What is your study method for medical school?

[Girlygirl2020]

What's your typical day to day like in terms of your studying habits and methods?
Do you attend lecture and take notes? Do you pre-read for lectures?
Or do you only make Anki cards day in and day out? Do you studying primarily in a group?

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[honey0102]

What's your typical day to day like in terms of your studying habits and methods?
Do you attend lecture and take notes? Do you pre-read for lectures?
Or do you only make Anki cards day in and day out? Do you studying primarily in a group?

It varies a lot by person and school. Some schools I interviewed at only had class 8-12 and nothing at all in the afternoons. Others required on site attendance 8-5 each day. My school in particular has class or anatomy lab most days 8-12. Anatomy lab is mandatory attendance. Most classes are not, but some are. Depending on the class I'd go, or watch from home. I didn't ever pre-read. I felt time was better spent, for me, studying it after knowing what the prof had to add.

One afternoon a week with small group activities (2 hours), one afternoon a week with Clinical Skills (1 hour), every other week M1/M2 students have clinical activities another afternoon of the week too, and we have other miscellaneous activities like shadowing in other specialties that's required. Then if you are in student orgs (I was) that takes some time too.

Anytime I wasn't in class or in one of those activities I mentioned-so some afternoons and mostly all the evenings-was spent studying. I studied the powerpoint presentations with my notes. I used Anki if I was able to successfully do 3-4 passes of the material and still had time and/or it was something with many little chunks to memorize.

I studied for anatomy with others all the time in that we went to lab together. It was so helpful to be able to point things out to someone and have them fill in gaps or correct me and vice versa.

But all non-anatomy studying, I did alone. This varies by person. But personally, I have to look at things on my own to internalize them. Discussing it only helps me once I've properly internalized it and given the time pressures of med school by the time I had looked at something enough to be truly confident about it, I didn't always have time to discuss with someone else. I also study best at home...my double computer screen is there, coffee is only a reach away, and the stress associated with school is just not there when I'm in the comfort of home. I only ever studied at school if I had an open block of time but had to be at the school for something later.

 

[Oso]

I would wake up and make coffee, head down to campus, show my ID and enter the library, walk up some stairs, find a nice little comfortable table, open my laptop, put on some headphones, open the lecture recordings, and then cry for 8 hours.

That being said, there are TON of threads here about people discussing different study methods and study tools. Spend some time searching the forum and you should find something that proves useful to you.

 

[FindMeOnTheLinks]

I would wake up and make coffee, head down to campus, show my ID and enter the library, walk up some stairs, find a nice little comfortable table, open my laptop, put on some headphones, open the lecture recordings, and then cry for 8 hours.

That being said, there are TON of threads here about people discussing different study methods and study tools. Spend some time searching the forum and you should find something that proves useful to you.

3rd year and the beginning of 4th year makes me miss the days where I could just chill and stare at my computer all day with a cup of coffee in hand

 

[Newyawk]

3rd year and the beginning of 4th year makes me miss the days where I could just chill and stare at my computer all day with a cup of coffee in hand

So true. I miss this so much. Didnt realize what i had. Also i didnt spend every waking moment under pressure of being graded. Studied and took the damn test. If i did well it was cuz i worked hard, not cuz some resident thought i spoke well.

 

[Newyawk]

What's your typical day to day like in terms of your studying habits and methods?
Do you attend lecture and take notes? Do you pre-read for lectures?
Or do you only make Anki cards day in and day out? Do you studying primarily in a group?

Drop the anki cards. Delete them from your memory. This whole anki thing starting from M1 is a joke and is being propagated based on the results of a select few who managed to do well. Itll crash eventually as it should when people start to realize that shoving facts into your head isnt an effective study method.

 

[Aerus]

I study almost exclusively with a study buddy. We go through Step 1 resources and slides together. Having a person with me allows us to read aloud the material to each other and forces us to explain what the concepts mean and is really helpful in making sure we have a decent first pass. Neither of us take notes or learn from taking notes, which saves a lot of time.

 

[Dagrimsta1]

Annotate slides, notes on annotated slides, review slides and notes if time permits.

 

[Doctor_ruski]

Drop the anki cards. Delete them from your memory. This whole anki thing starting from M1 is a joke and is being propagated based on the results of a select few who managed to do well. Itll crash eventually as it should when people start to realize that shoving facts into your head isnt an effective study method.

What do you use instead? I started using Anki in ungergrad to stop wasting time taking so many notes and then reading through them without really understanding. How do you make your studying more proactive? I realize this varies a lot based on the person/program.

 

[Kr#36]

Drop the anki cards. Delete them from your memory. This whole anki thing starting from M1 is a joke and is being propagated based on the results of a select few who managed to do well. Itll crash eventually as it should when people start to realize that shoving facts into your head isnt an effective study method.

They are very effective for me. To each their own.

 

[flyboy3]

What's the best way to study for a guy who, for the most part, spent most of his time in undergrad reading textbooks and doing practice questions? I hate flashcards, I never took notes during lectures (just watching usually did the trick for internalizing material), I just rely on my reading comprehension to do well. I don't want to have to buy every textbook the prof's require, so is there a good 1-2 reading sources I could rely on?

 

[Naruhodo]

Many of the textbooks will have online versions that should be available for free through your school's library. I don't love online textbooks so often end up checking out hardcopies from the library even if they are an older edition, but to each their own. There are practice questions in the back of most of the textbooks. I personally rely most on slides for studying as these tend to highlight key points.

