COMLEX study plan for avg student?

[sabsaf123]

Hey all,

So I wanted to get some advice on studying for COMLEX as I head into semester 4. I've always had a hard time focusing on boards studying while making sure that I am passing my classes. Semester 4 at my school is known to be pretty tough and I am not sure I'll be able to devote much time to boards from January - mid March. After spring break, school gets easier during April and then the entire month of May and June is essentially dedicated for boards.

I believe that I could probably devote about ~8 hrs a day to boards from the end of March till mid April (~6 wks). Then from May till the end of June (~8 wks), I should be able to focus solely on boards as I have to take COMLEX by the end of June.

I am ranked around the 45th percentile and I plan on only taking COMLEX.

What are the best resources/methods for me to accomplish my goals?

I have gone through most of sketchy micro, pharm, and path with my coursework and I believe that it has helped me a lot in longterm retention. Should I be using UWorld starting in the end of March for COMLEX? IF I tried my best to make time I think I could do like 5 qbank questions per day about 4-5 days/wk from Jan - March. That would end up being like ~250 questions. Is it worth it to do that?

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[docbsb2015]

That won't be enough. You need to try to get through all of UWorld... not just 250 questions. I think there are like 2,000 questions or something if I remember correctly.

 

[Drrrrrr. Celty]

That won't be enough. You need to try to get through all of UWorld... not just 250 questions. I think there are like 2,000 questions or something if I remember correctly.

You can get through uworld one and review all the questions in 2 months without any issue.

However I agree. This 5 questions a day thing isnt actually worth much.

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[Drrrrrr. Celty]

My recommendation is invest in a side bank or use your school's bank. Start reviewing Pathoma both the book and the videos. And start doing 20 to 40 questions a day in your side bank.

Then when you get to your dedicated period where you have all time off to study to get through uworld and review all the questions. Read first aid and annotate it. And then go through Pathoma again.

I personally used DIT to augment and I thought it was good. Boards and beyond is popular as well.

I also recommend that you anticipate and plan to take the usmle as well. I was 50th percentile in my school and I got a 240 because I studied my butt off. And I can tell you that my usmle score got me significant interview invites that I wouldnt have otherwise gotten.

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[sabsaf123]

That won't be enough. You need to try to get through all of UWorld... not just 250 questions. I think there are like 2,000 questions or something if I remember correctly.

Are you saying that I need to get through ~2000 questions BEFORE dedicated? Like I said, I will have the entire month of May and June for "dedicated". I believe that should enough to get through UWorld. The issue I have is that passing my classes isn't easy and from Jan till the end of March school will probably take up ~12 hrs/day.

 

[sabsaf123]

My recommendation is invest in a side bank or use your school's bank. Start reviewing Pathoma both the book and the videos. And start doing 20 to 40 questions a day in your side bank.

Then when you get to your dedicated period where you have all time off to study to get through uworld and review all the questions. Read first aid and annotate it. And then go through Pathoma again.

I personally used DIT to augment and I thought it was good. Boards and beyond is popular as well.

I also recommend that you anticipate and plan to take the usmle as well. I was 50th percentile in my school and I got a 240 because I studied my butt off. And I can tell you that my usmle score got me significant interview invites that I wouldnt have otherwise gotten.

Sent from my SM-G950U using SDN mobile

Thanks. I didn't want to discuss USMLE in this post because I will actually be taking a research year next year which includes large chunks of free time that could be used for Step if I decide to take it at that time.

The thing is that I am pretty sure that I will not have enough time to do 20-40 questions per day in a side bank from Jan till ~March 16th (start of Spring Break). Then from March 16th till April 20th I can probably spend ~ 8hrs/day on boards. Starting in late April till the end of June I can study as much as I want for boards.

Would it be alright if I didn't do much boards studying from January till mid March? Are the resources you mentioned the best for COMLEX (since I can take USMLE later)? Once mid-March comes around would you recommend that I go straight to UWorld or would you recommend starting with Kaplan/COMQUEST/COMBANK?

Once again really appreciate your feedback!

 

[BorntobeDO?]

Thanks. I didn't want to discuss USMLE in this post because I will actually be taking a research year next year which includes large chunks of free time that could be used for Step if I decide to take it at that time.

The thing is that I am pretty sure that I will not have enough time to do 20-40 questions per day in a side bank from Jan till ~March 16th (start of Spring Break). Then from March 16th till April 20th I can probably spend ~ 8hrs/day on boards. Starting in late April till the end of June I can study as much as I want for boards.

Would it be alright if I didn't do much boards studying from January till mid March? Are the resources you mentioned the best for COMLEX (since I can take USMLE later)? Once mid-March comes around would you recommend that I go straight to UWorld or would you recommend starting with Kaplan/COMQUEST/COMBANK?

Once again really appreciate your feedback!

If your worry is purely passing comlex with a 500+ just do all the OMM questions in Savarese and the UWorld question bank or doing all the brosworld flash cards (the smaller 2.7k set within the broencephalon set that is based on uworld). That will be suffcient. I would aim for more tho if you have 2 months of dedicated.

