 All right guys, welcome back to the channel and the TMJ show in the Doc Talk series. Today we are talking about how to crush it as a college student, how to do well on your MCAT, how to crush it using a lucky and so much more. Let's get into it. All right Jess, welcome to the TMJ show. How are you doing? I'm well, how are you? Doing great. So what's your question today? I am studying for the MCAT currently. Well, I've already taken the MCAT but it's likely that I'll have to take it again. So I guess I kind of wanted to just talk to you about your study strategies, which I know you have all lined out but I don't have access to them yet. So let's, first of all, thank you. But walk me through how you're studying right now, what works and what didn't work. Let's just say during your first MCAT attempt and then we can try to figure out some networks. So I know what I need to do. I just, I think it was a matter of time in terms of, like I just didn't have enough time to study all the material. And I think that I would consider myself like kind of like a lazy studier. I like to just read the stuff and think that it's gonna magically stick because I feel like that works for me a lot or has worked me a lot in the past but for the MCAT there's so much material that it's just not really working. So I would do a lot of like note-taking and reading but I'm not really truly encoding. So I think what I really need is just more time to study for the MCAT specifically but I think that it would be helpful to know other strategies when I do go to medical school or for my master's. Absolutely. Have you scheduled your MCAT by the way? I haven't. I'm still waiting to hear back from a couple of schools before I would sign up for that again. Perfect. Here is kind of my broad overview on how to study which applies to students taking the MCAT, students taking board exams at med school and et cetera. All of us are lazy studiers. That's not like specific to you. If we have a choice we would read something and then we'd just be done with it and we'd hope it'd stick but unfortunately our brains aren't amazing. 99% of us don't study like that. And so the biggest lesson especially that I've learned throughout the medical journey med school being specific for that because it's like almost like studying for the MCAT for every test just because there's so much more info than you have time to study for. That issue of time to info is like super difficult. So you have to flip your study schedule and this includes for all of the future classes that you're taking while you're still in school to initially, you know, it's all about like gathering as much info as possible so that you when you are attempting to see how much you actually encoded, you know, there's a good foundation you can take. Okay, I've like at least learned some of this I can test myself on it. But eventually your studies strategy has to transition as you get closer and closer to test it of being more and more of a how much have I encoded essentially testing yourself and everyone does this differently. For the MCAT, you know, the best way to do it honestly is through practice questions and the practice tests that they offer. And so if I was to just take the MCAT today and I had let's say 12 weeks, which is typical pay somebody will take about, you know two to three months to study. Then the initial month is really gathering info with whatever resource works best for you whether it's Khan Academy, whether it's Kaplan whether it's Princeton Review you pick the book that you like. And there's still some practice questions that go in it, but maybe it's, you know every two or two times a week, you know whatever works with your schedule. But then month two and three, it's all about okay, I've learned roughly a month of material for the MCAT and I'm still two months away. These next two months are really about how well did I understand that info that I have learned as well as info I'm going to continue. So there's a transition and how much you test yourself versus how much you try to learn new material. So if you were initially doing practice questions like twice a week, now it's going to be, you know it's month two, it'll be let's do practice questions you know, half the week. So every other day I'll be doing practice questions. And then as you're transitioning into the end of month two, going to month three it's really about every single day it's about doing practice questions first and then reading about what I'm missing. So ideally what you find happens and this is the same for medical school is as you get closer and closer to death state you're giving yourself more time to absorb some info but the best way to understand truly how much you encode it is by testing yourself through the practice questions that they give. And so that would be my sample is that you know, month two I would basically be start doing more practice questions. I would start creating a list of everything I'm missing, you know and then as I'm starting to do my reviews closer to the end of month two, the start of month three my main focus is not now to read more info for the MCAT it's to focus on my personal list of stuff that if it showed up on the test I'd have this oh crap moment because I knew I needed to know it but I just didn't get to spend a lot of time. So that list will grow initially and as you do more and more questions you'll be able to knock things off your list. So now when you go into test day any test day MCAT, step one just normal school exam you have more confidence. You have a smaller list of information that is weaker personally for you and you've tested yourself enough to know what your weak points are and you've given yourself enough free time or enough leeway to be able to knock that list down. Does that make sense? Yeah, so taking that you know into medical school or this step or you know, even my master's program that's how you would say to study for exams as well. Yeah, absolutely. I think and I learned this the hard way my first six