Med school tips
Ever since I started med school, one of my main goals has been to understand why it is so hard and why do so many students drop out. Is there a secret to achieving success like that of one colleague of yours who continuously aced their exams?
It is no secret that medical school is hard. But what exactly is difficult in medical school? Is it the curriculum and seemingly countless pieces of information that you must memorize? Is it the competition with many brighter and more determined students than you? Or maybe it’s the biological variable, like intelligence, that you must innately possess to pass all of your exams? Factors of success in med school are many, like intelligence, memorization, luck, and determination, but there is one factor that is, in my opinion, the greatest determinant of them all. That factor is a passion for learning.
In my experience, the most successful students weren’t the most intelligent or the ones with semi-eidetic memories, but the ones who loved to learn about a specific topic in medicine.
Throughout my whole life, I was always the smartest kid in my classes. I aced every exam and always did the extra work. Not because I cared about what I was studying, but because I adored being at the top of the academic food chain, plus the pure admiration in the eyes of those around me was like fuel to me. Everything changed when I entered med school, and the first thing I noticed was that many of the students in my class were really smart. And I mean REALLY smart. Some people got stuff pretty quickly, and some could retain almost any piece of information, no matter how indigestible it might be. If one of those people failed to answer something correctly, they would go home and research everything on the topic.
I couldn’t bear the feeling of being mediocre. It was one of the worst feelings I've felt in a long time, if I ever felt it at all. Instinctively, I pushed myself and managed to pass all the exams in the first year, but almost all of my grades were B's. I managed to get some A’s but was met with Cs in other subjects. I was incredibly furious and pushed myself to the brink of insanity trying to get that A, but it was all for nothing.
After the first year, I started carefully observing my above-average colleagues to find out the true recipe for success. It wasn’t easy, and I faced many challenges along the way. The deeper I dug to find that one golden ore of success, the more questions began to arise. One of the many mistakes I made was trying to copy the study methods and mindsets of my smarter colleagues to realize what makes them so good at what they’re doing. One colleague’s method after another, I noticed that whatever I did, I just couldn’t be in the top 10 of my class. Some methods worked better, and some were total failures.
The first somewhat successful method I tried was the Feynman technique*.
Feynman’s technique is based on explaining the stuff you learned as simply as you can and trying to find gaps in your knowledge.
I carefully read every paragraph in the textbook and explained it to myself as simply as I could. I liked the process, but couldn’t remember all the small details that separated good students from excellent ones.
One of my best friends from med school told me that he uses a method that helps him remember almost the whole chapter of a book, including the details we all hate.
The method is pretty simple and gives incredible results if you’re determined enough to follow it.
Andrew's method
The key to this method is writing down all of the subheadings of a chapter you’re studying. Within each subheading, write down the most crucial terms that those subheadings contain. It is important to note that many medical textbooks are written with lots of useless information, so differentiating it from the actual stuff you need to learn is one of the main goals of this method. Once you write everything down on one or two pages, you have to start rereading your script.
The first thing to do is to memorize the subheadings. Just repeat the subheading to yourself, and eventually, it will carve into your brain.
The next thing is to memorize all of the content or terms of each subheading that you wrote down.
Now that you have memorized subheadings and the most important terms, using your textbook, try to explain to yourself each of the terms you wrote down.
If you follow every step correctly, you should be able to get the general knowledge of the chapter you read.
The next step is to focus on less important terms and details that you intentionally left out during the first step.
This way, you can balance how much information you want to retain. The most effective way is to build a basic knowledge of the chapter and then slowly add new information (if necessary) every time you reread your script.
This was arguably the most effective method I tried, and in honor of my colleague, I coined it Andrew’s method.
By combining Feynman’s technique with Andrew’s method, I was able to study effectively and, for the first time, make actual progress.
I encountered only two drawbacks of this method. The first is making each script with too much detail, and the second is failing to revise the script continuously.
The solution to the first problem is that you have to actively remind yourself not to write too much, since you can always add details later if needed, and the solution to the second problem is to change your revision strategy.
By implementing revision strategies like spaced repetition, you will be able to significantly increase the power of your memorization. The best way (in my opinion) to increase that power is to understand how memorization works:
The simplified neuroscience of memorization:
Different groups of neurons (nerve cells) are responsible for forming new memories.
Once you memorize some information, you build a connection between two neurons. That connection is pretty weak at first, and if you fail to repeat that information, you won’t be able to access it later at a time (you won’t remember it). By constantly revising the information, you strengthen those connections, thus allowing yourself to remember it later.
To successfully strengthen those neuron connections, you have to revise the information effectively.