 

[deleted645092]

What's the best way to study for a guy who, for the most part, spent most of his time in undergrad reading textbooks and doing practice questions? I hate flashcards, I never took notes during lectures (just watching usually did the trick for internalizing material), I just rely on my reading comprehension to do well. I don't want to have to buy every textbook the prof's require, so is there a good 1-2 reading sources I could rely on?

I used to do the same during undergrad, and I learned pretty quickly after starting first semester that I couldn't just read the material anymore and retain it. I think the issue with that strategy is that there is just so much, every single day, that you can't synthesize it all by just passively absorbing it through reading the textbooks. Well some can, but not most. Overall you have to find some sort of spaced-repetition strategy.

It also isn't about understanding the material as much as it is memorizing the small details, because those are what really hurt you on our tests; Most of the time you can narrow it down to 2-3 choices, and oftentimes the difference between which is correct might be one small detail in the question stem that is super easy to mix up if the last time you reviewed it was 2-3 months ago.

As for materials, unless you decide to only learn from First-Aid, which shouldn't be anyone's primary teaching material, there will be 1-2 must-have resources for each class. My school provides all of our books on our iPads in our tuition, but resources I would consider essential are Pathoma (primary), Goljan (review), Robbins (primary) for pathology, Sketchy-Micro for microbiology. For pharm I added any drugs that weren't in the lecture notes from First-Aid into my own notes. I don't have anything good for anatomy, immuno, biochem, etc unfortunately, and although I never used it, my classmates swear by Physeo for physiology.

 

[Ms Procrastinator]

I would wake up and make coffee, head down to campus, show my ID and enter the library, walk up some stairs, find a nice little comfortable table, open my laptop, put on some headphones, open the lecture recordings, and then cry for 8 hours.

That being said, there are TON of threads here about people discussing different study methods and study tools. Spend some time searching the forum and you should find something that proves useful to you.

Why would you need to leave your apartment if you're going to just watch lectures on your laptop though? I mean, I would rather suffer and cry in private than in the corner of some library. Libraries are kind of naturally depressing though.

 

[ekmf27050]

I would wake up and make coffee, head down to campus, show my ID and enter the library, walk up some stairs, find a nice little comfortable table, open my laptop, put on some headphones, open the lecture recordings, and then cry for 8 hours.

That being said, there are TON of threads here about people discussing different study methods and study tools. Spend some time searching the forum and you should find something that proves useful to you.

Advice for staying hydrated?

 

[Girlygirl2020]

Why would you need to leave your apartment if you're going to just watch lectures on your laptop though? I mean, I would rather suffer and cry in private than in the corner of some library. Libraries are kind of naturally depressing though.

I compartmentalize. I can't study at home because my brain associates my room with sleep.

 

[AnatomyGrey12]

Drop the anki cards. Delete them from your memory. This whole anki thing starting from M1 is a joke and is being propagated based on the results of a select few who managed to do well. Itll crash eventually as it should when people start to realize that shoving facts into your head isnt an effective study method.

And yet.... a massive chunk of the top of the class/high board scorers are religious Anki users...

Active recall beats passive lecture watching every time.

 

[Levrone]

It took me a while to finally see what works best for me. Start with pathoma, usually listen two times and go slowly the first time. I pound through Zanki in the morning, supplement with firecracker, ignore lectures as I get nothing out of them. If anything, quickly make some anki flashcards of the lectures for the in house exams. And do around 50 practice questions a day or more. By the time the nbme final comes I've done around 1000 practice questions

Doing this my scores have gone way up

 

[Oso]

Why would you need to leave your apartment if you're going to just watch lectures on your laptop though? I mean, I would rather suffer and cry in private than in the corner of some library. Libraries are kind of naturally depressing though.

If I stayed home I never got anything done

Advice for staying hydrated?

 

[BigBoss]

Drop the anki cards. Delete them from your memory. This whole anki thing starting from M1 is a joke and is being propagated based on the results of a select few who managed to do well. Itll crash eventually as it should when people start to realize that shoving facts into your head isnt an effective study method.

There are kids at my school that do hundreds of Anki cards a day and I'm just bewildered at how they manage to find the time to do it, let alone wonder if they have a life outside of school.

 

[Kr#36]

There are kids at my school that do hundreds of Anki cards a day and I'm just bewildered at how they manage to find the time to do it, let alone wonder if they have a life outside of school.

I could do 100 cards in 20 minutes tops. It isn't that time consuming.

 

[The Knife & Gun Club]

Early in med school:
1) Watch lecture video on 2x while taking notes

2) compare notes with FA, fill in gaps

3) make consolidated review documents like tables, hand written flow charts, or picmonics

4) USMLE-Rx questions in tutor mode

Always ended up strapped for time though, since my school has LOTS of hours of lower yield lecture that were not super helpful. When it came time for step I switched to:

1) Watch all physeo & pathoma videos for the unit on day 1-2 of the unit

2) USMLE-Rx systems questions + Uworld random blocks

3) Pepper and Bros Anki

 

[rg2o3]

It took me a while to finally see what works best for me. Start with pathoma, usually listen two times and go slowly the first time. I pound through Zanki in the morning, supplement with firecracker, ignore lectures as I get nothing out of them. If anything, quickly make some anki flashcards of the lectures for the in house exams. And do around 50 practice questions a day or more. By the time the nbme final comes I've done around 1000 practice questions

Doing this my scores have gone way up

What bank have you been using for this?