Why Students Shouldn't Buy iPads

Heya, as someone who used the iPad religiously for everything in my first year of medical school, I’ve now switched to a laptop and found it sooo much better! This video is to make the point that:
1. You might also find your laptop to be better for note taking
2. If you can’t afford an iPad (they’re super expensive!) you shouldn’t feel bad or the need to have one! You’ll probably be absolutely fine without!

If you'd like my iPad lecture notes from first year (for free ofc), let me know, I'll put them together :)
To save you some time:
0:00 - 👩‍🔬 Intro: Going from iPad to MacBook
1:38 1 - 🥃 Taking Screenshots
4:06 2 - 🕸Restructuring on the Spot
5:09 3 - 🤯 Immediate Active Recall
6:04 4 - 👀 Research On The Spot
6:38 5 - ✍️ Stop Handwriting
7:59 - 🤡 Final Thoughts

[elizabethfilips]

Hiya everyone! As a massive ex-iPad-notetaking fan, I have a lot of notes I made for medicine - if you would like to download the PDFs (for free) check them out (link below) - there's one for Immunology and one for Anatomy. I'm really not sure why so many people have asked me for them, there's much better resources out there! But I do really hope they help 💙

[miggywiggy]

For a lot of science-heavy courses, I think having the ability to take notes free-handedly is just irreplaceable. Writing stuff down also helps with recall.

[deidrerobinson]

It’s funny how YouTube recommended this to me the day after I bought my iPad Air

[chiaracernoia]

As a physics major I wouldn’t even consider taking notes on a laptop, it would just be impossible, my notes are more formulas and equations than actual words. I feel like every note-taking/study tips video I come across are from people who study medicine/chemistry/biology lol, math-based courses are on a totally different level and so different, would like to see more variety on YouTube

[livem]

As a medical student I couldn't imagine not using an iPad. I completely stopped using a laptop. You just can't draw a quick chemical structures or type a biophysics formulas on a laptop.

[sameerahmohammed]

I’m a 3rd year med student in Dublin and I actually had the opposite experience. I started off typing my notes at the bottom of the lecture PowerPoint but that wasn’t really an efficient way for me to study. My school always uploads the actual lecture slides so personally I found it a lot easier to import the slides to notability and just write my notes directly on the slides to review before exams. I think I just learn better that way so that’s what worked for me but I understand how typing would be better in your situation.

[sarahs-mchi]

Me watching this on the ipad that i bought before a week :

[monsi]

I think the iPad is still the way to go, as it allows you to do both handwriting and typing, which I consider to be very useful.

[july]

The funny thing is that I can do most things you mentioned with my iPad as well. Buying a MacBook wasn’t in my price range so I got an iPad and a Keyboard. I use notion on my iPad to take notes of the books I’m reading and I’m using GoodNotes for the lecture notes. I do have to say that I didn’t try it while having online school, but most of the specific things you mentioned are possible in GoodNotes. You can use the lasso tool to copy or move everything around, and you can open two documents in a split screen view. Sure, opening multiple tabs while having a smaller screen isn’t as easy, but I hope we won’t have online lectures for ever. In class, I usually have GoodNotes Open and if I have to look things up, I just quickly open google.

This is not meant to be hate or anything. I just wanted to mention that some things are still possible if you have an iPad and most of these reasons only really apply if you have a laptop or computer.

[ebenezerjaydenmugunga]

I have been experimenting with this and it make sense there is no need of handwriting notes unless u are doing math !! The point is active recall sorts everything out perfectly!!

[ChristinaAaliyah]

Laptops are definitely the way to go in med school! After a term of handwriting I had to make the switch 😭

[faisalbaig]

Honestly, I think it depends on which program you are in. I would still use an Ipad. Our teachers post the slides in advance on the school website. I download them before the lecture and take notes directly on them. Plus there is a lot of graphs and problem-solving in my program (engineering), which is easier to do on an Ipad.

[mathewsgeorge]

Came to this late. Thanks so much for this truth. There's such a number of youtubers who make one think that without an ipad and goodnotes/notablity you are missing out on academic achievement. This makes so much sense. Gratitude for putting this out there

[AHA-kvsm]

To some extent I agree with you; however, if you're reviewing documents such as PDFs, a tablet with a pen is much more comfortable. Using a pen just releases the stress.

[studyism]

This is such a fresh perspective vs a lot of YouTube content that promotes iPads as a must for med school 😭 Thankyou!!

[medstuff]

I've had the opposite experience as a medical student. I think, it depends upon from person to person. I owned a laptop in the 1st year of medicine, it was timetaking for me to switch it on and off everytime and even the charging process seemed difficult. Couldn't read while falling asleep, couldn't take it to places.
With Ipad I use split screen when I need to multitask (video lectures on one side, and collanotes on the otherside mainly in landscape view) while using collanotes, I import pdfs/books/notes and add points I think is relevant. Moreover diagrams are much better with the apple pencil.

[danielnguyen]

I agree with every point you said. I was a religious iPad user for the first four years of my university and switched to laptop only in medical school. It’s been so much more better to put my notes into anki cards immediately after lecture, rather than having to go through so many hoops with an iPad

[mikaylabaradat]

Honestly, I disagree! As a biology major who used the notebook/laptop combo for my first 3 years and then an iPad for my 4th year, I found using an iPad to be much more helpful and intuitive in regards to taking notes. Being able to download lecture slides in advance and mark them up saved me SO much writing/typing time. Also, taking notes on a laptop when you're taking classes that involve math/formulas/reactions/etc. is incredibly difficult. I used GoodNotes on my iPad and found it much easier to navigate than any note-taking app on my laptop.

[winnief]

Sounds like your issue wasn’t the iPad but the software. You can also type on an iPad and can screenshot without having to save them in photos.

[thepretender]

Writing helps you remenber things easier that is scienfically proven.