Is Med School all memorization?

[biomed1010]

Hi guys,

So far in Undergrad, I have taken some Biology classes, where anybody could get a 100% in, provided they memorized the entire textbook or notes.

All the MCQ were straight forward, random facts. You either know it or you dont.

However, now im my genetics class, it is a whole new ball game.
The question is all application, and very twisted, and tricky to the extreme. I have friends who study 24/7 and still get C's. On top of that, there is bell curve.

There is obviously a great deal of memorization involved in med school. What are the multiple choice questions like for... say a first year student?
Are a lot of them straight forward you either know it or you dont type?

Also - I always wonder. In medical school, you are full of students who were pretty much top notch students in their undergrad, and i always wonder how hard professors have to make the exams to ensure that the class average is ~70%... As i said, you are teachign some of the brightest students ....

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[MilkmanAl]

There's far more memorization in med school than in undergrad. The tests aren't exceptionally difficult, but there's so much material that most people can't keep all of it down. Our class averages are usually somewhere in the mid-70's.

 

[Law2Doc]

Are a lot of them straight forward you either know it or you dont type?

In my experience a minority of questions in med school are like this, though you will likely have some. Profs often try to make a lot of the questions similar to those you'll see on the shelf or step exams. Thus rather than ask what drug is used to treat X condition, they'll give you a set of symptoms that you have to determine on your own is X condition and then ask you not what the condition is, but instead a question about what common side effect to watch out for when using the gold standard drug for the condition you diagnosed -- ie a two step problem -- you have to figure out the condition and know the drug and then use that info to answer about the side effect. And so on. The tests tend to all be multiple choice, so you can sometimes use the answer choices to reverse engineer your way to what condition you should be thinking about. Since it's multiple choice, it's an odd form of memorization -- you don't actually have to have the words in your head, just how it all goes together.

 

[LizzyM]

Some schools use a pass/fail system where the only students who fail an exam are those who fall at the extreme left of the bell curve (2 standard deviations from the mean). Schools may offer opportunities to re-take failed exams over the summer and if that doesn't work out, to repeat the course the following year at no additional charge.

You've really got to (not) work to be consistently in the bottom 2.5% of the class.

 

[Law2Doc]

...and if that doesn't work out, to repeat the course the following year at no additional charge.

You've really got to (not) work to be consistently in the bottom 2.5% of the class.

Well, at some places, it's quite common to fail an exam, and well over 2.5% of the class at some schools will fail a course. While it's tough to fail out of med school, it is certainly possible to have to repeat a course, or potentially even a year, at some schools. The way the first two years of med school are set up, you may not be able to repeat a course the following year without repeating the whole year -- there simply isn't time built in to repeat a course and stay on schedule. And at many schools it's not a "no additional charge" thing -- if you repeat a year, you pay another year's tuition. So failing is a very expensive proposition, adding insult to injury. As for having to not work to end up in the bottom 2.5% of the class -- I'm not sure where you are getting this information, but I think you may be underestimating how much work is involved to stay out of the basement at some schools. The differential in terms of hours studying between the person who does well and poorly may be nonexistent -- it's to some degree more about efficiency, memory and test taking skills, than it is about effort.

 

[Doublecortin]

Hi guys,

So far in Undergrad, I have taken some Biology classes, where anybody could get a 100% in, provided they memorized the entire textbook or notes.

All the MCQ were straight forward, random facts. You either know it or you dont.

However, now im my genetics class, it is a whole new ball game.
The question is all application, and very twisted, and tricky to the extreme. I have friends who study 24/7 and still get C's. On top of that, there is bell curve.

There is obviously a great deal of memorization involved in med school. What are the multiple choice questions like for... say a first year student?
Are a lot of them straight forward you either know it or you dont type?

Also - I always wonder. In medical school, you are full of students who were pretty much top notch students in their undergrad, and i always wonder how hard professors have to make the exams to ensure that the class average is ~70%... As i said, you are teachign some of the brightest students ....

well over 90% is memorization

 

[dragonfly99]

My med school was a LOT of memorization in the first 2 years, and not as much thinking as I would have liked!

