When going in for an exam how well do you know the material?

[thrombin]

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The biggest challenge in med school is the volume not how hard the content is, I wanted some feedback from people; when you go for your class-tests do most of you have everything mastered (referring to the basic science subjects) or is it that some you tend to leave some topics for others.

I wanted to know exactly how to go about exams,

1. Either to get a good overview of all the information and leave knowing the material in greater depth

2. To focus more on knowing the greater depth of a select portion of the information and then leaving the rest that you believe is lower yield.

How do you know that your well prepared for an exam in med school?

 

[Rollo]

Aren't both your either or scenarios the same?

Anyway, I prepare for exams by understanding the big picture i.e. the concepts and basic reasoning behind the processes that we're learning. For example, in the renal block, I went for an understanding of renal physiology in pretty good detail so that when it came time for renal path and renal clinical medicine, majority of it made sense from a physiology perspective. The rest of the specific details I filled in first by attempting to rationalize it. If I couldn't rationalize it or there was no logic, then I just memorized the details.

Although some of your professors will be really picky about the type of questions they will put on the test. Some will ask the most obscure, somewhat irrelevant fact. For example what is the attachments for the 2nd lumbricals? Like who gives a ****!!!

I've discovered that by focusing on the big picture and going for mastery of the concepts rather than pure memorization lets you feel better prepared for in-class exams.

 

[da8s0859q]

I wanted to know exactly how to go about exams...

How do you know that your well prepared for an exam in med school?

Unless there are reliable previous exams made available to you, you don't until you've taken a few and know what to expect. Some professors just get excited about the chance to ask minutiae, but by and large, knowing the high-yield stuff in some detail will get you a lot of points.

Aren't both your either or scenarios the same?

...

Although some of your professors will be really picky about the type of questions they will put on the test. Some will ask the most obscure, somewhat irrelevant fact. For example what is the attachments for the 2nd lumbricals? Like who gives a ****!!!

I've discovered that by focusing on the big picture and going for mastery of the concepts rather than pure memorization lets you feel better prepared for in-class exams.

Agreed to all of this. ****in' lumbricals.

 

[corbis11]

try to know the key points in the prof's ojbectives at the beginning of the lecture...and hopefully remember everything else because anything can show up on exams

 

[clinicallabguy]

The biggest challenge in med school is the volume not how hard the content is, I wanted some feedback from people; when you go for your class-tests do most of you have everything mastered (referring to the basic science subjects) or is it that some you tend to leave some topics for others.

I wanted to know exactly how to go about exams,

1. Either to get a good overview of all the information and leave knowing the material in greater depth

2. To focus more on knowing the greater depth of a select portion of the information and then leaving the rest that you believe is lower yield.

How do you know that your well prepared for an exam in med school?

Usually the morning before the test it is difficult for me to gauge how prepared I am. I do both of your suggestions. First, I try to get a good overview by going over each lecture repeatedly (at least 2, preferably 3 or more times). During the first pass of the material, I make flashcards on an internet site (http://www.flashcardmachine.com, but there are multiple sites) on what I think is the highest yield or most difficult for me (or sometimes just most interesting to me), and load them onto my iPod touch and view them with a flashcard app (available on http://orangeorapple.com/Flashcards/Default.aspx, but there are many of them as well). I go over these cards as many times as I can, and if there are any practice questions available in the syllabus I will have a mock exam at some point and focus on whatever my weaknesses were.

My theory is to do whatever keeps my interest the best at the time. So my studying changes a lot. Doing the same thing all the time is incredibly boring. For lists of names (ie drugs/bugs/carotid artery branches) or flow chart type material I usually write on a black or white board repeatedly. For hard to remember details I usually do flashcards.

 

[Ischiowhat]

Although some of your professors will be really picky about the type of questions they will put on the test. Some will ask the most obscure, somewhat irrelevant fact. For example what is the attachments for the 2nd lumbricals? Like who gives a ****!!!

Not to be a smartass but the whole lumbrical/expansion hood concept is probably one of the more important things to know if you want to understand the actions of the fingers. Doesn't make much sense otherwise.

 

[Zoom-Zoom]

Being "well prepared" totally depends on what you're shooting for. If you're just aiming to pass, you could seriously dumb down the studying by focusing on the high-yield stuff. I think this is option 2 above. But, to to be competitive grade-wise, you pretty much need to know everything. I'd say this is more than just a "good overview"... you'll have a % of the details memorized and hope it's well represented on the exam.

Lets break it down... Assume you have an arbitrary 1000 bits of information you need to study. Even if high yield, give-in questions comprise 70% of the actual exam, the other 30% will still represent a sampling of 300 random bits of information you were supposed to learn. So you'd have to know 300 things here to get those extra 10-20 points on the exam. Now, you can gamble and learn only 150 of those things, shoot for 50% of those questions, and end up with an 85 on the test. Not too shabby. Many/most people do this b/c to be a performer in our example you would have to learn twice as much to get an extra 10-15%. In general there's a pretty small spread between average and top performance as you can see, with relatively high averages all around.

Understanding of difficult concepts is definitely less emphasized in med school compared to undergrad and there are a lot less comprehensive thinking-type questions on the exams. Basically, if you know it in med school, you'll get the points. I much prefer it to undergrad in this respect. In undergrad I'd understand something perfectly but could still miss points on weird exams that had oddly phrased "thinking" or "thought experiment" type questions. I often had to debate in my mind what I thought the prof was trying to ask. I hardly ever do this anymore. Anyway, to sum it up, just memorize as much as you can and start with the most important stuff.

 

[hurdlepup]

Umm...

Know everything. Any word mentioned in the notes might be a question. So, also know the concepts, because otherwise you might not link two and two together and apply it to a clinical vignette.

Yep... that about sums it up. Shoot for 100%, but realize it never happens. You have to know it for boards anyway.

 

[theVster]

Not to be a smartass but the whole lumbrical/expansion hood concept is probably one of the more important things to know if you want to understand the actions of the fingers. Doesn't make much sense otherwise.

I think the point is that it's not high-yield material unless you're a hand surgeon. I've never needed to know anything beyond clinical anatomy for my classes and the NBME and bulls*&t attachments which describe the motion of finger muscles are only relevant if there's a pathological importance to them. The NBME and boards will NEVER ask questions about minute details unless there's a fracture or a tear or some sort of disease process involved with it. You're never EVER ever gonna get a question like "The proximal attachment of the second lumbrical is (A) (B) (C) (D)".

So yeah, you are being a smartass, and a pretty poor one at that.

 

[airplanes]

For an exam? I know, or try to know, every last detail. Which I promptly forget once new material sets in and the weeks pass. I'm left with vague concepts and the hope that reviewing for the boards will be easier since at one point, I really did know the material like the back of my hand.

 

[Ana1982]

Ugggh...I hate to admit on most exams I've had to wing it, regardless of how much I've studied. Medical schools exams make you rack your brains.

Then again, no amount of studying could have changed my score on most of my tests that I've taken so far...it's kind of HOW you apply the knowledge...right?