From the SAT to the MCAT: How Your Study Strategy Needs to Change in College

The SAT and ACT are two of the more important milestone tests in your career journey. I remember when I was studying for both and the relief I felt when it was finally over. For months, I was reading textbooks, doing practice questions, and trying to improve my scores. Looking back as a current medical student who went on to take the MCAT and Step 1, my study regimen for standardized testing is entirely different. If I could go back, I would change the majority of my strategy based on the years of trial and error I’ve gone through to try and fine-tune what works.

If you are a high school student or incoming college student who would like to start the pre-medical journey and eventually take the MCAT, this article is for you. Today, I want to highlight what study methods used in high school carry over to college and which ones I believe you can drop because they’ll drag you down. My goal is to help you learn to be efficient and ahead of your peers from the day you step onto campus and get you ready to know how to tackle the MCAT. Building strong study strategies for rigorous coursework before college can make that transition much easier. When you eventually reach the MCAT stage, there are also MCAT study guides and resources for premeds that can help you build out the next part of your study plan.

3 Science-Supported Study Strategies for College and MCAT Prep

First, I want to introduce you to 3 basic concepts that you should always try to incorporate. I say this because these 3 have been shown in scientific studies to produce better memorization, improved recall, and higher test scores compared to students who used standard note reading.

1. Spaced repetition
2. Interleaving
3. Active recall

Spaced repetition is essentially learning a fact or concept and then relearning it again a couple of minutes later. For example, imagine you complete a flashcard right now. Then, you would do that card again 5 minutes later, then 30 minutes later, 2 hours later, and the next day. If you’ve ever studied something one day and then looked at it again the next and forgot about it, this is how you can prevent forgetting!

Interleaving is the practice of studying multiple subjects and/or topics at once. The studies have shown that studying a single topic, such as natural selection, is less effective than studying natural selection, inheritance, selection pressures, genetic drift, and founder effect at the same time. It’s common to feel like you’re mastering a concept as you go one by one through each, but the test results actually end up worse!

Lastly, we have active recall. This strategy is in play anytime you force yourself to fill in a blank or answer something in your own words rather than reading it off your notes. This can also include being quizzed by someone or doing practice questions, which both force a recall from prior memory. It forces your brain to recall the information, which is very important for encoding the info into memory!

If you incorporate all three methods, you are already one step closer to succeeding in your pre-medical endeavors.

Flashcards for College and MCAT Studying: Use Them More Effectively

If you used flashcards during high school, this is a great start! When I was at that stage, I was using paper flashcards I wrote out and cycled through by hand as often as I could. Usually, it would be a term or concept on one side and the description or answer on the other.

This is the classic flashcard setup, and the good news is that this is scientifically supported! It’s called active recall when you have to come up with an answer rather than just read it off the paper. However, these can be better.

There are two concepts that flashcards incorporate. The first is spaced repetition, and the second is active recall. Even better, you can incorporate fill-in-the-blanks on your flashcards, and this institutes multiple opportunities for active recall per card! You can add a third dimension, interleaving, by mixing multiple topics of flashcards into your deck. This is so helpful if your final exam is cumulative for the whole semester. You would keep the flashcards from your last quiz or exam in the deck and then add the new cards in for the current unit. If you do that, you’ll really retain a lot more of the year’s info, and it doesn’t cost you that much extra time.

Why Practice Questions Are Essential for Premed and MCAT Study

Practice questions are the key study concept that I use in medical school every day! Additionally, you’ll use them a lot for the MCAT when the time comes, so why not go ahead and use them during your undergraduate courses? These incorporate active recall each and every time you have to go through each multiple-choice question and you have to remember what each answer choice means.

Professors usually provide practice exams or worksheets with practice questions based on what you learned during any given unit. I would recommend doing all of them! Unlike high school, these often show up nearly word for word on the exam, and it really helps you apply the knowledge you learned on flashcards. This same habit is useful while preparing for standardized tests, where taking a full SAT or ACT mock test under realistic conditions can help you practice more than just individual questions.

I always found that there are sometimes practice exams from other institutions if you search up a concept learned in your class followed by “practice exam” in Google. Oftentimes, there are also Quizlets that may provide questions. One last option for potential questions is at the end of each textbook chapter. Something I wish I had known earlier when I began college was to go to office hours and ask your professor which of these question resources you should use because these were the most likely to show up again on exams!

Review Missed Questions and Learn From Your Practice Exams

Once you begin doing as many practice questions as you can, it’s important to learn from them. When I was in high school, I would do these questions, grade them, and then move on to the next set of questions. I used the grade as a tell of how well prepared I was for an exam but didn’t know how to review them for knowledge improvement. This is also something that matters during SAT and ACT prep, where timed practice tests followed by reviewing incorrect answers can be an important part of improving your score.

