 Let's face it, every student wants to be the best, or at least they're very best. Regardless of our field of choice, we want to master the information while seemingly managing our busy lives outside of school. We want to be that one percent. So in today's episode, we're going to break down exactly what a top one percent student looks like, and the answer may surprise you. Let's get to it. Hey friends, welcome back to our channel, and if you're new here really quickly, my name is Lakshman, internal medicine doctor, full time, but on the side, I'd love to make videos and content to help people like you succeed on whatever journey you're on, but doing it with less stress. And so after reflecting on my own experience, as well as observing other top students around me, it really comes down to four things that all top students do and do really well. Phase one is information simplicity. Phase two is being a predictable machine. Phase three is creating the story brand, and finally phase four is being a growth factory. Now we're going to break down each of these phases, but in case you're interested or impatient, you can go ahead and check out the links, I'll put the timestamps right here. But let's get into phase one, which is information simplicity. Now the most routine way to compare a top student compared to somebody who is below average or right at average is essentially looking at their grades and understanding of the content. And contrary to believe being a top student doesn't mean that you're more intelligent than your peers. Honestly, I know that my GPA was higher than most of my classmates who are much more intelligent than me. I was able to just use the remaining principles I will talk about. And information simplicity is that first phase. It's that first pillar. Basically, it's the idea of how well you take something as well as learn and apply it to then show up for your quizzes, your test, and your practicals. And really to understand what a top student does well in this phase, it's easier to actually just look at what students that are average or below average are doing more or less of. And if there's one thing that we've learned in our time working with students one-on-one through our coaching programs is that most students try to complicate how they learn something. Usually this includes an abundance of resources, various different study strategies, but none of them are necessarily focused on how that student best learns in the time availability that is given to them. But on the flip side, a top student will keep things simple. And here are the four parts that I recommend you guys using in case you want to master this pillar of information simplicity. The four parts are absorption, repetition, gap ID and cementing. So to quickly break this down, step one is how you absorb your information into something that you can come back to repeatedly. Most students will tend to write their notes or make annotations, but never come back to those. And thus that hour they spent in lecture is essentially a waste of time. Compared to a top student who may take their notes in the form of questions or a flashcard, something they easily come back home to and review over and over again and never really have to look at the PowerPoint unless they're lost. Step two is repetition. This is not only about how often you repeat something, but how you actually do the review. We take the example for somebody who is writing their notes in an outline or an annotation. That student may not actually have an active form of coming back to those notes and actually trying to master that information. More often than not, they're just going to be rereading what they wrote and never truly mastering the information. But on the flip side, somebody who is a top student may say, okay, I've mastered the absorption phase. Now I'm going to take my flashcards or my notes or my questions. And I'm going to quickly keep asking myself those as many times as possible on the day of the next day throughout the week and on the weekends. Step three is gap ID and more simply just saying testing yourself through very different modalities to understand, did you actually understand something or not? Most students don't even get through the first two steps and they're much less likely to actually get to this part. But top students are always repeating their information and then asking, okay, how much of this do I still remember after all those repetitions? If I'm not truly getting it, what do I need to do to fill in that gap? And that gets you into step four, which is cementing. This is really where the pillar of repetition kicks in because this is where you can identify if you're truly BSing yourself. Sometimes we will review information over and over again to tell ourselves that we know it, but there are certain techniques that a student can do. For example, putting an entire lecture on a whiteboard from just memory and if they can do it, awesome. If they can't, now they can visually see where they've been BSing themselves for that entire lecture. Again, most average students and below average students don't even get to this point, but a top student on the other end is using all these four steps repeatedly in a very simple framework. They're not using the excess resources unless they need it. They're finding themselves during their gap ID or their cementing phase to feel weak on certain topics before a quiz or a test. This is when they'll go to other video resources or other textbooks to actually understand that information better. And so if