What is your method of preparing for exams?

[Ragtime]

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I need a more efficient way of preparing for exams because I somehow manage to mess up on them. How am I supposed to remember everything? I study for like hours and don't procrastinate, so I don't know what the problem is.

I spend hours reading the chapters and doing the examples from them but I start to forget what I've studied.

It takes me 3 hours to do a problem set. The next day, when I start a new section from the chapter, I forget everything I learned from the prior one.

I guess the real issue here is trying to remember everything. I usually try to read all the chapters and then go back to review, but by then, I don't even understand what I'm reviewing because I forgot it all.

How do you remember everything???

 

[inycepoo]

 

[Bovary]

I usually try to read all the chapters and then go back to review,

This is your problem, in two parts:
1. Detail: if your chem/bio/physics textbooks are anything like mine, they're far more detailed than the course requires. Do your professors provide any lecture slides or other notes that pinpoint the important material? If so, those materials should be the focus of your attention.

2. What to repeat: Reading chapters of content over and over is not how to commit that information to memory. Instead, verbalize the important material. If you can't give the lecture yourself, then you don't actually know the material. Attempt to rephrase all the important material, either out loud (to a study-buddy to to yourself) or written on paper, until you can do this without the help of any notes.

For example: You just read two dense pages in your hellishly detailed biochem textbook on how how the body adapts to low pO2 by changing O2 binding affinities. Now stop, turn away from the book, and repeat, in your own words, what you just learned. Check the page when you forget a detail. Do it again. Now repeat the same info, but writing down onto scratch paper.
This is how you study.

You don't memorize when you just read; you memorize when you are the source of the knowledge.

Edit with another example: Lets say you're tasked with memorizing the structure of every amino acid. Tough, right? It is. But you can't get by just by reading over the structures. You need to periodically sit down, cover up the page, and draw them all out. Check your answers, then 20 minutes later, do it all again. Repeat every 20 minutes, drawing ever amino acid and checking for errors until you make no mistakes multiple times in a row. And do this the next day too — if the test is tomorrow, then get a practice run in for just a minute beforehand.

If the midterm is on Friday, and you go to bed Thursday night thinking "I finally learned everything!" then you'll forget 10% of it overnight and you'll get no better than an A-.
The key is to be "ready" for the test one extra night in advance. If you go to bed Wednesday night having gone over and learned all the material, you'll re-learn that elusive 10% on Thursday.

These are the study habits that 4.0s are made of.
Best luck. Get this **** down now and you'll be knocking down a 38+ on the MCAT when it comes around.

 

[natti101]

This is your problem, in two parts:
1. Detail: if your chem/bio/physics textbooks are anything like mine, they're far more detailed than the course requires. Do your professors provide any lecture slides or other notes that pinpoint the important material? If so, those materials should be the focus of your attention.

2. What to repeat: Reading chapters of content over and over is not how to commit that information to memory. Instead, verbalize the important material. If you can't give the lecture yourself, then you don't actually know the material. Attempt to rephrase all the important material, either out loud (to a study-buddy to to yourself) or written on paper, until you can do this without the help of any notes.

For example: You just read two dense pages in your hellishly detailed biochem textbook on how how the body adapts to low pO2 by changing O2 binding affinities. Now stop, turn away from the book, and repeat, in your own words, what you just learned. Check the page when you forget a detail. Do it again. Now repeat the same info, but writing down onto scratch paper.
This is how you study.

You don't memorize when you just read; you memorize when you are the source of the knowledge.

Edit with another example: Lets say you're tasked with memorizing the structure of every amino acid. Tough, right? It is. But you can't get by just by reading over the structures. You need to periodically sit down, cover up the page, and draw them all out. Check your answers, then 20 minutes later, do it all again. Repeat every 20 minutes, drawing ever amino acid and checking for errors until you make no mistakes multiple times in a row. And do this the next day too — if the test is tomorrow, then get a practice run in for just a minute beforehand.

If the midterm is on Friday, and you go to bed Thursday night thinking "I finally learned everything!" then you'll forget 10% of it overnight and you'll get no better than an A-.
The key is to be "ready" for the test one extra night in advance. If you go to bed Wednesday night having gone over and learned all the material, you'll re-learn that elusive 10% on Thursday.

These are the study habits that 4.0s are made of.
Best luck. Get this **** down now and you'll be knocking down a 38+ on the MCAT when it comes around.

I think this is great advice. To go further, I think sometime it helps to write out the material by hand. And after you verbalize it, try to reframe the concept in your head. To truly test if you know the material, you should be able to understand to the extent that you can come up with example questions by yourself. Ask yourself, if I were a professor trying to come up with questions separating the As from the Bs what would I ask? So to go with the pO2 binding example, a normal question would be, what is the allosteric regulator molecule that increases Oxygen affinity? (2,3-BPG). A better question would be, what would happen to 2,3-BPG if all the histidines in hemoglobin was changed to aspartic acid; how would this affect oxygen affinity; how would this further be affected if the CO2 was decreased and pH was increased?

Asking questions like these force you to go beyond memorization to understanding.

 

[Ragtime]

This is your problem, in two parts:
1. Detail: if your chem/bio/physics textbooks are anything like mine, they're far more detailed than the course requires. Do your professors provide any lecture slides or other notes that pinpoint the important material? If so, those materials should be the focus of your attention.

2. What to repeat: Reading chapters of content over and over is not how to commit that information to memory. Instead, verbalize the important material. If you can't give the lecture yourself, then you don't actually know the material. Attempt to rephrase all the important material, either out loud (to a study-buddy to to yourself) or written on paper, until you can do this without the help of any notes.

