Anybody prep without a specific plan?

[agranulocytosis]

I had a general plan in place, like do the more conceptual-based subjects first like physio then path. But from there I just sorta winged it. I felt that biochem was pretty weak, so I hit that after thinking about it after finishing path, then I thought Micro could use a go, then neuro, then pharm, then all over again a second time but without physio. I just felt like I could have used my time more efficiently had I planned everything out to the last detail. But with my test tomorrow all that is history and we'll see how this method works.

Anyone else prep without a plan? It would be interesting to see if people didn't have one yet still did well on the exam.

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[R_C_Hutchinson]

I had a general plan in place, like do the more conceptual-based subjects first like physio then path. But from there I just sorta winged it. I felt that biochem was pretty weak, so I hit that after thinking about it after finishing path, then I thought Micro could use a go, then neuro, then pharm, then all over again a second time but without physio. I just felt like I could have used my time more efficiently had I planned everything out to the last detail. But with my test tomorrow all that is history and we'll see how this method works.

Anyone else prep without a plan? It would be interesting to see if people didn't have one yet still did well on the exam.

I'm in this boat; I had certain things I knew I'd go through but other than that I've kind of been winging it.

We shall see...

 

[tfom08]

Yeah, winging it as well. Started by reading Goljan in full because I didn't study path during the year much and was way behind. It was an ok read but didn't remember a whole lot and might have helped to read physio first. Followed that with CMMRS in full, then Lange Immuno. Then Kaplan biochem. Then I started going in systems through FA and Goljan at the same time. Has worked ok, but I feel like I should have thought more about my end game strategy because I feel like randomly studying subjects these last 10 days isn't going to work well. 8 days left as of tomorrow. I'm trying to go through everything in FA again while referencing other books but am not moving quickly enough, will have to pick it up and/or drop my other sources to finish. I can see the benefits of a plan, but I just couldn't force myself to make one without knowing how long I needed on each subject. Obviously you have to have some kind of an internal clock and know not to spend 4 days on anatomy or something like that, but other than that I don't think it is a huge problem.

 

[agranulocytosis]

Yeah, winging it as well. Started by reading Goljan in full because I didn't study path during the year much and was way behind. It was an ok read but didn't remember a whole lot and might have helped to read physio first. Followed that with CMMRS in full, then Lange Immuno. Then Kaplan biochem. Then I started going in systems through FA and Goljan at the same time. Has worked ok, but I feel like I should have thought more about my end game strategy because I feel like randomly studying subjects these last 10 days isn't going to work well. 8 days left as of tomorrow. I'm trying to go through everything in FA again while referencing other books but am not moving quickly enough, will have to pick it up and/or drop my other sources to finish. I can see the benefits of a plan, but I just couldn't force myself to make one without knowing how long I needed on each subject. Obviously you have to have some kind of an internal clock and know not to spend 4 days on anatomy or something like that, but other than that I don't think it is a huge problem.

I think that's the biggest thing about a method like this. It's like the plan gets made with each passing day as you realize that you spend 3 days on biochem, 5 on physio, 7 on path, etc. I don't know, maybe I've never been the typical anal-retentive type of student, but I've never liked set schedules. However, I know in my mind where I'd like to be by the end of the week.

 

[osli]

I made a pretty detailed plan in the beginning but always knew that in the end it would only serve as a rough guideline. My performance on UW and NBME's has influenced where I spent more or less time. There were also a few things that I just didn't devote much time to in the original plan (like neuro), but after hearing a lot of experiences of recent test takers have now decided to take a much closer look at. For example, autonomic pharm just didn't want to stick from FA and my flash cards, so I decided it would be worth a trip through USMLE Roadmap Pharm to make sure I got that down properly since it is probably high yield as far as pharm goes. On the other hand, I had mapped out a heck of a lot of time for FA in the beginning, and quickly realized that I'd prefer to go through more specific and detailed texts first... and since I just started hitting FA this past week, it was much more of a review and checklist of things to memorize and revisit than a true source of hard review and learning. Also, I had thought I'd spend two weeks or so with path, but one trip through RR did so much good for me (and I had a pretty solid foundation from years 1 and 2) that I don't plan on hitting it very hard again... just FA review and a few scattered HY lists I've made of things I tend to either forget or mix up repeatedly.