You ever sit down to study?
You know you have a few hours and you know you have a lot to get done but you don't actually
know what to do within that study time.
Hey guys this is Leah from leah4sci.com/mcat and in this video, i'm going to share 5 steps
to make sure that your studying is as productive as possible.
I've had quite a few students signed up for my program after they've gone through all
of their MCAT books, but they were still not scoring well on their practice exams.
They checked off every chapter but they never mastered the material.
After a thorough evaluation, they realized that they have to start all over.
So how do you make sure that doesn't happen to you?
How do you make sure that what you're studying actually sticks?
Now keep in mind, this is my approach and it may or may not work for you.
My perfect approach that doesn't work for you is worthless, a mediocre approach that
helps you get into medical school is awesome, so what i'm asking you to do is to go through
the 5 steps, make sure that you understand, try it for a couple of days and then evaluate.
Does it work for you?
Great, maybe half of it works for you, apply what you like, change up the rest and make
sure that at the end of the day you get into medical school, first, lets understand the
goal, your goal is not to get through the MCAT conduct, it's not.
You're not just looking to say I did 2 chapters, I did 3 chapters, no.
You're looking to understand the material, because you want to understand well enough
to be able to look at crazy difficult MCAT passages, figure out what is going and be
able to answer the question, and that means we first have to get rid of that notion of
studying a chapter a day.
I don't know where it came from, I know it sounds amazing, I do a chapter a day, everyday,
a hundred chapters, a hundred days?
I'm done.
No no no, some chapters are gonna be very easy.
You'd recognize it, the material will be familiar, there are not a lot of equations, it's very
easy to get through, other chapters like lenses and mirrors in physics take most MCAT students
days to go through it carefully and truly understand.
Are you really gonna be able to look yourself in the mirror, no pun intended and say "I've
got this", after flying through the entire chapter in one day?
I don't think so, because the last thing you wanna do is try to get through it quickly,
realizing what you don't understand and then think "I'm so stupid I can't even do a chapter
a day" When in reality your goal is simply unrealistic.
We're going for quality over quantity and we're going to try to move at a reasonable
clip so that it doesn't take you years to go through the material.
Are you ready?
Let's begin.
First thing you need is a resource for learning the material.
Some students learn from books, if you're watching this video, i'm guessing you're more
of an audio visual learner like myself and need something more engaging to teach you
the material without losing you halfway through.
I have students come to me saying "Leah I have all of these books and all of these subscriptions
and all of these everything."
No no no, that's too much and I promise you're going to get so overwhelmed.
If you bought a bunch of different books, pick that one set, put it in your study area
and hide the rest, that way you're not thinking about them, you're not feeling guilty and
you're able to focus just on that one thing in front of you and if you chose wrong, if
those books are missing information, it's not the end of the world.
Phase 1, the content thing is about getting that basic foundation and Phase 2 is when
you're going to fill in a lot of the knowledge gaps and hey, you don't actually need to master
every topic a hundred percent for the MCAT because the average gets into medical school
without a 528, yep, I have students who've gotten in with scores over 500, scores into
5 teams, they didn't know everything but they knew just enough to ace their MCAT and that's
good, they got it.
Now sure you can aim for perfection, you can go through multiple books but how long does
that gonna take you?
Most MCAT students are racing against the clock and if you have a limited amount of
time, would you rather master the first 3 topics a hundred percent or have extra time
to get through 6 or 7 topics in that same amount of time?
I discussed this concept in more detail in the higher score article link below.
Step 2, don't be passive.
If you're watching this video, I assume you're an audio visual learner like me and maybe
we even have ADHD like me.
I prefer to learn from videos because videos are alive, things come to life in full color
where your textbook is typically black and white, more on texts.
If you don't understand something, nothing changes and it's very hard to learn from so
let the videos teach you and set the books for practice.
As you're going through the videos, don't pressure yourself to get through it too quickly,
a 1 hour tutorial video can take you about 2 hours to get through, now let me say that
again, 1 hour video, 2 hours to get through, how does that happen?
