studying until your eyes fall out – and yet, you’re still getting Bs on all your

exams. Meanwhile, Einstein over there is getting near-perfect scores and setting the curve.

How is he doing it? Does he have some sort of X factor that you don’t? Or maybe he

was just born smart. Not quite, and here’s why.

Dr. Jubbal, MedSchoolInsiders.com

A common misconception is that to be a top student with a 4.0 GPA or a great MCAT score,

you must be inherently smart. While intelligence does help, most people do have the potential

to become a top student - it’s just a matter of applying yourself in the right ways. Here’s

what separates the top students from the rest of the pack, and what you can do to become

a top student yourself.

First, top students are able to reflect and adapt their approach to studying depending

on the class or type of material they’re learning.

We’ve all heard the saying that, “the definition of insanity is doing the same thing

over and over and expecting a different result.” That being said, it can often be difficult

to realize when you’re repeatedly making the same mistakes in your own life.

When students don’t do as well as they want to on an exam, it's common for them to conclude

that they just didn’t study enough. So what do they do next time? They study longer and

try to brute force their way through.

Although this might work for a while, there will eventually come a time when it stops

working – and when that happens, these students plateau. What makes top students different

is that they don’t just try to brute force their way through by studying longer and longer.

They reflect on their study strategies and adapt. Here’s an example.

During college, I was a neuroscience major. As such, most of the classes I took required

deep knowledge of the material. To succeed, I needed to understand how brain receptors

and ion channels work, how they interact with other body systems, and apply that knowledge

to novel situations. I always had to consider the bigger picture to avoid missing the forest

for the trees, so to speak. My study strategy for these classes relied heavily on comprehending

the information and applying it through practice problems – and this worked well for me.

The issue is that this strategy is not ideal for every situation. I learned this the hard

way when I got to my first psychology upper-division course, which was supposed to be easy. I used

these same techniques and ended up with a B on the midterm. But instead of trying to

brute force my way through using the same tactics for the final, I reflected on the

midterm and thought about how I can approach the final more effectively.

In this case, I realized that instead of trying to deeply understand the material and look

at the bigger picture, my time was much better spent going through flashcards and trying

to just commit the facts to memory. By refining my strategies and making this switch, I was

ultimately able to ace the final and get an A in the class.

Top students understand that you have to refine your approach on a subject-by-subject, class-by-class

basis. For example, subjects like psychology and biology tend to be more memorization-heavy,

so strategies such as flashcards and spaced repetition work well. For subjects like chemistry

or physics, however, it is often better to work through practice problems instead.

In addition, some professors emphasize deep understanding and application on their exams

whereas others focus more on memorizing facts. You have to be able to identify what you are

dealing with and adapt accordingly. It sounds simple, but most students only know one way

of studying and try to apply it to every situation.

I didn’t realize it at the time, but learning how to adapt my study strategies early on

in my college career helped me immensely when I got into medical school. It allowed me to

approach each subject differently and tailor my study strategies to what would be most

effective for each one. This, in turn, helped me excel in medical school and match into

one of the two hyper-competitive specialties in medicine.

Next, top students are better at managing their time.

People often think that to be at the top of your class you need to be a slave to your

schedule and spend 12 hours a day, 7 days a week studying – never taking time to relax

or enjoy yourself. It’s actually quite the contrary. There are diminishing returns the

longer you work in a given day. Paradoxically, to achieve the highest degrees of productivity,

you must plan time away from your work – and the top students know this.

Top students understand that sustainability is the name of the game. Studying 12 hours

a day, every day, and prioritizing school over all else in your life is a sure-fire

way to burn out. To get straight A’s and crush your exams, your mind has to be operating

at full capacity. This simply isn’t possible if you never give yourself the chance to recharge.

The question then, is how do you balance studying and relaxation? The answer is by being intentional

with your time.

If you set aside two hours to study, be sure to focus and study. But if you set aside two

hours to spend time with family or friends, be fully present and enjoy yourself. There’s

no point in trying to combine work and play. You end up not getting much done and not feeling

refreshed in the end.

In addition to being intentional with their time, top students are also more efficient

with their time. They understand that the goal of studying isn’t to see who can spend

the longest time staring into a textbook, it’s to learn. As such, if you want to be

efficient with your time, your goal should be to squeeze the most amount of learning

into the least amount of time. You can do this by focusing on active instead of passive

learning strategies.

