Medical school work ethic and exams

[sjagan1]

Hello everyone, how are you? I am a new MS1 at a DO school. I understand that getting As and Bs is MUCH harder in med school compared to undergraduate no matter how hard undergraduate was. Also, there is no sugarcoating that you can study very hard and still get "just passing".

However, I feel that knowing ahead of time the most common reasons medical school students fail exams will go a long way. Also, what is key to having a strong study/work ethic? One of my good medical student friends who has not gotten lower than a B on her tests says that it is work ethic that makes the difference and knowing what's important clinically is important in how to study.

What do you think? I would appreciate your advice whenever it may be convenient. Thank you 🙂


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[cliquesh]

Med school isn't hard. It's just a lot of stuff. Go through your notes 4x before the test and you'll never get below a 90%.

 

[keevwu]

Med school isn't hard. It's just a lot of stuff. Go through your notes 4x before the test and you'll never get below a 90%.

that sounds easy

 

[cliquesh]

that sounds easy

I thought it was pretty easy and kind of fun, too. The only hard part is when you have a couple hundred pages to go through for a test.

 

[Kevin Baker]

The top three things imo which result in failing classes, in order, are

1) Not studying efficiently

2) Failing a previous class and freaking out or having school required mandatory sessions going over why you failed and trying to prevent future failures, which take away needed time

3) Not studying long enough.

Most students at this level have a great work ethic so I wouldn't worry about this. I would worry about studying efficiently. I had a ton of trouble starting out as I'd just keep rereading the same old anatomy pages and keep going over the UMich anatomy website without absorbing the relevant info. There is a close to infinite amount of testable material, but only a small fraction is high yield. The hardest part of doing well in the pre clinical years is filtering the testable material into high yield material. Once you figure this out, the workload gets a lot less daunting.

 

[PeachyOrange]

Repetition is the key

 

[sjagan1]

Yup, translating the seemingly "all fair game material" into high yield is the steepest curve when it comes to adjusting to medical school examinations.

Ultimately high yield carries the day.

what was the process u used to figure out the "really high yield", kevin? Studying with groups and thinking of relevant patient case scenario questions? That really helps me learn well and understand things in general. I have heard a lot of people say that is effective.

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[sjagan1]

Thanks everyone for your advice 🙂

One last thing, would you recommend using board review books to help with classroom exams or should you wait until AFTER you finished the course and use them ONLY for COMLEX study?

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[shibby1111]

Just make sure you go to class, pay attention to the lectures, take some notes, review the notes once maybe twice with friends the night before the exam, maybe quiz each other before the exam starts, and you'll be fine.

 

[Kevin Baker]

Yup, translating the seemingly "all fair game material" into high yield is the steepest curve when it comes to adjusting to medical school examinations.

Ultimately high yield carries the day.

what was the process u used to figure out the "really high yield", kevin? Studying with groups and thinking of relevant patient case scenario questions? That really helps me learn well and understand things in general. I have heard a lot of people say that is effective.

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Studying in groups helped keep me focused as did quizzing each other and asking questions.

I tried to use lots and lots of review books and board prep sources at first to highlight the high yield stuff. That didn't work so well, (except the Green Book by Savarese which was amazing for OMM class) though I do think it's good to lightly follow along in a board review book just to gauge what you should be retaining.

What you'll be tested on is very professor specific. With some professors, review sources work great. A video pathology lecture series called Pathoma taught much more efficiently than my path prof and the prof would test on the same types of things. No pharm book I found taught the same stuff as our pharm prof, so using outside resources was a waste of time. Your own study strategy will likely need to be tweaked a bit with each class, but repetition is going to be key.

My main strategy was to determine if a professor's lecture was worth studying. If it was, did I need to listen or attend lecture, or could I get the information through the powerpoint. If the lecture wasn't worth studying, what alternative resource could I use to get the information. Generally, I'd go through each powerpoint worth studying 3-4 times before a test, listen to ~1/2 the lectures, and use sources to supplement those other 1/2 of our lectures. I found Qbanks really helpful end of 2nd year to help quickly recall information. I'd also keep all my notes since the previous test on one word document, which I'd try to go over for an hour every night, and I'd limit each lecture to a page worth of notes max.. That way, you review the previous day's material every day and don't forget it, and limiting the length of your notes forces you to only focus on high yield material.