congrats on the score! how did you end up studying aside from doing questions then? or is there a specific way u did practice questions?
Thanks! I attribute my score mainly to working hard in classes over the first two years. I used board review sources alongside classes. I would listen to lecture (or do the readings) and highlight stuff that was emphasized. Then I would focus on board review sources for the topics. I did my best to always have this completed for the weeks topics by Sunday. At this point I had a solid understanding of the topic and knew all the high yields. Then I would just cram memorization stuff and professor details right before the test. In doing this I was able to do very well in classes and it set me up for boards nicely.
As far as boards resources I used pathoma, sketchy (micro and pharm), and sometimes boards and beyond for other stuff (mainly physio). I started using Rx qbank at the beginning of second year, on random. I would skim answers...sometimes haha. I think it was mostly just helpful to see questions and keep topics fresh in my mind.
I also kept reviewing the sketchy videos. I tried to watch 1 a day, although I wasn’t always consistent about that. I reviewed pathoma sporadically.
For dedicated, I did UW on timed, random. Read all explanations, unless it was a topic I knew really well, then I would just skim to see if there was a tidbit I didn’t know. I would do UW all morning usually. Then in the afternoon, I would use B&B to fill in my knowledge gaps, maybe review a sketchy video if I felt it was a weak area. I did review most of the front part of FA, which I thought was good. I didn’t look at most of the organ systems, other than 2 that I was really strong in and wasn’t going to review otherwise, so just quickly paged through those sections. In the last week, I went through most of the pathoma book since I hadn’t really looked at most of it for 6 months or so.
I hope that answers your question haha. Also, just to be clear I wasn’t hating on anki or FA. I think they can be great resources, just weren’t what I liked or used. I guess I just wanted to show that you can do very well without them, because it used to stress me out some that I wasn’t using them because a lot of high scorers seem to. I likely covered everything (and more) in FA using B&B, pathoma and sketchy. And all I really meant about the questions was, use whatever resources you like but you gotta do questions, and UW is the best. I actually didn’t feel like questions were that helpful to me at first (but I i was very wrong), and I’m glad I didn’t ignore that golden rule. I’ve never once seen someone who took boards say questions weren’t helpful or they wished they had done less. In fact, if I did it over again, the only thing I would change is to try to do more questions, and start earlier.