you really wanna measure yourself against a top student, ask yourself, how well of a job do I predictably take new information, absorb it, and through multiple guaranteed repetitions, I can show up to the quiz and test with confidence. Again, I'm not asking you how quickly you can absorb information. It's not about how smart you are, but how smart your system allows you to take new information predictably. And speaking of predictability, the second pillar of the second phase is being a predictable machine. The difference between a top student who looks like they just have their entire life figured out compared to somebody who is just trying to tread water and stay on top of their class material for the day is that student who is a top student who will always focus on how they plan and how effective their plan is actually executed. And it's not about being busy, it's about being effective. Most students, including myself when I started medical school, who feel like school is running their life, often don't give enough priority to their planning or their schedule. But if I compare my below average and average version when I started medical school to the ultimate version that finished it, as well as compare myself to my rest of my peers that also just crashed into medical school, the difference was is I can look on a Saturday and saying these three hours, if I need to use them, are going to be spent for this specific class. So if I need to study for a quiz, then I'm going to break down within those three hours, this first hour is going to be for this lecture. This one is going to be here. I need to take a longer break because I know I'm going to be tired. These last 15 minutes that are available are going to be doing practice questions. It is very systematic. I can visually see what personal appointments I have for myself to show up for school. And it's not just your educational life. I can look at my calendar, I can look at my planning system and saying this is when I'll be working out and exactly what I'll be doing during that hour, hour and a half. This is when I'll be hanging out with my loved ones and it is a personalized appointment. So I'm not going to fit studying or cramming for a quiz or test. If you guys want to see my entire time management system that I show you step by step, go ahead and check the video down below in the description. But again, if you truly want to measure yourself against a top student, ask yourself how predictable your schedule is. Do you know what you're going to be doing in the next four hours? Do you know what you're going to be doing tomorrow? And then most importantly, when those things show up on your calendar, do you actually show up? I'm getting into phase three which is creating a story brand. Now this is probably my personal favorite because I attribute a lot of my success to this pillar. In fact, I think this one pillar, this one phase is the reason that I was able to bypass and excel past some of my classmates and peers who honestly were smarter than me and higher potential in terms of being a fantastic doctor. In the back of your mind, you're very familiar with this pillar already. All of us have had friends within our peer groups who just look like they were going to reach for the moon in terms of how brilliant they were. But unfortunately, when we look in the span of five to 10 years, those smart friends just look like they've actually undercheap compared to what you may have achieved in your own life. And again, from personal experience, I wasn't the smartest in high school, definitely not in college and then definitely not in medical school. And all those people that I grew up with when we had the same goals, a lot of them are nowhere to be seen. And that's simply because they didn't create a story brand despite being brilliant. And that means having meaningful experiences that go with your grades. And just like you, everyone has amazing scores, amazing grades. But to really be able to separate yourself, you have to rely on your experiences. And this is really where I took advantage of this one pillar. Because regardless of where you are in your journey, you can start asking, okay, what am I interested in? For example, when I was asking with myself, what kind of doctor I wanted to be, I had no idea that I was gonna be a pediatrician when I went into medical school. But I started asking, okay, what about medicine do I like? I like that one-on-one interaction with patients. Okay, being a pathologist and a radiologist probably out. I think I would like to work with kids. Let's go ahead and look for an experience and build upon that and find out, do I really enjoy it? And so after my first year in medical school, I worked an entire summer working with kids up to the age from four all the way to 17, 18, who had type 1 diabetes. When I realized I loved the medicine of diabetes, but I didn't necessarily care to work just with pediatric patients. I really just enjoyed the medicine, okay? So let's see if I enjoy just taking care of adults. Found out I did. Which one did I like more? Over time, different experiences happened to be adults. And that's really where my experience grew. Now when I had to sit in front of an interviewer, I could tell them exactly when I wanted to go into medicine or why I wanted to go into residency at the specific institution. Because I had thought about those because my experience has led me to always ask yourself, what did you like about this? What did you not like about this? You're always introspecting. A top student is