The College Game: How to Play
Yes, college is a game, and there is a strategy where you can win!
From the onset, you are taught that the grade equates to your success. Your self-esteem, your external validation, and your measure of success among your peers is all based on your grade. Then you are taught that in order to gain admission, graduate, and get employed, your grades and test scores are what matter. No one cares if you remember anything, just if you are in the 99th percentile. No one cares if you learned anything, only if you graduated with a 4.0 Summa Cum Laude. Where did you go to school? What was your GPA? What prestigious job will hire you?
And so many who are otherwise very intelligent, insightful, and motivated find they still fall short because they lack one particular gift – they can’t memorize and regurgitate copious amounts of information on the fly!
And that is ultimately the fundamental skill – who can memorize the best. It is a system that does not allow for individual learning methods. If you need time, reinforcement, and experience to learn and retain, then you are at a disadvantage to succeeding in the system.
It is amazing how our culture views someone as competent in their field as long as he/she can pass that one test, that one time, at that one moment. Then he/she is then considered to be qualified for the rest of his/her life. Our society even makes jokes about memorizing for the test or vomiting back the information on a test, and yet the paradigm remains.
So how can you compete with someone who can simply memorize vast amounts of information and vomit it back at will? How do you compete with someone who gets a 4.0 GPA, or 1600 on the SAT, or 180 on the LSAT, or 45 on the MCAT?
Here’s how.
Aside from the obvious modus operandi – you need to study. Nothing, no technique, trick, or strategy can replace you doing the work. If you are not motivated, if you are not dedicated, if you are not committed, then this success strategy will not work. What this strategy does is allows you time. Time to reinforce the information so it is not simply copious amounts of facts roaming around your brain struggling to remember, but permanent long-term memory with concepts understood and retained for a lifetime.
As someone who didn’t know how to study, who ended up with a few C’s and a D in calculus my freshman year, I found my academic career haunted by those grades, and despite earning A’s later in life, my GPA was still low. I thought with those C’s and D that I just wasn’t that smart and could never excel in a high level profession. Those that do excel in the current academic system aren’t super smart. It turns out, they just know how to play the game!
Imagine the profession you are looking to enter into: law, medicine, engineering. There is so much to know in such little time and if you don’t get it on the first try, you are looked over for graduate admissions, job interviews, grants, and more. Yet some do, and they are not any smarter or diligent than you. But they do have a strategy.
The main component of this strategy is time, and that means hours and hours more time than someone else would be spending on a subject. Depending on what your goals are, it may take another year or two. But the rewards in the long term are worth it. As I’ve said, there are no short cuts, and there is no special trick. Ultimately, it is you who will have to make the effort and commitment and do so over time.
So what is the strategy already!
Lets take medicine as an example. Prerequisites for medical school include:
· Biology with lab – 1 year
· General Chemistry with lab – 1 year
· Organic Chemistry with lab – 1 year
· Physics with lab – 1 year
Certain colleges require additional courses:
· Calculus – 1-2 semesters
· Anatomy & Physiology – 1 year
· Microbiology – 1 semester
Additionally, many schools reward nonscience related degrees, and nonscience related activities, particularly volunteering.
So you graduate high school. You then take the courses that many universities now label diversification curriculum. You know, the art history, the history of World War I, etc. You only take 12 credits – do not max out, because you will be taking 2 other courses – two of the required science courses, but not for credit.
I would choose chemistry, since you will need it to take organic. If you are planning on medicine, take basic math and algebra physics. If you are looking to become an engineer, you will want to take calculus and the calculus based physics courses.
So now you’ve chosen biology and chemistry. Now before you get started you will need to find out a few things. You can use Facebook, Twitter, Craig’s list, or other media to seek out someone who already took that course at your school. What you are looking for are old notes, old tests, and old lab assignments.
The notes allow you to get a feel for what is taught and what is the focus for the course. The tests give you a feel for what the professor focuses on, and the style of questions, so you can better prepare. The lab assignments tell you what the experiment is looking for, and what are the correct results. This allows you to prepare for the lab, and know during the experiment if you are on the right track.
If you cannot get the lab assignments from someone the previous term, you can always find the experiment on YouTube. If you cannot get an old test, there are various practice tests posted online, just be sure there are answers attached. It may not be directly specific to your school, but it is better than nothing.
Then once you have all that info, you start to “take the course”. Yes, you take the course on your own without having registered as if you are taking the course for real. That is the hardest part. There is a relaxation that occurs when you know you are not going to be penalized. It is essential to study at the same level of intensity as if you were taking the course for real!
In many cases, for these types of classes there are large numbers of students who need the requisite filled. As such, there are often lectures in large halls that hold hundreds of students. It is easy to sit in without being intrusive and experience the lecture with the other students.
