Hello!
Taking medical boards is a big step in your medical career; especially for your first go-around at it. Your first round includes everything you’ve learned in the past 2 years of your didactics. It will also be your first exposure to how they run the exams and what to expect for your next set of rounds.
It is not uncommon for students to use several study aids during your dedicated period. What is that you say?
Dedicated is the time you set aside to solely study for boards. For most students that is about 4 solids weeks. For some it is less and some it is more. I personally took more time, but our school built in time for us to have dedicated. Other schools may not.
Planners:
Before you even get to studying, a lot of students (especially the super type-A) like to have a plan of what they will do. Several of my classmates utilized CramFighter. If one of you gets it, there is a code you can give to others for a discount type of thing. I’m not sure if you can get a group discount like you can with Pathoma and Sketchy though.
CramFighter is just one of many scheduling sites that you can utilize. This one is for boards (specifically for step 1/level 1) so it has literally any and all resources you could think of to add in there. You can do a one week trial (which may be free or you might have to pay a small fee for). I tried the one week trial, but personally as you have to schedule things out and there were so many resources I became very overwhelmed and couldn’t find it helpful. I had some friends that once they were able to make there schedule find this very helpful. In fact, a lot of classmates used this. I’m also the type of person to add too much to my plate and not get it done, so I had a feeling that this would just make me feel worse.
Other possible online study scheduler sources: (not super popular, just did a quick online search):
- My study life
- Shovel
- Study Schedule (more MCAT specific though)
- Go Conqr
- Memorangapp.com
Others just used an excel/google drive sheet to make their own schedule and knew which resources they wanted to use.
Sources:
I mentioned the sources I used in my previous post, but you will find a lot of the same top few sources. And for good reason! They consist of concise information and high yield concepts of what has previously been tested on in the boards or what may be tested on the boards. Some programs take what is in First Aid and just make the information easier to digest (i.e. Sketchy).
Top sources:
- First Aid
- U world
- SketchyMicro
- Pathoma
- Savarese (for OMT)
Other sources include:
- Boards & Beyond (B&B)
- Doctors In Training (DIT)
- SketchyPath
- SketchyPharm
- First Aid cases
- Anki (using either Zanki decks or your own decks)
- Online Med ED
- Osmosis
- AMBOSS
- Truelearn (DO only)
- COMBANK (DO only)
- COMQUEST (DO only)
- USMLE Step 1 secretes
- Kaplan
- Goljan Rapid Review Pathology
- NBME assessments
- Robbins Pathology
As you can see there are A LOT of resources. And there are many many more. The above is compiled from a few different websites and from friends who were studying at the same time I was. In fact, there are many more resources available depending on how you prefer to learn and what you are willing to pay.
Whatever you choose to use, do NOT overwhelm yourself with resources. Pick a few and stick to them. Try to find sources that fill in the gaps of what your other sources don’t teach/review well. This is why the First Aid, SketchyMicro, and Pathoma are all historically used. (Although personally I know friends who preferred SketchyPath over Pathoma). U world is typically used for questions as they are hard, the program is set up similar to USMLE step 1 exam, and it allows you to actively apply your knowledge by answering questions. Anki is also frequently used to help with facts that are just difficult to memorize given it has a proven exposure rate with studying.
Goals:
This will obviously be different for everyone, but you should aim for similar goals. Feel free to reach for higher goals than I set for myself; I was somewhat at the end of my rope by the time my exams were taken.
- You need to review all major systems. A great way to do this is either via First Aid and go through the section to review/relearn the subjects, doing Anki cards (which is just First Aid in a different format), or doing a video program such as B&B.
- Aim to review First Aid about twice. Once thoroughly, and once where you can quickly review. If you find yourself needing to re-learn something, this gives you a chance to do that on your second pass.
- You should aim to do a lot of questions. Doesn’t matter how you get them in: mock exam style, x amount per day, x amount after each section; doesn’t matter. You should aim to do many questions. The more questions you are able to do, the better your testing skills will be and the more knowledge you will gain. I aimed for about 2000 questions before step 1. I had friends that wanted to stick to doing 2 blocks of 40 a day, friends that wanted to review everything first and then just do questions for weeks. Personally, I slowly added in questions to see if I was retaining or understanding the knowledge I was concurrently learning.
- Practice taking a few mock exams. My only advice with this one is so you can work through your testing fatigue. You are going to be testing for 8-9 hours in a day. Make sure you can train your brain to stay focused during the long testing periods. It can also help you gauge how long you need to be spending per question, and in combination with taking questions regularly will help you decide if you should be sticking with your gut guesses or re-evaluating your guesses. (I’m a gut guesser; more often than not if I gut guess it is correct, but if I try to change it I usually change it to a wrong answer).
Breaks:
I touched on this in my previous post but I want to reiterated it here: Make sure you schedule breaks for yourself during dedicated. You will be studying long and hard for really stressful exams. Giving yourself downtime will not only improve your performance, but also your ability to focus and your mental health. If you need to seek professional help then do it. If you need to make sure you workout because it helps keep your stress levels down, then do it. If you need to be able to paint your nails or paint a picture, then make time for that. If you need to spend a day getting lost in the woods going hiking to reconnect with nature and reset your soul then you know what I’m going to say; DO IT. Medical school and medicine in general is all about how balanced as a person you can be while simultaneously juggling the stresses of medicine.
Make sure to keep the balance in your life and to not overtip it one way or another. Your body will tell you if you are.
Good luck in dedicated. Cheers!
