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Um, so did I (mainly bc I thought it was a creative, awesome idea). It was answering premeds' common questions about med school.
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Intelligence factor?
Started by Yadster101
Not gonna lie I did base the comparison...I swear he said in that vid that he remediated something. Guess Im wrong but I still think the question has value. How are people with 3.9's 35+'s struggling to learn the same material as people with 3.5's and 27's?
lol uh okay?
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Could just be that life gets complicated and motivations change. Often there's a disconnect btw expectations of what medical school will be and what it actually ends up being. Also, some people are black clouds with terrible luck. Past performance doesn't guarantee future success, regression to the mean, etc... I could go on for days, theres like a million reasons why this stuff happens.
The 4.0 and 40 MCAT tells you the person is hardworking, bright, and capable of kicking ass in any medical school in the country. Whether they end up ACTUALLY acing everything depends on motivation/interest/health/luck/psychosocial factors/etc....
It's really simple: MS1 is nothing at all like undergrad or the MCAT.
So what's the consensus here, did we all decide if med school is easy or hard??
What are you trying to prove here? There are multiple factors that can make one fail a class or repeat a year in med school...
I also think what's behind the 4.0 matters. A 4.0 at Swarthmore is quite impressive since it means you got As without grade inflation (something Swarthmore brags about not having). It can be quite easy to get a 4.0 at universities that have high grade inflation (public state schools). I do believe also you're right, expectations and the disconnect as to what med school/medicine will be like.
I know I'm in the minority in this, but I also think the medical school you go to matters in terms of policies that are student friendly (true P/F grading vs. letter grades), giving large amounts of time to study for the step after classes are over (8 weeks vs. 4 weeks) - not bc of more time to study but getting a sizable block of time to organize, study, take your test, and rest/relax before starting M3, etc.
How does that prove your point?
Why even try to compare the two? Compared to anything I've done in med school organic was a joke...
Are you saying that because his MCAT is low or because it's a personal anecdote?
EDIT: oh didnt see you bolded 30 heh 🤢
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I don't know about that, it just seems like its a biology major @ 5x speed so far at my school and our tests do feel a bit like the mcat. The exam questions are never just testing rote memorization, I have to think my a** off and I walk out feeling uneasy no matter how much I studied but end up doing well anyway (curve). Also at my school it does seem like the people who were bada**es on their MCAT/trashed everyone in undergrad are still the ones on top...not that it matters due to it being P/F.
How generous is the curve at your school?
it might matter. there's such a thing as true p/f. and the more you know, the better off you'll be in third year
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I agree, that's why I'm doing the 8am-midnight thing. Hopefully it will put me in a better position to take step1, etc. I just meant to say it doesn't matter in terms of rank. My school is true pass/fail first year but I pretty much just ignore it
This is neither here nor there, but although grade inflation is probably happening just about everywhere, I think it tends to be less of an issue at public schools.
I think that unless your previous success involved the same type of work as med school (i.e. hard work/long hours/not very much free time/lots of memorizing) it doesn't necessarily transfer over directly. You may have been a killer English major who aced the MCAT, but it is just one test. Succeeding in med school requires a pretty different skill set than cranking out brilliant papers. I'm not saying that non-bio majors do worse in med school of course, just that a lot of times skills that ensured previous successes which got you into medical school are not particularly useful for making you successful in medical school.
My observation thus far with regards to who is doing well in my class is really just those people willing to put in the time. The point, I guess, is that it really seems to come down to motivation. I know people who barely got in based on test scores, but have no problem going HAM 12-16 hours a day 6-7 days a week, and they are sitting at the top of the class.
This. I don't consider myself to have more RAM or HD space in my brain than other med students, but I am willing to sit on my a** 7 days/week 8am-midnight (except when I nurse those Sunday morning hangovers). Not to say having a quick brain doesn't matter, I know people in my class that study half as much as me and score as well/nearly as well
Which is why many schools (Wash U, Penn, etc.) do true P/F at least in the first year, since everyone is coming from different backgrounds and so people can acclimate to the workload accordingly, without being penalized in terms of class rank.
Depending on the bachelor's degree in question - your rote memorization skills can be honed quite well. I agree, if you're an English, Sociology, Psychology, Women's Studies, yada yada, major then it's not shocking that the basic science years (at least MS-1) will be way different than what you're used to. That being said, the energy level you come in with can dictate a lot. That's what is so frustrating about the process: premed --> med school --> residency --> fellowship, at each checkpoint it starts all over, somewhat. So once you get to med school, everything you did up till then no longer "counts".