Then after the term, and you have “taken the course”, you spend the next term tutoring. When you teach, you learn twice! Try to tutor at the school, if not try at another college, high school, or try private tutoring for a nominal price or for free. If you try to get a competitive tutoring price, you’ll lose out. Again, you’re not in this to make money tutoring! You’re in it to reinforce what you have learned, and grasp concepts more fully by organizing them in such a way that you can then teach them to someone else.
This teaching is one of the most effective methods of reinforcing, retaining, and more comprehensively grasping concepts and facts of a subject.
Then after having taken the course unregistered for one term, and then tutoring for another term, you can then self-test your knowledge on various online exams, review books, or take one of the tests obtained from a students who took the course a previous term. You can also obtain new ones during the 2 terms where you took the course, and taught. That gives you 3 terms of practice exams for the course.
If you ace the tests, if you are rattling off concepts and facts off the top of your head without effort, then you are now ready to take the course for real. Register and take the course. What grade do you think you’ll earn?
Then while taking Biology and Chemistry “for real”, you do the same procedure for physics and organic. As it stands, you may only be 1 year or less off a regularly paced timeframe. In the meantime, you continue to tutor in those subjects. Now that you are strong in your knowledge base of the subject, you want to maintain that strength. Just like not speaking a language for years, or not thinking about a subject, you begin to forget. Even not working out at the gym, your muscles will get weaker. It is just as true for your brain and your knowledge base – if you don’t use it – you’ll lose it!
This is most important when it comes to take the MCAT (or any other comprehensive exam) where you are nott tested on one specific thing, but on a broad base of knowledge.
It also increases your marketability, and so you may begin to be able to start charging more for tutoring, if it helps your financial situation. Working and going to school is not an easy task.
After another couple of years, having taking the courses and tutored for years, you then have a strong base for taking the MCAT. So we then repeat the process for the exam. Take a practice test and gage your standing. Then go through a test prep book, taking a practice exam again at the end, seeing how your score responds. You may then take a test prep course, and then take another practice exam again. Don’t have an ego and say you don’t need the course. You may be well prepared, but there are often incidental tricks and helpful facts that a test prep course will offer, such as what types of questions are asked, not asked, or how they are phrased. A proctor might know some inside info on what topics the current exam tends to focus on compared to previous editions.
Importantly, when taking practice tests, the most important part of taking the test is not establishing your score and where you stand, but understanding from each question why the correct answer is correct, and why the wrong answers are wrong. This technique cannot be emphasized enough. The key is learning how those who designed the test think, why they think this is the right answer - regardless of whether you agree or not. When practicing questions, you should review every question - even the one’s you got right. For each question, you must understand why the correct answer is correct and why the wrong answers are wrong.
With years of continuous study, review, and tutoring, and repeated practice testing and preparation, you should ensure an extremely high, if not perfect score.
Sample schedule for becoming a doctor:
· Prereqs:
o Biology
o Chemistry
o Organic Chemistry
o Physics
o Calculus
o MCAT
Key:
· Practice – taking the course unregistered as practice in order to learn
· Tutoring – spending time reinforcing the material by teaching others
· For credit – taking the course for real, registered, and for a grade.
Year / Fall Term / Spring Term / Summer Term1 / Biology I Practice
Chemistry I Practice / Biology I Tutoring
Chemistry I Tutoring
Biology II Practice
Chemistry II Practice / Biology I for credit
Biology I & II tutoring
Chemistry I for credit
Chemistry I & II Tutoring
2 / Bio & Chem I & II Tutoring
Biology II for credit
Chemistry II for credit
Physics I Practice
Organic I Practice / Bio & Chem I & II Tutoring
Physics I & Organic I Tutoring
Physics II Practice
Organic II Practice / Bio, Chem, Org, Physics I & II Tutoring
Physics I for credit
Organic I for credit
3 / Bio, Chem, Org, Physics I & II Tutoring
Physics II for credit
Organic II for credit / Bio, Chem, Org, Physics I & II Tutoring
Calculus I Practice
MCAT Prep & Test Practice / Bio, Chem, Org, Physics I & II, Calculus I Tutoring
Calculus II Practice
Take MCAT
4 / Calculus I for credit
Calculus II tutoring
Apply Med Schools / Calculus II for credit
Interview Med Schools / Medical School Acceptance
If you are fortunate enough to recognize what you want to do at an earlier age, the first and best way to save time is to graduate high school as soon as possible. Find out what the minimum requirements are for a diploma, take summer school courses, and finish in 2 years. Then you can begin taking college courses earlier, saving a couple of years. Then, taking courses throughout the year, including 1 or 2 summer terms will also accelerate the pace and put you back toward a more traditional timeframe, if not put you ahead.
For the determined, motivated, and dedicated student, this is the road map to success, and can be achieved as early as 20 years of age.
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