How to study Biology in School: A Complete Guide

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How to study Biology in School : A Complete Guide

Here is the favorite subject of most students who wish to become a doctor in the future. It has no numerical and covers the highest portion of your entrance exam – 50%.

The only issue people face in this subject is that they have to learn a lot.

It’s a challenge to fail in the biology exam but scoring high is not everyone’s cup of tea either.

Because this subject is easier than physics, it becomes important to ace in biology. 

So what can we do to ace in biology exam?

Figure 04 03 05a
CNX OpenStax, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Biology does not require a typical algorithm like physics. It is a 2 step process – understand and learn. The better you do in the former step, the easier it will be doing the latter step. 

So that’s the simple algorithm –

  1. Understand the concept.
  2. Learn what you understand.

Understand the Concept

Here are a few tips to understand complex processes in biology.

  1. Read before you come to class. – If you have an overview of what are you going to study in the lecture then you can understand it easily.
  2. Make notes in lectures – Don’t write like a stenographer. I would suggest just write the keywords and properly arrange them.
    That would give you an active read whenever you revise.
  3. After the lecture, make sure to revise all the terms and check that you are clear with the definitions or not.
  4. The next step, make a mind map of all the concepts in the chapter and see if you can revise the whole chapter without opening the book.
  5. Use the famous Feynman technique i.e. explain it to someone( I used to irritate my friends for this).
Biological and technological scales compared-en
Guillaume Paumier, Philip Ronan, NIH, Artur Jan Fijałkowski, Jerome Walker, Michael David Jones, Tyler Heal, Mariana Ruiz, Science Primer (National Center for Biotechnology Information), Liquid_2003, Arne Nordmann & The Tango! Desktop Project, CC BY-SA 2.5, via Wikimedia Commons

Learn what you understand

Here are a few tips to learn the bulk of material in Biology.

  1. Revise what you have studied after some time. This is like the most important suggestion and sadly very few students do it. You can find many of them in the toppers batch. Revising what you have studied makes the material to retain for longer periods.
  2. Make flashcards of what you have studied. You can try using digital apps like Anki for this. It’s free of cost and very beneficial.
  3. Draw diagrams – It’s a fun activity and a very good way to retain what you have studied for longer periods. 

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