How to study efficiently in med school?

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liger

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hi everyone,
i'm a 1st yr and was wondering if y'all had any good tips on how to study efficiently? in college i outlined everything and then made outlines of my outlines and that always seemed to work. i have been trying to do the outline thing in med school but it takes me like 8 hrs to do one chapter and i don't retain anything. i would love to know if anyone has found a way to get through such a dense amt of material in a fast way. do you all outline or make notecards or just try to go through things quickly but multiple times. i feel really lost in class and just can't seem to get a handle on the work. any tips would be awesome. thanks!

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liger said:
do you all outline or make notecards or just try to go through things quickly but multiple times.

All three of these are tried and true methods that work for some people and not others. No one will be able to tell you a specific recipe for success, as what works for them may be a disaster for you. Learning is an incredibly individual thing. Part of first year is figuring out what works. Repetition is the key for remembering things, preferably with some form of writing involved, as virtually all studies suggest that active learning (outlining, note-taking, transcribing, highlighting) tends to stick better than passive (reading, watching an AVI). But you will never have all the time to do everything you want to do, and part of the game is figuring out when it's safe to pull the plug. For the first test or two, err on the side of doing too much, and then cut back as warranted. If anyone tells you a "fast way" to get through all the material, be very wary. Someone who already had all the courses and/or was blessed with a so-called photographic memory might be able to get through the stuff fast. But the rest of the mortals need to just slog through.
 
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If your school has a transcript service (ie students that transcribe and summarize lectures) by all means use it! It can save you time creating reams of notes. And also it highlights what's important for a given class.
 
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Rewriting notes, transcribing and going over the same stuff over and over again seems to work for me when it comes to pure memorization. Actually, even conceptual stuff, i like rewriting stuff, my notes are all in a jumble and this is a good way to keep everything straight on paper as well as in my head. After the initial note rewriting, all it takes is constant review and you get things memorized without having to cram. That's the approach I'm going to hit with med school. It seems to work in my other classes, however, the sheer amount of work in med school may mean modification of this process. I guess we all just have to use what we know, and tailor it to the med school curriculum.
 
like others have said, it's a really individual thing - just keep trying stuff until you find what works - i did the outline thing as an undergrad and grad student, but found that it was too slow in med school too.

My school publishes notepacks that are what we're responsible for the test, but you can probably adapt this method to anything -

I read the notes, and as I'm going make up simple little questions and write them in the margins - it forces me to actively read, and to try to understand as I go in order to formulate the questions. Then when I go back through I can use the questions as a sort of review to make sure I know it all. I've just found that repeated quizing is what works best for the massive amount of material.

Again, just try lots of stuff and see what works - when you find something use it.

Good luck - and don't worry, you'll figure it out.
 
Took me a year to determine what worked best for me. First year I tried rerererereading the notes, notepool services, and study groups none of them worked well. For me it was tables, I put everything and I mean everything into a table. My friends would see my notes and be like "Dude that doesn't even make sense in table format" but hey it worked for me. A good book you can check out from your school library is "How to Excel in Medical School" they give great examples of how to construct tables and letting you know what info is should be included.

Heres what I would do, after class I would reread the class notes then get on my computer and put it all into tables highlighting things that seemed HY or important. Depending on the day this would take an hour or two. After that I would sit down in front of the TV half watching and half rewriting my tables over and over on a dry erase board. But it wasn't just rewriting I would be making connections between like things and establishing differences with opposing things. It was a very active process which helped me retain it. And since I still got to watch a good 4-5 hours of TV a day my mind wasn't total mush when I went to sleep.
 
Trial and error on different methods. I found that taking notes was good for me but took too long sometimes. I've never been into the whole notecard thing. Sometimes getting together with one person helped me a lot in terms of talking about things. I've never been into the study group thing. I guess it's different strokes for different folks.
 
mendel121 said:
like others have said, it's a really individual thing - just keep trying stuff until you find what works - i did the outline thing as an undergrad and grad student, but found that it was too slow in med school too.

My school publishes notepacks that are what we're responsible for the test, but you can probably adapt this method to anything -

I read the notes, and as I'm going make up simple little questions and write them in the margins - it forces me to actively read, and to try to understand as I go in order to formulate the questions. Then when I go back through I can use the questions as a sort of review to make sure I know it all. I've just found that repeated quizing is what works best for the massive amount of material.

Again, just try lots of stuff and see what works - when you find something use it.

Good luck - and don't worry, you'll figure it out.
thanks for the good tip
 
Agree with above: you need to figure out what works for you. Here's what worked for me

1) Note coop system
2) Making tables and diagrams
3) Writing them up on huge dry erase boards
4) Figuring out when to go to class and when not to - I went to 99% of my first year classes, and didn't do so hot. I went to maybe 20% of my second year classes and did way better.
5) Studying with friends with compatible study habits. This included frequent short breaks, conversation, and a lot of friendly pimping.
 