months of medical school is that you know, there really is this pressure to feel like we have to learn everything but even you know, being like six years into this now post medical school, that's just not possible. And so the best way to do it is you spend you know, you have to obviously use good study strategies that way you're not wasting your time in the initial part of it. So that first month or that first week when you're learning a new info you want to ideally good develop good skills so that way that retention is as good as possible but the fact that you'll get a hundred percent of the material the first time around very unlikely as you accept that and you then schedule in that nice review into the latter parts as you get closer to test day whatever that schedule is to be able to address for you know, essentially what I call kind of like those holes in your bucket you know, you imagine like you're studying an idea for the test days to fill that bucket all the way to the top that means a hundred percent retention ideally a hundred percent on the exam over time, you know, we usually run to the issue where we keep trying to fill the bucket but the holes are just way too much and so we usually walk in with like a 70 to 80% retention of knowledge and then it just depends on what the test actually quizzes us on of terms of what our grade is but if you spend that latter part of filling those holes and decrease how much you actually are trying to fill in then you run into a situation where you always walk into test day with confidence that I know this I know this, I know this the things that would have scared me the most are now the things that I feel the most prepared for Yeah, so you know, I have a couple of friends that are in medical school now and you know, a whole semester of biochem is crunched into two weeks so how do you, do you know all that information or like how do you pick out what you need to know for the test? Yeah, so there's a few strategies that I recommend to understand like what's high yield is essentially the question you're trying to get at is like if I have a 70 slide PowerPoint which is not uncommon like how do I know what of that is important? One I've learned that unless you have an amazing lecture most of the information is a little bit of high yield information and also stuff that's like personalized that they want you to know but not really like truly important, right? And we run into that at every phase of our education and so for medical school the beauty is that you've had enough people that have gone through this that can basically tell you without trying to quiz you of like here's what's important. So personally what I recommend to doing is that I would just go to a resource that I knew was the highest or the highest yield so there's obviously books like First Aid for medical schools and there's like notes and you pick your resource I liked watching videos personally but if I knew let's say I had a lecture tomorrow on like heart failure and I had a 100 slide PowerPoint coming on it I didn't wanna freak myself out so the best thing I could do for myself is spend like five minutes watching a video on osmosis or something that's free on YouTube and getting an idea of like okay, what's the biggest picture idea here? Five minutes, nothing to pressure your time but now you know, like if I have three lectures tomorrow I can watch these videos maybe two on each topic so then I can get an idea of what's high yield. Now when you go into lecture you will ideally hear some things that the professors will say that the high yield resource also said and then you'll be able to say, okay, these are for sure are things that I need to focus on and so now if we go back to the thing that we were talking about your first pass of that material should be focused on this needs to be learned first because this was not only discussed in class but also on a resource that I had no association with but has made for people like me and then as you get to more and more repetitions of that lecture, of that topic you will find situations where, you know obviously that retention for both the high yield and the details go up. Okay, I guess hopefully you guys are enjoying this conversation with Jess and so many more golden nuggets coming your way but really quickly if you're watching this on YouTube go ahead and just hit that like button down below it's super helpful to the channel, to me but let's get back to the interview. And then I know you recently, very recently put out a video of how to study with Anki for medical school. I have not watched that because I'm not in medical school currently but I plan to, well anyways I have Anki and I am interested, I did use it when I previously studied for the MCAT but how can I use it better and do you have any specific like cards that you studied from or suggest? Sure, I'm happy to send you a few links and I also put those on the videos for people listening but there are a good few Anki decks that people use through like Kaplan and exam crackers and Khan Academy. So I love using the hard work that people have done to make my life easier so I definitely would recommend those. And the beauty is as you do more of your own practice questions and you miss things then you can create your own personalized Anki cards and you can add it to that deck. So now you have high yield plus things you've missed. I would recommend watching that video because at the very end I kind of recommend things that we mostly do using Anki and the ways to like get past it. One of them being that we, you know let's say you had 20 flashcards to do the initiation is that you're gonna spend a good amount of time on the first 10 because you're gonna not know it really well and then by the end of it your motivation, your energy level and the focus on the last 10 goes down. And that's usually where we run into trouble especially if the high yield information is in the latter part of the test. And so a few of the tips that I've given that video and I'll link