Yes, they do make the tests HARD to get the average to be in the 70's because, as you noted OP, the average med school students were the top 5-10% vs. their college classmates.

Med school adcoms do a pretty good job of weeding out people who can't do the work, so if you get in you can be pretty sure that you can...provided you are dedicated and don't burn yourself out.

 

[lord_jeebus]

There's a lot of memorization, especially in the preclinical years, but being able to apply that knowledge to novel situations is the key to clinical success.

 

[Narmerguy]

Is it so much information that you simply can't possibly study it all or is it so much that it is extremely tedious to study it all?

 

[MilkmanAl]

Is "both" an acceptable answer? 😛 You can study everything, but studying it all well is pretty difficult.

 

[LizzyM]

Well, at some places, it's quite common to fail an exam, and well over 2.5% of the class at some schools will fail a course. While it's tough to fail out of med school, it is certainly possible to have to repeat a course, or potentially even a year, at some schools. The way the first two years of med school are set up, you may not be able to repeat a course the following year without repeating the whole year -- there simply isn't time built in to repeat a course and stay on schedule. And at many schools it's not a "no additional charge" thing -- if you repeat a year, you pay another year's tuition. So failing is a very expensive proposition, adding insult to injury. As for having to not work to end up in the bottom 2.5% of the class -- I'm not sure where you are getting this information, but I think you may be underestimating how much work is involved to stay out of the basement at some schools. The differential in terms of hours studying between the person who does well and poorly may be nonexistent -- it's to some degree more about efficiency, memory and test taking skills, than it is about effort.

Yes, you lose a year, but you need repeat only the failed courses, not the entire curriculum.

Obviously, the policies on repeating the year is not a question you want to ask at interview. 😱

In my experience over more than 5 years, it is very unusual to have a student fail more than one exam in an academic year. Sometimes it is a fluke, sometimes it is a wake-up call that is heeded, in some cases is the result of illness or other problem.

 

[scarletgirl777]

Some schools use a pass/fail system where the only students who fail an exam are those who fall at the extreme left of the bell curve (2 standard deviations from the mean). Schools may offer opportunities to re-take failed exams over the summer and if that doesn't work out, to repeat the course the following year at no additional charge.

You've really got to (not) work to be consistently in the bottom 2.5% of the class.

I mean, someone has to be in the bottom of the class...if performance on an exam is a function of ability and work ethic, it doesn't seem that much of a stretch to me that there would be some people who are continually in that position in a system where failing is based on a bell curve.

 

[TexasTriathlete]

It starts out as all memorization, and it becomes more conceptual as you go.

 

[vin5cent0]

I recently spoke with an Anesthesiologist and based on what he said, a good amount of it is memorization. He told me about one lecture where he learned over 100 different drugs and had to have them memorized on the test.

He also told me the most common studying method at his med school was the "leaky bucket method." Basically, it consisted of cramming as much as you could right before the test, and then hurrying to it before you forgot everything you just crammed. In case you don't get the analogy.. your head is the bucket, the info you're cramming is the water and you want to get it to the test before you spill it all out.

 

[TexasTriathlete]

Is is so much information that you simply can't possibly study it all or is it so much that it is extremely tedious to study it all?

They throw a ****-ton of information at you, and you have to figure out (i.e., guess) what is important. I find books like BRS to be good for narrowing down what to focus on.

 

[cpants]

It's a lot of memorization, but it's not all memorization. The test questions require you to actually think, not just regurgitate info that you memorized. Basically they want you to not only know everything, but to be able to apply the knowledge to clinical vignettes.

 

[CuddyMD]

I don't have a problem with memorizing a lot of stuff-- just retaining it. For most of college, I was able to study hard and do well on most exams, but 3 weeks after the final, I can't remember a thing.

Do med students do this too? If not, did you have to do something different to remember it for, well, forever? I can't imagine, from what I am told, learning the boundless amounts of material there is to learn and retain it for 2 years till I may actually use some of it.

