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Feb 12 2016

The proper way to take notes during a class!

How to take notes the right way!

Taking good notes is a necessary skill that all pre-meds should have mastered in order to make those A’s. The way you take notes can make a big difference in the way you study, retain knowledge, and in making better grades. There are a ton of different note taking methods out there. But I’m going to go over what actually works for me and has made a big difference in my ability to succeed in my classes. I learned the hard way and over time there is definitely a better way to take notes that is more optimal. By avoiding common mistakes and utilizing the techniques and strategies I will list here, I know you will improve your grades and GPA. Let’s jump into it!
There are two types of classes to worry about: Conceptual based, and Calculation based. I use different note-taking strategies for each.

Conceptual based class:

So first let’s start with Conceptual based classes. These would include classes such as English, Biology, Genetics. Classes which are primarily about learning and remembering facts and concepts. Where there are not too many calculations involved in it. Most of these classes rely on the use of powerpoints in teaching the material.

When I first attended college I made the mistake that most students make, I tried to copy down everything the teacher was writing. If there is anything I can teach you in this article it is this. If your teacher is teaching from a powerpoint that will be posted online, DONT spend your class time copying whats on the powerpoint. It’s already online! That’s a waste of your time and energy. I repeat don’t copy down whats on the powerpoint into your notes if it will be posted online!

The reason for that is because it’s already online, you don’t need to copy it! Instead its much better to spend your time listening to the professor go over it. Often the professor helps explain the powerpoint and clarify things you might have been confused on. If you are trying to keep up with copying the powerpoint you will never hear the hidden nuggets of information the professor is sharing with you! It also helps in our ability to learn to process information in as many ways as possible. You want to see the material visually (expressed in graphs, numbers, powerpoint, etc.), hear it audibly, write it down yourself, etc. The more ways you see information the more connections you make with it and ultimately the better you are at understanding it. Once you understand something you will always be able to remember it. Don’t try to force yourself to memorize things, try to understand why! Check out my article on the power of why and how it will revolutionize the way you take science classes and make straight A’s in them. (It really is that powerful, check it out!)

So the most optimal way I found to take notes in conceptual classes is to focus on listening to what the professor is saying and actively trying to understand it and organize those concepts into your “big picture”. Have a sheet of notebook paper out to write down just the important things they are saying, anything you know you want to remember. If they write something on the board thats important, you can copy that down. But really your main focus is to just try to focus to what the professor is saying! There are so many resources online and your textbook that you can always reference that. Plus you should be creating summary notes for all of your classes once you are home anyway. Alternatively, there is a GREAT method for taking notes from powerpoints which allows you to do what I just mentioned. Check that out here! It’s super easy to do and will greatly improve your note taking for these kinds of classes. Highly recommend that you check that article out. (The best way to take notes from powerpoint slides). Okay so let’s summarize!

To summarize:

DON’T copy down the powerpoint that the teacher will post online.
Focus on listening to what the professor is saying. (Thats your most important task)
Have a piece of paper to take down notes on only the important things you feel you should. (Or use the powerpoint technique)
Remember to focus on understanding why rather than just memorizing facts

Calculation based:

So in calculation based classes, we are going to take almost the opposite approach for how we do our notes. I have found that it works best to take note of all the examples and problems that the teacher does. This is important for several reasons, a few being; Problems and examples are the best study tools for knowing how to do those type of problems! And also because typically the type of problems and examples you do in class will be very similar to whats on the test. So by having all the problems and examples that the teacher writes down you will know almost exactly what will be on the test and what to study.

Now with that being said, you can do a few things to optimize your time in the class room. Don’t just be trying to copy down notes as fast as you can and wait for the professor to start a new problem for you to copy. You are not a copy machine! What you want to do is try and understand exactly why your professor is doing what they are. For example, the professor is doing a physics problem. As the professor is writing the problem down and writing the solution, you want to understand why each step is happening. Let’s say he is writing down the sum of the forces in the y-direction and he puts a negative sign in front of mg (force of gravity). In your head you would ask yourself “Why did he put a negative sign in front of mg?”, and then say to yourself: “Oh its because in this situation we have made up the positive direction, and because the force of gravity is pointing down it’s negative” Or whatever the reason / logic for that step was. You want to be asking yourself and knowing why the professor is doing everything they are as they do it. Then after you know why they have done what they did, then copy down the problem to your notes. As you copy them to your notes, remind yourself why they did each step. And after it has been copied to your own notes, add in some annotations explaining important things that you found useful to know and helpful to you understanding how to solve the problem.

Okay I know thats a lot so here’s to summarize the main process, in order:

1. Just watch what the teacher is writing down and try to understand why he/she is doing each step.

2. Once you understand why they did what they did. You can begin copying it into your notes.

3. Add your own personal notes in, annotating the teachers notes.
Here are some pictures to show what annotations look like for your notes:

Doing these annotations will help you ALOT during studying! You will remember important tips and why its that way. This could help seriously save some time during studying.