always asking themselves, what does this experience today? What did that patient experience? What did this thing at work or at school teach me about what I like, what I should do, how I can make improvements? And because of that, whenever they are asked questions on an interview, an application, a personal statement, it's very easy for them to just spill their hearts out because they've thought about it so much. And this, again, is the reason I was able to excel past a lot of people who honestly had a greater potential than I did. And that's simply because I took those extra seconds, those extra minutes to say, what did I get from that? And when you do that and you combine it with good grades and a good schedule, now you have somebody who looks like they're fully put together. And it's simply because you've given time to think about your life and experience in its whole. Now I wanna share a pro tip with you guys because I know that's easier said than done. Sometimes if you're struggling with really identifying what you like and you don't like, ask yourself instead what the future version of yourself five to 10 years from now would ask you to pursue in terms of experience or opportunities based off your current interests. It may not necessarily always point you to the right direction, but at least it will help you identify, I like this a little bit more than I like this, and then you can continue to ask that question over and over again until you end up with a career, a future, and whatever you're doing, your training, and your journey that you're happy with. And finally, phase four is being a growth factory. By far, one of the coolest parts about being around top 1% students is that they're obsessed with being better than their current average. Think about that again. Obsessed with not just being better than the average, but being better than their current average. And this is not just about grades, it's about literally everything. This is why we're so impressed with students who can balance school, balance their fitness, balance any family obligations they have, and still have time to build up their CV because again, they're asking themselves how can they grow each of those pillars in their own lives that they consider to be important? And so again, to truly measure yourself in this one pillar, this one phase, is ask yourself, who are you outside the realm of being a student? If you don't have a good identification, if you don't see any kind of structure forming, that simply means that you're just focusing too much on pillar number one, and sometimes that's what you have to do. You have to figure out how you can get the grades, then have the time to build those rest of those pillars, but make sure you're giving that thought of where do I need to grow based off of what matters to me. Because from personal experience, if you ask me that question, I would tell you that I'm a husband, I'm a dog dad, I'm a family man, I am somebody who enjoys entrepreneurship and finance, I'm somebody who is a fitness enthusiast, but nowhere in that would being a doctor be my first five or six things that I would tell you about me. Again, it doesn't represent me, it's just something I love doing on the side. It has to be that same thing. If you say that you're a medical student or on the medical journey as one of your initial things, and you have to ask yourself what other core pillars of your life do you wanna make sure are also being built up while you're going ahead and working hard and studying to be a great physician? And so if we take all of this together, you realize that a top student is one who absorbs information simply and predictably. They always get stuff done because they're predictable and prioritized planning. Their CV is super impressive and sells itself because they've asked themselves on what their interests are and they seem like they're good at everything because they're always focused on improving everything little by little. Now, if you enjoyed that breakdown and you've made it this far, all I simply ask is what are you gonna do to become a better version of a student than you are today? Add that in the comment section down below if this video helped you either through lessons, through strategies, or if it just inspired you to become better because that's the goal of this channel. Hit that like button, consider hitting that subscribe button. If you're listening to this as a podcast and consider hitting that subscribe or follow on your favorite listening platform. And if you're interested in becoming a better student and learning from some of my personal failures as well as successes, there's tons of resources that I've included for you down below in the description. Some of them are free, including our Med School Success Handbook. Some are the opportunities to work with people like me and our study coaches one-on-one, including our Med Elite Academy or if you're interested in mastering that first pillar of information simplicity, you can go ahead and work with us one-on-one in our coaching program, which again, I will link down below. And if you enjoy the breakdown of this video, again, I would highly recommend you guys go ahead and check out that time management system video, which I'll link down below here, as well as this video right here on how you can use Anki like a pro, most popular video on YouTube by far. As always, my friends, thanks for being a part of my journey. Hopefully, I was a little help to you guys on yours. Go be that 1%, and I'll see you guys in the next one. Peace.