tl;dr I would've relaxed more, and stuck to UWorld questions, and FA and pathoma but exclusively for the content that I 1) didn't already know AND 2) could realistically learn before my exam. Also wouldn't have compared myself to literally anyone, my peers or people online or anything, and would've been better off going exclusively off of my own practice tests and self reflection on what I deep down KNEW I needed to see again. And I did do all that, I just wish I would've been even more hardcore about it.
I would've hit the gym more, ate healthier, would've set aside and appreciated my free time a bit more, & would've felt less guilty for not always doing board studying during dedicated. & this is basically my same sentiment for all of pre clinical lol.
I originally aimed to study really hard all through m2 and then take the exam early af with no dedicated, but found out my school had a timeframe we had to take it after a certain date in the summer, thus making me have somewhat of a dedicated. So instead I chilled until feb/march, started slowly doing some UWorld with classwork, always felt guilty for not doing more, but still focused on school. Got done with school, into mandatory dedicated, was doing OK on practice assessments because I'm smart enough to get into med school and I just spent the last ~20 months learning all this anyway & imho it's not as bad as some would say (evidence: 96% pass rate nationwide and 100% in a recent year at my school, tbh might be again this year bc idk anyone who has failed it yet). Made some UWorld flash cards, did like half the cards a single time (basically a waste), but should've been even more discerning on when to make the cards or not because most of the time my uworld incorrects were either "Oh yeah, I remember that, dumb mistake--wont do that again" or "skip! not gonna learn that by exam time lol." Watched sketchy micro once 2X speed with no active memorizing, it helped a bit for what little effort it took. Watched and read pathoma 1-3 and a couple passages here and there about nephritic/nephrotic etc. Helped a bit but I'm not exactly on the pathoma 1-3 bandwagon tbh.
Supplemented with FA and glad I did, because I did memorize some things out of there that got me some questions right that I don't think other resources or my school's stuff would've (I mean if I knew 100% of what my school taught I'd probably kill the exam anyway, but FA just does a good job of really making a point of it and making it clear its important if I didn't catch it the first time around during school).
So ultimately I did ~50% of uworld, whittled FA down to 50 pages that I thought were what I should really have down for myself on test day which I looked at and actively tried to memorize about 2-3 times the week of the test, reviewed my 2 NBME's I took which were 60-62% range, spent my month of dedicated doing anywhere between 0 and 3 question blocks per day with random content review here and there, but probably didn't spend more than 4 solid hours studying in a single day, ever. Not that I didn't actually sit around longer or TRY to put in more useful time.. [[Personally I don't believe people are honest or sufficiently insightful when recounting to others how long they studied ("12 hour days for 2 months straight"? gimme a break you were pacing around or at a coffee shop partly distracted or peeing or eating or rereading a passage bc you couldn't focus or doing something dumb that doesn't take a lot of effort anyway like watching videos... for at least SOME portion of that time) ... but whatever I'm not out to start a fight about that]]. ...But I did feel guilty/down about it or tried to bring myself to study and ended up sitting around for longer than necessary and wasting time. I just wish the expectations were different/lower bc for me they didn't need to be as high as they were back when it was scored and although I knew I could pass with what I was on track doing, I still saw the difference between that and expectations from years past and it was a bummer for no reason. Took COMLEX and step and passed both. I just wish I hadn't been moping as much or feeling guilty for not doing more when my benchmarks were good enough to pass already. Ultimately glad that I put in the level of effort I put in, just basically would've had a different perspective with marginally different execution
