Advice on how to be a faster test taker

[Dr.CCM]

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Any advice on how to train to be a faster test taker for step 2? Most of my board exams this year I barely finish in time or have 5-8 questions left at the end of board. Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

[Ronin786]

Theres going to be a balance between speed and accuracy. Many questions you can get by with just reading the first and last lines and getting enough of an idea in order to answer. However, that includes a high risk of being duped into a wrong answer or missing a vital clue.

IMO the least risky way to speed things up is knowing all the lab values by heart. The less you have to open the lab values tab, the quicker you can get through some of the insanely long lab values some question stems give you.

Another strategy I use at times is to leave any question with lab values to the end, that way you can get the short questions done quickly and have more time for the lengthy ones. Also some folks have said that there are around 1-2 questions of statistics per block, so being able to answer those questions in a few seconds can add valuable time.

 

[Stellar Clouds]

Read the last sentence of the question stem, browse quickly through the answers, and then read the entire question stem. Already knowing what they are looking for when you are reading the enormously long question stems is key to quickly going through questions.

 

[Dr.CCM]

I like the idea of the last line and answer reading first. Gonna try that on my uworld blocks.

 

[Ronin786]

That strategy definitely saves time, but caution needs to be exercised. You can sometimes be lead down a wrong path cause you're so focused on the answer you think you know.

 

[ohyeahbaby]

memorized lab values cold - that alone has def helped