I could totally see someone who barely got in bc of a low MCAT, from not trying hard, hit pedal to the metal and put in a lot of hours in the basic science years. Whether it's probable is up for debate.
This thread...
Is 8 AM to 12 AM really necessary for you? It seems like you're being inefficient - unless your school doesn't have recorded/streaming lectures, course packs, etc.This. I don't consider myself to have more RAM or HD space in my brain than other med students, but I am willing to sit on my a** 7 days/week 8am-midnight (except when I nurse those Sunday morning hangovers). Not to say having a quick brain doesn't matter, I know people in my class that study half as much as me and score as well/nearly as well
What's wrong with it?
Which is nice because I straight up ignore one of my classes (epidemiology, everything except for the biostats isn't really step testable) and just score in the 80s on those exams while studying for sciency things that I actually give a crap about
Um, USMLE Step 1 tests on epidemiology and biostatistics -- even more so now, as it's a recent change, with recent iterations of the exam. It's why High Yield came out with a new edition of it, when the last edition was like 10 years ago.
Also, in M3, when you're bring in an article, you have to be able to interpret literature properly so it's helpful on the wards and in residency. If anything that is UTTERLY useless is the Krebs cycle, malate shuttle, etc. (the sciency stuff)
This. I don't consider myself to have more RAM or HD space in my brain than other med students, but I am willing to sit on my a** 7 days/week 8am-midnight (except when I nurse those Sunday morning hangovers). Not to say having a quick brain doesn't matter, I know people in my class that study half as much as me and score as well/nearly as well
I feel you. I put in decently long hours hours and am doing well, but have friends who are hitting the very top few percentiles in the class but are studying a good bit less than I am. I'm not in a position to complain but boy do I want to become more efficient!
This. I don't consider myself to have more RAM or HD space in my brain than other med students, but I am willing to sit on my a** 7 days/week 8am-midnight (except when I nurse those Sunday morning hangovers). Not to say having a quick brain doesn't matter, I know people in my class that study half as much as me and score as well/nearly as well
So what did you do in undergrad? Were you like a 1pm-9PM kind of guy back then?
I stream all lectures, and memorize every word of the coursebook provided. I do this by making anki cards for everything, getting through those anki cards successfully, then I do last week's anki cards for that day. It does take a long time, but I get every sentence and usually score >95%. Idk if its worth it considering its pass fail/whether its even worth it or not in terms of step prep, but I just figured I would keep it up and do the best I can. I can usually get through the material 4-5X before the test using this method but yeah I have no life
I do pay attention to all of the stats stuff, but a lot of what is presented in epi is just the professor's research. I never thought the sciency stuff was going to be necessarily relevant in real life, I just know that at least some of it is on the step
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I worked in a lab 25ish hours/week, tutored for maybe 10, and studied the rest of my waking hours. Also exercise.
Yeah I think efficiency is not my strong suit
Yes, this new Anki invention seems quite tedious. It would be one thing if they were premade cards that you can then alter yourself, but making the cards makes it quite the deal breaker I would think for those in MS-1/MS-2. I guess if your school is "true" Pass/Fail then you can pretty much do anything you want - although you can greatly take advantage of that that many people in other med schools can't.
The main concern I would have with your method is avoiding burn out.
So far it hasn't been too stressful, but I do worry about burning out next year when the volume/pace is much faster. I should probably try a different method when the new block starts Monday, I'd like to move away from Anki somewhat to something quicker.
Yeah, I also use anki pretty heavily. Add on Firecracker to the anki cards and I'm doing about a minimum of 3-4 hours of flashcards a day, spending as much as 8 hours sometimes (usually this is when I've let them build up or when we get slammed with anatomy). It can be tedious, but the biggest benefit for me is the amount of stress relief it provides. Without anki I would be constantly worried about maintaining mastery of all of the information in a block from beginning to end (i.e. remembering in week 5 what we learned in week 1). I'd also be worried that I thought I knew something because I recognized it when I read it, but couldn't actively recall it without a prompt. Anki solves both of these problems by making you actively recall material and allowing you to use a spaced repetition algorithm to ensure that you continually see material you are weak in/are at risk of forgetting. Its a pain, but it works.
