I went through pathoma once (read through the book again a second time), went through FA once, sketchy micro once, and did about 25 questions in Combank per day before my remediations and about 50 per day the last 2 weeks. I did a COMSAE a week before my exam and focused on the areas I did the worst in in FA for ~ last week. I did not feel properly prepared when I took it and definitely know I hadn't studied enough and felt very rushed :/ I know that this time around I need to stick to a more specific schedule.
My plan currently:
- I'm starting with my weakest areas: pharm, micro, and path (based on my COMSAE and COMLEX score breakdowns)
- I have started doing ~5 DIT videos a day and going through First Aid in concordance with this
- Then doing about 40-50 questions on combank per day (making sure to go through the answers slowly and make sure I understand all of the reasons why the answer is what it is)
- Watch all the sketchy micro again, watch pathoma again
- Will be taking another 1-2 assessments through my school and going over them and plan to take 1 COMSAE
- Take the exam in 2-3 months
Do you have any advice on things I should add or take away from this? Also, should I buy uworld and is 50 questions per day not enough?
Thanks in advance for any help!
As someone who had to repeat first year due to low grades and failing the last class by 3 questions -- no, I did not fail COMLEX I, just repeated 1st year --- a few things:
1) This is not about passive studying -- I'm seeing some of that in the way you describe your volume of the new plan -- you can "watch" and "read" all you want to and still not grasp the concepts or the information -- this is about active, effective studying.
2) Micro, pharm, path are your known weaknesses -- focus like hell on these and review the material for the other areas. Get a tutor from your school and meet with them twice weekly -- get a block of material that you both agree that you will cover and then have them pimp the crap out of you during your meetings over that material -- the idea here is to get it embedded into your memory for fresh recall -- and it should be cumulative -- anything you've talked about is fair game.
3) I would get both UWorld for learning the science and Comquest for getting into the COMLEX way of doing things/asking questions. Those last 2 weeks would be almost 75% Comquest -- I would get through that Q Bank at least twice randomly -- pretty soon you'll be able to immediately grasp what the question is really asking, not the distraction rabbit trails they present.
4) I use DIT for Comlex 2 and it was marginally useful for me -- I found I spent so much time attending class and listening to him lecture that I didn't have enough time to cement the stuff in my head. COMLEX 3 -- I used Comquest and spent hours with that and either FA or Step UP to step 3 -- scores went up and some of those questions were almost verbatim off the exam -- or at least felt that close -- it was almost like the savarese green book where the dude is channeling the comlex writers.
This is not the time to be passive and get into a "check box" mentality -- well, if I do 25 questions or 5 videos or 2 trips through pathoma, I'll be ready -- BS on that -- if you take the relevant subject matter and topics and study them like you'll need to use them professionally in a few years, then you'll be ready --
I can't stress enough that if you pursue passive studying techniques, you will fail.