that down below for people watching is one, I usually give myself a mental or actual physical time on my phone saying that you have like 15 seconds, 10 seconds. Time doesn't actually matter how much but to both think of the answer and then look at the answers and then move on. So the beauty of it is like let's say you had five topics on a flashcard that you need to memorize most people will try to focus on learning all five before they move on. And you run into a trap of like not being able to give equal focus to things later on that show up on your setting. So what I would do is like I have 10 seconds to answer this as best I can. Like, okay, I don't know it, show me the answers. There's five things on this flashcard I need to know. I'm gonna spend 10 seconds trying to memorize the first two. And then I'm gonna use Anki to say just show it to me again. There's no harm to see a flashcard twice. And then the next time 10 seconds to answer ideally the first two things that I should have memorized and now focus on three and four and five. So it's always kind of like a, you're using the space repetition of Anki but you're also kind of using chunks of time to make sure that you learn piece of information on those cards without any stress and focus away from the things later on. So that timer method has really helped because most people find that they can't get through their cards quick enough. So they find that they're studying for like an hour doing flashcards and they still don't feel like they've gotten enough retention. I feel like that timer method helps because ideally over time you can say, well it's taking me 20 seconds to answer a card. Let's make myself mentally try to do it in 15. And then you find that your studying session gets a little bit, honestly it becomes a little bit more fun because you're not stressing yourself out to learn everything the first time. You're like, okay with letting things go. So that's one of the tips that I feel like people have really found beneficial because usually time I'm doing the flashcards is one of the most difficult parts. So 15 ish seconds. I mean, give or take, everyone's different, but 15 seconds to answer and then what about for looking at the answer? So roughly the same. So I would say, ideally maybe even 10 seconds to answer the question because ideally you want your knowledge to be like, I know this and then move on. And then you pick the time that's comfort to you that makes you still a little bit uncomfortable because you're like, well, I don't know everything. And that's okay. But also can saying I gives me enough time to just learn a piece of it. So I picked 10 seconds personally because for me it's like, all right, what's the first two things I need to know? All right, memorize this, this, all right, move on. But everyone learns with a different level of confidence. That's okay. Right, absolutely. So for me, like you send out a lot of resources and you have a lot of resources. And at this point, because I'm not in medical school, I feel like out of your resources, I don't know which one would be best for me. Sure. So I will full disclaimer, not every, even though all my resources may not be perfect. I'm just putting that out because there may be people watching this video. But usually people that come to them to journey usually end up watching something regarding studying because that's what all we all have issues with. And if you were to essentially kind of act as if I was with you every single day, trying to fix your studying, essentially and ask what I would do differently, then the thing that I've created to kind of replicate my approach is our level up your studying program. So that's essentially three weeks where the first week I talk about here is what you're doing, find the stuff that you enjoy, find the stuff that you also enjoy that that's totally useless to you. And you've learned that now and take those out because now you find extra free time. You find those bad habits and you remove those. Week two is about here are things that have worked for me is the things that worked for other top students and start to implement them using that extra free time you have and double down on the things that you learned week one that really worked for you. So now you start creating a study system that's not completely different for anything you've done. It takes a little bit of what you've done. It adds a little bit of things to help amplify your results. And then week three is really about putting it together. So, you know, studying is not simply about retention and how you learn information but also how productive you are, how motivated you are, as well as like having a perfect system that way every time you go to study, you're like, I am studying in a way that works for me. It doesn't matter how person A or B is studying, this works. And I know that this works and I also know how to adjust this over time. So that's essentially what the program teaches you and it's kind of a split over three week kind of program. And so if somebody is specifically trying to help understand how to study better, that is what I would tell you to do. If you are, you know, and if you are trying to learn a little bit about everything to help you kind of help you study a little bit better, how to be more productive and kind of be ready for medical school, the domination bundle is really where it goes into this. So those are essentially all of the initial guides that I created when I started the MD journey. And it was essentially me sharing my experiences and techniques like some of the ones that we talked about here and today are put in those all in one. So those would be the first two things I'd recommend. Okay, so both of them. So for you personally, if you are, you know, most of your questions are around studying, I would focus on the level up you're studying one. Okay, and then maybe as time goes on. Exactly, and you know, I feel like to over without like, you know, trying to stress yourself out or getting yourself too much