 

[docbsb2015]

Are you saying that I need to get through ~2000 questions BEFORE dedicated? Like I said, I will have the entire month of May and June for "dedicated". I believe that should enough to get through UWorld. The issue I have is that passing my classes isn't easy and from Jan till the end of March school will probably take up ~12 hrs/day.

Ahh that's my fault. Yeah 2 months is fine to get through UWorld. My recommendation is to go through something like USMLERx or Kaplan before if you want. But make sure you get through UWorld at least once.

 

[deleted645092]

It sounds like your 2nd semester is structured the same as my school was 2nd year so I'll tell you what I did;

January: Did 10-15 COMBANK/ Kaplan questions per day on top of keeping up with classes.

February: Bought 6 month subscription for UWorld and did 10-15 per day plus schoolwork. Did COMBANK and Kaplan during block weeks. I started doing a personalized board-review schedule that I made in February as well. I'll elaborate on what I did later in this post.

March: Continued the same as February.

April: Continued the same as February and March, but increased question count to 20/ day on UWorld. Continue COMBANK and Kaplan during block weeks. Did my first NBME (13) assessment mid-April.

May: Classes ended mid-May, with dedicated lasting from mid-May to the beginning of July. Continued 20 questions per day until classes ended. Took UWSA1 2 days after classes ended. After UWSA1 I did a full 40 question block every morning before starting studying. At the end of May I did my second NBME (18).

June: 40 question block first thing in the morning before studying. I felt like it really helps to do it early and without any pre-studying since this is what you'll see on test day. I then did another 40 question block mid-afternoon. Did my 3rd NBME (19) mid-June. I ran out of UWorld questions around mid-June, and ended up doing the free trial for USMLERx as a replacement q-bank, since I realized that after I reset UWorld I had memorized a lot of the questions and could answer them almost immediately, so I didn't feel like I was really getting that much out of it.

July: Took UWSA2 at the beginning of July, 1 week before Step 1, and the Free 120 2 days before. Took Level 1 a week after Step 1. I dedicated that week to doing COMBANK questions in 40 question blocks instead of UWorld, since it more resembles Level 1. I focused half my day studying Savarese and the other half reviewing topics I had trouble with.

Pre-dedicated board review: Fortunately my school teaches really well to the boards, so your experience may vary. But I made a point of crushing my classes all of 2nd year instead of dedicating my time to board review. Instead I started reviewing material for boards for 3 hours per day; 2 hours of whatever system I assigned to that week plus an hour of epidemiology, stats, micro, biochem, etc. as "special topics". For the weekly system I split it into embryology, anatomy, physiology, pathology, and pharmacology, and assigned each one to a weekday. You'd be surprised how much comes back to you dedicating 2 hours to a specific topic. The biggest reason why I think that studying for classes is important is that I got a lot of questions about specific epidemiology topics for each system on both Step 1 and COMLEX that aren't covered in First-Aid or the other review sources. Things like how rapidly can PSA rise before prostate cancer rises above BPH on your differential, or questions like "How often does x complication arise from y disease", with specific percentages. These were things that I was only taught in class.

Utilizing Q-banks: Timed-random is your best friend. I did all of my blocks on timed-random during the first few weeks of a block. Then 1 week before our block exam I would use COMBANK and Kaplan to specifically do practice questions by system. Still timed, but I would filter by whatever system we had done that month. The reason I switched to USMLERx after running out of UWorld during dedicated is because it tends to ask questions in new ways that really challenged me. Plus it has a page or 2 of First-Aid for you to read after each question while you're reviewing your blocks. Even if you don't plan on taking Step 1, UWorld is still the best q-bank to start with, but you can probably go without USMLERx and switch to COMBANK instead.

Review resources: Sketchy and Pathoma are must-haves. I would watch at least 2-3 Sketchy Micro videos per day starting in January plus the relevant Pathoma for that month, plus an extra old one on whatever system I had assigned each week for board review, just cycling through them. Everything else is up to personal preference, but personally I really liked Boards and Beyond which I started using during dedicated. He has a lot of good tricks for memorizing anatomy that really helped me.

Practice Tests: I would suggest 1 per month after taking one early on as your baseline. Then every 2 weeks after starting dedicated. This was my system and it worked well but you can switch this up a little. I also had to do 4 practice tests during the semester for school to track our progress and make sure we were meeting benchmarks. If

In terms of importance of topics for COMLEX, it was basically structured Micro > Path > Pharm > OMM > anatomy > everything else.

Sorry if that was long-winded, and I know you said you aren't taking Step 1, but you can still follow this basic structure and still do well on COMLEX, just switch out the NBME practice tests with COMSAEs and you'll be fine.

 

[Spectreman]

It sounds like your 2nd semester is structured the same as my school was 2nd year so I'll tell you what I did;

January: Did 10-15 COMBANK/ Kaplan questions per day on top of keeping up with classes.