For example: You just read two dense pages in your hellishly detailed biochem textbook on how how the body adapts to low pO2 by changing O2 binding affinities. Now stop, turn away from the book, and repeat, in your own words, what you just learned. Check the page when you forget a detail. Do it again. Now repeat the same info, but writing down onto scratch paper.
This is how you study.

You don't memorize when you just read; you memorize when you are the source of the knowledge.

Edit with another example: Lets say you're tasked with memorizing the structure of every amino acid. Tough, right? It is. But you can't get by just by reading over the structures. You need to periodically sit down, cover up the page, and draw them all out. Check your answers, then 20 minutes later, do it all again. Repeat every 20 minutes, drawing ever amino acid and checking for errors until you make no mistakes multiple times in a row. And do this the next day too — if the test is tomorrow, then get a practice run in for just a minute beforehand.

If the midterm is on Friday, and you go to bed Thursday night thinking "I finally learned everything!" then you'll forget 10% of it overnight and you'll get no better than an A-.
The key is to be "ready" for the test one extra night in advance. If you go to bed Wednesday night having gone over and learned all the material, you'll re-learn that elusive 10% on Thursday.

These are the study habits that 4.0s are made of.
Best luck. Get this **** down now and you'll be knocking down a 38+ on the MCAT when it comes around.

Thank you so much for taking the time to write this for me. I will definitely try this out. I also saw this video on active recall, where you learn the material as if you had to present it to a class as a professor. Supposedly it is the most effective way to learn.

 

[pepocho]

.

 

[CW 2010]

This is your problem, in two parts:
1. Detail: if your chem/bio/physics textbooks are anything like mine, they're far more detailed than the course requires. Do your professors provide any lecture slides or other notes that pinpoint the important material? If so, those materials should be the focus of your attention.

2. What to repeat: Reading chapters of content over and over is not how to commit that information to memory. Instead, verbalize the important material. If you can't give the lecture yourself, then you don't actually know the material. Attempt to rephrase all the important material, either out loud (to a study-buddy to to yourself) or written on paper, until you can do this without the help of any notes.

For example: You just read two dense pages in your hellishly detailed biochem textbook on how how the body adapts to low pO2 by changing O2 binding affinities. Now stop, turn away from the book, and repeat, in your own words, what you just learned. Check the page when you forget a detail. Do it again. Now repeat the same info, but writing down onto scratch paper.
This is how you study.

You don't memorize when you just read; you memorize when you are the source of the knowledge.

Edit with another example: Lets say you're tasked with memorizing the structure of every amino acid. Tough, right? It is. But you can't get by just by reading over the structures. You need to periodically sit down, cover up the page, and draw them all out. Check your answers, then 20 minutes later, do it all again. Repeat every 20 minutes, drawing ever amino acid and checking for errors until you make no mistakes multiple times in a row. And do this the next day too — if the test is tomorrow, then get a practice run in for just a minute beforehand.

If the midterm is on Friday, and you go to bed Thursday night thinking "I finally learned everything!" then you'll forget 10% of it overnight and you'll get no better than an A-.
The key is to be "ready" for the test one extra night in advance. If you go to bed Wednesday night having gone over and learned all the material, you'll re-learn that elusive 10% on Thursday.

These are the study habits that 4.0s are made of.
Best luck. Get this **** down now and you'll be knocking down a 38+ on the MCAT when it comes around.

THIS is the best advice. I've been both a good and a bad student at times, but this is how I studied when I received A's. It is not easy to honestly force yourself to study and overcome laziness, etc. But you gotta do it and then you'll succeed!

 

[Daneosaurus]

I was going to say to not be lazy and learn as you go along, vice cramming it all in a week prior to the exam (seriously, not enough time to ace an ochem test). But the verbalizing method is something I had not tried before. Another premed in my ochem class and I meet once a week in the library to go over the materials, and twice in the week of the test. We've both got 95+ averages after the first two tests - each worth 30% of our grade (the final is worth the remaining 40%). Homework is not mandatory, but you will fail if you don't do it.

 

[1TB4RKSB4CK]

cram hard lolol
but srs who crams here? 😉

 

[Bovary]

I recommended above that it can be helpful to verbalize content to a study buddy. I stand by that, but with a caveat: group studying is not the most efficient studying. The more people in your "study group", the greater chance you're just going to socialize half the time, and half-heartedly study the rest. Test prep is unfortunately not usually a fun or social activity.

What I've been recommending for years is to spend the first ~80% of your studying for a test mostly by yourself, then the last 20% talking over material with someone else in your class. Hopefully this person is someone with a comparable level of preparedness — if you're trying to get an A in the class, you might not want to do this last-day review with someone who's getting B-s. Is this a competitive attitude that pre-meds are derided for? Yes. I know, sorry. But I stand by the advice if you want to do very, very well in a science class. I don't mean "don't study with B students" or "Don't help people who have questions" — you should do these things — but that last 20% of studying should be a two way street, not just one person helping along the other.

 

[Dr.Forssmann]

1.) Investigate
First thing i do in the quarter is figure out how to study for that class. I ask my TA's, i talk to other classmates, people who took the course, and the professor how to best study for the class. usually they are pretty straightforward.

2) Plan

Plan out your study schedule. you plan to study everything for the exam before it hits you in the face like a train hitting a bumblebee. So you dont have to last minute cram!

3) execute

Stick to the plan, to ace that exam.