almost every lecture, took good notes and refreshed the day before each test for maybe an hour or two (3.99 sGPA). I can't imagine having to study more than that for undergrad classes, just like alot of people can't imagine studying for less than 3 hours per day for the same undergrad. Obviously I realize that I'll be spending 8 hours a day studying in med school and am not naive enough to think I can get by with the same study habits as undergrad. I do have to agree with an above post though and say that those studting 8 hours/day for undergrad should be more worried than the 0-1 hour people if it really does take them that long to absorb undergrad material.
I don't know what it is, that just seems crazy to me. I think a huge part of it, and a trend I'm seeing from other peoples posts, is that most people are "going to class, taking notes, and then refreshing before an exam". This is literally impossible with the sciences I've had so far (chem 1&2 and bio). The teachers are good people and from reviews comparing schools they're apparently up there but you seriously just can't take notes in the classes. All of the lectures are power points which either just have pictures that the professor briefly explains or slides with highlights of the chapter that really doesn't tell you anything if you don't read the whole chapter by yourself anyway. So basically a
huge amount of my time goes into outlining every chapter we cover
A good example of this is in my chem class. I've skipped 3-4 lectures this semester and on the first exam I scored a 91. The class average was a 65 and I either had the highest grade or the 2nd highest so going to the lecture hardly does anything. In bio for the first exam we got back today the average was a 71, I got a 98 and am probably one of the very few who took such extensive notes. So I just don't see an alternative because the students who aren't doing what I'm doing here seem to be sucking
We had a quiz in bio today on osmoregulation and I just studied what she went over, then a lot of the questions were on an entirely different section of the topic even though it wasn't even mentioned in class so like I said it seems you literally need to read every detail of everything mentioned.
Also...6+ HOURS?! Um, hi...I'm roseglass and I'd like to introduce you to a thing called "having a life."
Yea I seem to have lost mine to work
lol, so much for the "best 4 years of my life"
Sometimes it's definitely less than that, but often out of necessity. Today for example I was in classes, lab, and studies from 9:30am-7:30pm. I'll be going to sleep probably at 12:30 so even if I wanted to I couldn't do more than 4 hours or so outside of class (assuming I take some time to eat and whatnot)
Yeah...OP should've been more specific. I consider studying to include doing homework, working on lab reports, writing papers, etc. If we're talking just purely studying (i.e. reviewing material, reading ahead, etc.) ...it's probably about an hour a day.
Yea my mistake, like I mentioned I couldn't change it in the title but the post and poll say overall work.
I feel like study time has to be adapted to intelligence level/learning style. My friends can pull of the 2-3 hours the night before an organic test and come out with an A, but if I do the same I get a C. I've been diagnosed with ADHD for a very long time, and take Adderall for it, but it only brings me up to "normal" level, it doesn't make me some info-retaining superstar.
I agree, but I don't think I'm stupid or anything and that's the reason I need to study so much. I mean I'm outscoring the students here who are in the accelerated med school programs and almost always score in the top 1-5 grades for exams...I guess sometimes I over study but if I don't I feel like I won't be covering what I need to.
Here's a tip: you'll have more free time if you take notes during class instead. Try it sometime.
As mentioned above, this is unfortunately impossible in my classes for the most part.
