Secrets for Study Success

Success isn’t just about hard work—it’s about smart strategies and developing effective habits that propel you toward your goals.

We reached out to medical students to discover what truly helps them excel. Ready to transform your medical school success? Discover the tried-and-true tips for greater productivity straight from those who’ve been there.

Here’s what they shared:

• Utilise some sort of spaced repetition revision method. In the first term of medical school, I tried to use the same note-taking and revision style as I did in A-levels, as it worked perfectly then. This method was far too passive for the sheer amounts of content in medical school, and it all became very unmanageable to sustainably learn

• If there’s one piece of advice, I’d give anyone starting med school, it’s this: you can’t learn everything, so don’t even try. Being a perfectionist will burn you out. It’s much smarter to be strategic with your time and really nail your exam technique.

• Focus on understanding the ‘why’ behind things, not just memorising facts. That way, you can apply what you know in a clinical setting. But honestly, the two things that will matter most in your entire career are your hands-on clinical skills and how you talk to patients. If you can master those and explain things without jargon, you’re set.

• Personally, I learn best by doing tons of practice questions. My advice is to get your hands on a good question bank early. ClinicalKey Student and their online question bank were a lifesaver for me.

• The quickest trick is to always ask, ‘So what?’. When you learn a nerve or a muscle, immediately look up a clinical problem related to it. Learning the ‘what’ is memorising; learning the ‘so what’ is understanding. It makes everything stick so much better.

• Don’t try do everything at the last minute. Stay on top of lectures

• Don’t let work pile up. It becomes a mountain that is very tricky to tackle

• The most important thing is to keep good relationships with your mentors/ supervisors. One project/ opportunity can lead to many more if you prove that you are good to work with.

• Come to class prepared.

• With studying: little and often!  

• For pre-clinical years use your university lecture slides. Osmosis and other YouTube videos can be very useful for helping you grasp concepts.

• Link everything to a story or patient. Anatomy is dry until you see it in the context of injury, illness, or surgery.

Thank you to the students at Bart’s and the London School of Medicine and Dentistry & Imperial College of London, for these insightful tips!