buffer period...how critical?

[cassieandcheeta]

Hi everyone,

I was just wondering...has anyone studied for this without having had a week of buffer period (or 3-5) days to review everything again? I haven't started any comprehensive review, and I have 4 days left before the exam....and I still have to do embryology, psych and some biochem....

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[lilnoelle]

Hi everyone,

I was just wondering...has anyone studied for this without having had a week of buffer period (or 3-5) days to review everything again? I haven't started any comprehensive review, and I have 4 days left before the exam....and I still have to do embryology, psych and some biochem....

I didn't really have any time afterwards to go over everything again. I had a day or two, but it didn't really feel like review....

 

[mudphudwannabe]

There really is no such thing as "comprehensive review." Basically, for people who have spent a long time studying, it's just going through the major topics again and filling in any holes. If you don't have time, don't sweat it. Embryology and biochem are not super high yield - I bet you could cover them each in half a day, and another half day for psych. You should have enough time to page through First Aid once more before the exam and hit a couple of your weak spots again, which is all you will probably need for a refresher unless you've been studying a very long time.

 

[LadyWolverine]

I ran out of time. I used my last 24-48 hours going over neuro, micro/immuno, and pharm, instead of reviewing things like biochem/anatomy/BS. There is no way to be 100% prepared for this thing.

 

[osli]

My "last minute review" is almost just that. I covered FA cover to cover in about an hour. I'm not trying to learn anything new, but if in scanning the pages I notice something that I've probably forgotten (like IL's, again ) I'll pause to look that over. There's also about 20 pharm cards that keep giving me trouble, so I went through them. And one more pass through virology to make sure I can remember which ones are naked etc. Of course, there are some pages, like the stupid helminths, that I'll never learn so I just quickly flip past it so I don't get too depressed.

On the other hand, there are two books sitting right here that I really wanted to go through before the exam, and I'm just not going to be able to. I've covered the material elsewhere, but I know I'm a little weak there and wanted a different perspective. But I know I'll just have to settle for whatever I know now.

I guess... I need to sleep now!

 

[peppy]

I went into the test not having enough time to review a lot of things more than once and still did a decent job. It's definitely ideal if you can review it again - but since you DID already learn most of this stuff at least once in your classes I think it's not necessarily a disaster if you run out of time as long as you've had a chance to see everything at least once. You're really just refreshing your memory more than starting from scratch.
Good luck.

 

[thedrjojo]

biochem is pretty important, so i would spend most time worrying about that... but behavior also can show up alot... i disagree with people saying that in general time to review is not important, and would recommend people out there preping to try to schedule as much time as you can review because you will run behind schedule most likely, so I had scheduled 14 days at the end to go over stuff and had 12 to do it and feel i really cemented myself in that time (although my NBME3 to Step1 score only changed 4pts in that time)