But during those 4 years, there is a subset  that thrive and not only enjoy the process,  

but also place themselves to match into  the most desirable residency programs.  

These are the strategies of those  highly successful medical students.

Dr. Jubbal, MedSchoolInsiders.com.

Thriving in medical school isn't about forgoing  any semblance of a life and having a committed  

relationship with your textbooks. Rather,  it's about focusing on these 5 key elements.

The medical students who can manage the immense  volume of information aren't smarter than those  

who cannot. Rather, they rely on evidence-based  learning principles rather than the antiquated and  

more comfortable passive strategies  we've all come to know and love.

I thought I knew how to study in college. I  had strong grades and did well on my MCAT,  

so surely I could handle  medical school without issue.

I was wrong, and the first two  months were a wake up call.  

It wasn't until I revamped my study strategies  that I was able to live a more balanced life,  

rather than spending Friday nights at  the medical school buried in books.

Some students are overly focused on their  VARK learning style, meaning visual, auditory,  

reading, and kinesthetic. It turns out that  using your VARK learning style to guide your  

medical school studying will hold you back.  Although it may feel more comfortable to you,  

the scientific literature suggests that  studying to your VARK preferences is not  

correlated to better academic performance,  even though it may feel more comfortable.

Instead, relying on active learning  principles is a reliable way for  

everyone to improve their test performance.  The two main ones to focus on are (1) spaced  

repetition with active recall, and (2)  practice questions. There are five other  

strategies that I've elaborated on in  my Evidence Based Study Strategy video.

I can tell you from personal experience  that active learning initially feels  

quite uncomfortable. You'll  probably be tempted to regress  

to passive methods that are much more  comfortable and less challenging.

The reason active methods are initially  uncomfortable is because they're working. They're  

causing your brain to have to process on a deeper  level and with greater intensity. It's just like  

lifting weights in the gym. If it was too easy,  you wouldn't be stimulating meaningful progress.  

This may at first feel unpleasant, but with time  you'll adapt and it will become your new baseline.

Burnout amongst medical students and resident  physicians is a systemic problem requiring  

reform. However, we're not going to fix  that problem overnight, so rather than  

waiting until things change for the better,  you must mitigate the risk for yourself. Take  

responsibility for your own health and wellbeing  even when the system seems stacked against you.

This may look different for each person, but  the foundations hold true for everyone: be  

uncompromising with your healthy habits  around sleep, nutrition, and exercise.

Some students get caught up with the latest  nootropic or hot productivity hack, thinking that  

will give them the edge they need. The truth is  that none of those will yield anywhere close to as  

strong of returns as focusing on these foundations  of sleep, nutrition, and exercise. And I'm not  

just talking about a 2x improvement by focusing  on getting better sleep compared to gulping down  

coffee. There will be an order of magnitude  improvement by focusing on the fundamentals.

In medical school, I had an extremely clean  diet which definitely did its part in helping  

me endure higher intensity. I was also regular  about getting exercise in through the form of  

weights at the gym and riding my bike for  transportation rather than driving my car.  

But in hindsight, I didn't prioritize my  sleep enough, and I averaged 7 hours a  

night during my pre-clinical years  and less during my clinical years.

During your preclinical years, depriving yourself  of sleep points to a lack of efficiency and focus  

during your waking hours. During your clinical  years, there may be times when you're on call or  

simply have to be in the hospital  for over 16 hours in a single day.  

In those instances, you won't get adequate sleep,  but they'll be the exception, not the rule.

You'll find that the top performing medical  students don't blindly follow the pack – instead,  

the question assumptions and seek to  understand why things are done a certain way.  

In doing so, they are able to adapt and improve  their own approach to yield stellar results.

When I was in medical school, I was told  that research was done a certain way,  

and if you followed those principles, you  could hopefully get a publication or two.  

I questioned the assumptions,  knew there must be a better way,  

and created my own systems that resulted in dozens  of publications and presentations, which was a  

strong selling point of my residency application.  Research is one of the most powerful ways to  

differentiate yourself from other applicants,  particularly in highly competitive specialties.

