You’re in medical school! Feeling overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information that you need to learn and remember?! Those old study habits may have worked in college, but now that you’re in med school, you need to find a more effective way to learn.
We’ve spent the last 30 years perfecting learning tools that help physicians ace their board exams and maintain excellent practices. We brought all of that knowledge together to help you take the stress out of med school.
Avoid study pitfalls and streamline how to study in med school with science-backed methods to help you save time, learn more effectively, and actually remembered what you study. To help transform how you learn in med school and ace your step exams, here are some study methods that you’d be better off forgetting.
Stop Relying on Reading Alone
When you read and reread, highlight and rehighlight, and underline and reunderline material, you might feel that you are learning the material better and better. Don’t be tricked by what is now known as the “fluency illusion,” the very powerful but false sense that you have a much greater grasp of the material than you do— simply because the information has become more and more familiar. In fact, rereading, rehighlighting, and reunderlining have been proven to not improve test scores at all—no matter how many times you do it!
Don't get us wrong, reading will always be important, but instead of reading alone, you can more effectively build your knowledge of important medical concepts and reinforce your long-term memory by employing various modes of study. The Medical Student Study Strong System includes the Student Core, a 20-volume set of books (in both print and digital formats) that give you all the content you need to read, Heart Sounds, Skin Signs, and Qbank+ (a Q&A bank that links with the digital Student Core) with Step 1 and Step 2 questions. So, you can first read must-know information in the Student Core, and then test yourself on what you've studied with Qbank+. Each question in Qbank+ links to the Student Core, so you can dive deeper into the topic. This deepens your understanding and makes the information more accessible to you when you’ll need it in the future for exams, classes, and eventually everyday practice!
Forget Studying One Topic at a Time
It might seem intuitively logical to study one concept or set of related material before moving on to the next. However, studies show that there is an even better way to learn—essentially by mixing up the topics. That’s where Personal Trainer comes in.
Personal trainer is your new, super-smart learning guide, and it’s included with the Med Student Study Strong System for free! Tell it your study goals, and your personalized study plan will walk you through all the topics to cover week by week, broken up into study units. Throughout your study sessions, Personal Trainer will guide you to preview, study, or review (we call it spaced retrieval) different units instead of focusing on one topic alone. Never worry about making your own study schedule again, Personal Trainer does it for you!
Never Cram Before Exams Again
The overarching problem with cramming for exams is that most of what you crammed is gone shortly after. It is much better to learn the material in a way that makes the information readily accessible whenever you need it, even long after the exam.
That’s why we built Personal Trainer to be adjustable based on your goals, so you don’t end up needing to pull an all-nighter to cover everything right before the exam. When you set up your personal trainer, you’ll choose what topics you cover and what date you want to be done studying. We’ll determine how much you’ll need to cover each week, so you can take your time and actually learn all the topics you need to master for classes, step exams, and beyond!
Check out our StudyWise guide to learn how to study in med school more effectively by forgetting about these (and even more!) learning myths, and instead using our science-backed MedStudy Method.
*The United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE®) is a joint program of the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB®) and the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME®). None of the trademark holders are affiliated with MedStudy.