Active recall and spaced repetition
By now, you have probably heard of these terms somewhere on the internet.
Active recall and spaced repetition are scientifically proven to be the best and most effective revision strategies for almost all of the subjects you come across in med school.
Active recall is a method in which you actively engage in learning new information instead of passively rereading your script until you memorize it.
The easiest way to do that is to try to remember the whole chapter you studied without looking at your notes. At first, you probably won’t be able to recite the chapter from word to word, but with practice and continuous revision, you will manage to memorize the most important information and even details if you stick to the revision plan.
After all, you don’t have to sit next to your notes or textbook to revise. You can actively try to remember the chapter you want while taking a shower, waiting for a bus, or lying in bed before sleep.
It is important to mention that countless studies have proven that actively engaging in memorization leads to stronger neuron connectivity responsible for a specific memory.
Now that you have the grip of active recall, how often should you revise?
Here comes spaced repetition into the picture. Spaced repetition is a method in which you revise the information in spaced intervals. The spaced repetition schedule I used goes something like this:
Day 1 (Learning Day) > Day 2 (Repetition 1) > Day 7 (Repetition 2) > Day 16 (Repetition 3) > Day 35 (Repetition 4)
So on the first day, you learn a piece of information. The day after you revise it for the first time, on day 7 for the second time, and so on. While this method is proven to be effective in theory, it may be challenging in a practical sense. To make the most out of this method, you have to stick to your schedule because missing one or two revision sessions could dramatically lower its effectiveness.
It is important to note that this was the method I used for some subjects and not all of them. My revision schedule varied according to the complexity of the subject, the deadline date, and the time I had in a day/ week for revision.
How can we make a revision schedule even easier than that? Simply, by using an app or software to make the scheduling for us. Luckily, nowadays, there are many great apps to help you with spaced repetition scheduling, like Anki or SuperMemo.
I personally never used SuperMemo, but I can guarantee you that Anki makes the whole process much simpler.
Anki
Anki is a free, open-source program that lets you make flashcards in many different ways and uses spaced repetition techniques to make learning as efficient as possible.
You make a deck of flashcards you want to learn, and when you start revising them, the program offers you to evaluate how many of the questions you were able to answer.
For example, if the question was easy, you can press the “easy button” on your flashcard, and it will ask you the same question in 4 days. If you were able to answer the question but it wasn’t that easy, the question would reappear in 3 days, and if the question was hard, it would reappear in 2 days.
Of course, you need to practice making flashcards to make them with enough information, but not to cram them too much with useless information.
There are many websites with premade Anki decks on the internet that you can use, but I preferred making my flashcards since I got the general knowledge about stuff I want to learn while making them.
While Anki is a powerful tool that simplifies your studying, you still have to put in the work and stick to the revision schedule.
Summary:
When I started med school, I was obsessed with understanding why it's so difficult and why so many students drop out. I wondered if there was some secret to success—something those top students knew that I didn’t.
Med school is hard, no doubt. But it’s not just the overwhelming content or the competition. What really determines success, in my experience, is a passion for learning. The students who excelled weren’t always the smartest—they were just genuinely interested in the subject matter.
Back in school, I was always top of the class. But med school humbled me. I was suddenly surrounded by people who were smarter, faster, and had amazing memory retention. At first, I pushed myself relentlessly and barely kept up. I tried copying others’ methods, hoping for a shortcut to success. It didn’t work.
Eventually, I started experimenting. One method that helped was the Feynman Technique—explaining concepts simply to find gaps in my understanding. But it still lacked detail retention.
Then a friend introduced me to a method I call Andrew’s Method. You write down all the chapter subheadings and key terms, simplify and filter out irrelevant info, and then build up your knowledge gradually, starting with main ideas and layering in the details. Combined with Feynman’s technique, it really worked for me.
The two big challenges were: 1) overloading the script with too much info, and 2) not revisiting it enough. The solutions? Keep your scripts lean and use spaced repetition for review.
Understanding how memory works helped me even more. Memorization strengthens connections between neurons, and revision is what locks that info in.
That’s where active recall and spaced repetition come in—two of the best tools I’ve used. Active recall means testing yourself, not just rereading notes. Spaced repetition involves reviewing info at increasing intervals (Day 1 → Day 2 → Day 7 → Day 16 → Day 35, etc.). But staying consistent with it is key.
To simplify spaced repetition, I started using Anki. It’s a free flashcard app that adjusts how often you review each card based on how well you know it. It’s powerful, especially if you make your own decks tailored to what you need to learn.
All in all, med school isn’t about being a genius—it’s about building a system that works for you, staying curious, and putting in the work. Passion and persistence beat raw talent every time.