Thank you, I appreciate your advice. May I ask what strategies you have found most helpful besides Anki? What I usually do is make a study guide of notes based on the PowerPoint and professor's lecture, then practice it by saying it out loud as if I'm teaching another student the material. It has helped me understand/memorize material very well, I just hope the strategy can work in medical school.
That's the problem, I didn't. I didn't even learn Anki well enough. I learned about Anki probably 1 month into the first semester. I started using it, but once you are in the fast stream, hard to switch swimming gear or learn how to swim. Gotta get going. I will start doing more Anki for the boards after this semester. I use it slightly, but only basic features and not for all subjects.
That is why I think it is better to settle ahead of time, learn around the town where you will live, just get adjusted and set up your learning space, computer, and whatever resources you need.
First couple of weeks, like most other people I went to lectures, used OneNote to take notes on power point slide and such. I quickly gave it all up. Waste of time. Even students who were religiously going to lectures, gave it up this semester. Taking notes is waste of time, at least in my school.
What worked in undergrad, doesn't work here. Couple differences that I see:
1. In undergrad, you cover about the same amount of material in 1 month or more as we cover it here in 1 week.
2. In undergrad, you almost never knew what will be on the test, unless you got lucky with professor. They could test anything from the book, slides, what they said in lecture, what they never said, what was in other resources provided in class, etc.
3. Here, at least so far, everything comes exactly from Power Points. When I see students take notes or read their notes, I can't understand. Why? Professors read exactly from the slides. Why take notes about notes? All lectures are recorded. If you didn't understand something just listen to it online.
Most of the time they tell you or hint what will be on the test and what will not be on the test.
So, how to study then? You need to have several passes over high yield info. Repetition. Since there is so much information thrown at you (~1000+ slides per week) you need to have it all condensed into high yield package. Imagine, if there are 4 hours of lecture every day, even if you pass thru the same material twice, that is 12 hours per day non-stop (plus other labs, activities, exams and so on). Not going to work.
That's where Anki comes into play. I create my own cards, but often it is so time consuming. There are premade decks which many are using and they are good for USMLE/COMLEX boards, but very low yield for my own exams. I tried them. Waste of time for me. Will probably use them after June.
Some of our classmates never go to lectures and never listen to recorded lectures, they just study from the slides. They say it works for them. Some don't even use school materials for the big classes, they use some other online resources only and say it works for them. Since, majority of information comes from boards prep books anyways, professors tend to ask only those questions that are related to boards. Everything else is just for your own knowledge.
If you can figure that out and know what is high yield and pay more attention to that, you will be ok.
Bottom line, if you have resources that are more condensed and more high yield and if you can put it through constant repetition, this is probably best strategy.
What is also very important is to know how to take med school exams. I was not a good test taker in undergrad. If I didn't know the question, 99% I would get it wrong. Now, if I don't know exact answer, high chance I will guess it right. I learned some tricks through our Student Learning Center. There is so much info that you won't be able to remember and know everything, but if you know how to select the best answer, you will save yourself at least 5-10 questions per test.
