On an average day, how many lecture slides are assigned during the M1 and M2 years (among all courses)? Just trying to get an idea of how fast med students are required to move through the material.
Thanks.
Thanks.
How many lecture slides are assigned on a given day?
- Thread starter Cwc127
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There's a wide variance depending on the lecturer and the number of slides doesn't really correlate with how time consuming it is.
Some presenters will make a bunch of slides with little info on them, others fill 50% of their presentation with slides of blood smears/biopsies ect. On the other end of the spectrum, some will have dense slides that take a few minutes each to swallow the material.
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At my school, we get around 40-60 slides per lecture with an average 4-5 lectures per day. Some professors' slides are really dense, others put only a few lines on each slide. Depends on the professor and the subject.
So an exam could easily test you on over 1,000 slides?
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Yes. A more important question -- why do you care?
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Easily. Most lectures have anywhere from 40-70 slides and unfortunately have had many lecturers go 100+. Tests can range from 12-25 lectures depending on the subject. Path was notorious for having an enormous amount of slides that were tested on. I can remember one pathologist going through 376 slides in 3 consecutive class periods (he even took a chair at one point to continue the lecture).
Currently an undergraduate studying for finals. Applying next year, and was just randomly thinking how many slides a med student is responsible for on a given exam, seeing as that I'm responsible for about 320 slides for a final in a few days.
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It's kind of a weird way to think about it in terms of numbers of slides per test, but maybe it's because you have the same teacher for all of the lectures. for a given test, it could be 15-25 different lecturers, all with very different slides and presentation styles
Pharm can be very deceiving, and for some of these lectures we might only have 20 slides. But it might take hours and hours to nail down the drugs. Radiology always has >100 slides, but, obviously, it's just pictures.
Just for a different perspective, we have 30-40 lectures per test (every 3 or 4 weeks). If they averaged out to 35 slides, that means 1225 slides for a test...and it sure does feel like that too.
But really, i prefer to think about it as how many weeks worth of material will be on a test. 3 is normal, 4 is freaking insane.
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As others have pointed out, the number of slides has very little indication on how much material the exam actually covers.
I think a better way to think about it is that one month of med school is about equal to a semester of college.
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We have an exam every 4 weeks or so. We have 76 hours of material, on average, for those exams. Most lectures are either 1 or 2 hours. We have a wide range in the number of slides, but as far as material... I have a one inch binder for the first exam, and it doesn't include all the handouts that we were given, only those that I thought I'd need. To give a personal comparison... I have 1.5 inch binders from undergrad that covered all my classes for a semester (that's 12-17 credits, depending on the semester). So we cover 2/3 of that material in 1/4 the time.
We covered the entire biochem book in about 1.5 exams. The entire genetics book was done in about 1 exam. Our immunology book is covered in a little more than 1 exam. And we have cell bio, histology, radiology, pharmacology, and pathology all integrated into there as well. Not to mention clinical correlations, ethics, epidemiology (aka Stats)...
We covered the entire biochem book in about 1.5 exams. The entire genetics book was done in about 1 exam. Our immunology book is covered in a little more than 1 exam. And we have cell bio, histology, radiology, pharmacology, and pathology all integrated into there as well. Not to mention clinical correlations, ethics, epidemiology (aka Stats)...
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We had an exam in our first course that I printed about 500 pages with 6 slides per page.
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Sounds about right.
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That does sound about right...
We don't get copies of slides as a rule- we have a syllabus for every class that covers everything you need to know. It's typically ~200-300 pages per exam.
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our final 4th exam next week consists of about 40 lectures, ~50 slides per lectures,
thats about 2,000 slides
our test are 4 hours test 3-4 questions per lecture ~150 question test, alot are usmle style questions
thats about 2,000 slides
our test are 4 hours test 3-4 questions per lecture ~150 question test, alot are usmle style questions
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We have exams every 5 weeks or so, so it's more like 4,000 slides, give or take.
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Five weeks! That's brutal. We have exams every 2-3 weeks (alternating), and 4-5 hours for a test.
D
da8s0859q
Not only will med school go far beyond 320 slides for a final or equivalent "large exam," but the material itself cannot be compared to most undergrad classes, imo.
Don't sweat this right now. It's rough at first, but everyone adjusts.
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When people told me it was going to be a lot of material, I definitely did not understand what they meant by that. I did not believe that it was physically possible to cram as many facts into my brain as I now do on a weekly basis. You get used to it, but nothing can prepare you for it. Enjoy your time before it starts.
