Should You Buy an iPad for Medical College? A Comprehensive Guide for Medicos. 

Hello medicos. Entering medical college brings new responsibilities and new needs.  One common question among First Year Medicos is whether buying an iPad is necessary. This decision is a complex one.

It depends on a lot of things, like your study habits, your budget, and your needs. I have dissected my journey of buying an iPad and created a guide that will help you decide if you need one too.

Consider These Points:

Cost of books

You might have brought the first-year books by now. You might have also realized that they are very bulky and expensive. One book alone (Guyton and Hall) costs around Rs 1700. You will be having 19 subjects in the course of MBBS. Each subject requires a book, costing around Rs. 1500 on average. (I have included all: International author books, Indian author books, and exam preparation books).

This means that you will be spending a LOT on books, around 30,000. (minimum)

So reading from Free PDFs and EBooks becomes necessary.

Note-Taking

I am an avid note taker. I need to write down to remember, it is a habit from school. So, naturally, by the end of the first year, I had already filled 15 or more, 200 pages-books.

This made organizing a little difficult, and I spent a lot of time searching for the notes that I needed at the moment.

In the second year I got an iPad and note-taking became 10x easier. I could just search for a topic and study it without wasting my time. Also, I could just carry my iPad to places instead of carrying so many books. This further reduced the bulk of my bags, while keeping everything accessible too.

Streaming Lectures: 

Most of us get subscriptions of educational apps by the end of second year. If not, all of us at least use youtube to watch lectures. So essentially, streaming of online lectures is required. Now, you can totally watch them on your mobile too, but watching on a tablet to an iPad is a better experience.

Watching on a bigger screen is more sustainable, you can watch lectures for a longer time too. Also mobile is full of distractions, in the form of social media notifications, using an iPad replaces the need to use a mobile.

Another Benefit:

As I said, note taking is a very good feature of an iPad. I recently started exploring the feature in detail, and I discovered a lot of things. 

• We can copy paste content from different books into one book. This allowed me to compile and create good notes that included points from all the books generally used. 
• We can integrate diagrams from Google into our notes. By  long pressing on a saved image, a sticker is created. This sticker can then be pasted onto the notes. Diagram practice also becomes easier when you have the diagram ready on the page to see and copy.
• We can copy paste previously drawn diagrams or previously written stuff onto the new page. This will help you describe a diagram in detail, without cluttering around it in just one page.
• All that we write gets picked up and indexed in the app. So, I used to write the lecture number before starting note making. This helped me find them faster. I just had to put in the lecture number in the search bar and the notes from that lecture popped up.
• There is also the split screen feature where you can watch YouTube on one side and take down notes on the other. This allows you to multitask.
• While reading PDFs, you can annotate and mark the important points. These are editable changes, you can remove these markings in the future, if you want to.

So, what do we decide?

See, I’m not sponsored by Apple to write this. It is my genuine advice to get an iPad. The cheapest one also works totally fine and is very durable. 

It will make your medical college life much much easier, trust me.

Or, if you feel like an iPad is way out of your budget, go for a tablet. This will still provide everything listed except for note-taking. You will still save a hefty amount in the long term. 

Some tips for buying an iPad:

• Time your purchase. Buying an iPad after you get into college can help you take advantage of student discounts. All you have to do is submit a digital copy of your student ID.
• Try not to opt for the latest models. It is fine to go with the 9th generation too.
• Try to spend money on a high storage version of a basic model instead of investing that money in a professional model.
• Always use Apple chargers with the iPad, or you might reduce the durability of the device.

Alternative Devices

If you feel like your budget is restrictive, you can go for other options:

Samsung Tablets: Samsung offers a range of tablets that are budget-friendly and capable of handling most needs. I’ve also heard about the new versions that allow note-taking. I haven’t tried them out myself so can’t comment.

Other Tablets: There are several other tablets in the market that offer good performance for reading PDFs, taking notes, and streaming content.

Conclusion

Remember, your success in medical college ultimately depends on your study habits. Not on what device you have.

Given the high cost of medical textbooks, I really really recommend getting at least a basic iPad or another tablet. The investment can save you money on books in the long run.

Hope this helps you make an informed decision! All the best for your medical journey!