Subjectively, year 3 is regarded by many students as one of the most difficult years to pass. The difference in workload and content coverage between 3rd year and other preclinical years is massive. This extensive content coverage is meant to give you the foundation to succeed in the clinical years, which means that what you will be learning in year 3 will be extremely important and heavily utilized on your journey onwards. This article will cover some general tips and tips geared towards specific subjects. Please note that the curriculum and syllabus changes every year, so this article will not be able to provide you with specific details for every subject.

• Come to Class Prepared Content that will be taught in classes in 3rd year are significantly more difficult and harder to follow along. For this reason, it is highly recommended that you prepare notes to class based on what is in the syllabus. For many of the classes, professors prefer to have an engaged classroom and will ask you to prepare presentations or be ready to have answers to the questions they will ask in class.

• Create Summaries 3rd year is the year where you realize that the preparations to be made for 1 class will consist of reading 100+ pages of the textbooks and slides. Hence, there is a lot of information you need to cover. Highlighting pages on the textbooks or slides will not be enough for you to understand nor memorize content. As the terminology and concepts that are taught are quite advanced, you will also benefit from putting things into your own words.

• Don't Stick to Your Textbooks Some textbooks just go on and on about one concept in a not-so-easy to understand type of way. You could spend hours getting stuck on understanding a few pages in the textbook very easily. Hence, be careful. If you are stuck on a topic, leave your textbook and turn towards online resources or slides if given by the professor.

• Use AI Responsibly AI is great, it gets you the answers you need immediately. Be careful though, it may be fast, but it will result in you utilizing less of your critical thinking, a required skill for a good physician. Furthermore, AI Models like ChatGPT are not specific to medicine and may pull resources from inaccurate sources or may even hallucinate. AI should really be used as a last resort in helping you find information when information is not available elsewhere or if the content is too confusing. Good Uses of AI includes: Finding More up to date information on a Topic, Tackle Complex Topics with Multiple Aspects, Create Practice Questions. Don't use AI to write an essay for you, solve a worksheet, or cheat. It will not help you in the long term. An AI model that is recommended is OpenEvidence, as it is tailored for Healthcare Providers, pulling from only accurate information sources such as leading scientific journals, specialty associations, and government agencies.

• Balance Your Workload You will have subjects which requires more of your time and subjects which requires less of your time. It is vital to identify these subjects early on to make sure that you maximize your study time. Subjects like Pharmacology, Pathomorphology, and Microbiology are examples of subjects that are extremely demanding and will take up most of your time. You should also know that if there is an assignment that will not take up a huge chunk of your time, you should try to finish them first to prevent deadlines creeping up on you.

• Expect to Fail It's normal to fail in 3rd Year, the workload is high, the amount of tests per week is numerous, and the content is difficult. Don't be afraid to fail, it happens to nearly everyone in 3rd Year, regardless of how much work you put into it. What's important is that when you fail a test, or a partial, or an exam, remember that there are many other assessments waiting for you and you focus on the next deadline.

• Ask for Help Don't attempt to do everything alone. Split up work with your classmates, exchange notes, and work with each other. This will help you have an easier time in 3rd year. Remember that you also have your professors and upperclassmen that will always be happy to help you. 

In this section, only specific subjects will be highlighted to give you the most important information on how to succeed in these subjects. It would be impossible to cover tips and tricks specific to all subjects in 3rd year as there are a numerous amount of subjects in 3rd year, with some subjects not having specific tips and tricks for. Pathomorphology (Pathology), Pharmacology, and Microbiology will be discussed as these subjects are likely to be the most difficult for students to tackle.

Pathomorphology

• The most dreaded subject of them all! This subject requires to understand various diseases, their pathogenesis, clinical presentations, and morphology.

• You will be given a list of topics to study for each partial. The list of topics are topics that you will need to self-study, not a full list of things you need to learn to prepare for the partial. A partial will contain questions from the list of topics, but also pathologies provided to you in lectures and labs.

• Officially, the Required Reading for this subject includes the Presentation Slides given by the Professor and the Textbook

• As a general recommendation, start off by reading the presentation slides. Then fill the gaps in the list of topics by finding information from the book.

• The book may be an extremely difficult read, so it is recommended that you take a look at study notes online that is based off the book. One of the best notes that I have found to help is the one by the National University of Singapore. Take a look and see if these notes are right for you.

• Per the experiences of multiple students, Pathoma can be utilized as an additional resource, however, Pathoma is extremely concise and may not cover all the information that is taught at our university.

• Compared to the other subjects, there a 4 partials per semester rather than 2, so be careful and do not wait until the last minute to study, as the amount of content that is covered in each partial is equivalent to 2 partials of other subjects.

Pharmacology

• There is a lot of rout memorization to be done for pharmacology, from drug names, to mechanisms of actions, to adverse effects and drug interactions. This subject is a highly intensive exercise on memorization skills. It also connects various subject areas from biochemistry, physiology, microbiology, histology, and immunology. Hence, students find this subject challenging.

• Officially, the Required Reading for this subject is the Textbook. The textbook contains sufficient content coverage as the syllabus and test material is highly dependent on the textbook, with topics being divided the same as the chapters of the textbook.

• A great way to help you memorize content is to have mnemonics. One of the services used by students for Pharmacology is Sketchy, which provides pictures as mnemonics that will assist you in memorizing content faster. Sketchy also provides you with a question bank.

• Practice Questions are essential for this subject! At the end of the chapters, questions are provided. More advanced questions that are particularly useful for the NBME can also be found from Katzung's Pharmacology Examination and Board Review Textbook, which you have access through via AccessMedicine.

Microbiology

• The same techniques used for pharmacology is also helpful in microbiology as microbiology is also another subject with rout memorization.

• Officially, the Required Reading for this subject is the Textbook. The textbook contains sufficient content coverage as the syllabus and test material is highly dependent on the textbook.

• A great way to help you memorize content is to have mnemonics. One of the services used by students for Microbiology is Sketchy, which provides pictures as mnemonics that will assist you in memorizing content faster. Sketchy also provides you with a question bank.

• Practice Questions are essential for this subject! At the end of the chapters and the entire textbook, questions are provided. These questions are extremely high yield concepts that will almost certainly show up on your partial and final exams.