Quantifying the Work

[CuddyMD]

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Hi!

On these boards, everyone quantifies the material in how many hours they have to study, but that number isn't really helpful to me.
I was wondering if a few med students could help me quantify the workload one expects to do their first and second year in terms of pages/unit time where the time is one exam cycle.

1. For example, in undergrad, I had about 30 slides per day, met 3 times a week and had exams every 3 weeks, giving me about 270 slides to consume in 3 weeks. To hopefully make this a bit more objective, I was hoping you could express the pages all in the same unit too (roughly), making the standard either a powerpoint slide or a word document with 1" margins, single spaced and no images. I know this is pretty unscientific, but any ballpark number/time would be helpful.

2. I have a poor understanding of what happens 3rd and 4th year in terms of volume and WHAT you are studying. Do you get a syllabus + xxx(please fill xxx in with real numbers) pages of material to study outside the hospital? Do the pimping questions come from this material or out of thin air?

3. I think you have "shelf" exams for each rotation. What is being tested here? The xxx pages, the pimping questions, stuff you are learning by ear on the floor, all of the above?

 

[Depakote]

Hi!

On these boards, everyone quantifies the material in how many hours they have to study, but that number isn't really helpful to me.
I was wondering if a few med students could help me quantify the workload one expects to do their first and second year in terms of pages/unit time where the time is one exam cycle.

1. For example, in undergrad, I had about 30 slides per day, met 3 times a week and had exams every 3 weeks, giving me about 270 slides to consume in 3 weeks. To hopefully make this a bit more objective, I was hoping you could express the pages all in the same unit too (roughly), making the standard either a powerpoint slide or a word document with 1" margins, single spaced and no images. I know this is pretty unscientific, but any ballpark number/time would be helpful.

2. I have a poor understanding of what happens 3rd and 4th year in terms of volume and WHAT you are studying. Do you get a syllabus + xxx(please fill xxx in with real numbers) pages of material to study outside the hospital? Do the pimping questions come from this material or out of thin air?

3. I think you have "shelf" exams for each rotation. What is being tested here? The xxx pages, the pimping questions, stuff you are learning by ear on the floor, all of the above?

This is a realistic depiction of the cumulative volume you will cover M1+M2

M3-M4 you have a rotation, you are responsible for your duties on the rotation and then you have a shelf exam at the end. You study independently for the shelf exam using whatever recommended text. I don't believe you will get a syllabus. You may have a clinical skills exam to test your proficiency in the skills you learn on the rotation as well.

As mentioned above, there is material you are supposed to learn in the field. Some of it you may learn from your residents/attendings but you are also responsible for a large amount of independent study years 3-4. (year 3 in particular) This is one of the major reasons that year is such a strain.

 

[cpants]

Hi!

On these boards, everyone quantifies the material in how many hours they have to study, but that number isn't really helpful to me.
I was wondering if a few med students could help me quantify the workload one expects to do their first and second year in terms of pages/unit time where the time is one exam cycle.

1. For example, in undergrad, I had about 30 slides per day, met 3 times a week and had exams every 3 weeks, giving me about 270 slides to consume in 3 weeks. To hopefully make this a bit more objective, I was hoping you could express the pages all in the same unit too (roughly), making the standard either a powerpoint slide or a word document with 1" margins, single spaced and no images. I know this is pretty unscientific, but any ballpark number/time would be helpful.

2. I have a poor understanding of what happens 3rd and 4th year in terms of volume and WHAT you are studying. Do you get a syllabus + xxx(please fill xxx in with real numbers) pages of material to study outside the hospital? Do the pimping questions come from this material or out of thin air?

3. I think you have "shelf" exams for each rotation. What is being tested here? The xxx pages, the pimping questions, stuff you are learning by ear on the floor, all of the above?

For preclinical:
Last cycle (3 weeks) we had about 50 hours of lecture with 40-50 slides/hr, for 2-2.5k slides per exam cycle, plus lab material, assigned reading, and small group sessions. It's a lot, but there is significant overlap in the material, ie. almost everything in the assigned reading is covered in lecture and visa versa. You get used to the volume.

 

[njbmd]

This is very school dependent. My school had very detailed syllabi books that were given out at the beginning of each semester. These contained essentially everything that you needed to know and master. We had recommended texts that were somewhat useful for some classes and not needed for others.

For third year, we had in house exams and shelf exams that determined 45% of our grade. The rest was from evals from attendings/chief residents. Every rotation had a recommended text but word of mouth determined whether or not one actually needed the text. In general, reading about your what your patient had and keeping up with a solid reading/study schedule made the end of rotation exams pretty simple.

For fourth year, no end of rotation exams but grading heavily dependent on clinical performance. In short, fourth year was pretty sweet as long as you took USMLE Step II early and got your match work done as soon as possible. Most early rotations knew that you would be away on interviews and thus they were pretty nice. After Match Day, nothing stood between me and graduation except to pick up my diploma.