I was gonna make some anatomy notecards, but I just gave up and bought the Netter notecards. They were $35 and 100x nicer than anything I could've made.
 
That system will definately get you through classes where you basically have to remember tons of details such as anatomy and embryology. In other classes you have to do a bit more analyzing and learn broad concepts such as physiology. There, you might try other methods.
 
For more difficult topics that I understand but then can't really recall in a robust way, I use the internet. An example topic for me would be peritoneal and retroperitoneal spaces. I'd read it in my primary text and then re-read it from 5 or 6 sources on the web. Just getting five different descriptions and different phrasing really helped me.
 
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There is a book that helped me alotte last year **check it out :)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0609805959/102-4500875-5932167?v=glance&n=283155

;)

Nooooooo!!! Not more reading! :) Is it helpful enough that I should take time out from my panicked study sessions to read it?

Also a first year here. I've been reading books along with my notes and simultaneously typing up a new, final set of notes. It takes absolutely forever, but my school is PBL, so no textbooks to follow or anything. First I have to research the stuff I need to know and then I get to learn it. I never even know whether I've gotten appropriate depth or not. Arrrgh! :(
 
My most efficient study method was to go through the material, writing test questions for myself as I went. It takes a while the first time through, but afterwards I'd just do the questions to review. I found it helpful to actively think what might they ask me about this as I read the material.

It's even better if you can find a study partner to do the same, and then exchange questions.
 
Nooooooo!!! Not more reading! :) Is it helpful enough that I should take time out from my panicked study sessions to read it?

Also a first year here. I've been reading books along with my notes and simultaneously typing up a new, final set of notes. It takes absolutely forever, but my school is PBL, so no textbooks to follow or anything. First I have to research the stuff I need to know and then I get to learn it. I never even know whether I've gotten appropriate depth or not. Arrrgh! :(


I'm a second year at a PBL school. At the beginning of year 1, i was also completely lost (almost didnt pass my first unit because i was so confused). But what finally worked for me was to take my own notes for the given learning issues with each case and tying in the lecture notes with my own notes. So, come exam time...i could just read my notes and do fine. As for how to organize your stuff, i first tried to organize by subject. that didnt work so well. then, i organized by case, and that worked extremely well for me.
 
is it really necessary to take notes during classes ??
coz in my school biochem classes are done with projectors and most of the information are from the book
and in my anatomy the lecturer goes really fast because all she teaches are from the book
is it enough to just read it from the book directly???
 
some great advice here guys!:thumbup: :thumbup:
 
is it really necessary to take notes during classes ??
coz in my school biochem classes are done with projectors and most of the information are from the book
and in my anatomy the lecturer goes really fast because all she teaches are from the book
is it enough to just read it from the book directly???

It's all about "active learning". You learn less if you are passive, according to many studies. More goes right by you without acknowledgement. If you write the notes, even if you have no intention of ever looking at them again, at least the info had to go into your head once for your hand to work. So taking notes is often a good idea. There are other ways to study actively on your own, but this is probably of some value too.
 
hi everyone,
i'm a 1st yr and was wondering if y'all had any good tips on how to study efficiently? in college i outlined everything and then made outlines of my outlines and that always seemed to work. i have been trying to do the outline thing in med school but it takes me like 8 hrs to do one chapter and i don't retain anything. i would love to know if anyone has found a way to get through such a dense amt of material in a fast way. do you all outline or make notecards or just try to go through things quickly but multiple times. i feel really lost in class and just can't seem to get a handle on the work. any tips would be awesome. thanks!



Hi there,
One of the problems with outlining (and recopying) is that you spend so much time on the clerical work, that you do not have the time to spend on learning the concepts and the application of those concepts.

If you have access to old exams, try looking at how your school tests various concepts. If you do not have old exams, try reviewing your notes and syllabi and writing your own questions in the margins of your notes or textbook. At my school, every professor used Powerpoint for lectures so we could down load those, fill in with facts from our notes and the textbook if necessary.

My method of study went like this: The night before the lecture, I went over the objectives and notes in the course syllabus. I then read or skimmed the relevant chapter in the book, looked at the captions under photos, graphs etc. I then went to lecture taking notes on what I needed. Later that day or in the evening, I reviewed the notes, made more annotations as needed and reviewed the previous days lecture materials. On the weekend, I reviewed my weeks worth of lectures for that course.

I looked at old exams and got an idea of how the material was tested and adjusted my studying as needed. The objectives in the syllabus were how I divided my material into concepts. For some material, working with my study group was good but we all came to group study prepared and reviewed together.