And a question to residents/attendings: how much information that you learned in med school is still with you? How much of that do you really use from day to day?

 

[Lukkie]

Obviously, the policies on repeating the year is not a question you want to ask at interview. 😱

 

[FLDoc]

Yes, you lose a year, but you need repeat only the failed courses, not the entire curriculum.

Obviously, the policies on repeating the year is not a question you want to ask at interview. 😱

In my experience over more than 5 years, it is very unusual to have a student fail more than one exam in an academic year. Sometimes it is a fluke, sometimes it is a wake-up call that is heeded, in some cases is the result of illness or other problem.

The policies for dealing with failed courses is set by the school. UCincy, for example, has remediation for 5% below a passing grade (65-70 for micro, 62-67 for physio etc.) during the summer after the course is completed. If you fall below 5% or fail the remediation you retake ALL first year courses and pay FULL tuition (makes sense, I dont want a doc working on me who could only pass his classes when he took them one at a time).

 

[Haro4130Frame]

FLDoc, some schools, like mine, do one class at a time normally...lol

 

[LizzyM]

I mean, someone has to be in the bottom of the class...if performance on an exam is a function of ability and work ethic, it doesn't seem that much of a stretch to me that there would be some people who are continually in that position in a system where failing is based on a bell curve.

If everyone is "average" then how people fall on the curve in each test can be accounted for by random variation. In a class of 100 with 6 major exams, there might be 15 exams failed during the course of the year (6* 2.5). There might be 15 students falling 2 standard deviations below the mean on one test or another but no student falling below that cut point on more than one exam. Remediation and retaking of the exam in the summer is sometimes offered to make up the deficiency in that one block.

If someone repeatedly falls 2.5 standard deviations below the mean then the are statistically "below average" and a student promotion committee is called on to determine the next step.

 

[majahops]

Lizzy, please only answer this if you've got time. I won't be at all offended if you gloss over it 🙂

In these "unusual" cases of students failing more than one exam in an academic year, how often (if at all) is the primary reason related to being weak at memorizing facts with no underlying concepts to tie them together?

I ask because I am good at remembering things that have conceptual backing, because I can "reverse engineer" (to steal a phrase used below) the detail/fact using logic and an understanding of an overall process. What I tend to be quite weak at is remembering facts that aren't logically married to some greater concept (a process commonly referred to as "rote" memorization).

For instance, I did well in Organic Chemistry II, but for a very different reason than most of my friends. I had acquired a very good feeling for the way acids and bases behaved in various environments, so I was able to "intuit" (at least in large part) how reaction mechanisms would proceed. However, my friends, I noticed, found success primarily by memorizing every step of mechanisms and simply regurgitating them. I don't mean to bash their method at all. In fact, quite the opposite - I've always been envious of such skills.

Yes, you lose a year, but you need repeat only the failed courses, not the entire curriculum.

Obviously, the policies on repeating the year is not a question you want to ask at interview. 😱

In my experience over more than 5 years, it is very unusual to have a student fail more than one exam in an academic year. Sometimes it is a fluke, sometimes it is a wake-up call that is heeded, in some cases is the result of illness or other problem.

 

[LizzyM]

I'm not sure what proportion of exam failures is due to problems related to memorization. I don't have a first line responsibility in that regard. From what I've heard, some students have psycho-social or health issues that cause them to fall behind.

As much as some people belly-ache about PBL, it does put facts into a context that may make them easier to remember.

 

[majahops]

Thanks, Lizzy! 🙂

PBL seems AWESOME, by the way.

I'm not sure what proportion of exam failures is due to problems related to memorization. I don't have a first line responsibility in that regard. From what I've heard, some students have psycho-social or health issues that cause them to fall behind.

As much as some people belly-ache about PBL, it does put facts into a context that may make them easier to remember.