February: Bought 6 month subscription for UWorld and did 10-15 per day plus schoolwork. Did COMBANK and Kaplan during block weeks. I started doing a personalized board-review schedule that I made in February as well. I'll elaborate on what I did later in this post.

March: Continued the same as February.

April: Continued the same as February and March, but increased question count to 20/ day on UWorld. Continue COMBANK and Kaplan during block weeks. Did my first NBME (13) assessment mid-April.

May: Classes ended mid-May, with dedicated lasting from mid-May to the beginning of July. Continued 20 questions per day until classes ended. Took UWSA1 2 days after classes ended. After UWSA1 I did a full 40 question block every morning before starting studying. At the end of May I did my second NBME (18).

June: 40 question block first thing in the morning before studying. I felt like it really helps to do it early and without any pre-studying since this is what you'll see on test day. I then did another 40 question block mid-afternoon. Did my 3rd NBME (19) mid-June. I ran out of UWorld questions around mid-June, and ended up doing the free trial for USMLERx as a replacement q-bank, since I realized that after I reset UWorld I had memorized a lot of the questions and could answer them almost immediately, so I didn't feel like I was really getting that much out of it.

July: Took UWSA2 at the beginning of July, 1 week before Step 1, and the Free 120 2 days before. Took Level 1 a week after Step 1. I dedicated that week to doing COMBANK questions in 40 question blocks instead of UWorld, since it more resembles Level 1. I focused half my day studying Savarese and the other half reviewing topics I had trouble with.

Pre-dedicated board review: Fortunately my school teaches really well to the boards, so your experience may vary. But I made a point of crushing my classes all of 2nd year instead of dedicating my time to board review. Instead I started reviewing material for boards for 3 hours per day; 2 hours of whatever system I assigned to that week plus an hour of epidemiology, stats, micro, biochem, etc. as "special topics". For the weekly system I split it into embryology, anatomy, physiology, pathology, and pharmacology, and assigned each one to a weekday. You'd be surprised how much comes back to you dedicating 2 hours to a specific topic. The biggest reason why I think that studying for classes is important is that I got a lot of questions about specific epidemiology topics for each system on both Step 1 and COMLEX that aren't covered in First-Aid or the other review sources. Things like how rapidly can PSA rise before prostate cancer rises above BPH on your differential, or questions like "How often does x complication arise from y disease", with specific percentages. These were things that I was only taught in class.

Utilizing Q-banks: Timed-random is your best friend. I did all of my blocks on timed-random during the first few weeks of a block. Then 1 week before our block exam I would use COMBANK and Kaplan to specifically do practice questions by system. Still timed, but I would filter by whatever system we had done that month. The reason I switched to USMLERx after running out of UWorld during dedicated is because it tends to ask questions in new ways that really challenged me. Plus it has a page or 2 of First-Aid for you to read after each question while you're reviewing your blocks. Even if you don't plan on taking Step 1, UWorld is still the best q-bank to start with, but you can probably go without USMLERx and switch to COMBANK instead.

Review resources: Sketchy and Pathoma are must-haves. I would watch at least 2-3 Sketchy Micro videos per day starting in January plus the relevant Pathoma for that month, plus an extra old one on whatever system I had assigned each week for board review, just cycling through them. Everything else is up to personal preference, but personally I really liked Boards and Beyond which I started using during dedicated. He has a lot of good tricks for memorizing anatomy that really helped me.

Practice Tests: I would suggest 1 per month after taking one early on as your baseline. Then every 2 weeks after starting dedicated. This was my system and it worked well but you can switch this up a little. I also had to do 4 practice tests during the semester for school to track our progress and make sure we were meeting benchmarks. If

In terms of importance of topics for COMLEX, it was basically structured Micro > Path > Pharm > OMM > anatomy > everything else.

Sorry if that was long-winded, and I know you said you aren't taking Step 1, but you can still follow this basic structure and still do well on COMLEX, just switch out the NBME practice tests with COMSAEs and you'll be fine.

Did it work well for you? I’m basically on the same plan as you described except I’m workig through Zanki as a big part of my routine, but pretty much everything else is spot on.

 

[deleted645092]

Did it work well for you? I’m basically on the same plan as you described except I’m workig through Zanki as a big part of my routine, but pretty much everything else is spot on.

I got 249/664 so yea it worked pretty well. I should have added that I made all of my own Anki cards from 2nd semester 1st year onward so I used those instead of Zanki for classes. I tried it but I wasn't able to get into it, I felt like it gave away the answer too often to truly test me. I have been using it to keep pharm fresh in my mind while on rotations though since it's still hard to keep drugs straight sometimes in the hospital.

 

[cadingcading]

January: Did 10-15 COMBANK/ Kaplan questions per day on top of keeping up with classes.

Did you do these at random or on whatever organ you were working on?

 

[deleted645092]

Did you do these at random or on whatever organ you were working on?

I did all of my questions on random-timed. The only exception was during block week when I would only do practice questions for the relevant topics for that month, and when I would switch from UWorld to COMBANK and Kaplan.