In short, you have to find something that works for you. For some, concept mapping works. Beware if you have never used this method because you can become too caught up in learning how to concept map that you do not learn what you need for your exams.

Some folks used flash cards, but I found the preparation too time consuming. I also used our scribe service (I was one of the scribes too) for many things. I made drill tapes for listening while I was working out on the treadmill or running. I would drill things that I felt needed to be rote memorized.

My other strategy was to cut my text books and clip them into a looseleaf binder. That way, I could keep a couple of pages on a clipboard and study them on the subway or read them while standing in line at the bank etc. I did the same with some of my notes too.

Good luck!
njbmd:)
 
The best advice I can give is keep it simple, and know your limitations.

Firstly, try to understand the topic you are studying, once you understand it, it is easier to remember.

Secondly, just accept you can not know everything. Every topic of medicine is vast and you can go to an in depth micro detail of everything - but you will compromise on other topics. Thats why consultants are becoming more and more supra specialised.

So lastly, just learn what is necessary. Get the content from the lectures, med school syllabus and past questions. Only go into further details of each chapter once the above is nailed.

So keep it simple, concentrate on the basics, you will be fine :D
 
You may be aware of this website... Pretty good source of information...Some you may already know and some you may not... Helped me out a lot..

http://studygs.net/index.htm
 
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Nooooooo!!! Not more reading! :) Is it helpful enough that I should take time out from my panicked study sessions to read it?

Also a first year here. I've been reading books along with my notes and simultaneously typing up a new, final set of notes. It takes absolutely forever, but my school is PBL, so no textbooks to follow or anything. First I have to research the stuff I need to know and then I get to learn it. I never even know whether I've gotten appropriate depth or not. Arrrgh! :(

omg i can't think of anything worse than all PBL all the time. PBL are a low yeild waste of time imho.
 
i use flashcards. i'm a bit dyslexic when it comes to memorizing things. i can sit in a study group, have a whole conversation about a concept, (and participate!) and the next day it is GONE....so gone i can't remember anything about it.

so i read the book, the class notes/handouts (yes it helps to read it from 2 different sources), maybe even BRS. Then i go through the professors objectives and make notecards on it. Then i go over the notecards every day (or at least try to) until i know it cold. this is the only thing that works for me.

and i dont go to class, as the above proces takes about 6-7 hours a day.
 
i use flashcards. i'm a bit dyslexic when it comes to memorizing things. i can sit in a study group, have a whole conversation about a concept, (and participate!) and the next day it is GONE....so gone i can't remember anything about it.

You seem not to remember an accurate definition of dyslexia either, as it is not an inability to remember things. Amnesia perhaps?
 
i use flashcards. i'm a bit dyslexic when it comes to memorizing things. i can sit in a study group, have a whole conversation about a concept, (and participate!) and the next day it is GONE....so gone i can't remember anything about it.

so i read the book, the class notes/handouts (yes it helps to read it from 2 different sources), maybe even BRS. Then i go through the professors objectives and make notecards on it. Then i go over the notecards every day (or at least try to) until i know it cold. this is the only thing that works for me.

and i dont go to class, as the above proces takes about 6-7 hours a day.

I've had the problem of doing the types of studying you described here, and the problem is that you have to make your reading more active. As you are reading your notes, put a check mark next to the words/concepts that you plan to put on notecards. When you make your notecards, do you reread them? Not read in them like reading your book/notes, but look at the front, try to force yourself to recall what's on the back and after trying to remember seeing if you were correct. I made notecards all the time but did not Really review them correctly, and I've also had to train myself to decrease the amount of info written on any one card. As tedious and annoying as it is, repitition really is the key. I've also started restating what I read outloud to myself to make the process more 'interesting.' Just my 2 cents.
 
For me it was tables, I put everything and I mean everything into a table. My friends would see my notes and be like "Dude that doesn't even make sense in table format" but hey it worked for me. A good book you can check out from your school library is "How to Excel in Medical School" they give great examples of how to construct tables and letting you know what info is should be included.
<snip>
I would sit down in front of the TV half watching and half rewriting my tables over and over on a dry erase board. But it wasn't just rewriting I would be making connections between like things and establishing differences with opposing things. It was a very active process which helped me retain it. And since I still got to watch a good 4-5 hours of TV a day my mind wasn't total mush when I went to sleep.
This is the best method I've ever heard. Watching TV and studying at the same time... brilliant!!!!

Studying is a customized process. For me, I rewrite notes using lecture notes and review books. I need the review books to provide structure to the lecture notes, which are all too often scattered. Sure it's pretty labor intensive since I retype everything, but it works [for me]! Then off to the printers I go to grab my outline printout and start highlighting like crazy. I highlight and add onto the printout as I review it over and over. It's a good day when I can go through it at least twice before the exam.