What a class should do is have the class above them make Anki cards for all the material (Are they questions you make or information on flashcards?) which then everyone can download and alter at will. So then you have all the cards to test yourself already made and you can just keep studying the material as always.
My naivete, but what's the difference between Anki and Firecracker?
Never seen firecracker, I make questions from the course material. Our professors write ~200 pg pdf and we just memorize it all for each exam, so thats what I base the questions off of. Each lecture I write between 60-100 questions on flashcards incorporating pictures where necessary (using a program called "snagit"). Then I add any additional information the professor says in the lecture that was not in the coursebook. I am however a bro and upload the cards to my class's facebook group if I'm not ashamed of the cards ha (which people thank me for profusely)
Lmao @ thinking a medical school professor would ever willingly make anything easier for his students.
Are your professors jerks? Our professors give us a 200 page module for each exam that they wrote themselves, and it pretty much has everything on the exam in there.
We get nothing like that. Lecture slides with a dozen "learning objectives," but no condensed PDF file like you're talking about.
But what use is it if your questions are just basic recall questions and not even in a USMLE style format? I guess I don't understand how it's supposed to help for boards.
I wasn't talking about the professors but the classes of students themselves. I would never expect a professor to make Anki cards for his/her students - which would be an unreasonable expectation in the first place.
Um, that's how most schools have it as well - all the lecture slides. There are schools that make a course pack/syllabi but that's not always the case.
With Anki, you make the cards or snag someone else's deck. Standard electronic flash card program that I'm sure you could imagine.
With Firecracker, you pay them to generate direct recall questions for you via scheduled daily quizzes based on your previous rating of understanding the last time you saw the question.
They are basic recall questions, but they have so far allowed me to do well on the exams. All the exam questions are written as clinical vignettes, and the professors claim that they are meant to get us used to boards style questions. What it comes down to is that if there is a better way to study, I don't know about it and would like to know. Whats the deal with that firecracker thing? Is it any good?
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Ah, ok. I guess I just don't see how direct recall questions help you on the boards, but I guess if you don't have the info down as direct recall then it's hard to apply it. I imagine it would be best for the Anatomy course which tends to be rote a memorization subject anyways.
You get a 1 month free trial I believe. It is good that your professors are actively structuring their questions as clinical vignettes which take more time than rote memorization 1-2 liner questions, since a majority of the boards are in that format.
Yeah, there is definitely some anki sharing that goes on at my school. It seems to be more heavily used each year so the decks out there are building up. So far I have made cards covering every lecture we have had and have tagged them by content, theme, and block and put them online for my classmates/posterity. A super nice M3 at my school built an anki deck of M1 material from our lectures that is also found in FirstAid so that is pretty good. Of course, a lot of people make anki cards and then don't share them, so that's lousy 😛.
Firecracker is basically a collection of digital flashcards that operate on a spaced repetition algorithm and contain much/most of the basic knowledge you will need for Step 1. The flashcards are organized into topics which are linked to a brief overview. To add flashcards to your deck you flag topics, a process which generally involves reading the brief overview then adding the attached questions. Firecracker is of course a service which you subscribe to.
So the gist is Firecracker operates just like anki except someone has already done everything for you plus there is explanations (at attached images, diagrams, etc.) for all of the questions. The way I use it is to tag topics as we learn them in class (M1 here). For sure it is not a sufficient resource to well on the boards, but the idea is that you maintain your recall of all M1 and M2 material so that you have a very strong foundation to build on. Its extra work, but I'd rather learn the material once than purge post exam like some of my classmates, and this is the method that seems to work for me. 🙂
It's a pretty solid tool, in my opinion. Basically super quick, high yield info you'd see in First Aid but with slightly more detail. The idea is you do an hour or so a day to keep old things fresh.
For example, you'd get: "What do you see on EM with minimal change disease?" You answer in your head quickly, "effacement of foot processes," rate your knowledge 1-5, and move to the next question. Rate a 5 you'll see it in 3 weeks, rate a 1 it hits you again tomorrow. There's an detailed explanation for each answer if needed with a full synopsis of the general subject.
Ah, so its greater value is the spaced repetition concept. If you're unable to recall it, then you keep getting the question which theoretically slams it in your brain, pushing it into your long term memory.
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