Study Styles

Anki is an exceptionally popular study resource that you will likely encounter at some point during your medical school adventure. Anki is a flashcard program that uses spaced repetition, a science-backed approach, to maximize learning and long-term memory retention. Anki is a widely used study tool because of its flexibility and relative ease of use — after a short tutorial on how to use it. You can be as hands-on or hands-off as you like: making your own cards, using pre-made decks from other students, or studying from the famous “AnKing” deck. The sky is truly the limit when it comes to studying with Anki, and even those who are not technically savvy can still get a tremendous amount of value out of it.

Anki currently accounts for about 95% of my studying regimen since I find it so effective and efficient. I typically study for 30-60 minutes every morning and evening, using pre-made cards created by other students combined with some of my own cards to fill in any gaps. I’m a huge Anki fan, as are many other students, so I recommend you give it a try if you haven’t already!

Whether it’s required or optional attendance, in-person or Zoom sessions, you can almost always find me in class at the scheduled time. I’ve heard all the arguments for skipping class: having your own schedule, sleeping in a bit later in the mornings, or watching at two-times speed. While these are totally valid, I just like the structure and accountability that going to class affords me! Consistently going to class keeps me on schedule with lectures, provides me a structure to organize my studying, and allows me to ask clarifying questions in real time. Going to class is also an easy way to get familiar with our well-accomplished faculty and develop relationships with them!

When watching lectures on my own, it’s often easier to get distracted. The classroom environment is a good way to focus my attention strictly on the material for the duration of the class. Even if I don’t retain all the information upon initial presentation during lecture, I can always go back later and review recordings with a more focused eye for specific concepts that I need to work on. Plus, I think we are paying for this education, so we might as well take advantage of it! If going to class is what works for you, don’t be afraid to stick by it.

I am someone who, unfortunately, 1) needs a lot of sleep, 2) overcommitted myself outside of class, and 3) struggles to stay focused for more than an hour of live lectures. To this end, my fatigue and subsequent inability to retain information stopped me from going to non-required attendance classes about a week into Gateway Curriculum. To this day, I still only rarely attend non-mandatory sessions.

If one of those things from my list above applies to you, you are in luck. The Gateway Curriculum is set up very well for students who subscribe to offline learning styles. All lectures with testable content are recorded in good quality and posted with the lecture slides on Keystone (our learning management tool). Furthermore, you can control lecture playback speed and replay sections that you need extra passes to digest. The Gateway Curriculum, in general, gives you clear expectations of the content you need to learn and respects that people synthesize information best in different ways.

In short, this setup is highly flexible and allows students to learn efficiently at a pace and time of their choosing. Even if you are someone who goes to class, it’s easy to catch up on material if you’re sick, need to travel for conferences, or have other conflicts. If you just want some me-time and/or decide to sleep in — that works, too. Gateway has you covered.

-Brian S., M1

To preface, going to every class, skipping the non-required attendance sessions, and everything in between are all viable strategies for consuming the material. The only common denominator is attending mandatory class sessions. My advice to all incoming M1s would be to try every learning method and find out what works for you. For me, it’s skipping non-required lectures. Don’t get me wrong, I still learn the material — or try to. However, watching the video on two-times speed or sometimes three-times speed on my own time is faster and more flexible for my own needs. By skipping class, I can workout, eat, and study when I want to and how I want to. For me, skipping class is a no-brainer.

-Chris B., M1

I use mostly traditional study methods to get through the Gateway Curriculum. What one defines as “traditional” may be relative, but I like to think of it as whatever study techniques we used during our undergraduate studies. For me, this includes watching lecture videos, taking notes during lectures, reviewing lecture slides, and doing practice questions. While there are undeniable benefits to the spaced repetition provided by Anki, I feel like traditional techniques allow me to encode the information using multiple sensory modalities. I’ve realized that hearing, seeing, and writing the information helps me retain content better. The number one complaint with this study strategy is that it can be too time-consuming, so it may not be suitable for some students and/or schedules. However, all of our lecture videos can be sped up, so if you are a two-times speed master, there is still chance that traditional study methods may still be right for you!