The default strategy that nearly all students employ is passive learning. This includes

reading through notes, highlighting textbooks, and listening to lectures on repeat. The issue

with these strategies isn’t that it’s impossible to learn by doing them, it’s

that they are highly inefficient. The reason that we default to them, however, is that

they are often easier, require less effort, and overall feel more comfortable. Active

learning, on the other hand, is more challenging, less comfortable, but much more effective.

Active learning strategies include things like active recall in the form of flashcards,

condensing notes into summary sheets, or going through practice questions.

We have an entire playlist on study strategies showing you how to study like a pro – link

in the description. The key takeaway, however, is that you shouldn’t just look at how many

hours you’re studying. You need to also consider how much you’re learning in those

hours and try to get the most bang for your buck with your study strategies.

Lastly, top students know the importance of investing in themselves – both in terms

of their time and their money. Just as people invest in the stock market to get a return

on their investment, investing in yourself can have a significantly higher ROI.

Let’s start with investing in yourself from a time perspective. Top students know that

in order to perform optimally, you need to start by taking care of your body and your

mind – and the only way to do this is to make your health a priority and actively set

aside time for it. Although it isn’t as sexy or exciting as the hot new nootropic

or life hack, 95% of your performance comes down to three pillars: sleep, nutrition, and

exercise. If any one of these is out of balance, then you won’t be able to function at the

top of your game. I discuss how to optimize sleep, nutrition, and exercise and how they relate

to productivity and cognitive performance on my personal channel Kevin Jubbal, M.D.

- link in the description.

The key takeaway, however, is that top students make their health a priority. They make time

for sleep, exercise, and nutrition to ensure they’re functioning optimally. Skipping

meals, opting for convenient but unhealthy foods, skipping the gym, and not sleeping

enough are all habits that may work in the short term, but long term they will severely

limit your potential. Schedule time for the gym daily – make it a routine. Plan out

your meals to make sure you always have healthy food accessible to you. And make sure you

get enough sleep.

In terms of investing in yourself from a financial perspective, top students aren’t afraid

to invest extra money into their education. I am a strong believer in that your finances

should reflect your priorities. If I look at your bank statements, I should be able

to clearly see what your priorities are.

In today’s day and age, education is absurdly expensive, and it can be difficult to bring

yourself to spend a dime more on your education. I get it. I didn’t come from a privileged

background. We pinched pennies, had three of us in a one-bedroom apartment, and I had

to work in a library and save for 6 months to afford my first laptop. But even still,

my family always reminded me that my education is a priority not to be taken lightly.

Whether it is spending extra money to live closer to school so you don’t burden yourself

with a long commute, purchasing extra study materials, or hiring a tutor, spending a little

bit more on your education can be one of the best investments you ever make. By focusing

on my education and investing in myself, I was able to get into multiple top medical

schools and 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 had this level of success with Med School Insiders. 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.

One of the most important investments for a premed is how they decide to approach the

medical school admissions process. Applying to medical school is a costly endeavor, and

it is in your benefit to only apply once. Reapplying to medical school means one year

of lost physician salary, which averages between $230,000 and $340,000 per year.

At Med School Insiders, we specialize in helping students achieve their maximal potential,

get into the best medical school and residency programs, and surpass even their own expectations

of themselves.

That’s because when creating Med School Insiders I took my obsessive interest in optimization,

systems, and results, and applied it to the world of medical school admissions consulting

and tutoring. By poaching top talent from competitors, working with that talent to identify

and address common shortcomings in the industry, we innovated new systems and proprietary approaches

never seen before.

That translates to not only delivering stellar industry-leading results for our clients,

but more importantly, we do it consistently, for all students, because of the innovations

we’ve created. No other company has been able to replicate that.

You’ll never receive a cookie-cutter plan, and can rest assured that we are made up of

a vast team of top-performing medical doctors - those who have been at the top of their

class, earned sizable merit-based scholarships and matched into competitive specialties at

top programs. We know how to help you achieve stellar results because we’ve done it ourselves.

Plus, we’re actual MD physicians with actual admissions committee experience for both medical

school and residency.

Our results speak for themselves and it’s no surprise that we quickly became the fastest-growing

company in the space.

Become a top performer and learn more about our admissions consulting and tutoring services

at MedSchoolInsiders.com.

Thank you all so much for watching. If you enjoyed this video, be sure to check out Anatomy

of a Successful Premed or this other video. Much love, and I’ll see you guys there.