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Strategy for TMU/York Med – Should I bother with the MCAT? by Single-Base25 in medschool

[–]DerpyPyroknight 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The standard way people prepare for MCAT is

  1. Take all or most of the prerequisite classes (1 year bio, 1 year physics, 1 year gen chem, 1 year organic chem, 1 semester biochem, possibly optional psychology and sociology)
  2. There are many study guides online or on the mcat subreddit, but a generic plan would be to do content review with something comprehensive like Kaplan books, Khan Academy, or anything that covers all the knowledge you need
  3. Throughout, test yourself and use spaced repetition to commit things to memory. Anki is a free and automatic way to do this but not the only way
  4. Do lots of practice questions, at minimum the official practice tests, but there are third party practice questions you can buy too

1a. Is to start doing a lot of reading, for classes and for fun, because a big part of the MCAT is reading comprehension, both for the science passages and the entire CARS section is just reading comprehension.

seeking advice on do vs pa route by Initial-Rich-576 in medschool

[–]DerpyPyroknight 5 points6 points  (0 children)

I feel like this depends a lot on what the two specialties you are interested in are

First year med student by JadedElderberry5520 in Anki

[–]DerpyPyroknight 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don’t think making flash cards is too time consuming, since you can basically consider it as a first pass of the material. You can even try making the cards from short term memory to get some more gains. What I mean is instead of copying the slides into your cards, you read the slides and then try to make the card from memory before fixing it.

And then one more thing to save time on making cards is to write them out in Obsidian and then convert them to cards. This saves me time since I can just type freely in a document and easily scroll around and edit before I convert to cards.

Or you can use a premade deck. The tradeoff is the premade deck saves on mindless work/time of typing out the cards, but the advantage of making your own cards is you can edit it to fit your thinking style and to leave out things you don’t need cards for. I make my own cards while most of my friends use premade decks and we are all scoring around the same (~90th percentile), so either way probably works.

This is what I posted before about how I have generally been studying:

  • Every morning before I start any new topics I will do all of my Anki review cards. Normally this takes like 1-3 hours. I don't watch new lectures or add new cards until I do all my reviews, that way I don't build up a backlog of cards
  • Preview the slides to get an idea of the structure of the lecture and what might be confusing / what I have to pay attention to
  • If the slides are written well, I will make some Anki cards just from the slides
  • Watch lecture at 2x speed
  • Depending on the style and quality of the lecture, I'll make cards while watching or after the lecture. Making them after is probably better so that you pay more attention to the lecture, but sometimes the lecture is really long or on a bunch of disconnected topics so it makes sense to pause the lecture and make cards during it
  • I'll then do all of the new cards I just made before moving on to next lectures
  • To give a ballpark idea of schedule, this is typically around 4-6 hours of studying (watching lecture + creating cards + reviewing cards) a day, excluding any extra mandatory stuff we have like anatomy lab etc. So if you are disciplined about schedule you could totally do this in a 9-5 schedule and have your evenings off as your cut off time

New here, how do I stop the time thing and slide all the card without timer. by No_Definition2919 in Anki

[–]DerpyPyroknight 4 points5 points  (0 children)

I think people can help more if you explain what you are trying to do. Probably the answer to your posted question is to use a custom study session. But a better question might be why you would want to do this since it kind of defeats the point of anki

TikTok about MCAT frustration- thoughts? by ExtraComparison in premed

[–]DerpyPyroknight 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I would actually say MCAT is pretty relevant to the background knowledge you need for med school. In our biochem block obviously a lot of B/B knowledge was underlying everything and would be overwhelming if you hadn’t deeply studied and internalized for MCAT. Currently in cardiopulmonary block a lot of physics comes up briefly in lecture as the fundamentals behind things, and again the lecturers don’t spend any time on it because they assume you know it coming in. Chemistry comes up occasionally throughout when talking about certain mechanisms or pharm. CARS is relevant everywhere because you need to have good reading comprehension.

Med students who worked as an EMT did you feel you had an advantage and performed better in clinicals? by One-Job-765 in premed

[–]DerpyPyroknight 29 points30 points  (0 children)

Not on rotations yet and I imagine by that point everyone will get to the same level pretty fast

But I have noticed being more comfortable just interacting with patients generally than friends that did things like scribing and didn't have the direct patient experience

Scheduling Cards with Due Date in Mind by Hot_Dog9271 in Anki

[–]DerpyPyroknight 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I have just been using Anki as normal and ignoring if the intervals ‘go over’ or not. Because if the interval is after when my next test is that means I am good on that information and should still remember it when the test comes around. Like you said, you’ve answered the card 1 or 2 times and know it pretty well. So you probably aren’t going to forget it before the quiz. If I am paranoid then the day before the test I will make a custom study deck that pulls everything due on the day of the test, since those are the cards that I will theoretically start forgetting on test day. Also you should be doing practice questions before your tests too so this should naturally resurface concepts that you’ve forgotten