By adopting this mindset,  you'll learn to experiment  

and improve upon your study  methods, hone your research skills,  

and find better ways to navigate the seemingly  insurmountable challenges that inevitably arise.

This mindset will serve you well not only in  medical school and future residency training,  

but also elsewhere in life. This is where  you'll unlock so many hidden opportunities  

that are difficult to even imagine now. The  possibilities are endless. For me, it started  

with questioning why my school didn't have a  biomedical incubator – so I decided to start  

one. I then fell in love with entrepreneurship,  started some side hustles, and ultimately those  

gave me the option to redefine my future career in  ways I couldn't have imagined just a year prior.  

For you, it could be something totally  different. Perhaps you invent a medical  

technology to help those with limited resources  in developing countries, or maybe discover you  

enjoy hospital administration and want to  improve healthcare in meaningful ways for  

both physicians and patients. Or something else  entirely different. It's completely up to you.

If you haven't experienced it yet, you'll  realize learning in medical school is far  

different from college because of one key factor:  volume. The volume of content and the pace with  

which you need to go through it is immense  in medical school. The actual subject matter  

isn't necessarily as conceptually challenging  as some college majors, but you'll be pushed  

to your limits in learning a great quantity  of information in a short period of time.

Medical students who focus on efficiency are  the ones who don't drown in the content or  

fall behind. This pursuit of efficiency  translates to better use of down time and breaks.  

For example, using breaks to get through chores  or tasks you'd otherwise have to do anyway,  

like cooking or handling errands, which gives  you a mental break from studying while still  

taking care of necessary things. This focus on  efficiency also means knowing when is the best  

time to apply yourself – for example, if you  experience an afternoon slump, you'll learn  

to study before or after that time to maximize  the value of each minute you spend studying.

This isn't to say you need to push yourself  constantly to the limit. That's a recipe  

for burnout and suboptimal performance long  term. Optimal performance occurs from brief,  

high exertion bursts followed by high  quality rest and recovery. This occurs  

not only in physical performance and  sports, but mental performance as well.  

Remember, go all-in on work or relaxation,  but never both at the same time.

The last principle of the successful medical  

student is that they understand the  importance of investing in themself.

I didn't come from a privileged background.  But even still, my family always highlighted  

the importance of investing in my own education.  We could be frugal with clothes, travel, food,  

tech, and just about anything else. But  anytime I needed a book or resource,  

I was reminded that my education is  a priority not to be taken lightly.

I could have downloaded the textbook  PDF from a friend and saved $100,  

but the experience of reading the paper  book and taking notes and marking it up  

gave me a marginally better experience,  and that marginally better experience  

could be the difference of me getting  through 50 practice questions or just 15.

Just as people invest in the stock market  to get a return on their investment,  

your education is an investment in yourself.  The main difference is that your education can  

have a significantly higher ROI. By focusing  on my education and investing in myself, I was  

able to get into multiple top medical schools,  and little did I know, even make me competitive  

enough to earn merit based scholarships that  saved me hundreds of thousands of dollars.  

If you want to get more meta, this investment paid  off thousands of times more because without it,  

I wouldn't have been successful with  Med School Insiders. Think about it,  

if I was an average student that barely got into  medical school, aspiring physicians like you would  

be less eager to learn from me, and the quality of  my insights or advice would also be compromised.

Invest in your future success through any  of our services at Med School Insiders.  

Whether it's crushing the MCAT or USMLE,  finessing a personal statement, honing your  

interview skills, or anything else related  to excelling as a premed or medical student,  

we've got you covered. We've had over 3,000  customers so far and have an industry leading  

99% customer satisfaction rating. That's  not an accident — we've obsessed and  

invested heavily over the past few years in  creating our proprietary systems that allow  

us to consistently provide excellent service  and deliver stellar results. That's the Med  

School Insiders difference. Learn more about why  our customers love us at MedSchoolInsiders.com.

If you enjoyed this video, check out my video  on the anatomy of a perfect morning routine,  

or my comparison of medical school and residency.  Much love, and I'll see you guys there.