science

Apr 12 2019

Studying advice: The rule of four passes

The Rule of four passes

As you all might know I have a lot of articles about studying advice. That’s because I believe there is a science to effective studying and anyone can improve their grades if they learn how to be an effective studier. I am constantly evaluating my methods of studying and realizing what works well and what doesn’t. It is important that we learn to be efficient with our studying methods and utilize methods that have been shown to work. You need to constantly be refining your study methods and making it more efficient for you. During my first year of medical school, I have realized yet another component to this “science of effective studying”. Something I call the rule of four passes.

So what is the rule of four passes? Essentially it takes at least four complete passes through your lecture material/powerpoint from start to finish to be able to retain it for the exam. This means that just looking at a lecture or powerpoint once or twice is usually not enough to learn the material well enough for an exam. This depends a lot also on the density of the material. This is especially true when you are in medical school and you have lecture powerpoints that are 130 slides of dense material. You won’t be able to retain the information by just going through it once or twice. It will take at least four passes through it to really retain it. Also I have found an effective way to do these four passes to get the most out of it. So lets talk about what you should do starting with your first pass through the material to the last one.

First pass:

So by the first pass I mean the first time you are sitting down and going through your lecture material/powerpoint. So essentially the main goal of your first pass is to simply get used to the material and get acquainted with it. It is not about focusing on the details or writing notes. Simply read your lecture material with the focus of just trying to understand what’s going on. Think of it like getting your bearings. You want to understand the big picture and what the lecture is all about. If there are things you don’t understand, look them up and research them. Other than that its just simply about getting used to the material.

Second pass:

The objective of the second pass is two things: Understanding the material more deeply and taking notes on your lecture material. So as you are going through your powerpoint/lecture material for the second time you want to be going slower and aiming for understanding the material more deeply. As you are going through the material you will now be taking notes, underlining and highlighting the important information.

Here are some examples of how I take notes on my slides:

Notice how I am trying to identify the things that are most important. These notes will help me during my third pass to focus on the highest yield information.

Third pass:

The objective of the third pass is to really memorize all of the important facts and information from the lecture you will need for your exam. Now that you have gone through the material twice and become well acquainted with it, you want to really focus on understanding it fully and memorizing what matters. This pass is about understanding the nitty-gritty details. Your notes and highlights from the second pass should be helpful here as it will identify what is important to focus on. Make sure you take it slower this time and really focus on understanding your material and memorizing all key information.

Fourth pass:

Essentially the fourth pass is a self-review of the all of the lecture information. Now that you have gone through the material three times you should understand the material very well and have memorized all the key information. Start at the beginning of the lecture material again and go through each slide and quiz yourself as you go through it. You want to quiz yourself on everything you can in the lecture. Make sure you understand all the things you could be tested on. Quizzing yourself as you go through the material will allow you to assess how well you know the material and if there is anything you need to work on.

Thats the four passes! You don’t have to do all four passes all at once. You want to take breaks between each pass through the material. This gives you time to absorb the information and let your brain to take it in. Its fine to even do the passes across multiple days if you want, I would personally recommend that. You can do more than four passes obviously if you want as four is the minimum I believe it takes you to be ready for your exam. If you are to do more passes through the material I would recommend focusing on quizzing yourself on the information and identifying areas to focus on. The rule of four passes really lets you know that you can’t cram for an exam and expect to do well. Doing well on exams and getting high grades has alot to do with multiple repetitions of going through information, similiar to the concept of spaced repetition I talk about in this article. I hope that you all are excited to add another tool to your study toolkit! This is a great concept to understand which will help you do better on all your exams!

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, youtube, and pinterest!

Apr 22 2016

Pre-Med 101: What is the best major for getting into medical school?

Pre-Med 101: What is the best major For getting into Medical school?

This is a common question that many new pre-meds have. What is the best major for getting into medical school? As mentioned in our other premed 101 article (Is there a premed major?) , you don’t need to major in any specific degree as long as you get the premed required classes done. But even though you don’t need a specific major to get accepted into medical school there still might be some things worth looking into before deciding what you want to major in. There isn’t a “best” major but there are pros and cons to the different types of majors you can take. So let’s take a look at that, and you can decide for yourself what the best major for YOU is!

Generally speaking there are two types of majors you can major in if you are a premed. Science major or non-science major. So I will discuss the benefits of both.

Science major:

Pros:

– Helps prepare you better for MCAT and the rigors of medical school

– Will give you a headstart in medical school

Cons:

– More difficult curriculum, can hurt your GPA

– There are many science majors applying to medical school

Non-science major:

Pros:

– You can take a major on something you are really interested in and enjoy
– Will be better for your GPA
– Shows well roundedness and helps make you more unique on your application

Cons:

– Won’t prepare you as well for MCAT or rigors of medical school

These are the general pros and cons associated with either being a science major or non science major when it comes to being a premed. Science majors are better trained for doing well on the MCAT and in medical school because of the rigor involved in a science curriculum. However that same difficulty involved in studying the sciences can make it harder to maintain that great GPA. But it will prepare you best for medical school. On the other hand taking a non-science major might be a bit easier academically and thus be good for your GPA. But also it will not prepare you as well for the rigors involved with medical school and taking the MCAT. That being said its also important for you to consider what you would enjoy studying. And if medical school doesn’t work out and you chose a science major even though you don’t actually like science, that would be a bad position to be in. So you also have to consider what happens if you don’t get into medical school. But that won’t happen because you got premed community here!

Download a comprehensive medical school rankings report and get the free ebook, The Pre-Med’s Beginner Guide, right now!

Get our free pre-med ebook! Download now!

(You definitely want this!)

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!

Was this article helpful? What kind of articles you want to see? (For more polls, click here)

[yop_poll id=”12″ tr_id=”Summary notes”” show_results=”-1″]

[yop_poll id=”13″ tr_id=””” show_results=”-1″]

More helpful premed resources:

Get our free ebook , “The Pre-Med Beginner’s Guide”, which summarizes what every premed must know!

Bonus:

Also get free access to our comprehensive lists of medical school rankings! Click here to download

Good luck on your journey to medical school! Premed Community is here to make that a reality!

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!

Was this article helpful? (For more polls, click here)

[yop_poll id=”12″ tr_id=”Science tip”” show_results=”-1″]