I'll bet those transcription services are super useful... We can't all have photographic memory, so I live with it.
 
Thanks for all the help guys! I only have exams five times per year, so it will be a while before I find out how effective my new methods are, but it seems promising!
 
Everyone has different methods that work for them. I can only share my method so that's what I'll do :).

During the week I just do around 3 or 4 hours a day after class reading through the notes. On that "first pass" I don't pay too much attention to specific details, I just try to understand as much as I can. If I run into something I don't understand, I look it up - I don't try to know everything I read but just enough so that what was presented in lecture makes sense. During this time I also skim the relevent parts of Robbins, Clinical Microbio Made Rediculously Simple, Costanzo Physiology, BRS pharm/microbio/path, etc. At this point I'm just trying to see it all and try to recognize the ways that everything connects with each other.

As an exam approaches, I ramp this up - I put in more hours and try to finish looking through everything by the end of Friday (if it's a 2 week exam, if it's a 4 week exam, I try to finish by Wednesday - we usually have exams on Mondays). After that, I read through all the notes actively, and pay close attention to details. What that means is, I'm reading each lecture with all the other lectures in mind, making connections between different lectures to reinforce my knowledge. I spend very little time on trying to commit anything to memory by rote, because by taking note of details and trying to think of each detail in relation to other details from other lectures I'm strengthening connections between different concepts so that when I think of one concept the associated concepts pop up as well. (Sorry for the weird explanation, I was into connectionist neural networks in undergrad.) I don't actually set aside any time at all for aggressive memorization (i.e. flashcards, looking over charts, etc), I just rely on my understanding of the material and trust that the associations I've made between concepts will allow me to retrieve the details I need when I encounter them on an exam. In our organ-based curriculum, this works really well for me.

For courses where memorization of details is important, like anatomy, or memorizing what antibiotics are used for what bacteria, etc. it helps to attack it from multiple angles. For instance, in anatomy, memorize the muscles, with their innervations, blood supplies, etc. Then instead of going by and trying to rememorize the muscles, go through everything by nerve. Draw out the nerves, and try to remember what each nerve innervates. Then draw out the arteries, and try to remember what muscles each artery supplies. Then go back by muscle, then nerve, then artery again. Rinse and repeat. For attachments, you can do it by muscle and then by attachment site, instead of trying to memorize everything by each muscle every time. For microbio, you can do it by pathogen, by drug, by mechanism of action, etc. But if you understand how the drugs work, and understand why certain drugs are used for certain bacteria, rote memorization isn't quite as necessary as for anatomy.

If you attack the problem from the same angle every time, your eyes will glaze over eventually and your brain will shut down. Trying it from multiple angles and in different ways keeps it more interesting and makes it more active, and it makes your memorizing more effective because you're seeing the problem in different ways. It's like when you look at a sculpture - if you look at it from only one perspective your understanding of it will be very limited, and trying to memorize details is difficult because everything seems unrelated to everything else. If you walk around it and appreciate it from different perspectives you have a better understanding of what the sculptor was trying to accomplish. And when you understand the sculptor's motives, remembering little details about the sculpture becomes easier.

Well that's my New Age explanation of how I study.

Edit: I guess I should mention that we have class 8-12, so 3-4 hours every day after class isn't so bad for us.
 
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You guys have some very good advice!!

I'm wondering, for readings, do you do all of them? And do you read it line by line?

I find myself to be a slow reader, and spend too much time on the textbook. I try to skim or even skip over topics I already know to speed myself up but I never really felt comfortable doing that- unless I'm out of time and have other projects. I want to find ways to speed myself up, but effectively, and I'm not sure how... Any suggestions? How do you approach the readings?

(btw, I'm a senior undergrad right now.)
 
You guys have some very good advice!!

I'm wondering, for readings, do you do all of them? And do you read it line by line?

I find myself to be a slow reader, and spend too much time on the textbook. I try to skim or even skip over topics I already know to speed myself up but I never really felt comfortable doing that- unless I'm out of time and have other projects. I want to find ways to speed myself up, but effectively, and I'm not sure how... Any suggestions? How do you approach the readings?

(btw, I'm a senior undergrad right now.)
I'm a slow reader too. If you try to speed it up you won't really absorb anything. Just go at your own pace. You'll waste more time trying to go fast and not understanding anything than if you just go slow and steady and understand it better.
 
I study everyday as if there's an exam tomorrow; when exams come, I just chill. I just had a test yesterday; and seriously I "didn't study for it" as the work was done gradually. In fact, I spent the whole day before my test sleeping. :D
 
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