Since it’s fairly early in the year, I thought it’d be a good idea to start off with some general studying advice for USABO! Though these have definitely been covered somewhat before (check earlier blog posts), I think it’s essential to know how to tackle bio. As you well know, biology is understandably vast. Time management, therefore, is critical to success for USABO and just getting the most enjoyment out of biology in general.
If you don’t want to read the rest of this blog post because it’s long, read this: study in a manner most efficient for you, but always look to improve; most importantly, aim for the correct scope and do not delve too deeply into any one field*. However, if you don’t want to read it because you’re already a biology master like Yilun Du, then I salute you.
For any subject, I personally learn most effectively when I learn all the fields (e.g. cell bio, ecology, anatomy) at a consistently high, but not terribly deep, level at first. For biology, this translates to the best advice anyone could give you: read Campbell Biology. 8th, 9th, or 10th edition is fine; just read it. Campbell gives such a succinct yet powerful insight into biology, and it is an excellent resource for anyone completely new to bio (like I basically was), and is a potent review source for anyone who started with other methods (AP Biology, perhaps).
How should you read Campbell? There are probably more ways of studying Campbell than there are chapters in Campbell, but here are some common variants:
- Read straight through Campbell, perhaps a chapter a day or every two days (or some other time interval you determine). Strive to gain the best understanding you can without dwelling terribly long on one paragraph or chapter. After reading through once, it’s generally beneficial to read it through again once or twice before the exams. If done correctly, you shouldn’t need to extensively read Campbell 5 or 6 (or whatever ridiculous number some people claim) to gain a perfectly sufficient understanding.
- Read through each chapter of Campbell three times (before moving on to the next chapter): the first, to get a broad grasp of the situation; the second, to master (to the best of your ability) the concepts present; the third, to take notes on diagrams and concepts drawn mostly from your memory to ensure you understand the concept. Clearly, these three readings require different amounts of time. The first reading is pretty succinct, while the second is definitely the longest, and the third depends on how successfully you remember the concepts. I personally used this method, and I think it’s awesome, but remember to do what works best for you!
- Basically speed read Campbell the first time to get a super broad understanding, then proceed to reread Campbell, striving for more depth each time. This is probably where the high rereading numbers come about, and I don’t really recommend this, but hey, it could work!
Some general tips for studying Campbell (or most any other biology textbook):
- Pay attention to diagrams. This is extremely, extremely important. You won’t have a fun time on tests by just memorizing the nice bolded words in each chapter. It is crucial to have a concise visualization in your mind. Moreover, pay much attention to diagrams of important molecules. There has been a boat load of questions that require you to understand what type/which specific molecule is being pictured.
- Don’t get complacent while reading. If understanding becomes easy, challenge yourself. Memorize more. Connect to more topics.
- If a concept seems ambiguous/shady, look it up before proceeding! Learning wrong concepts is arguably worse than not learning them in the first place.
Finally, some general tips how to prepare for USABO (yes, apart from Campbell):
- Biology requires a massive amount of problem solving. If you don’t have much background in math/logic/computer science, it would definitely be to your benefit to dabble in it a bit for USABO! For more, learning more competition-esque math helped me a huge amount.
- Do as many past tests as you can get your hands on, but don’t waste all of them in one go. This is pretty self-explanatory, but never underestimate how important taking practice tests is to your actual score.
- On tests, don’t stress out, don’t freak out if you can’t remember something right away, and learn (beforehand) how to process a large amount of information quickly.
These tips are much easier said than done, yet they’re all so helpful to actually implement. Don’t burden yourself too much, but do your best to put these into action.
Thanks for reading, and good luck to everyone this year! It’ll be great.
~ Thomas Xiong
*For solely USABO purposes; if you love the field, definitely go for it!