I had friends at other schools that had far more reading and handout materials that we did. I also had friends who spent more time studying notes (we didn't need too much note taking) that we did. Again, there is not specific way to tell you how much you will have to study, read, memorize etc. You work out what you need to do for yourself.

 

[nlax30]

Regarding the first two years specifically.... going to vary depending on the school and curriculum. I'm in a strictly PBL program so there are really no lectures/powerpoints for the basic sciences, just our required texts. Our first test of this semester is coming up in a week and there's about 40-50 chapters that will be covered on it. Though the way the curriculum is set up a good portion of that is material we've kind of already covered, most topics tend to get hit on twice during our first two years.

Not sure how you would compare that to your slides and such, but I don't think it's much of a stretch to say that those 270 slides you are currently covering in 3 weeks might be covered in like a couple days?

 

[CuddyMD]

For preclinical:
Last cycle (3 weeks) we had about 50 hours of lecture with 40-50 slides/hr, for 2-2.5k slides per exam cycle, plus lab material, assigned reading, and small group sessions. It's a lot, but there is significant overlap in the material, ie. almost everything in the assigned reading is covered in lecture and visa versa. You get used to the volume.

This is exactly what I was looking for. I just wish I didn't know now 😡.

 

[ChiDO]

We just started a new system this past monday, first test this coming monday. 1 week - 20 lecture hours ~150 pages of 4 slides per page, plus assigned self reading.

Some overlapping material ~10-15 pages.

And that is why it is almost 10 PM and I'm in the library...yay...medical schoooool!

 

[nlax30]

This is exactly what I was looking for. I just wish I didn't know now 😡.

Don't worry about that part now, just focus on doing what you should be doing now at the undergrad level keep good grades and prepare for MCAT.

It is intimidating and before I started my friends who were in med school tried to explain it to me, quantify the work, and describe how much material it can be, but it just won't become real until you actually start. And then somehow, magically it seems, you build up momentum and just start chugging along.

I am by NO means a quick reader and not good with rote memorization at all and have done just fine. My strength, though, is that if I take my time to understand a pathway, mechanism, disease process, etc... then I can go back and work through most problems/questions dealing with that pathway even if I may not remember a specific little detail.

There are others though that can get through material extremely fast and just seem to remember every little detail they see and they do just fine as well so everyone is going to learn differently. The challenge is to figure out how YOU need to assimilate and get through this material so that YOU understand and retain it.

 

[BigRedPremed]

Our test today had 50 lectures of approx. 30-40 slides per lecture so that's approx. 1600 slides covered per test (not including anatomy, histology, etc.). I'd say that's fairly typical for M1-M2 tests at my school.

 

[sprinkibrio]

Slides are really, really variable based on lecturer. I would say 30-50 per lecture is a good estimate. I think each lecture is the same amount of material as a college lecture, but we have 40 lectures in three weeks then a test. Each lecture has around 15 pages of single-spaced, probably 8 size font in the syllabus. MS1 was about half this amount, but I don't remember enough to give you detail like you want. You are much less efficient at learning MS1 so although it's less info you might study the same amount.

MS3 at my school has a syllabus per rotation, but it's mostly basic and practical things and you need to know much more to do well on the shelf exams (national standardized tests). Most people buy an review book that deals with things you learned MS1 and 2 plus more treatment issues and many books with practice questions. On rotations where you are notoriously pimped (surgery) there are actually books that deal with common pimp topics.

 

[PepperMD]

I'm an M2 and the first test we had this semester after 3 weeks of class covered 1100+ printed pages with roughly 3 slides per page. This covered cardiovascular, infectious disease, and some various other topics. This was the first of 4 tests for ONLY THIS CLASS. Add in the other classes and you can imagine... Good times, good times.

 

[grandslam521]

I'm an MS2. We generally have three weeks of material before a test. Typically, we have an average of 4 lectures a day containing, on average, about 50 slides per lecture (some may be 30 slides...we have had up to about 90 in one lecture - kill me). That makes about 200 slides per day, and it usually ends up to be about 2500 slides per test. However, we are systems based, so we have everything on one test.

 

[bodonid]

volume only really comes into play if you are cramming. For the people that keep up with the material on a day-to-day basis it is manageable. But lots of people I know still cram in med school- most don't do as well, but that is their business. My advice- don't worry about the volume, just convince yourself that you either 1)need to go to class every day or 2)that you need to keep up with each day's lectures THAT SAME DAY. Not at the end of each week, but every day.

Also, making review questions/sheets helps. Just like notecards back in the day, you learn a lot just by making them.

 

[Law2Doc]

... 2)that you need to keep up with each day's lectures THAT SAME DAY. Not at the end of each week, but every day.
....