 

[FLDoc]

FLDoc, some schools, like mine, do one class at a time normally...lol

👍 for the smart ***** remark...my comment was refering to previous comments discussing retaking 1 vs. all courses if you happen to fail one. Odviously it is one in the same for many systems-based curricula. But please continue to enlighten us with pointless attacks.

 

[GoLakers310]

yes, 90% of how well you will do in med school ALL depends on how much you memorize. The other 10% is applying. Get this: there are so many smart people in my class that can memorize over 500 different stuffs per day. The difference in curve will come down to how well you apply what you learned, in addition to KNOWING almost EVERYTHING in your notes. Yes, that 10% will separate A's from C's...

 

[GoLakers310]

Obviously, the policies on repeating the year is not a question you want to ask at interview. 😱

I am guessing that would mean an automatic rejection?

 

[GoLakers310]

FLDoc, some schools, like mine, do one class at a time normally...lol

Texas education sucks

 

[BigRedder]

There is a lot of memorization, but if your professors want to keep it interesting they will make you apply your knowledge. In Organic Chemistry, conceptualization is the way to go. However, to be successful in anatomy you really have to keep a model of the entire human body in your head. How you do that is up to you. Just remember that what separates MDs from PAs and NPs is that we really know how the body works and they are usually following protocols. People are paying you extra money to KNOW a lot of information and put it all together.

A good trick for remembering as much as possible is to talk through everything. Explain it to your friends, explain it to yourself, explain it to your cat. If you can teach it, you know it.

A side note about PBL: we are primarily lecture based, but one of our classes is kind of PBL-like, and while I've learned a ton from it, the class can be QUITE frustrating. It's tough to walk before you can crawl...

 

[majahops]

BigRedder,

From the bottom of my heart, thank you for your very thoughtful input and advice.

I have found that the best way to learn stuff is to explain it to someone else... I completely feel you there.

Thanks again.

There is a lot of memorization, but if your professors want to keep it interesting they will make you apply your knowledge. In Organic Chemistry, conceptualization is the way to go. However, to be successful in anatomy you really have to keep a model of the entire human body in your head. How you do that is up to you. Just remember that what separates MDs from PAs and NPs is that we really know how the body works and they are usually following protocols. People are paying you extra money to KNOW a lot of information and put it all together.

A good trick for remembering as much as possible is to talk through everything. Explain it to your friends, explain it to yourself, explain it to your cat. If you can teach it, you know it.

A side note about PBL: we are primarily lecture based, but one of our classes is kind of PBL-like, and while I've learned a ton from it, the class can be QUITE frustrating. It's tough to walk before you can crawl...

 

[Concubine]

Yeah, lots of memorization so far (1st year).

At my school, the teachers try really hard to make the questions like those you would see on the boards, i.e. lots of distractions. The problem is there is so much info coming at you, that it is impossible to memorize all of it. You got to pick and chose what you think is most important. That works for the bulk of the tests, but there are always questions that nit-pick at details that you overlook or don't study enough. These are the ones you can sometimes arrive at the correct answer just by elimination, but also require a good bit of thinking. So it's not all about spouting out info.

 

[Law2Doc]

If everyone is "average" then how people fall on the curve in each test can be accounted for by random variation. In a class of 100 with 6 major exams, there might be 15 exams failed during the course of the year (6* 2.5). There might be 15 students falling 2 standard deviations below the mean on one test or another but no student falling below that cut point on more than one exam. Remediation and retaking of the exam in the summer is sometimes offered to make up the deficiency in that one block.

If someone repeatedly falls 2.5 standard deviations below the mean then the are statistically "below average" and a student promotion committee is called on to determine the next step.