And as always you should try and combine this note taking strategy with the use of summary notes.

I hope these tips helped all you amazing premeds! I have learned over my time during undergrad what works and doesn’t. I have been utilizing exactly what I laid out here, and have literally been making straight A’s every semester since. How you take notes is definitely one important aspect to making good grades. And I have a ton more tips I want to share with you! I am going to lay out exactly how I have been doing it and give you all the knowledge, secrets, and tips I have learned that has helped me maintain a high GPA in a tough premed program. Make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to get free access to all our exclusive premedical advice!

Tell us what note taking techinques you use by leaving a comment down below!

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Feb 05 2016

How to make good “summary notes”

How to make good summary notes

So if you read my other posts you know that I emphasize that there are no shortcuts or secrets to making good grades, you have to simply become an “A worthy student”. A student who practices good habits and utilizes good work ethic. Well if I ever really had a secret that could have a huge impact on your grades it’s summary notes. So what in the world are these summary notes I’m talking about?

Quite simply, summary notes are your own super condensed notes that only focus on what matters. The main point of summary notes is to have a convenient easy to access file that contains all your most relevant and important notes for a class. Hence the name “Summary” notes. You want to summarize everything that matters to you. With these notes, you cut out all the fat and fluff from your class notes and power-points, and you are left with a sort of super note that has only the things that matters.

Why are summary notes awesome?

– Great for studying!
– Personalized just for you
– Can use as a resource for the rest of your life
– Almost guarantees that you will learn be ready for any test and especially the final

Great for studying: It goes without saying that having a note which is highly focused on only the things you will be tested on and you care about is going to be a really useful resource to have. Summary notes are awesome for studying because it makes studying much quicker! You don’t have to go through a bunch of notes to find the material you need to really be focusing on. That was the whole point of making them! Now that you have yourself some awesome summary notes, its super easy and fast to study up on whats going to be on your tests!

Personalized for you: These notes are going to personalized just for you, since YOU are making them! You get to decide which things go into your summary notes and even how you format it. This can be very helpful, especially if you are used to trying to study from dull and boring textbooks. It will be a breath of fresh air to not have to spend hours trying to decipher what a textbook is really trying to tell you. Instead, you will instantly understand what is being said. And that can make studying a lot more fun too!

Can use as a resource for the rest of your life: This is honestly something that makes them so appealing to me. Once you create your summary notes for a class, you will have them for the rest of your life. And you can reference back to them whenever you forgot something from that class. It makes for a great resource in the future! Its so convenient to have a single file that contains what you are looking for, instead of having to go through tons of old powerpoints, your old textbook, youtube videos, etc. Also if you want to help a friend out sending them your old summary notes will be much appreciated!

You are going to do better on your tests and final: That is a promise. If you make summary notes, I guarantee you will definitely do better on your tests and final. One of the awesome parts about making summary notes is that it helps you retain the information better! The more times you process the same information the better you remember it. By typing and focusing on trying to create good summary notes, you are actually helping yourself learn and remember it better! The very process of creating them will help you learn it. And of course once you have finished it, you will have a great resource for future studying! This is especially true for your final. I almost never have a hard time studying for my final, because I have created summary notes. They instantly tell me everything thats going to be on the final and everything I need to know for it. If you didn’t make the notes, you may be spending hours trying to go back through your powerpoints and trying to do it the hard way. Do yourself a favor just make yourself some summary notes at the beginning of the semester and save yourself a lot of trouble!

Okay you can clearly see that summary notes are awesome! And they will come in handy. They really are one of my secrets to making good grades and maintaining a high GPA.

So how do you make some good summary notes?

I’m going to share some tips and advice on making good ones.

1. Organize. This is my first main tip to making good summary notes. This is for a few reasons; first it helps you find things easier for when you are using the notes for studying. Second, this helps you understand how all the concepts are related and where they fit together. Third, this just makes the overall studying experience better. The best way to organize your summary notes is by creating headers for the topic (Ex. Electricity) and then creating sub headers within that header (Ex. Electricity formulas). Don’t worry I will have an example at the end. Just try and organize everything as best as you can. It will help!

2. Copy important info from your class notes and powerpoints. This is the fastest and easiest way to create your summary notes. Go through your powerpoints/class notes and just extract all of the important information from it. Important information typically are definitions, formulas, concepts and anything your teacher said you should know. Just copy them into your summary notes, and make sure to organize them. Also when copying your notes, you can change the wording around so it makes more sense to you. This is the time to make these notes highly personalized. Make sure it makes sense! If in the powerpoints or notes it explains a concept in a long and confusing way, try and simplify it down. Remember, try your best to summarize the important concepts!

