How To Cram For A Cumulative M1 Exam?

[Detective SnowBucket]

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My school does a end-of-year final that's cumulative for all of M1. I don't even know if it's scaled or curved or anything. I am doing anking and keeping up with the cards from previous blocks but I still do a little below avg on the end of course NBME's so I have no idea what to do for a year 1 cumulative exam. Also, the exam is 5 days after our block 4 final exam so I doubt I'll be able to study much outside of that 5 day window. Any ideas on how to take on an exam like this?

 

[TakotsuboOkazaki]

Tough situation.

Here is what I would do:

1.) Those 5 days will be entirely dedicated to that final. Eat, sleep, exercise, see your loved ones but, otherwise, keep the nose in the books. You should list out topics for that test. Make sure you touch on them all. Organize and make a plan. Use study strategies that work for you to attack those topics.

2.) Begin SOME cumulative review now. Target the oldest/foggiest topics that the final test will cover. Work in that spaced repetition now, while you can.

3.) Focus the final 3-5 days before your block 4 exam on that test alone. Fortunately those topics will be quite fresh.

Fortunately you will have M1 summer to decompress a bit after this. You will be pretty burnt out. However...

Acute burnout + knowing you did your best >>> regret and mulling over it all summer

 

[IMG69]

Study your ass off, my course is like this you just have to study 24/7 and really work to try figure out whats high yield. You can't really cram for these things, you've just gotta suck it up and crank out the hours.

Make some good plans for summer, sounds like you would've earnt it.

 

[mmchick]

Yikes that's pretty brutal.. seems like a ton of unnecessary stress to impose on their students. You'll ultimately have to freshen up on all this stuff anyway when it comes to Step 1 time, but to add in a final right after your final block exam is bollocks. Sorry your school is putting you through that. I'd agree with what everyone else said, healthy amount of studying, no need to overdue it. They likely will only ask "high yield" sort of topics anyway i.e. metabolism, key patho, micro, pharm, etc.

 

[xffan624]

Sounds like what my school did to me. I wonder if you're going to the same school. I was glad I hadn't discarded my ANKI cards after each block and that definitely helped. I remember studying over the next couple days focusing on the high yield items from each block. I found the exam to be a reasonable review of the most important concepts and I did ok. Hopefully you have the same outcome.

 

[Redpancreas]

My school does a end-of-year final that's cumulative for all of M1. I don't even know if it's scaled or curved or anything. I am doing anking and keeping up with the cards from previous blocks but I still do a little below avg on the end of course NBME's so I have no idea what to do for a year 1 cumulative exam. Also, the exam is 5 days after our block 4 final exam so I doubt I'll be able to study much outside of that 5 day window. Any ideas on how to take on an exam like this?

@Phloston is good at this kind of stuff. Unfortunately cramming won't help with 5 days left after Block 4. For the Block 4 period, focus on Block 4. You can review ANKI comprehensively. I also recommend you start watching a comprehensive lecture series (Pathoma, USMLE Rx, DIT, idk what's out there now) where you go through everything comprehensively.

My recommendations is to get as many NBME forms as possible and take interest in each question and what the question's testing. If your school does integrated curriculum (all of cardiology including drugs, path, etc. at once) then use NBME forms for Step 1 in addition to whatever NBME forms your friends find. Each NBME question (with few exceptions) is based off a learning point. Keep track of what these learning points are (UWorld has them at the end of the explanation, NBME doesn't but you can find explanations online). You can also use a lot of this time to finish the comprehensive lecture series mentioned in the last paragraph. The way I'd organize your schedule schedule is 4-6 hardcore hours doing these questions and then decompress with 5 hrs of just passive lecture per day and ANKI if you need it. Since it's so close to the exam, you may get a few questions you recall straight from whatever lecture series you choose (USMLE Rx, Pathoma if you guys do Path).

Approximately 1 week from test day, anecdotally people have had success with light exercise daily with a set sleep schedule (i.e. go easy on the redbull, late night ANKI sessions...diminishing returns at this point given the format and time you have remaining).

 

[Phloston]

My school does a end-of-year final that's cumulative for all of M1. I don't even know if it's scaled or curved or anything. I am doing anking and keeping up with the cards from previous blocks but I still do a little below avg on the end of course NBME's so I have no idea what to do for a year 1 cumulative exam. Also, the exam is 5 days after our block 4 final exam so I doubt I'll be able to study much outside of that 5 day window. Any ideas on how to take on an exam like this?

Shoot me a DM. I'll send you some pdfs that'll save you.