Um, no. Many schools simply don't use the bell curve/"2 standard deviations" rule you describe. In fact, at a lot of schools theoretically the whole class could fail. They don't but it's not that "unusual" on a given test for as much as 5-10% of the class to fail. There was a discussion on SDN a while back where a person at one school saw a whopping 15% of his class fail a final. So I think you are describing what is done at your school (in your 5 years of experience), and perhaps not the norm across schools. In fact, at a lot of schools there will be many people who will fail an exam, a smaller but still pretty significant handful that will fail a course (ie multiple exams), and a couple of people required to repeat the whole year (meaning failing multiple tests in multiple courses). Happens someplace every year -- at a lot of schools as you advance to second year, you will see a few of your classmates back in the first year again. Remediations and make up exams are the norm, and every school gives folks second and third chances, but you are leading people astray if you suggest that at most med schools it's a rarity to fail anything. I've watched the exact thing you say is "pretty unusual" happen to quite a few people, and for the most part these people logged the hours (although perhaps inefficiently). And there are lots of posts in allo supporting the fact that more schools are like this than the bell curve method you describe.

 

[CCLCMer]

We don't have tests or grades at CCLCM, so basically there is no memorization required even for the preclinical years. That has both pros and cons. On the good side, we come out of second year being very conceptual thinkers with a problem-solving orientation, and I think it helps us on the wards. Even the PBL cases come in useful sometimes because I will remember something from a case that is similar to a real patient I'm seeing. On the not so good side, I know way less anatomy than most med students do because I hate memorizing it, and I wasn't ever forced to memorize it except for the relatively few things that are essential to know for Step 1. This is also a big part of why I am taking a medical micro elective right now, since micro is another memorization-heavy subject that I mainly only crammed for Step 1. Ironically, micro wound up being my highest subscore on Step 1, but I still felt like I didn't know as much about it as I should have coming out of second year.

I think Law2Doc is right about how at least some schools work. It's not just limited to first and second years, because people at schools with shelf exams still have to memorize things for them. I have a friend at another school who low passed and failed too many clerkships and had to repeat the entire third year, of all things. 😱 I don't know how anyone recovers from a blow like that, on a lot of levels: cost of a fifth year, having that kind of massive failure on your record when you go to apply for residency, and the mental anguish. As bad as the first two things are, the psychological and social fallout from having to repeat third year would be worse by far.

 

[enjoydrywax]

I don't have a problem with memorizing a lot of stuff-- just retaining it. For most of college, I was able to study hard and do well on most exams, but 3 weeks after the final, I can't remember a thing.

Do med students do this too? If not, did you have to do something different to remember it for, well, forever? I can't imagine, from what I am told, learning the boundless amounts of material there is to learn and retain it for 2 years till I may actually use some of it.

And a question to residents/attendings: how much information that you learned in med school is still with you? How much of that do you really use from day to day?

Could somebody address/answer these questions? Thanks.

 

[Law2Doc]

Could somebody address/answer these questions? Thanks.

Sure. The big difference between undergrad and med school is the number of repetitions you do through the material. Where in undergrad you might be able to cram the night before and get an A, in med school to do well, you usually have to go through the material multiple times, starting long before the night before. Typically, you might preread the material, hear it at lecture, review your notes the night after lecture, review the whole week's material on the weekend, and again review the whole block's worth of info before each exam. So that's five passes through the material. Definitely helps cement it into your longterm memory better. And then you will look at the material again for Step 1, and probably review parts of it for various pimp questions on rotations. So eventually, you end up remembering quite a lot of it. Not all of it, or even most, but a lot more than the typical undergrad course which you would forget right after the exam.

 

[RySerr21]

There is a lot of memorization, but if your professors want to keep it interesting they will make you apply your knowledge. In Organic Chemistry, conceptualization is the way to go. However, to be successful in anatomy you really have to keep a model of the entire human body in your head. How you do that is up to you. Just remember that what separates MDs from PAs and NPs is that we really know how the body works and they are usually following protocols. People are paying you extra money to KNOW a lot of information and put it all together.

A good trick for remembering as much as possible is to talk through everything. Explain it to your friends, explain it to yourself, explain it to your cat. If you can teach it, you know it.

A side note about PBL: we are primarily lecture based, but one of our classes is kind of PBL-like, and while I've learned a ton from it, the class can be QUITE frustrating. It's tough to walk before you can crawl...