I’d start by going to each incorrect question answered. Take a look at the question again as well as your answer. Was this a knowledge deficit? Did you misunderstand the question? Did you have a 50/50 and then guess the wrong one? Did you second-guess yourself and change your answer? Ask yourself these and more first.

If you had it at a 50/50, ask yourself what info was provided that made it the other answer. If you second-guessed yourself, I’d keep a mental count or a paper count of how many correct-to-incorrect changes you’ve made over time. If you are changing your answer to the wrong one much more often than to the correct one, it may be worthwhile to just quit changing your answers on future exams and see how that goes.

If you misunderstood the question, I’d try to find out what made you misinterpret it. If you can’t, notate this question mentally and try to remember not to make the same misinterpretation if you see a similar question in the future.

If you missed a question due to a knowledge gap, I’d go ahead and make a flashcard of the information and work it into your rotation. An example would be if you missed a question because you didn’t know what pleiotropy is, make a card such as: “_____ is when a single gene influences two or more distinct, and often seemingly unrelated, phenotypic traits.” Incorporate as many of these as you can into your deck, and you’ll be correcting your deficiencies as you go! This becomes even more important once you reach the MCAT, where having a system for reviewing MCAT full-length exams and turning missed questions into targeted study can help you identify exactly why you are losing points.

Why Textbook Reading Becomes Less Efficient in College and MCAT Prep

In high school, we used textbooks all the time. I remember reading pages of a giant textbook during class and as homework many times. Looking back, I felt this was very difficult to remember. Scientific studies have shown that passive reading is nowhere near as good for knowledge retention as the methods I’ve outlined above! So, in college, you use textbooks much less and focus mainly on PowerPoints and flashcards.

Even better, I’d find the teaching assistant (TA), supplemental instructor (SI), preceptor, or any students who have had the class and ask them if they made flashcards or know of resources made by prior students. Why make new cards when someone may have already made them? It’s much quicker, and they may be tailored to the quizzes/tests better. One disclaimer I’d like to add is that you should make sure these resources were made by students who succeeded in the class or made a high grade.

How to Make College Lectures More Useful for Premed Studying

Attending lectures is usually mandatory for a lot of undergraduate classes. In others, they aren’t. This is different than high school because you really don’t have to attend if you don’t want to. I would recommend attending, as this is a great way to learn. However, some students find their time is better spent watching a recording of the lecture at 2x speed or by skimming over the lecture PowerPoint on their own time.

In college, I attended nearly every lecture. However, many medical students don’t go to lecture in favor of watching the recording at 1.5x–2x speed afterward to save time. Am I saying to skip lectures? NO! I am saying that you need to find out whether lectures are part of your grade and then, if not, ask yourself if attending lecture is what is best for your learning style.

As far as actual lectures go, I’d say the most useful ones are filled with mnemonics to help you memorize various concepts, have plenty of pictures that should help you remember a concept, and should have practice questions incorporated throughout. Ideally, these lectures would be interactive with the audience and engage you rather than being a standard lecture for 1–2 hours. If they are just talking at students, these are usually less effective for your retention.

In my senior year of college, I struck a happy medium for this. I attended all lectures regardless of whether I thought they were particularly useful. I say this because sometimes the professors drop special knowledge or facts during the class that are not on the PowerPoint. Additionally, many of these classes are not recorded, and because of that, you’d never know this info!

While I went to every lecture, I had my laptop open and had my flashcard app Anki set up for any downtime, any pause moments, during audience questions that weren’t content-related, and during any slides where I felt I understood the concept well. This was something I never did during high school, but this saved me so much time and helped me collect every bit of knowledge I could.

Study Efficiency Is the Biggest Difference Between High School and Premed

If you haven’t caught it yet, most of this article has been focused on ways to help you incorporate better study methods or to augment the methods you currently use as you transition into college. Essentially, the name of the game is efficiency! You have very little time in college compared to high school, and if you are wanting to balance it all, you have to cut out any methods that don’t work.

At each stage of your class, I recommend analyzing your study method and whether it is currently helpful for you. Did it help you get the grade you wanted? Is there any step in the process or a resource used that wasn’t helpful? Did you hear about a resource or method from friends or peers that may be helpful? Make changes and always be working to do things better and faster. After about a semester, you’ll look back at 6 months ago and think, “Wow, I can’t believe I used to study like that.” At least that’s how I ended every semester, if that’s any encouragement.

Preparing for the MCAT Starts With Better Study Habits in College

To finalize this, I’d like to encourage you to always be open-minded to new ways of learning things, as everyone’s best way of learning is as unique as they are. What works for you may not work for others! The key is that you need to find it, and it can take some time. I recommend always sharing what you did and any resources you find with the other students, as they may turn around and help you as well! You can make friends, have more resources, and if your TA or professor finds out you help others, they may invite you to be a TA or write a better letter of recommendation for you. It’s almost always a win-win for everyone, and I have found over the years that your college experience will be much improved if you do this versus seeing others as competitors.