Tag: comlex 1

Medical Boards: What to Expect the Day of

Okay.

You’ve finally studied your heart out.

You’ve accepted that you will never be ready to fully take this exam but you are going to anyways.

Exam day has finally arrived.

Boards and dedicated are stressful. Ask any medical student! But there are some things that can help calm you down or help you familiarize yourself with for test day. Whether that be step 1 or level 1, there are few things to keep in mind and a few things to be prepared for.

Step 1:

The test in total looks something like this:

  1. 15 minute beginning tutorial
  2. 7 blocks total of questions. Each block is 40 questions and you have a max of 1 hour per block.
  3. 45 minutes of break time for the day.

When you arrive to Prometric, step 1 usually requires a piece of paper for you to print and bring with you. There is an ID # that they will have you write on your sheet of scratch paper. You will need this ID # to log into the exam every single time you come back from a break. Don’t bother memorizing this #. It will be written there for you.

Uworld is set up very similarly to step 1. It has the running questions on the sidebar, the same blue bar up top and gray background. It has the forward and backward buttons, calculator button, and labs. It also has a timer (although if I remember correctly the timer is on the bottom of the real exam). There are a few extra buttons on Uworld that are not on Step 1, but if you are someone who is anxious about navigating the exam on test day, look at Uworld set up to get an idea.

Then you have the check-in (which is very similar to the MCAT). You sign your name, they wand you, they fingerprint you, they time stamp your in and out, take a photo of you, and ask to see your empty pockets, up your sleeves, etc. For mine, we eliminated the fingerprint and wanding because of COVID. We also didn’t sign in/out for every break, but we did sign in at the start and end of the exam. You will have a locker which you can access during your breaks.

So after going through check-in you are sat in your assigned seat. I brought foam earplugs because I had a feeling some nervous ticks of other test takers would be loud; and my goodness were there some loud and annoying ones.

You login with that ID # and click that you are you and blah blah and then you start at the home screen.

For step, you decide how many blocks you do at a time and when to take your breaks. If you finish early on any testing block, they recycle that time into your break time. After an hour passes for each block, you have to submit that block of questions and move on. You get no more time for that particular block.

So you can choose to do the 15 minute tutorial or have this time recycled into your break time. I chose to quickly go through it to see if there were any additional functions that I was unaware of that differed from Uworld. I ended up with about 10 minutes extra.

I’m really annoyed that there isn’t a good screenshot of how that main test screen looks. This would have saved me a lot of anxiety as I wasn’t sure how it was going to go. Below is my “attempt” at what I remember for how it looks.

Sample screen for Step 1

As the exam continues on, the timing will change. Again, if you do not use the full allotted time for each section it will recycle and add to your break time. Below is how I ended up taking my exam:

I used the rollover time to add to my break times so I could take more of a breather. It was a long day of testing and I needed the time to reset. Plus, I knew I had extra time so I wasn’t pressed to keep watching my phone for the time on my break. I could just enjoy my break, eat, look up something if I wanted to, stretch, or just enjoy the sunshine.

During your breaks (at least at my site) you were allowed to use the restroom, get into your locker, go outside the building, get in your car, etc. They had only asked us to not go near crowds of people. Most of us if we went outside either sat on the sidewalk right out front of the building or sat in our cars in the parking lot. Others just stayed in the building.

At the end of the day we signed our name out, got a print out that was notarized, and we were done!

Level 1:

Okay, the set up for this exam is a bit different. I tested at the same Prometric site a few days later, so the process of getting into the exam was the same, and the rules were basically the same about breaks. The only difference is there was no ID # to log into with and I didn’t need a printed out sheet of paper with me.

This exam has LESS freedom to decide how you want to test. The exam is longer and more rigid in the schedule compared to step 1. Here is the following break down:

  1. 10-15 minute tutorial
  2. 2 blocks of 50 questions
  3. 10 minute break
  4. 2 blocks of 50 questions
  5. 40 minute break
  6. 2 blocks of 50 questions
  7. 10 minute break
  8. 2 blocks of 50 questions
  9. Survey

The timing is set up into two 4 hour blocks. This means that you get a 4 hour block before lunch and a 4 hour block after lunch. Within that 4 hours, it is recommended that you try to complete each block within an hour. But unlike step 1, the clock doesn’t stop ticking. This means that you need to constantly be watching your time. At around 1 hour you should be hitting submit for your block and moving on to the next one. What this does mean, is if you finish a block early, it rolls into the next testing block (as long as it is within either the first or second 4 hour block). You do not get any extra break time however.

So that means let say the following happens:

block 11 hour
block 21 hour
block 350 minutes
block 470 minutes
End of first half of examno time rolls over after submitting block 4

Once you submit a block you cannot go back. If you take more than the allotted time for your 10 minute break, it will pull from your overall 4 hours of testing time (or whatever is left).

After lunch you repeat the same process. You need to watch your time and try to submit each block within an hour. If you finish quicker, again that time will roll over for other blocks, but not be added to any break time.

Truelearn is a very similar set up to the exam interface on the level 1. Again, there are a few less buttons, but overall the set up and how you work it is pretty much the same. It looks the same as well.

Hope that was helpful! Cheers.

Medical Boards: Resources

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.

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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!