I actually never learned to crawl. I just started walking. I started crawling AFTER I leanred how to walk. I wonder if I would be kick ass at PBL?

 

[nlax30]

I agree in that there is a lot of memorization, but by no means is that it.... Granted, if you are REALLY good at quickly memorizing a bunch of details then some stuff may come easier to you but that is NOT me.

I'm actually pretty bad at memorizing. I am, though, pretty good at understanding a concept and then working my way through a question/problem like someone above mentioned. I also need context in which to learn the details and that certainly helps.

So it's both. There's no escaping the fact that there are a lot of details you just need to learn, but you also need to be able to fit those into a larger picture and reason through a 2nd/3rd order type questions.

PBL here helps me with that. I don't get a whole lot from condensed notes/powerpoints and I have the time to be able to read the same concept in a few different books and that helps things sink in.

As far as retaining the info..... yea it's a problem in med school as well. For me there is a difference in that in undergrad I was young, stupid and not all that much concerned with trying to retain a whole lot from each class. I guess here there's a different mindset that now I'll actually be USING this knowledge one day and owe it to myself to really try to learn and retain as much as I can. And, at least in our curriculum, there is a good amount of redundancy in that we hit on most "topics" a couple times during the first 2 years. For example: I definitely lost a lot of the cardio path that I had covered first year but as we're touching on it again now some of it comes back and it just reinforces what you've already seen.

All in all..... it is a lot of work, and a LOT of material being thrown at you but it is very doable. Starting off last year I really no clue how I was every going to start to try learn all this stuff.... but it's a marathon and you just start working your way through the material as it's presented. There's no shortcut or magic tricks, just DON'T GET BEHIND.

 

[nlax30]

Couple other thoughts....


- I ABSOLUTELY agree with the advice of teaching the material to someone else. In a lot of cases it's the best way in making sure YOU know it. Very helpful....

- Quick note about PBL. I know people tend to be polarized on this but I'll throw this out there. From my experience so far, PBL is kind of an all or nothing sort of thing when it comes to the curriclum.... for it to "work" properly you kind of need it all to be PBL and not throwing in random case study sessions here and there in a traditional curriclum. The misunderstanding is that you are supposed to learn IN the small group session.... in reality very little learning actually takes place during the session. Instead, most of the learning should be taking place after you leave the group session and go read on the basic science topics that you have determined were necessary to read/understand so that you can progress further in the case.

Then next session, there may be a little time spent discussing what was read previously, but the majority of the time is now spent on moving forward and then determining what NEW science issues need to be learned.... rinse, lather, repeat.

 

[CCLCMer]

Couple other thoughts....


- I ABSOLUTELY agree with the advice of teaching the material to someone else. In a lot of cases it's the best way in making sure YOU know it. Very helpful....

- Quick note about PBL. I know people tend to be polarized on this but I'll throw this out there. From my experience so far, PBL is kind of an all or nothing sort of thing when it comes to the curriclum.... for it to "work" properly you kind of need it all to be PBL and not throwing in random case study sessions here and there in a traditional curriclum. The misunderstanding is that you are supposed to learn IN the small group session.... in reality very little learning actually takes place during the session. Instead, most of the learning should be taking place after you leave the group session and go read on the basic science topics that you have determined were necessary to read/understand so that you can progress further in the case.

Then next session, there may be a little time spent discussing what was read previously, but the majority of the time is now spent on moving forward and then determining what NEW science issues need to be learned.... rinse, lather, repeat.

I agree with everything nlax30 said in this post. The way we do PBL at my school is fun and often the best learning experience. Our curriculum is about 1/3 PBL and the rest seminars and clinics. It's really more of a CBL (case based learning), actually, and the seminars are integrated with the PBL cases so that they all reinforce each other. Most of the time it works that way, anyway. But if I had to do PBL like some schools do (getting letter grades for it, and as an afterthought tacked on to a traditional curriculum where it took time away from studying for tests), I would probably have resented it too.

