Is there any hope?

[slacker101]

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Briefly this is my situation. I have always been a slacker/procrastinator. During my first 2 years of med school that’s exactly what I did. I was able to get by without failing anything but ranked in the lower 1/3 of my class. The reason why my test scores were not that high would be due to the amount and the way I would study for my exams. Since our school usually set pass at around 65% I would only get through around 70-80% of the notes and guess on the rest of the questions. Now to my concern, I always thought I would make it up with a high step 1 score since in the past I have scored well on standardize exams (35 on mcat). This put a lot of pressure on me when I began studying for the exam and I delayed the exam and decided to take the whole year off. A year ago when I did a random block in Q bank before I starting studying I scored 50%. At this point I have 5 weeks to prepare for this exam and all I want to do is pass (even with a 185). I am using Kaplan home study material and Q bank. Does anyone think I have a shoot at just passing this monster if I study 12-15 hours a day for the next 5 weeks after taking a year off from school and not having the best backround knowledge to being with (I did a random block of 25 Q bank questions and scored 30%). What should I do. I would appreciate any response.

P.S. If I do 50 pages/day in the Kaplan I would finish but I will have to incorporate review and questions in also since doing 50 pages/day would take me all the way up to the test date. I think 50 pages per day is the max amount I could handle

 

[lilmo]

Good luck! I think you can pass in 5 weeks. I'd really recommend using Goljan and focusing on Pathology. Path seems to be the most high yield subject, and then supplementing with Pharm and Phys. I also think Qbank is good.

 

[Arsenic]

i think its doable, i took NBME form 1 last week with only 3 weeks of studying and without having gone through all the stuff yet and passed with plenty of points to spare. i'd think it'd be hard for you to score high but if your goal is just to pass then i think you have a good shot if you work hard. depends on how much you remember after your year off and how hard you work before your exam. good luck!

 

[Psychopathology]

5 weeks? You could take an NBME assessment and do a few 50 Q blocks of Q Bank. That will let you know where you stand and it will manifest weak areas. I'm not sure what passing at your school entails or how much material you have retained from your first and second year. You sound very intelligent and motivated. Getting consistent 50s on Qbank before you begin to study is not horrible, and perhaps better than what some students with stronger, preclinical grades may have received when they began their preparation. The assessments will give you a hint at whether or not it is possible for you to pass given the time you have to prepare. You may also want to determine if it is worth pushing your exam back even further and what you would have to do to fascilitate study time between now and whenever you take it. There are a bunch of students at each school who put off the exam. You're certainly not alone! good luck!

 

[Flobber]

i took NBME form 1 last week with only 3 weeks of studying and without having gone through all the stuff yet and passed with plenty of points to spare.

Relevance to the OP? Or are we just trying to make ourselves feel a little better?

 

[Arsenic]

Relevance to the OP? Or are we just trying to make ourselves feel a little better?

no, i just meant that it probably wont be that hard for the OP to just PASS with 5 weeks of hardcore studying. sorry if you guys thought i was bragging, thats not what i meant to do.

 

[exmike]

five weeks is a world of time. get crackin' op

 

[slacker101]

Thanks guys for the kind words. I really hope to pass this exam and move on to rotations. Does anyone feel that the kaplan books are to detailed. Even First Aid seems to be a little on the detailed side. For example do most students memorize the different lysosomal storage diseases or are these the type of kids that get 240s. Also I have the Goljan audio tapes but felt the first few hours were not that useful due to goljan jumping all over the place. I only heard the basic path section and did not listen to the systems. Would you guys still recomend me listening to him due to my time constant and do the tapes get better once he starts reviewing the individual systems. Thank once again for all of your support.

 

[missbonnie]

5 weeks is plenty of time. Make a schedule, cover all the topics, leave like 4-5 days to review everything all over again. Start with ur weakest first - find out what those are by taking a diagnostic (or take like 3-4 blocks fo 50questions on kaplan, random).

I think First Aid is the minimum you would want to know, I see it more as a bare bones skeleton that needs to be supplemented with review books. And yes, unfortunately, you need to memorize those stupid storage dz (what I'm doing today...).

b

 

[SaltySqueegee]

Yes, stop reading these replies and find something more useful to do... 😉

 

[NYC-girl]

Honestly, if you think that you slacked off the 1st 2 years of med school.... DO GOLIJAN audios! I am such a huge fan of them. If you feel like he is jumping around, you may not be doing the audios in order. I was listening to them randomly and was just picking up on random nuggets here and there. Finally, I got a hold of the "menu" and did them in order and it was good. Before he describes a disorder he goes into the normal physiology in detail, then describes "how it all went wrong". I also used the menu as a schedule, and crossed each lecture out when I finished it.
You can annotate your FA with the points that you find hard to remember. My NBME jumped 100 points after doing this routine, so it may help.
Good Luck

T-2....June 1st is my da

 

[JayZee]

good luck NYC-girl!