How To Get Into Medical School

How to do well on college tests

Instead of taking a science class formally during your first year as a pre-med, I suggest you audit a science class that you plan on taking. Auditing means showing up to class but not registering. Ask your professor if you can do this if it is a small class (less than 30). If it is a larger class you can easily audit without or being a nuisance to the class. While you are auditing the class, try to understand the concepts instead of constantly writing down what the professor is writing on the board. Get many copies of old tests and look at the format of each. Look at the type of questions the professor gives to the class. Be a student of the type of test. In most cases 80% of the test questions will be in the same format as previous tests. The reason. Profs don’t want to reinvent the wheel.

What I am giving to you during your freshman year (what you are giving yourself) is time to learn how to take tests. Well you might think that if you have a sound foundation of science you should be able to take the tests. That is true, and you should establish a good foundation of the basic principles.

What about if you have already taken some pre-med classes and don’t have the time to audit a class? If you are currently not getting A’s on your tests, I strongly urge you to devote a large portion of your time to understanding the nature of your pre-med tests. That means looking at practice tests and understanding the type of questions being asked and how to solve every type of question asked. Why should you be concerned about studying primarily from tests and problem sets and not by reading from a textbook to develop a foundation of the facts? Say you have a great science foundation and are asked a multi part question on a test. It looks difficult, but if you reason it out based upon the facts given in your textbook you can definitely do it. However, during that 10 minutes you took reasoning out the question, you could have answered the question if you had seen the type of question and answered it before a few times. You will know the important values necessary for calculation, the type of calculation, and the steps to get to the final answer. It will be second nature to you. Cost of time to answer the question 2 minutes. 10-2=8 minutes that you now have to spend your brain power on questions no one has ever seen before. This time can be spent reasoning out questions that NO ONE has seen before. And you will need that time.

If you are in a science class right now and this is your freshman year and you are just getting below the mean on your first midterm, don’t worry. Relax. If you feel you would have to kill yourself studying to get the mean you might want to reconsider dropping the class (if you are still allowed the option.

If you become a student of the tests you will:

Know the format the tests are in.

Know the type of questions

See the breadth of material that will be covered.

Know how to answer each type of problem automatically.

Once you know these basics from looking at the practice tests, try to answer some of the questions. If you can’t answer the question, try to answer it using either your notes or textbook. If still no luck, ask a classmate. At this point if you don’t have an answer, go to office hours and ask your prof. Not too many people go to office hours, so if you go ask you question and try to develop a relationship with the prof at the same time. Be comfortable with the questions come test time.

After you start taking these practice tests, you subconsciously start developing a system and rhythm of how to take tests. To take better advantage of this system, start to write it down.

In general when I take tests:

I first scan the whole test. See how long it is and look for what I can answer almost immediately based upon memory. I answer these first.
I then answer the questions on the ranking of what will be either the easiest to answer or take the least amount of time. MAKE SURE TO READ THE INSTRUCTIONS AND PAY ATTENTION TO ANNOUNCEMENTS OF WHO IS ADMINISTERING THE TEST! I cannot emphasize this enough. So many points have been lost from lack of following directions.
After all of these are completed I go to ones that will take me a while to answer (but I know I can give an intelligible answer). If you are not sure about an answer, it is always best to show as much work as possible. This way, the TA will be able to see more of your thought process. If you have two different answers, show how you got both of them on your test book. The more work you have done, the higher your probability of getting part of the question right. This will enable you to have partial credit even if you don’t get the exact answer. Partial credit is extremely important!
After all are answered, go back and recheck your answers. I have saved so many points by going back and checking out the numbers and calculating errors.