Picture this. You’re in college. You’ve been working hard, putting in the hours, and
studying until your eyes fall out – and yet, you’re still getting Bs on all your
exams. Meanwhile, Einstein over there is getting near-perfect scores and setting the curve.
How is he doing it? Does he have some sort of X factor that you don’t? Or maybe he
was just born smart. Not quite, and here’s why.
Dr. Jubbal, MedSchoolInsiders.com
A common misconception is that to be a top student with a 4.0 GPA or a great MCAT score,
you must be inherently smart. While intelligence does help, most people do have the potential
to become a top student - it’s just a matter of applying yourself in the right ways. Here’s
what separates the top students from the rest of the pack, and what you can do to become
a top student yourself.
First, top students are able to reflect and adapt their approach to studying depending
on the class or type of material they’re learning.
We’ve all heard the saying that, “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing
over and over and expecting a different result.” That being said, it can often be difficult
to realize when you’re repeatedly making the same mistakes in your own life.
When students don’t do as well as they want to on an exam, it's common for them to conclude
that they just didn’t study enough. So what do they do next time? They study longer and
try to brute force their way through.
Although this might work for a while, there will eventually come a time when it stops
working – and when that happens, these students plateau. What makes top students different
is that they don’t just try to brute force their way through by studying longer and longer.
They reflect on their study strategies and adapt. Here’s an example.
During college, I was a neuroscience major. As such, most of the classes I took required
deep knowledge of the material. To succeed, I needed to understand how brain receptors
and ion channels work, how they interact with other body systems, and apply that knowledge
to novel situations. I always had to consider the bigger picture to avoid missing the forest
for the trees, so to speak. My study strategy for these classes relied heavily on comprehending
the information and applying it through practice problems – and this worked well for me.
The issue is that this strategy is not ideal for every situation. I learned this the hard
way when I got to my first psychology upper-division course, which was supposed to be easy. I used
these same techniques and ended up with a B on the midterm. But instead of trying to
brute force my way through using the same tactics for the final, I reflected on the
midterm and thought about how I can approach the final more effectively.
In this case, I realized that instead of trying to deeply understand the material and look
at the bigger picture, my time was much better spent going through flashcards and trying
to just commit the facts to memory. By refining my strategies and making this switch, I was
ultimately able to ace the final and get an A in the class.
Top students understand that you have to refine your approach on a subject-by-subject, class-by-class
basis. For example, subjects like psychology and biology tend to be more memorization-heavy,
so strategies such as flashcards and spaced repetition work well. For subjects like chemistry
or physics, however, it is often better to work through practice problems instead.
In addition, some professors emphasize deep understanding and application on their exams
whereas others focus more on memorizing facts. You have to be able to identify what you are
dealing with and adapt accordingly. It sounds simple, but most students only know one way
of studying and try to apply it to every situation.
I didn’t realize it at the time, but learning how to adapt my study strategies early on
in my college career helped me immensely when I got into medical school. It allowed me to
approach each subject differently and tailor my study strategies to what would be most
effective for each one. This, in turn, helped me excel in medical school and match into
one of the two hyper-competitive specialties in medicine.
Next, top students are better at managing their time.
People often think that to be at the top of your class you need to be a slave to your
schedule and spend 12 hours a day, 7 days a week studying – never taking time to relax
or enjoy yourself. It’s actually quite the contrary. There are diminishing returns the
longer you work in a given day. Paradoxically, to achieve the highest degrees of productivity,
you must plan time away from your work – and the top students know this.
Top students understand that sustainability is the name of the game. Studying 12 hours
a day, every day, and prioritizing school over all else in your life is a sure-fire
way to burn out. To get straight A’s and crush your exams, your mind has to be operating
at full capacity. This simply isn’t possible if you never give yourself the chance to recharge.
The question then, is how do you balance studying and relaxation? The answer is by being intentional
with your time.
If you set aside two hours to study, be sure to focus and study. But if you set aside two
hours to spend time with family or friends, be fully present and enjoy yourself. There’s
no point in trying to combine work and play. You end up not getting much done and not feeling
refreshed in the end.
In addition to being intentional with their time, top students are also more efficient
with their time. They understand that the goal of studying isn’t to see who can spend
the longest time staring into a textbook, it’s to learn. As such, if you want to be
efficient with your time, your goal should be to squeeze the most amount of learning
into the least amount of time. You can do this by focusing on active instead of passive
learning strategies.
