Passed! This is going to be long so fair warning. These kinds of posts greatly helped me so I thought I'd make my own.
This was my third attempt at this exam. I did not study my first attempt at all. I was burnt out and was fully expecting to fail and then retake and pass. Foolishly things don’t always go to plan as I had a family emergency come up that took up all my study time for the second attempt. Due to the circumstances it was essentially pass my classes or part 1 the second time. I ended up choosing classes. You can make whatever jokes you want but I’m just keeping it real in case someone who reads this is in a similar situation. I genuinely believe this exam is not bad if you put in the time to study.
Now the important part.. resources used/how did I study.
I blocked off about 70 days of dedicated study time. Did I actually study 70 days? No. I’d say it was closer to 60 days of studying and those 60 days varied greatly on how long I studied per day. Most days I studied for about 4-6 hours. I would wake up do my new and review anki cards, take few hours off, and then study just a little bit more at night. The best thing about starting early is you can afford to have a more laid back schedule. I understand this is not feasible for most students because you might be studying for other classes or have other obligations, but I highly suggest giving yourself at least 60 days of study time if you’re like me and get easily distracted. Could you study a week or two and pass? Possibly, but it all depends on how much you remember the material from your first 2 years. Besides for LEA my other subjects were definitely a lot of relearning versus reviewing.
Resources I used what I’d recommend:
LEA: Use your school notes, use your school notes, use your school notes. If for some reason your school does not have good notes, most people recommend Scholl’s or Kent’s (Ohio book) notes. There are some anki’s going around that help cover the smaller details they might ask. I did not use them as I feel LEA is a subject that you can envision versus rote spaced repetition or whatever anki uses. (My deck didn’t have pictures either). Definitely know LEA front and back. I will not lie, most of my LEA was pretty easy all 3 attempts but I know people can get the smaller details wrong so don’t risk it and study this section well.
Microbiology: Sketchy, sketchy, sketchy. I cannot say this enough and most people will say the same thing. Sketchy micro is probably the best resource we have as pods (besides LEA notes) that will help you answer almost all of your questions that you will see on part1. It is concise, has good memory hooks, and the associated anki deck is excellent (Pepper’s anki deck). If you haven’t tried sketchy before please give it a try. Also don’t forget to review some of the smaller stuff you might have forgotten cell wall vs membrane, fungi vs bacteria etc. Sketchy micro teaches some but expects you already know some of the easy details beforehand. Your class notes should be more than sufficient for this.
Immunology: I wasted my time studying for this. I used some board and beyond videos and I thought they were good, but none of the material was on my exam. Same thing with my immunology notes from school. I feel as if my immunology was super specific and random. Definitely know basic stuff though because I did get some questions that were easy.
Pharmacology: Sketchy. Yes people complain about Sketchy Pharm because it is long. But I promise it is so worth it. The only difference it has to sketchy micro is that it is longer, and that it ties in other subjects like pathology/physiology in the sketches. But guess what, a lot of those tie-ins help with path/phys review and I got some physiology questions right simply because I watched these videos and did anki to review them (Pepper’s anki deck again). If you’re starting early and have the time, I recommend watching them. I probably got 90% of my micro and
pharm questions right just because of sketchy.
Pathology: Watched Pathoma videos. I think most people read the book to review but I didn’t have that and instead had some videos. I also found some notes online that people made of each video. People really like pathoma but in my opinion it can be a bit overkill. What I essentially ended up doing was going through the notes I found and writing down buzzwords or associations that I felt were high yield. Most of the pathology you will see on your exam is buzzwordy or obvious if you’ve seen the terms or associations. So if you have path notes from school with buzzwords, study them well. I did have a couple very specific questions that I did not see in the videos so if you’re feeling uncertain and have time just study everything from the book.
Physiology: BRS Physiology. This book is excellent, it covers pretty much all the physio that you will see. However, it is a bit long just for one subject and some of the details are a bit overkill. I would highly recommend taking notes as you read it and focus on the higher yield topics. I didn’t do that so I kind of just went in hoping I remembered most of it and luckily I did.
General Anatomy: 100 concepts Powerpoint and an anki deck I found associated with it. Anatomy is one of those subjects where they tend to focus on specific areas. It can vary but I would suggest just doing the anki cards and reading the powerpoint a couple times and you should probably be alright. I probably got like 60% of the questions right because of this resource.
Biochemistry: All I did for this section was study the glycogen storage diseases, vitamin deficiencies, learn rate limiting steps for the pathways, and other diseases (there should be a good chart in first aid biochemistry section). I didn’t waste my time on other stuff.
Practice tests: Please use all the old/prometric/meazure practice tests available to you. I was lucky and got old practice tests from my upperclassmen. I was scoring basically 70s on most of them and I genuinely feel if you’re scoring that you should pass (some people say you need 90s on them because they’re so “easy” but don’t listen to them). I had some questions that were word for word from old exams or tested the same kind of concepts so please don’t overlook these.
Board vitals: I think as a resource it is good to understand potentially “what kinds of questions they will ask”. It also helps to see what you already know. Don’t use it so much to learn material but it can be used in that way for some subjects. I did 1 complete pass through and probably 200-300 more questions after that. I got a 63% my first pass through and the other 200-300 were around 80% I felt confident enough to not review the rest.
How I felt after the exam:
I finished in less than 2 hours but I went back and really looked at each question. I was 99% sure I got 75 of the 150 questions (I got the shortened version) correct. I was confident in about another 10-15 (85%) but not so much that I would include them into my correct number. The other 50-60 questions I was split between two or had no idea/made an educated guess. I truly believe that if you’re confident in about half the questions that you should pass. Some people claim that you need high percentages like 70% or higher to pass but I believe that number is closer to 55-62%.
Overall: Give yourself a few weeks to study, stick to resources you like/that work, and do lots of practice questions and you will pass. Congrats to everyone who passed and best of luck to those who haven’t taken it yet or need to retake it. You can do it.
