Biology Forums - Study Force

Here it is: the end of another semester. I find that strategies which worked for me in year 1 biology no longer work for the Molecular Bio/Genetics course I am taking.
To give some background: the main focuses of year 1 were memorizing mechanisms, and knowing basics of everything sufficed. Exams were extremely difficult and tricky. It was like an MCAT exam in hyperdrive. But, alas, I did well from only reading wikipedia and doing MCAT practice questions.

This semester is unfortunately surprisingly more difficult than it should be. Not necessarily because of the material itself, but because of the exams. The first one was a piece of cake: homework questions, ver batim. A few question testing basic understanding of the material, and several questions asking about details which could only be extracted from extremely close reading of the textbook, so information one would normally toss out while outlining seemed to be the difference between getting those 3-4 MC questions correct. The second exam: even MORE questions on close reading. Logic didn't help much on this test at all. You either knew the basepair size of a seemingly irrelevant element (by irrelevant I mean something the textbook glossed over for about two-three sentences, and something that wasn't mentioned in class AT ALL) or you didn't. Short answer questions focused on labeling diagrams and matching up names of little discussed proteins/enzymes to their functions, as well as their location on the diagram. A single ~12 point question was based off of one powerpoint slide presented in class, which lecture touched on for ~5 minutes. The class average dropped from an ~85 to a ~60 as a result of the second exam, and it seems like now the focus shifted from critical thinking to 100% blanket memorization.

Given this information, how would one suggest to study for a cumulative final exam for this class? The material is pretty dense now, especially the material covered in the latter half of the semester.

I was thinking of breaking material down into vocab definitions and concepts into what/when/where/why/how, the ultimate goal being to use as few words as possible in terms of both reading and notetaking. But, the risk here is missing teeny details (which my professor loves to trip us up on...)
A hybrid approach, perhaps? Any advice would be appreciated b/c my old studying methods seem to be failing me now, and my classmates and I are at a loss of both time and strategies.

Has anybody been in this type of situation before? How'd you handle it? If not, how WOULD you handle it if you were in the same position?


Thanks y'all!

Your strategy seems just fine, but for your professor it seems that it might not be the most ideal approach.

Hopefully you/ve been taking notes while reading, if so I'd do a hybrid approach studying these as well as your usual studying. It's not perfect, but it may help you a little bit on those questions on teensy topics. Well, it's better than nothing anyways.  If possible, also ask your professor how they recommend studying, you can get a lot from this.

Another thing I would recommend is making up your own "test questions" in the same style your professor does, and then give them to your study mates. Have everyone do it, and then exchange them with eachother. That is something I've found helpful in the past, and may help with this professors particular style. Plus it will help YOU pick out those teensy details and test on them, making you more likely to remember them if they're on the test.

Our professor suggested that we review powerpoint slides and do homework to do well on the exam but... the powerpoints and homework can't be understood 100% without reading the textbook first, so, we're kind of in the shitter in that regard. We usually did end of the chapter questions in the book to prepare, and you'd think those would help but....nope.

I think you're definitely onto something with the idea of making up questions, it seems like a good idea for this class and definitely a better way to learn the smaller things without having to spend too much time swimming in the textbook.

Thanks!

Do what you've been doing. Just review review review.  Testbanks also don't hurt either :)