Izhan Hamza,
CMH LMC Final year
Exam date: 6th February------ score 263 Alhumdilliah!
Brief stats:
UW first pass : 88% ,
Exam date: 6th February------ score 263 Alhumdilliah!
Brief stats:
UW first pass : 88% ,
UW 2nd pass 97% USMLErx: don’t remember the percentage
Assessments:
UWSA 1 260 ( 3 months out)
NBME 13 260 ( 2.5 months out)
NBME 20 246 ( made a huge blunder of not reading the instructions prior to starting the online NBME. I assumed the interface would be the same as Uworld , I was wrong xD, had trouble striking out options)
NBME 23 248 (tried to change my strategy of solving questions). Most people advised me to read the last line of the stem first, have a look at the options and then proceed to reading the questions. However, this didn’t really work for me, time finished in some of the blocks and I had to leave some questions unanswered. For reference I usually had 15 mins to spare at the end of each block with my old strategy. Take away message would be that try not to make any major changes to how you approach questions towards the end. Experiment in the start of your prep to find out what works for you and stick to it till the end.
NBME 21 250
NBME 16 266
NBME 22 260 ( 1 month out)
NBME 24 255 ( 2 weeks out)
Free 120 89% (took this at the prometric to get a feel for the center, would not recommend spending 150$ for it, unless you have some anxiety issues and a familiar environment might calm you down. Didn’t help me out much. Another thing, a friend who took the online free 120 told me that some of the question he got (say 40 %) were different from mine, so that might make the idea of paying extra money a little easy to swallow.
NBME 18 261 (9 days out)
UWSA 2 262 ( 5 days out)
Preparation time: 1 year on and off due to college and a big 2 month break due to 4Th PROF. The last 3 months before the actual exam would count as my dedicated and I was putting in about 12-14hrs/day towards the end.
Resources : First aid, UW, Kaplan, pathoma, big robbins, 100 cases, BRS, shelf notes, UW biostats Review
So I started off as everyone does with Kaplan, the first 3 months of 2018 I spent watching lectures and reading the notes. In retrospect, this was not very productive as towards the end I remembered ‘zero’ of the stuff that was in Kaplan, maybe it did help me out intangibly by improving my concepts. That being said, I don’t remember ever solving even a single question on the real exam due to Kaplan. If I were to do it again I would skip this part. However, if you are an older graduate or your basics are weak Kaplan might help you out, though BNB is more the trend these days. Did a quick read of pathoma too alongside Kaplan, and in all honesty I think I underutilized this resource as I never did pathoma again into 2019 and I definitely saw some question that were in pathoma and not fa.
Started reading first aid in January and started doing USMLErx questions 2 months into my fa read. By June, I had a decent enough grip on fa and had done about 1200 rx questions. I decided to move onto Uworld, used most of my summer break + Prof/send up leave doing Uworld. I did Uworld blocks until 4 days before my PATHO prof and had about 75 % of my UW done by this time. Prof really slowed me down, a 2 month break made me forget a lot of the nitty gritty stuff, kher after getting done with it I finished my uworld and gave a quick pass of first aid and took UWSA 1. After this I did my incorrect and marked question, started using these extra resources ( 100 cases, shelf notes brs psych etc) and tried to fit in a NBME in between somewhere.
Started my 2nd pass UW on 1 jan of 2020 was only able to do about 90% of it, I don’t think this was very helpful as I only got on average 1 question wrong per block, usually a silly mistake more than forgetting something. If I were to do it again I would rather use another q bank amboss maybe, but do the uw more towards the end as the actual exam was super close to uworld and nothing like the NBMEs, which were super poorly written as if they were some rough draft.
Leading upto the exam, I revised biochem as it was something that I and probably most people tend to forget the most., tried to revise the more ratta walle topics in fa like immune, msk, neuro. I went over the rapid pass section in fa 2 days before my exam. Honestly I tried to chill my last 5 days hardly got any work done, but this was the right decision as I was super burned out while doing UWSA2.
Exam day experience:
I slept decently well the night before (took Zolpidem) woke up and got to the center early. Brought a ton of food with me, I figured more food wouldn’t be an issue but less would be a problem. Try not to eat heavy during the exam YOU WILL CRASH, I pretty much ate protein bars and had a couple of nuggets midway during my exam. Redbull was there as a caffeine shot, I took 2 panadols before and midway during the exam (the saadi kind not extra didn’t want to OD on caffeine)
The exam luckily had better wording than NBMEs, however, it was still not as good as Uworld. In my opinion the questions were tricky side and a single thing would change the answer, however, the answers were not as confusing as UW and you could easily pick out what you wanted. Some of the questions were insanely long like the stem went into the other page, nothing like UW, so a heads up maybe I should have tried the NBME 23 strat in these.