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well said
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Fo sho
Also, my experience has been that the material was conceptually more difficult in some undergrad courses I had. For me, it truly has been the volume of material that is the challenge. You do definitely get used to it though, really becomes routine after a bit.
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no one has mentioned it in terms of semester hours, so i will:
we take 25 semester hrs. each semester, basically.
...which translates into roughly 25 hrs per week (4-6 hrs. per day) actually sitting there letting someone tell you the information.
We take test every 3 weeks. That means every test has 75 hours of lecture material on it, more or less.
The "finals" are at the end of yr. 2, and are everything up to that point. 3rd and 4th year or totally different, though... less classroom, or hardly no classroom lectures.
all in all though, its not that bad once you get used to it! it sure beats working for a living!
we take 25 semester hrs. each semester, basically.
...which translates into roughly 25 hrs per week (4-6 hrs. per day) actually sitting there letting someone tell you the information.
We take test every 3 weeks. That means every test has 75 hours of lecture material on it, more or less.
The "finals" are at the end of yr. 2, and are everything up to that point. 3rd and 4th year or totally different, though... less classroom, or hardly no classroom lectures.
all in all though, its not that bad once you get used to it! it sure beats working for a living!
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We had a brutal 8am to 5pm lecture on dermatology. When the Powerpoint was emailed to the class, it was over 230MB and consisted of 886 slides.
D
da8s0859q
98+ slides per hour for a 9-hour day. I hope they at least bought you dinner first.
I've never counted slides. Though our powerpoints tend to be around 60 slides with lately ranging in the 80-100 slides. We have on average 4-6 1 hour lectures per week. ~9 hours of Gross Lab a week (1st semester). 2nd semester we will (iirc) have 4 hours of classes per day.
At my school we have what's called a "Note taking service" (NTS) which is set-up and run by the students. NTS is responsible for taking information that's on the slides and also taking what the professor's says about those slides (the pertinent stuff) and typing it all out into notes. We then take those notes and also make a condensed version of it highlighting the important concepts and things about the lecture. Notes are 1-side, single, sometime doubled spaced.
Anyway, we have about 4-5 weeks between tests. We take all tests for that "Block" in a 2 day span.
Now to the reason I told you all of the above. I'm not sure how many pages but:
Block 1 on the left, Block 2 on the right. Not pictured is Block 3 (final block of semester) which we will take in 1.5 weeks.
I really don't think it's that bad.
At my school we have what's called a "Note taking service" (NTS) which is set-up and run by the students. NTS is responsible for taking information that's on the slides and also taking what the professor's says about those slides (the pertinent stuff) and typing it all out into notes. We then take those notes and also make a condensed version of it highlighting the important concepts and things about the lecture. Notes are 1-side, single, sometime doubled spaced.
Anyway, we have about 4-5 weeks between tests. We take all tests for that "Block" in a 2 day span.
Now to the reason I told you all of the above. I'm not sure how many pages but:
Block 1 on the left, Block 2 on the right. Not pictured is Block 3 (final block of semester) which we will take in 1.5 weeks.
I really don't think it's that bad.
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2000+ slides every two weeks. We test every 2-3 weeks. It can't be understood until you're in the midst of it, so don't even worry about it.
My most intimidating looking course material was for the Neuroscience domain, our first Block II course. The course material packet thing was about 700 pages. It was a three week course. The materials were a mixure of powerpoint slides (2 per page) and paragraph style written content summaries. The 700 pages didn't include the required readings from Robbins or Sherris.
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We have our Human Disease 2 exam on Thursday. It is a 3 hour written and 1 hour lab exam covering 180+ hours (9 weeks) of lectures and labs. I have three 2 inch binders completely full of slides and syllabi not to mention lab CDs and slides on my computer. I have no idea how my classmates are studying for it, but my approach requires a rather large excel sheet.
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Short Answer: Always too many...
Long Answer: Probably around 300+ each exam... But, as others have said, 10 slides by one lecturer can easily >>>>> 50 slides from another. Also, this is 300+ per exam... We have exam blocks where I'm at... that's roughly 6 tests ... So easily 1500+ (this is also assuming every lecturer uses powerpoints.. Which they don't, but this is a rough estimate.... To skip the fear and go straight to apathy, See Short Answer above.
Long Answer: Probably around 300+ each exam... But, as others have said, 10 slides by one lecturer can easily >>>>> 50 slides from another. Also, this is 300+ per exam... We have exam blocks where I'm at... that's roughly 6 tests ... So easily 1500+ (this is also assuming every lecturer uses powerpoints.. Which they don't, but this is a rough estimate.... To skip the fear and go straight to apathy, See Short Answer above.