3. Keep up with your class. You don’t want to start making summary notes near the end of the semester. You want to make your notes in the same pace with your class. This really is important, because this will help you to not fall behind in class. But also if you don’t keep up with your class, you won’t have your summary notes there for when you need to study for your tests or final! The easiest way to keep up with your class is by adding to it each time your teacher uploads a new powerpoint or right after class. Just make sure to stay on top of your summary notes, otherwise they can’t help you!

4. Add in your own extra notes. Now that your summary notes are organized and contain the important information from your class notes and power-points, you can start adding in a bit of your own flair. This is to make them even more personalized and useful for you. I go over this in my article about how to take notes the right way so make sure to check that out. But essentially you want to add in additional notes that help you understand hard topics. Like little annotations that explain things or give tips on understanding something. Let’s say I’m talking about Gauss’s law from Physics class. There are a few different forms of the equation. This would be a time to add a little annotation note that explains when to use each. So for example, next to the equation that uses the integral in it. I would put a small bullet point, saying :” – Use this formula when E is changing in space”. And then maybe under the formula which doesn’t use the integral a bullet point saying, “Use this formula when E and A are both constants”. Its these notes which are really appreciated when studying!

Example:

Quantitative chemistry summary notes example

Here are some examples of how I organize the summary notes. Where I make headers, sub-headers, and bold important terms.

genetics biology summary notes

Here I show how I personalize notes to make them even more useful.

biology chemistry physics summary notes

Alright, I hope that helped! Summary notes are a great tool for studying and making sure you have learned your material. If you have any questions please feel free to comment. I will be posting all of my summary notes on here for you guys in the near future! Make sure to join the site to get access to them when I post it!

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Feb 01 2016

One essential tip that will help you ace your science classes

When compared to your general education courses, your science classes almost always require more study time and much more effort in order to get those hard sought A’s. And medical schools look at your science and math GPA separately from your overall GPA, so its incredibly important to score well in these classes. Because the grades you get in your science classes will be weighed more heavily than those general education courses.

This is why its essential that we develop all the best study skills and habits we can and really optimize ourselves into the best students we can. Science classes are tough! But they can be a lot easier if you know how to approach them. A few changes in your mindset can completely revolutionize how you do in these classes. I will give you one of these mindset changes, which if you actually try to apply it will definitely improve the kind of grades you are getting.

That change is how you approach understanding the material. You need to change your focus from understanding what is going on to WHY its going on. This is one of the most paradigm shifting things I learned which really helped me learn hard science topics faster. If you focus on why something is the way it is , instead of just whats happening you understand it on a much deeper level. By knowing the why you will always know the what. But knowing whats happening does not mean you know why it is happening the way it is. And by knowing the why behind whatever it is you are learning, you actually understand it. And when you understand something rather than just memorizing facts, you will actually have a WAY easier time recalling it on the test and getting the right answer.

The why = Understanding the logic and reasoning behind things. (Like understanding why you put a negative sign on mg or not, etc.)

The what = Just knowing the facts but not understanding the reason for them. (Ex. In physics the force of friction always opposes the direction of motion.)

Knowing the reasoning and logic behind what you are learning is critical to tying it all together and easily being able to recall it on a test. And of course for really learning the material!

Let me give you an example of how this is done in practice:

Example: An SN1 reaction from organic chemistry.

For those who aren’t familiar or forgot.
So in a SN1 reaction, we have an organic molecule which typically has an alkyl-halide substituent on it and a nucleotide. This reaction is marked by the substitution of the nucleotide for the alkyl-halide with a carbocation intermediate.

There are two ways to try and remember what will happen. By focusing on the why or the what (Just knowing whats going on; memorizing facts).

If you try to focus on the what, your thought process looks more like this:

– We have an alkyl-halide which is attached to a tertiary carbon
– SN1 is typically done in protic solutions.
– The alkyl halide dissociates
– A carbocation is formed
– The nucleophile attacks the carbocation, creating a new bond
– The end product is the organic molecule with the nucleophile attached to the carbon the alkyl halide was attached to. There is also a negatively charged halide in solution.

^ These are just facts. And quite a few that you have to remember.

Now if you focus on understanding why it happens the way it does, you will have a much better understanding.

We have an organic molecule with an alkyl halide attached to a tertiary carbon. This is most likely an SN1 reaction because I know that an SN1 reaction involves the formation of a carbocation intermediate. Because there is a tertiary carbon, the carbocation will be stabilized making it much more likely to form. Also the tertiary carbon sterically hinders the nucleophile from directly attacking the carbon, which prevents the possibility of an SN2 reaction. The alkyl halide is a good leaving group, because halides are very electronegative atoms so they will be happy to take the electrons out of the bond. This is also why it will have a negative charge upon entering the solution. Once we have a carbocation, it will attract the negatively charged nucleophile to it. Because the nucleophile has a negative charge, it must have lone pair electrons to donate so it will form a bond with the carbon.