MY breaks were 3- 5 min breaks the first time, just had a sip of water and splashed some water on my face.
Then took two longer 15 and 20 mins break, ate food here
Took my last 10 min break because I didn’t need to.
Study material:
To sum it up if you have a good hold on UW and Fa you are good to go, can even get a 260 with just these two resources. The way I used these resources is: whenever I did a question in UW (tutor mode)
I would read the relevant part in fa, any new thing I would find I would add into Fa. Doing UW and fa would make fa easier to read as UW would add the lacking explanation of everything. following are some additional resources I think might be helpful;
Biochem: fa is good enough, but if you really want Kaplans dr turco makes biochem a lot more fun
Anatomy; again fa is enough, shelf notes are good too but like 70 % of shelf notes is covered by fa, it just has more pictures . Neuroanatomy from Kaplan wasn’t bad either
Micro; sketchy is gold here, like I did it in my 3rd year and never rally forgot or needed to revise however it still only covers about 80 % fa has some extra bugs that are not in sketchy
Pharma : sketchy again, even better than micro in my opinion, covers like 95% of fa pharma too, highly recommended
Physio; there was Kaplan but I would skip it just do fa and you are good
Patho; fa is good, should have done more pathoma too. I actually skimmed through big robbins after my 4th year prof and so the lack of pathoma might have been negated, would not recommend anyone do big robbins though xD. First 3 chapters of pathoma are good too, I actually did this
Ethics: 100 cases highly recommended, do it with fa
Immuno; fa is enough, though the Kaplan notes are well written would not recommend the lectures.
Another way to look at this and certainly the way I do now is to divide the resources into active and passive learning kind.
Passive: lectures, review books etc. You are learning information but you probably not learning it significance and how it is going to be tested.
Active: Q banks pretty much. For me personally this was the best resource and the concepts on which I got questions got hammered into my memory. the question always come with a clinical vignette so you get to see the significance of what you learn.
If I were to do it again I would have perhaps skipped the time doing Kaplan and focused more on questions, maybe would have done another Q banks.
That being said you have to find what works for you. A lot of kids do anki, and hold it in high regard, some evens say they could not have done it without it. Personally, though I tried I never got used to it.
Last words would be that start fa and UW early, I wish I had started even sooner. Do not stress too much about your UW percentage it is a learning tool not an assessment one.
Best of luck to everyone,
If you have some follow-up question, do not hesitate message me on facebook or email me:izhanhamza@gmail.com
Assessments:
UWSA 1 260 ( 3 months out)
NBME 13 260 ( 2.5 months out)
NBME 20 246 ( made a huge blunder of not reading the instructions prior to starting the online NBME. I assumed the interface would be the same as Uworld , I was wrong xD, had trouble striking out options)
NBME 23 248 (tried to change my strategy of solving questions). Most people advised me to read the last line of the stem first, have a look at the options and then proceed to reading the questions. However, this didn’t really work for me, time finished in some of the blocks and I had to leave some questions unanswered. For reference I usually had 15 mins to spare at the end of each block with my old strategy. Take away message would be that try not to make any major changes to how you approach questions towards the end. Experiment in the start of your prep to find out what works for you and stick to it till the end.
NBME 21 250
NBME 16 266
NBME 22 260 ( 1 month out)
NBME 24 255 ( 2 weeks out)
Free 120 89% (took this at the prometric to get a feel for the center, would not recommend spending 150$ for it, unless you have some anxiety issues and a familiar environment might calm you down. Didn’t help me out much. Another thing, a friend who took the online free 120 told me that some of the question he got (say 40 %) were different from mine, so that might make the idea of paying extra money a little easy to swallow.
NBME 18 261 (9 days out)
UWSA 2 262 ( 5 days out)
Preparation time: 1 year on and off due to college and a big 2 month break due to 4Th PROF. The last 3 months before the actual exam would count as my dedicated and I was putting in about 12-14hrs/day towards the end.
Resources : First aid, UW, Kaplan, pathoma, big robbins, 100 cases, BRS, shelf notes, UW biostats Review
So I started off as everyone does with Kaplan, the first 3 months of 2018 I spent watching lectures and reading the notes. In retrospect, this was not very productive as towards the end I remembered ‘zero’ of the stuff that was in Kaplan, maybe it did help me out intangibly by improving my concepts. That being said, I don’t remember ever solving even a single question on the real exam due to Kaplan. If I were to do it again I would skip this part. However, if you are an older graduate or your basics are weak Kaplan might help you out, though BNB is more the trend these days. Did a quick read of pathoma too alongside Kaplan, and in all honesty I think I underutilized this resource as I never did pathoma again into 2019 and I definitely saw some question that were in pathoma and not fa.
