How I studied during my first two years of medical schools. First off congratulations on getting into medical school!! I don’t care if it was your first time or 4th time applying all that matters is you got in and are one step closer to making your dreams a reality!
So now your in and your probably wondering what will the next year or two look like for me? Well I won’t lie the next few years will definitely look quite different than college, even grad school or your previous 9-5 job. But that’s perfectly OK, it’s better to go in mentally prepared vs. no preparation at all. You’ll be taking classes similar to college during your first two years but the classes will be much more fast paced.
If your med school is like mine the curriculum was designed similar to the set up of my college during MS1 year. We took our basic medicine classes such as biochem, histology, physiology and etc. Having to go home and study multiple subjects every night takes a little getting use to, I will admit. But MS2 year was much better for me because our curriculum was designed in system-based blocks (cardiology, pathology, pulmonology, etc).
Which meant that at all times during one block we would be studying all things Cardiology. This approach to learning just made more sense to me and I liked only having to focus on one exam per block. How I studied during my first two years of medical schools: strategies resources and more.
Here are some overarching tips before I dive into MS1/MS2 year specifics:
- Organization: Most of us med students are type A personality but I know for me when I have so much to do on my plate I start to get overwhelmed. Kept a planner throughout med school for this reason. I would write down everything. I wanted to accomplish for my evening of studying and would check it off as I completed my tasks. There’s nothing like that feeling of checking something OFF your list YASSS. If I was unable to get to a task, I would simply add it to the next day and try to tackle it then.How I studied during my first two years of medical schools: strategies resources and more.
- I also kept track of major assignments and when my exams were, and set little reminders for myself so I could study accordingly.
- Be Proactive: You will be expected to be a proactive learner, meaning much of your actual learning and committing the information into memory will come outside of the classroom (during your self studies or in study groups). Your professors are of course there to help/guide you but they can’t learn and apply the information for you.
Study or read almost everyday
: Okay this may sound like a lot but it is so important to continue to review.
Know yourself and how you study best. For me reading content is not actively studying. How I studied during my first two years of medical schools: strategies resources and more.
I do not have a photographic memory or let’s face it the best memory period. I need to actively go over concepts multiple times by writing things out and talking to myself out loud for the info to stick. While this may not work for you.
I highly suggest knowing how you study best and start implementing those practices EARLY. This is NOT college you cannot pull an all nighter and ACE your exam the next day. There’s just too much information that your responsible for knowing to be able to do that. Medical school will feel like your drinking water out of a fire hydrant: which is impossible. It is good to come to terms with the fact that you will not and cannot know EVERYTHING.
Practice questions:
- In order to reenforce what you’ve been studying it’s equally important to do practice questions. Practice questions definitely count as studying. My biggest tip about questions is make sure to go over all the answer explanations. It’s not only important to know why the right answer is right but know WHY the WRONG answer is wrong so you can easily rule that out if asked something similar on the exam. I can’t tell you how many times I learned more from reviewing the incorrect answer choices.
- Take BREAKS: I admittedly did not do enough of this during medical school but I wish I had! Take frequent breaks when actively studying but keep the break to ~15-20 minutes. I know for me personally I liked studying one subject and once I was done with that I would take a longer break before buckling down again. Exercise on your break, talk on the phone, go outside, shoot I often napped during my breaks. Do whatever you need to do relax! If your schedule allows I would allot at least one half a day per week where you don’t do anything school related to have some time for yourself, family, kids and etc. I would suggest doing this on the weekend as a reset for the upcoming week ahead.
So with those tips and that background let’s get into MS1/MS2 specifics:
MS1: I bet your wondering how to incorporate Step 1 studying early into med school? I know the exam is know Pass/fail but you still have to know enough information to Pass. For MS1 year I really just focused on my lecture materials and in-class exams. Honestly I did have a copy of First Aid 2021 but nothing in there really made much sense to me during MS1 year. Little did I know the whole book was so important!
- For physiology heavy blocks: I focused on in class lectures and did lots of practice questions. I found that BRS Physiology and Physiology PreTest were especially helpful additional resources.
- Flash cards: I made lots of flash cards for subjects like anatomy and biochem. Many of my classmates liked the card deck called ANKI. However I just preferred my own home made tangible cards. For biochemistry specifically make sure you are able to write out all the pathways for things like glycolysis and know the specific enzymes involved. I would get a blank piece of scrab paper and make sure I could write everything out from memory just prior to the test. How I studied during my first two years of medical schools.
Anatomy:
- For anatomy specifically make sure you are IN THE LAB outside of your mandatory lab time. You need to get in there and learn that information and you need to be able to recognize and ID the items FAST. On the day of your practical you will be nervous and you will feel the pressure of the clock ticking when your moving from station to station trying to scramble and write down what you think is being shown. Which is why if you work hard in the lab prior to the practical you will feel more comfortable and your nerves won’t get the best of you.
Study groups
- Study groups: This makes studying less painful and you can learn from your classmates and vice versa. Referencing anatomy lab again I learned that there were MANY things to memorize but they were not all equally important. For example things like the brachial plexus were important but what pathologies may arise if one of the trunks and/roots is damaged. This is called secondary or even tertiary test questions. The professor not only wants you to know the structure but you need to then know the what the deficit would be if the structure is damaged.
- Pathology: Pathoma (book/videos): for pathology this is a great resource that I even referenced during my clinical years.
- Microbiology and pharmacology: Sketchy micro/pharm I would not know pharmacology or microbiology as well. I do now if it was not for these resources. If you don’t have access to it I would 100% say it is worth the price. I purchased a sketchypharm booklet and then printed out screen shots of each sketchymicro video. To form a booklet so I could take notes on them when watching the video.
- I believe they came out with sketchypathology as well I didn’t use it .Because it was not available to me however I would check it out.
MS2:
The first few months of the year I really focused on classroom materials and doing well on in-class exams similar to MS1 year. After this point I did begin to crack open First Aid 2021 AKA the Step 1 bible. Began taking some notes in there on important concepts that I learned from each of my blocks. I found this helpful when I went back over first aid leading up to/during my dedicated step 1 study month. Also purchased UWORLD at the beginning of MS2 year and initially didn’t really use many questions but worked my way up to heavily using UWORLD to study for in-class exams, NBMEs and of course for step 1.
Got through most of Uworld prior to my dedicated study period. I won’t go into much detail on that you can read more specifics on my Step 1 board prep post. But during my dedicated time I focused more on content review. I say review because there is not enough time to learn a ton of new info during dedicated. Hence the importance of working hard to learn those concepts during MS1/2 years.
To wrap things up I just want to say that medical school is a marathon not like any other race. I found a great group of friends that I studied with, shared materials and leaned on during tough times. I also came into medical school married and leaned on my husband heavily throughout those 4 years. Regardless of your study habits it is imperative to have a good emotional support system. I can definitely attribute my academic success to having a strong support system made up of people in and outside of medical school. Find your people and don’t be afraid to lean on them, your mental and emotion health will thank you.