From these posts it sounds like some of you study significantly less than I do for my undergrad classes...but admittedly I am quite neurotic about studying. How much are you all studying compared to how much you did as an ug?
Don't fall into the trap of comparing med school to undergrad. It's a very different world, and not an apples and apples comparison. A lot of what works in undergrad doesn't work in med school. Maybe none of it will. You will very likely have to throw out much of what you think you know about studying, and adopt different techniques, trial and error style, until you hit on gold. That may translate to more hours studying, or simply more effective hours. Or both. But it's kind of like comparing quarterbacking Pop Warner football to an NFL team -- you go through a lot of the same motions, but the pace is very different and they hit a lot harder.
Most people work a lot harder in med school than undergrad. In retrospect, they will still have a lot of free time compared to the clinical years and residency. You have time to work out, to grab meals with friends, maybe an hour to goof off or watch TV most nights. But you have nothing like the free time you had in undergrad in MOST cases.
A lot of that is because in med school you cannot cram. So if you aren't pre-reading and reviewing daily, you find yourself in too much of a hole to get out of -- there is simply too much material to try and cram study for it the week before the exam. So you will be studying every day just to keep pace. And weekends are the only days you aren't getting new material, so most people use much of them to get a handle on the prior week's stuff.
I'd say most med students use some variation of the 4-6 times through the material approach -- consisting of pre-reading, attending/watching lectures, reviewing (nightly), re-reviewing and organizing (on weekends) and then "studying" for the exam for each test. This multiple pass approach makes you more likely to keep a lot of this material in long term memory, which is important for purposes of the Steps and for rotations. You will need a lot of this info again (particularly the second year stuff). And this is the kind of approach almost nobody does in undergrad, because you don't have to -- the volume isn't so bad and if you spent a couple of days before each exam studying you would do fine. That won't usually work in med school. So undergrad and med school are night and day. Comparing them probably will give you a false sense of security which ill prepares you.
Plan on hitting the ground running and adapting flexibly to a new environment. If it ends up that you are doing well and have lots of free time, fantastic. If it ends up that you are working at full steam just to stay in the middle of the class, that happens too. Remember that half of all people who go to med school will end up in the bottom half of their class. And these were folks who also got A's in undergrad. How people deal with this ego blow tends also to be reflected in the number of study hours.