 

[MiguelSanchez]

You can kill yourself trying to memorize everything, sure. And you'll do just fine if you put in that amount of work.

Or you can realize that a lot of what you learn will be deducible based on a small set of memorized details, especially in subjects like physiology, pharmacology, anatomy, and biochemistry. Of course you need a strong background in science (and if you did all your premed by memorization, then no I don't consider that a strong background).

If you know a drug is an anti-hypertensive, and the basic class of the drug, you can figure out how it MUST work in the body. If you know what a muscle does, you should be able to deduce what it originates from and inserts into. If you know that people do not typically spontaneously die, then you can deduce several responses of the human body to stresses. And, if you know some basics of organic and physical chemistry, you should be able to figure out how a chemical pathway works given the initial substrate and the final product.

What was always frustrating to me in med school was when people would spend countless hours memorizing fact after fact, without thinking WHY these things are true. When I learned something new, I would first ask myself whether something makes logical sense. If it did, then I would memorize only the minimum to recreate the process/pathway. If not, then I would think about memorizing.

 

[BigRedder]

It's all about the mnemonics. Don't tell me you "conceptualized" the bones of the wrist without knowing that Some Lovers Try Positions That They Cannot Handle. At least muscles make sense.

 

[stooges287]

Yes, most of medical school is memorization.

No, I highly doubt anyone can not have the ability to memorize this material. The amount you memorize is directly correlated with how much time you put in studying it. I think most pre-meds who can matriculate into medical school will have this ability; it's not like you need exceptional memorization skills.

 

[RySerr21]

It's all about the mnemonics. Don't tell me you "conceptualized" the bones of the wrist without knowing that Some Lovers Try Positions That They Cannot Handle. At least muscles make sense.

I used: Stop Letting Those People Touch The Cadavers Hand

 

[Law2Doc]

It's all about the mnemonics. Don't tell me you "conceptualized" the bones of the wrist without knowing that Some Lovers Try Positions That They Cannot Handle. At least muscles make sense.

That works for a couple of subjects at best (definitely anatomy, not so much the later courses). Don't expect you will get by in med school on mnemonics.

 

[Law2Doc]

I agree with everything nlax30 said in this post.

Second that.

 

[BigRedder]

That works for a couple of subjects at best (definitely anatomy, not so much the later courses). Don't expect you will get by in med school on mnemonics.

Nah, I just think they are funny. I think I know like 5 mnemonics.

People talk about memorization as if it is a bad thing. You are going to take a test that requires you to know a lot of information. You can't bring a book, so you have to remember it. Is that not, by definition, memorization? The trick is memorizing higher order pieces of information and using the associative property to condense the small facts. Like file compression.

 

[GoLakers310]

I agree in that there is a lot of memorization, but by no means is that it.... Granted, if you are REALLY good at quickly memorizing a bunch of details then some stuff may come easier to you but that is NOT me.

I'm actually pretty bad at memorizing. I am, though, pretty good at understanding a concept and then working my way through a question/problem like someone above mentioned. I also need context in which to learn the details and that certainly helps.

So it's both. There's no escaping the fact that there are a lot of details you just need to learn, but you also need to be able to fit those into a larger picture and reason through a 2nd/3rd order type questions.

PBL here helps me with that. I don't get a whole lot from condensed notes/powerpoints and I have the time to be able to read the same concept in a few different books and that helps things sink in.

As far as retaining the info..... yea it's a problem in med school as well. For me there is a difference in that in undergrad I was young, stupid and not all that much concerned with trying to retain a whole lot from each class. I guess here there's a different mindset that now I'll actually be USING this knowledge one day and owe it to myself to really try to learn and retain as much as I can. And, at least in our curriculum, there is a good amount of redundancy in that we hit on most "topics" a couple times during the first 2 years. For example: I definitely lost a lot of the cardio path that I had covered first year but as we're touching on it again now some of it comes back and it just reinforces what you've already seen.