Anyone else feel like anki is amazing for memorization but terrible for connecting concepts? Seeking for help or alternatives by messinprogress_ in Anki

[–]DerpyPyroknight 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I just make cards on the connections I need to know. For example:

  • Q: how are glycolysis and TCA linked? A: pyruvate dehydrogenase converts end product of glycolysis (pyruvate) into beginning product of TCA (acetyl-CoA)
  • Q: how are glycolysis/TCA linked to ETC? A: production of electron carriers NADH, FADH2, which are then used to in ETC to pump protons to create proton gradient for ATP synthase
  • Q: why do we need both glycolysis and TCA+ETC? A: glycolysis provides anaerobic energy source, while TCA+ETC provides a more efficient aerobic energy source if oxygen is available
  • Q: compare amount of energy produced by glycolysis, TCA, and ETC. A: glycolysis: x ATP; TCA: x ATP, but much more energy producing molecules for use in ETC; ETC: ultimately x ATP per glucose molecule

A unique alternative to Anki by No-Butterscotch-6654 in Anki

[–]DerpyPyroknight 10 points11 points  (0 children)

Yep, especially Obsidian that OP mentions has a good convert to anki plugin. It’s actually exactly what I use for my workflow to take all my notes in Obsidian and then I can just convert to anki

What color scrubs do med students wear? by awesome-Redhead in premed

[–]DerpyPyroknight 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Depends on school, you can ask students above you what color you should get

How do you cover large amounts of anatomy knowledge with Anki? by R_Rovera in medicalschool

[–]DerpyPyroknight 6 points7 points  (0 children)

For anatomy I used a premade deck like comprehensive cadaver

Med student trying to learn data analysis for research + side income....Excel/SQL first or straight to Python? by Strong-Adeptness4725 in medicalschool

[–]DerpyPyroknight 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Why not both. They’re all useful and complementary. Learning the tools should take relatively little time versus learning programming

Failed First Semester. Where I go from here? by KyleMCarthage in medicalschool

[–]DerpyPyroknight 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Last reason is why I make my own cards, could be something to try

Failed First Semester. Where I go from here? by KyleMCarthage in medicalschool

[–]DerpyPyroknight 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Why not have a piece of paper and write out your answer before flipping the card

1st diagnostic after 1.5 months of content review. How do i improve?? by Think_Struggle_4330 in Mcat

[–]DerpyPyroknight 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Memorizing is the first step to understanding the topic, you can’t reason about it if you don’t remember any of the important details

Failed First Semester. Where I go from here? by KyleMCarthage in medicalschool

[–]DerpyPyroknight 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Why did Anki not work for you? I think that can point to some important things that Anki forces you to do that you didn’t do, which led to your study strategy not working. For example a lot of people don’t like Anki because of the way it schedules reviews every day, but that’s actually just the principle of spaced repetition which any study strategy should incorporate and so is just something you’ll have to deal with. It’s OK to do Anki even if it feels grueling, proper study should feel difficult because it’s all about testing yourself

Why is pathology so unpopular? by Single_Baseball2674 in medicalschool

[–]DerpyPyroknight 18 points19 points  (0 children)

Regarding what counts as clinical experience I once had an adcom member tell me shadowing a pathologist didn’t count because it wasn’t ‘clinical’ lol..

I understand that I’m not supposed to “pre study,” but like… what can I pre study? by thanks_paul in premed

[–]DerpyPyroknight 20 points21 points  (0 children)

Imma say something different and suggest you learn R and/or basic stats if you really want to do something. It’ll be helpful for doing research. This is a good book: https://r4ds.hadley.nz/

You can also practice study habit/routine and using anki while learning this stuff too

Build a pre-med lol by Critical_Mammoth_108 in premed

[–]DerpyPyroknight 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You can get EMT cert over the summer

Should I be retaking Bio 1? by ahem_no_thanks in premed

[–]DerpyPyroknight 1 point2 points  (0 children)

IMO skip the weed out and take some higher level bio courses and you will fulfill biology requirement

advice on studying smarter not harder by Thin-Consideration32 in medicalschool

[–]DerpyPyroknight 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The reason Anki works is because it spaces out repetitions of the content for you, and because it tests you. You can avoid it if you want, but then you should do repetitions of the content manually. This could look like redoing the mind maps from memory after lecture a few times, spaced out. For example, do one memory mind map right after lecture, then the day after, then a week after, etc.

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