What I Learned From Doing 10,000 Questions
Studying is easier when you find what works for you
In the past 15 months, I’ve completed a minimum of 10,000 practice questions preparing for medical licensure exams. With each item taking between 60 - 90 seconds to answer, I’ve spent a mind-boggling 250 hours of the last year answering questions. I’ve spent twice that amount of time in reviewing my answers.
I realized that before medical school, I had studied all wrong. Throughout our education, there is a focus on lectures, readings, note-taking, and review. However, there is little attention drawn to adequate practice with the learned material. Of course, we have homework and other forms of practice, but it always felt like an afterthought until I reached medical school.
There is no better way to learn than to do practice questions, and there are reasons for doing as many of them as we can. After completing over 10,000 questions in a short amount of time, I’ve learned a few things I’d like to share.
Pattern Recognition Machine
There are only so many questions that a test writer can create. At some point in my medical training, the content of the subject matter “clicked.” I no longer had to analyze what I was reading. There was no point in thinking through the physiology, pathology, or biochemistry of particular questions because my mind has shifted from an analytical thought process to a pattern-recognition mentality.
While that might seem like a concern to you that a future physician isn’t using his analytical skills to contemplate medical problems, it’s actually a good thing. As doctors train, the experiential knowledge overlays conceptual knowledge. It’s what allows your doctor to ask you about a set of symptoms and arrive at an answer rather than having to pull out a whiteboard and draw diagrams to arrive at a conclusion.
The goal of doing thousands of questions is to develop pattern recognition skills. It’s what allows me to see “pulmonary crackles, distended neck veins, leg swelling” and jump straight to heart failure. Also, I realized that the speed at which I took exams drastically increased. By reading the last sentence of a question and then scanning the question stem for patterns, you can efficiently use the recall centers of your mind rather than processing the problem after reading the stem.
Anxiety Reducer
It’s natural to have anxiety surrounding exams, especially if the exams are high-stakes, such as those for graduate school admission, or professional licensing.
The USMLE Step 1 exam is, arguably, the most critical test in medical school. It is the first part of three needed to become a licensed physician in the US. It is a grueling 7-hour multiple-choice test covering everything learned in the first two years of medical school. That’s a ton of material, and I spent six weeks of 12 hour days studying for this exam.
By the time my exam date came around, I was as cool as a cucumber. To be honest, I was ready to get it over with, but I also felt the most prepared that I’d ever been. I was a diagnosing machine.
The key to feeling confidence instead of fear when walking into a test is having completed ample practice questions.
Interconnecting Ideas
Reading, highlighting, taking notes, doing flashcards is still vital in education. However, it takes considerably more effort when using those methods to link two concepts together. When reading, we tend to focus on one chapter at a time, driving all focus to solidify the new information entering through our eyes. As we sleep, the information is processed, and some of it becomes stored in our memory. For that bit of information to be linked to another fact, there needs to be a process of application.
The application of information can take place through numerous outlets. Whether you prefer to draw concept maps, Venn diagrams, or write summary paragraphs explaining the linkage, the best way to accomplish the connection is through a practice question.
The reason that practice questions are so effective at linking distant concepts is that most of the time, you’ll get the question wrong. The process of figuring out what went wrong creates the strongest ingrained memories. You’re forced to overwrite your incorrect thought process.
Diminishing Returns
Even after completing over 10,000 questions, I still get some wrong. It can be an infuriating process when checking your answers and seeing questions where you realize what went wrong.
Don’t blame yourself. Realize that questions are a two-way street. You do need to know the information, but question writers need to compose the questions in an understandable manner. Have you ever read something in a book and wondered what the author is talking about? It’s because writing styles differ, as do reading styles. It’s why achieving a pure 100% on an exam is so difficult, especially as the level of education increases and question writers tend to overcomplicate the stems.
There is such a thing as doing too many questions. Question fatigue sets in when you’ve exhausted both your analytical and pattern recognition abilities. Your eyes will skim over the question without catching buzz-words and without engaging your memory recall. You might notice that as you approach an exam, your practice score may dip for several days. This is due to the question-fatigue phenomenon. The best way to combat question fatigue is through complete educational rest. Don’t touch your notes, books, flashcards, and absolutely, do not do any question for at least one day. If you’ve been studying for weeks, then take 2 or 3 days to rest your mind and reset your motivation to continue learning.
Regardless of my focus on medicine, you can apply the same process to any field. Search for question banks online, look up questions asked by other learners, or write your own if you’re struggling to find resources. Any questions are better than no questions. Keep studying, and one day that pattern recognition switch will click.