I would suggest that you keep up with each day's lectures AND go through it again at the end of each week. Weekends are nice because they are the only days you aren't getting any new material, so they should be used to really cement in the things you covered the prior week. But that only works if you spent the time to get a good couple of passes through the material each day. Some recommend prereading for each lecture, attend or watch the lecture remotely, then review all the material from the lecture EACH day. Then review the whole week on the weekend. And then you can do a very quick pass through the material at the end before the exam because you've already gone through it 4 times when it was presented. Repetition is what works in med school, cramming really doesn't. But everybody has their own tweaks, some like group study, some like flash cards, etc. So you have to figure out what works for you. Ignore what everyone else is doing -- it is a very independent journey. Keep your eyes on your own plate. And expect that what works in undergrad simply won't in med school. Everyone needs to change things up once they see the volume involved. Don't be afraid to shake things up if your test scores suggest you aren't doing things optimally. The first year is very much about learning how to study as much as learning the material. You may think you know how to do this from undergrad, but most don't.

 

[Jolie South]

volume only really comes into play if you are cramming. For the people that keep up with the material on a day-to-day basis it is manageable. But lots of people I know still cram in med school- most don't do as well, but that is their business.

I think this is key. I'm never stressed when exams roll around because I've already mostly learned the material through keeping up.

I guess it's your business if you want to sleep or not sleep in the library for a week straight before tests, but I'd rather not have the pressure and sleep 8 hours a night during test week.

I also feel like long term learning is what we're supposed to be doing, if not for your career at least for boards. I'm learning as much as I can now to avoid having to completely relearn all 2 years of material in the 6 weeks or whatever before Step 1.

 

[nogolfinsnow]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5RapBjos3I

Probably the best analogy out there about the first two years of medical school and pretty much goes along with all the advice already given in this thread.

 

[SB100]

I had a question about MS3/MS4 with independent study --> what resources do you tend to use? Reference texts, study aids, journal articles?

 

[Law2Doc]

I had a question about MS3/MS4 with independent study --> what resources do you tend to use? Reference texts, study aids, journal articles?

Most people rely heavily on online things like uptodate or MDconsult for the day to day research, epocrates for the drugs info, and study aids for the shelf exams. Journal articles are important to read to show interest to attendings. You can probably get by without a specific reference text.

 

[montessori2md]

For preclinical:
Last cycle (3 weeks) we had about 50 hours of lecture with 40-50 slides/hr, for 2-2.5k slides per exam cycle, plus lab material, assigned reading, and small group sessions. It's a lot, but there is significant overlap in the material, ie. almost everything in the assigned reading is covered in lecture and visa versa. You get used to the volume.

Dude, where'd you get that pic of Costanzo? 🙂 She should put that on her page. And I think that's only 1 year's worth of syllabi, and it's more than that if you print the slides to go with. The physio syllabus alone goes halfway up to her knee.

How many pages is kind of a lame way to go about assessing quantity of material, b/c the density of the information varies wildly from topic to topic. The structure list for the anatomy practical, for example, can take forever to master, as opposed to your histology slides (oh look, stratified columnar epithelium again!) which have lots of pictures and not so much text.
On the other hand, if you're actually using a list and microscope for histology.....well, that's a different quantity of time altogether.

There is also all the busy work involved, where you do not learn, or have time to study. As someone still interviewing or deciding where to go to school, that should be your number three (after how much money it costs, and what the clinicals are like) concern regarding your future school. How much do they waste your time before step 1? How much respect do they have for your time?

 

[Depakote]

Dude, where'd you get that pic of Costanzo? 🙂 She should put that on her page. And I think that's only 1 year's worth of syllabi, and it's more than that if you print the slides to go with. The physio syllabus alone goes halfway up to her knee.

Source:
http://blog.vcu.edu/som_dean/2008/10/setting_new_standards_for_medi.html

 

[themudphud]

It doesn't matter whether you quantify the work as pages or hours, so just relax. It's a lot of work but it's work that's directly applicable (mostly) to your future profession, so it's not too bad.

 

[fahimaz7]

We just started a new system this past monday, first test this coming monday. 1 week - 20 lecture hours ~150 pages of 4 slides per page, plus assigned self reading.

Some overlapping material ~10-15 pages.

And that is why it is almost 10 PM and I'm in the library...yay...medical schoooool!

So 30 slides/hour?

 

[DoctorPardi]

So 30 slides/hour?

The slides per lecture depend a great deal on the lecturer. Some lecturers will have 15 that are conceptual and will take an hour of the time. Some will have 110 slides that are all random facts that take an hour.

I would guess our slides are closer to 40-50 per lecture hour. It's a lot of work like everyone says but if you keep up it isn't so bad.

 

[pseudoknot]

This is a realistic depiction of the cumulative volume you will cover M1+M2

She's pretty short and that text is 12 point, so it's not nearly as bad as it looks. 🙂

 

[RowaH]

She's pretty short and that text is 12 point, so it's not nearly as bad as it looks. 🙂

She's also sitting on another pile of books.