And no it's not because you're watching it at half speed, as you watched it, say there's
something you don't understand, pause the video, think about it, let it sink in.
If it's still not clear, rewind the video, watch it again, even if you're watching a
prerecorded video, I want you to treat it like a life session.
If the video asks a question, don't just listen to the question, understand it and then listen
for the solution, pause the video, try the question, write out the equation, write out
your answer and then see if you got it right.
If you only know half of it, even better.
Work through the problem as best as you can then watch for the solution to understand
what you missed and if when you get to the entire video, you feel like you still don't
fully understand it, go in and watch it again, I promise you, you're going to catch something
the second time around.
As you're watching and learning, your goal was to understand, your goal was to make sense
of the information, your goal is not to memorize and don't get me wrong, you absolutely memorize
for the MCAT but I want you to do that later because I find that when students are trying
to learn and memorize at the same time, they're so focused on the facts they're not getting
the big picture.
So work on the big picture now and later you'll work on memorization with something like active
writing as I teach in the tutorial link below.
Step 3, verify in your book, I personally recommend videos before the book because as
I explained the videos are more exciting, they're easier to learn from, they're easier
to understand but no matter how well you learn from videos chances are you might've missed
something or that the video didn't include it.
As you're going through your MCAT book don't go through it slowly like you're reading for
the first time, skim through it quickly asking yourself with every paragraph "Do I get this?
Do I get this?
Do I understand it?"
If you do, fly through, but if you don't, slow down, reread the information, study it
more in depth, make sure you got everything because no matter how well you participate
in the video, chances are you missed something and you wanna make you catch it and this right
here, this is where most students call it thinking they've mastered the information
but we're only on step 3.
Before we continue, make sure you give this video a thumbs up, subscribe to my channel
and hit that bell icon so you don't miss out on any new videos and then let's continue
with step 4.
Remember I said, you'll save the memorization for later?
Well now it's later.
Step 4 is about making sure you reinforce the concepts that you learn and the memorization.
I recommend at least 15 to 20 minutes on active writing for every single study hour, every
single day.
This will help you memorize everything from equations and pathways, parts of the cell
or the brain, different scientists, their names, their theories, everything.
But the reinforcement doesn't stop just with memorization, you can add in different things
like audio summaries or flash cards, reviewing out loud, just make sure you don't go crazy
spending too much time on flash drives and last but certainly not least is to confirm
you know the information.
And last but certainly not least, step 5, confirm that you know the information.
If you feel good about this topic, excellent but don't take your word for it, prove to
yourself that you know this by working through practice questions.
Most Mcat books will have questions within the chapter or at the end of the chapter and
this is where you wanna test yourself.
You work through a couple of pages, you feel that you know it, do the practice questions
and see how you do it, the average student should aim to score between 70 to 90 percent
of the practice, if you score less than 70 percent, don't just review what you missed,
learn the answers and move on?
No no no, you haven't mastered the information, less than 70 percent means you have to go
back and redo the chapter.
Ask yourself why did I miss more than 30 percent of the questions?
Why didn't I understand?
Why do I have to relearn now that I'm doing the chapter for the second time?
If you score between 70 and 90 percent you should be okay but don't use that as a sign
to move on, review the questions, understand what you missed and why and make sure that's
clear before you move on.
And finally if you scored above 90 percent, congratulations but stop being such a perfectionist
unless you're aiming for a very high score, you spent way too much time on this chapter
to be scoring so high, I know you weren't expecting to hear this from an MCAT advisor
but lets face it, in a race against the clock, if you're taking this much time on every chapter,
you're going to lose the precious time that you would have for practicing later I would
much rather see you go a little bit faster, score a little bit lower and then have a lot
of time for practice in phases 2 and 3.
To recap, get your resources together, learn the information from the videos if you're
an audio visual learner, follow up with your book to make sure that you actually got it,
reinforce what you learned through active writing and consider adding something like
audio summaries and flash drives, last but not least practice, practice, practice.
I'm curious, let me know in the comments below which tip you're most excited to implement
next.