information to be overwhelmed especially going into medical school. I'd recommend the level up the studying program. And then ideally when you get accepted med school and then you're about to start, the domination bundle is kind of like a nice, kind of like starter kit of like, all right, let's get ready for all the phases of medical school. And then I can always reference back. Is there anything that you could have done or like if you were to go back, if you were to, you know, tell me like, would you do anything in terms of like preparing or like sometimes I just do like on key decks for fun. Before, you know, preparing for med school or? Yeah, yes, yes. Honestly, and this is like me, my personal experience as well as working with as many students as I have now is that if you can start to develop the study skills that are not dependent on things like outlining, reading and other people, most importantly, things like group setting, then you can go into med school comfortable with knowing that you're going to be uncomfortable with the amount of information you learn, but you have a system that you enjoy. And once you can do that, you know, the first month is stressful for everybody, but sometimes people are stressed out in medical school for all four years because they never really truly double down on how to study best for them. They always try to kind of copy something somebody else is doing. So if you can start to say, these are techniques that I know, like let's just say you had a test coming tomorrow or like, you know, later this week on Friday, you know, if you gave yourselves half the time that you now study doing whatever you do, how would you do it? And if you can start developing techniques that still give you similar results, you can essentially then replicate that to medical school when that's actually the scenario. When you have less time, you have more info and you can truly like start preparing. So develop a study system that is very active focused, very time limited. And, you know, if you had a quiz tomorrow, those pop quiz, you still would know exactly how to study for it without wasting your time. And that is a lot of tinkering over time for sure. Yeah, definitely. So, okay. So definitely the level up studying and then maybe wait a little bit for the Dominion Bundle. Yeah, so it's the Domination Bundle. It's like the Med School kind of like, yeah. So, go ahead. If you, so like, if I got accepted, you know, what would it be, would it hurt me if I was not accepted yet and I purchased that and then I got into Med School, you know, a year later or something? I mean, I do have a pre-med stud by the Domination, but it's only $37. And so, yeah, I'm making it in a way where it's like, you know, people can use it. And there's results from pre-meds on that website too, so I can send it to you if you like. So, but a lot of that is text-based or almost 90% of it is text-based. So it's kind of reading. The level of your studying is a video course where I kind of walk you like, here's how I would do it. Here's how I would do it. But it is three weeks of like, watch the video, change your studying and do the activities. And so it's really like, what would you want the most results from? Would you kind of want to know a little bit about everything and feel more confident going into medical school or do you want to just fix your studying actively at this moment? Everyone has their own individualized goals. Okay. Yeah, no, I, like I said, I've been really, you know, I've been following you for a little while now. So, and I have been really interested in getting stuff. I just was kind of in a stagnant period where I applied and like, I'm not in medical school and I'm not studying for anything right now. So that's why I haven't gotten it. But I'm going to be going back to school either to medical school or start my master's in August. So I'd like to ideally kind of, you know, get my studying habits on par with how they need to, how they should be. Well, hopefully today's called Helps. And I know you have to go, Jess. But thank you so much for all your questions. And hopefully this helps you and hopefully this helps somebody else that's watching as well. Yeah, absolutely. I really, I appreciate your time. So have a great day. You do the same. See you later. Thanks, bye. All right guys, hopefully you guys enjoyed that conversation with Jess as much as I did. We talked about a tons of things in this interview including how to prepare for any test really including the MCAT, how to use Anki like a boss. And independently she asked about some of her own products which I'll link down below including the Domination Bundle and the level up you're studying both of which since the making of this video Jess has now joined. So if you guys are interested you guys can check those down below. But if you're like Jess and you're on your pre-med journey you're trying to apply for medical school and you just want that step-by-step blueprint something that I've used to help me get into all the medical schools that I applied to. You can also check out the pre-med journey which is only 99 cents on Kindle on Amazon. So that will be linked down below for you guys as well. Now after this interview if you still have questions about being a pre-med or studying for exams go ahead and either good drop them in the comment section down below on YouTube or go ahead and send me a quick DM on Instagram. And if you made it to the end of the interview and you're listening to this on YouTube go ahead and just quickly hit that like button supports the channel. Also tells me you want more content like this. So keep going. So hit that like button, hit that subscribe button if you haven't done so already. And if you enjoy this video then you'll probably enjoy this video right here on how to use Anki step-by-step like a pro. But with that being said guys thank you as always for being a part of my journey. Hopefully I was a little help to you on yours. I'll see you guys in the next one. Peace my friends.