Wow that was a lot! But as you see, if you actually just understand why things are going on you will be able to put the pieces of the puzzle together easily. I haven’t taken organic chemistry for almost 2 years now but yet I was able to recall all of those details because when I studied it I focused on understanding why the reaction took place for each step!

Getting good grades is about being the best student you can. And one critical mind shift that should take place for learning , is focusing on the why instead of the what. Just know that there is always a why to any kind of science question you have. Try to understand why things are happening instead of just memorizing whats going on. I promise you will do way better on your tests and you will really learn your material too!

Tell us what you think by leaving a comment down below! For more pre-med tips and advice, make sure to subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on Facebook, twitter, and pinterest!

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Jan 13 2016

I was accepted as a “Who’s who” member for 2015!

Hey guys! Wil here!

Just wanted to share that I was accepted as a member of “Who’s who in American Universities and College’s list for 2015”. This is a pretty competitive list to get into so I’m very happy to be accepted! This is proof that with hard work, consistency, and dedication anything is possible!

(My first name is James. But I go by Wil. If you are curious why, its because my middle name is Wilson. 🙂 )

Please make sure to follow Pre-med Community to stay updated on my journey as a pre med into medical school. As well as the best advice I can give to other pre meds!

Until next time!

Nov 22 2015

5 tips to ace your finals

Finals are coming up and that means there are some stressed out pre med’s out there. But don’t worry we got you covered with a simple guide to help you ace those finals!

The dreaded finals are often the source of alot of stress for many pre meds. This is because finals usually are comprehensive and worth roughly half of your class grade. So if you want to make an A you have to kill it on that final! Here are some tips that will guarantee that you boss your final:

1. Start studying several weeks in advance

There are several reasons for this. First, this is super critical to making good grades because our brain retains information best when it is presented several times over a period of time. This is known as spaced repetition. (You always hear me talking about this, because it is SO important. Seriously make sure you study this way) Also by studying several weeks in advance this gives you time to figure out what you need to work on! If you wait till the last week to start studying, you might realize that you don’t know half of the material taught in the beginning of the semester. You will be in a terrible position and be forced to cram (And remember cramming doesn’t work well). If you start studying weeks ahead, you can plan out your study schedule and make sure you aren’t overwhelmed. Do yourself a favor and study with plenty of time ahead of the final. It will save you alot of stress and could potentially save your grade.

2. Summary notes

Summary notes are one of the best things I have figured out since I started college. They are basically a collection of only notes that matter, cut out all of that fat. They “summarize” everything you need to know. These notes are condensed and straight to the point. These notes are great for many reasons, they help you to focus on the most important concepts and when you finish them make great review material! It is best to start these notes at the beginning of the semester and work on them throughout the semester so that when you are ready to study for finals you already have them!

3. Go over old tests and quizzes

These are some of your best resources for your final because they were written by the same person who is writing your final! Reviewing your old tests and quizzes tells you what subjects to focus on and how the test is formatted. This is super important information to consider when planning your finals study schedule. Perhaps he/she asked a ton of questions on photosynthesis but only one on plant anatomy. This tells you what your teacher thinks is more important, so you want to make sure you spend more time on that. Also old tests and quizzes tell you what your weaknesses were then, telling you what to focus on now. Plus they make great review material!

4. Fill in your knowledge gaps

Throughout the semester we are presented a lot of material and sometimes we are not able to perfectly understand every concept or do every type of problem. This is the material we were struggling with in the beginning of the semester that we never really got a grasp of. These knowledge gaps will be where we lose a majority of our points on the final. So its important now to go back and relearn whatever you didn’t fully understand before.

5. Practice, practice, practice

There is no better way to guarantee that you make a good grade on your final than by doing practice problems. This is your bread and butter when it comes to studying and preparing for any exam. Just understanding the concepts won’t mean that you can solve a hard physics problem or be able to do a complex organic chemistry reaction mechanism. The only way you will be able to actually do it on the exam is by practicing it a bunch of times. Making sure you can do the actual problems you will see on your exam is where you want to spend most of your time. Just keep doing practice problems until you got that type of problem down. If you are having trouble with a certain type of problem figure out how to do it. Then practice that type of problem until you can do it in your sleep. Repeat this with all of the material that will be on the final until you feel confident in every topic.

Finals can be hard but they can be overcome by breaking them down and methodically going over your weaknesses. Give yourself several weeks to prepare for your final, focus on your weaknesses, use old tests and quizzes, and do practice problems and tests until you feel confident.

I hope you found this advice helpful! Tell us what you think by leaving a comment down below! For more pre-med tips and advice, make sure to subscribe to our newsletter and follow us on Facebook, twitter, and pinterest!

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