All in all..... it is a lot of work, and a LOT of material being thrown at you but it is very doable. Starting off last year I really no clue how I was every going to start to try learn all this stuff.... but it's a marathon and you just start working your way through the material as it's presented. There's no shortcut or magic tricks, just DON'T GET BEHIND.

Allopathic schools are EVEN harder!

 

[MiguelSanchez]

It's all about the mnemonics. Don't tell me you "conceptualized" the bones of the wrist without knowing that Some Lovers Try Positions That They Cannot Handle. At least muscles make sense.

Sure things like that can't be conceptualized. But if those are a significant portion of your med school curriculum or tests, you aren't being prepared well for USMLE and shelf exams. In med school, exams are (or at least should be) about applying knowledge, not answering things that any junior high student can look up within 5 minutes.

 

[GoLakers310]

applying is easy. it is more about whether or not you memorize everything and then applying that to clinical situations...
The tough part is knowing EVERYTHING... sure, if you have an idea, you might guess it right on the exam... but do you want to take that chance when someone is dying? Let me see... i will guess and do this... hah...
Most analytical math classes or engineering classes are much tougher in terms of applying, more than any medical school classes or clinical situations...
so are u freely admitting that engineers are smarter than typical med students?

 

[CCLCMer]

It's all about the mnemonics. Don't tell me you "conceptualized" the bones of the wrist without knowing that Some Lovers Try Positions That They Cannot Handle. At least muscles make sense.

I'm not sure if you're talking to me or nlax30, but I'll bite. In my case, I never learned the bones of the wrist at all. There was no reason for me to memorize the bones of the wrist. I never had to take an anatomy test and it's not the kind of anatomy that's important for Step 1. I have never even heard of that mnemonic you posted. But if knowing the wrist bones by heart does ever come up in my future career for some unanticipated reason, I suppose I'll manage to memorize them just fine.

applying is easy. it is more about whether or not you memorize everything and then applying that to clinical situations...
The tough part is knowing EVERYTHING... sure, if you have an idea, you might guess it right on the exam... but do you want to take that chance when someone is dying? Let me see... i will guess and do this... hah...
Most analytical math classes or engineering classes are much tougher in terms of applying, more than any medical school classes or clinical situations...
so are u freely admitting that engineers are smarter than typical med students?

I think you are probably a troll, but ok, I'll respond anyway.

I think you have things backwards. Memorizing facts is the lowest form of learning. Facts are useless without a context and a valid interpretation. Just think of the pointy haired boss from Dilbert. He has all the facts but is totally incompetent because he doesn't understand them.

When it comes to making decisions on the wards, you will never have all the facts available. So even the smartest, most experienced, most well-read doctor is always making decisions based on incomplete information. Even if you had perfect knowledge of Harrison's, you could still get tripped up because maybe we don't know enough about that disease's pathophysiology, or one of your tests gave a false positive, or our technology isn't able to solve the problem that particular patient has. For example, sometimes people come to CCF thinking that the doctors here can solve any cardiovascular problem in the world. I've heard a few patients with incurable heart diseases say things like, "wasn't CCF the top-ranked heart hospital for 14 years in a row? Then what do you MEAN, you can't cure my disease?" As good of a heart hospital as this is, and it really is awesome, the CCF cardiologists and CT surgeons still can't save every patient. People die of heart disease in this hospital every single day, and it's not because the doctors didn't learn enough facts in medical school.

No, I don't think engineers are smarter than medical students. But I think that most second year engineering students are likely to be better problem-solvers than most second year med students are. Fortunately, med students start needing to problem-solve more in the clinical years, and since they ARE smart, they learn how to do it. But it's a big adjustment for a lot of med students between second and third years when they start clerkships, and that's part of the rationale for introducing more clinical experience and PBL into preclinical curriculums.

My school focuses on problem-solving and not memorization. It's not a coincidence that around 1/3 of my classmates have engineering degrees. A lot of us who are not engineers have liberal arts degrees, and that's another background that rewards problem-solving more than memorization. People who mainly get by on memorization wouldn't do very well at this school, and they probably wouldn't want to come here anyway.