The default strategy that nearly all students employ is passive learning. This includes
reading through notes, highlighting textbooks, and listening to lectures on repeat. The issue
with these strategies isn’t that it’s impossible to learn by doing them, it’s
that they are highly inefficient. The reason that we default to them, however, is that
they are often easier, require less effort, and overall feel more comfortable. Active
learning, on the other hand, is more challenging, less comfortable, but much more effective.
Active learning strategies include things like active recall in the form of flashcards,
condensing notes into summary sheets, or going through practice questions.
We have an entire playlist on study strategies showing you how to study like a pro – link
in the description. The key takeaway, however, is that you shouldn’t just look at how many
hours you’re studying. You need to also consider how much you’re learning in those
hours and try to get the most bang for your buck with your study strategies.
Lastly, top students know the importance of investing in themselves – both in terms
of their time and their money. Just as people invest in the stock market to get a return
on their investment, investing in yourself can have a significantly higher ROI.
Let’s start with investing in yourself from a time perspective. Top students know that
in order to perform optimally, you need to start by taking care of your body and your
mind – and the only way to do this is to make your health a priority and actively set
aside time for it. Although it isn’t as sexy or exciting as the hot new nootropic
or life hack, 95% of your performance comes down to three pillars: sleep, nutrition, and
exercise. If any one of these is out of balance, then you won’t be able to function at the
top of your game. I discuss how to optimize sleep, nutrition, and exercise and how they relate
to productivity and cognitive performance on my personal channel Kevin Jubbal, M.D.
- link in the description.
The key takeaway, however, is that top students make their health a priority. They make time
for sleep, exercise, and nutrition to ensure they’re functioning optimally. Skipping
meals, opting for convenient but unhealthy foods, skipping the gym, and not sleeping
enough are all habits that may work in the short term, but long term they will severely
limit your potential. Schedule time for the gym daily – make it a routine. Plan out
your meals to make sure you always have healthy food accessible to you. And make sure you
get enough sleep.
In terms of investing in yourself from a financial perspective, top students aren’t afraid
to invest extra money into their education. I am a strong believer in that your finances
should reflect your priorities. If I look at your bank statements, I should be able
to clearly see what your priorities are.
In today’s day and age, education is absurdly expensive, and it can be difficult to bring
yourself to spend a dime more on your education. I get it. I didn’t come from a privileged
background. We pinched pennies, had three of us in a one-bedroom apartment, and I had
to work in a library and save for 6 months to afford my first laptop. But even still,
my family always reminded me that my education is a priority not to be taken lightly.
Whether it is spending extra money to live closer to school so you don’t burden yourself
with a long commute, purchasing extra study materials, or hiring a tutor, spending a little
bit more on your education can be one of the best investments you ever make. By focusing
on my education and investing in myself, I was able to get into multiple top medical
schools and earn merit-based scholarships that saved me hundreds of thousands of dollars.
If you want to get more meta, this investment paid off thousands of times more because without
it, I wouldn’t have had this level of success with Med School Insiders. If I was an average
student that barely got into medical school, aspiring physicians like you would be less
eager to learn from me, and the quality of my insights or advice would also be compromised.
One of the most important investments for a premed is how they decide to approach the
medical school admissions process. Applying to medical school is a costly endeavor, and
it is in your benefit to only apply once. Reapplying to medical school means one year
of lost physician salary, which averages between $230,000 and $340,000 per year.
At Med School Insiders, we specialize in helping students achieve their maximal potential,
get into the best medical school and residency programs, and surpass even their own expectations
of themselves.
That’s because when creating Med School Insiders I took my obsessive interest in optimization,
systems, and results, and applied it to the world of medical school admissions consulting
and tutoring. By poaching top talent from competitors, working with that talent to identify
and address common shortcomings in the industry, we innovated new systems and proprietary approaches
never seen before.
That translates to not only delivering stellar industry-leading results for our clients,
but more importantly, we do it consistently, for all students, because of the innovations
we’ve created. No other company has been able to replicate that.
You’ll never receive a cookie-cutter plan, and can rest assured that we are made up of
a vast team of top-performing medical doctors - those who have been at the top of their
class, earned sizable merit-based scholarships and matched into competitive specialties at
top programs. We know how to help you achieve stellar results because we’ve done it ourselves.
Plus, we’re actual MD physicians with actual admissions committee experience for both medical
school and residency.
Our results speak for themselves and it’s no surprise that we quickly became the fastest-growing
company in the space.
Become a top performer and learn more about our admissions consulting and tutoring services
at MedSchoolInsiders.com.
Thank you all so much for watching. If you enjoyed this video, be sure to check out Anatomy
of a Successful Premed or this other video. Much love, and I’ll see you guys there.