Started reading first aid in January and started doing USMLErx questions 2 months into my fa read. By June, I had a decent enough grip on fa and had done about 1200 rx questions. I decided to move onto Uworld, used most of my summer break + Prof/send up leave doing Uworld. I did Uworld blocks until 4 days before my PATHO prof and had about 75 % of my UW done by this time. Prof really slowed me down, a 2 month break made me forget a lot of the nitty gritty stuff, kher after getting done with it I finished my uworld and gave a quick pass of first aid and took UWSA 1. After this I did my incorrect and marked question, started using these extra resources ( 100 cases, shelf notes brs psych etc) and tried to fit in a NBME in between somewhere.
Started my 2nd pass UW on 1 jan of 2020 was only able to do about 90% of it, I don’t think this was very helpful as I only got on average 1 question wrong per block, usually a silly mistake more than forgetting something. If I were to do it again I would rather use another q bank amboss maybe, but do the uw more towards the end as the actual exam was super close to uworld and nothing like the NBMEs, which were super poorly written as if they were some rough draft.
Leading upto the exam, I revised biochem as it was something that I and probably most people tend to forget the most., tried to revise the more ratta walle topics in fa like immune, msk, neuro. I went over the rapid pass section in fa 2 days before my exam. Honestly I tried to chill my last 5 days hardly got any work done, but this was the right decision as I was super burned out while doing UWSA2.
Exam day experience:
I slept decently well the night before (took Zolpidem) woke up and got to the center early. Brought a ton of food with me, I figured more food wouldn’t be an issue but less would be a problem. Try not to eat heavy during the exam YOU WILL CRASH, I pretty much ate protein bars and had a couple of nuggets midway during my exam. Redbull was there as a caffeine shot, I took 2 panadols before and midway during the exam (the saadi kind not extra didn’t want to OD on caffeine)
The exam luckily had better wording than NBMEs, however, it was still not as good as Uworld. In my opinion the questions were tricky side and a single thing would change the answer, however, the answers were not as confusing as UW and you could easily pick out what you wanted. Some of the questions were insanely long like the stem went into the other page, nothing like UW, so a heads up maybe I should have tried the NBME 23 strat in these.
MY breaks were 3- 5 min breaks the first time, just had a sip of water and splashed some water on my face.
Then took two longer 15 and 20 mins break, ate food here
Took my last 10 min break because I didn’t need to.
Study material:
To sum it up if you have a good hold on UW and Fa you are good to go, can even get a 260 with just these two resources. The way I used these resources is: whenever I did a question in UW (tutor mode)
I would read the relevant part in fa, any new thing I would find I would add into Fa. Doing UW and fa would make fa easier to read as UW would add the lacking explanation of everything. following are some additional resources I think might be helpful;
Biochem: fa is good enough, but if you really want Kaplans dr turco makes biochem a lot more fun
Anatomy; again fa is enough, shelf notes are good too but like 70 % of shelf notes is covered by fa, it just has more pictures . Neuroanatomy from Kaplan wasn’t bad either
Micro; sketchy is gold here, like I did it in my 3rd year and never rally forgot or needed to revise however it still only covers about 80 % fa has some extra bugs that are not in sketchy
Pharma : sketchy again, even better than micro in my opinion, covers like 95% of fa pharma too, highly recommended
Physio; there was Kaplan but I would skip it just do fa and you are good
Patho; fa is good, should have done more pathoma too. I actually skimmed through big robbins after my 4th year prof and so the lack of pathoma might have been negated, would not recommend anyone do big robbins though xD. First 3 chapters of pathoma are good too, I actually did this
Ethics: 100 cases highly recommended, do it with fa
Immuno; fa is enough, though the Kaplan notes are well written would not recommend the lectures.
Another way to look at this and certainly the way I do now is to divide the resources into active and passive learning kind.
Passive: lectures, review books etc. You are learning information but you probably not learning it significance and how it is going to be tested.
Active: Q banks pretty much. For me personally this was the best resource and the concepts on which I got questions got hammered into my memory. the question always come with a clinical vignette so you get to see the significance of what you learn.
If I were to do it again I would have perhaps skipped the time doing Kaplan and focused more on questions, maybe would have done another Q banks.
That being said you have to find what works for you. A lot of kids do anki, and hold it in high regard, some evens say they could not have done it without it. Personally, though I tried I never got used to it.
Last words would be that start fa and UW early, I wish I had started even sooner. Do not stress too much about your UW percentage it is a learning tool not an assessment one.
Best of luck to everyone,
If you have some follow-up question, do not hesitate message me on facebook or email me:izhanhamza@gmail.com
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