Please comments on my Study Plan

[peace zealot]

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I am an IMG. I have done NBME 12 form and got a 196, since then I am freaking out,(my biggest mistake was taking NBME at 4:00 am after a 3hr sleep at night, I did at least 6 to 8 Qs wrong just because I didn't read the question well). I originally planned to take my exam on May 30,2012, but now I have extended my date and will take it in late June.
Now, I am doing around 50 pages of First Aid and around 100 MCQs UWorld daily and also read 2hrs Behavioral sci. and genetics from BRS Beh sci. and Kaplan genetics lecture notes respectively for 2hrs daily, as these are the areas of my weakness. Also I look into RR Pathology for my areas of weaknesses and pictures. My further plan is to take NBME 11 on 21st May and see my progress.
Please comment is this enough study plan for a day or I need to do more study daily. My goal is something near 240( or at least break a 230).

 

[peace zealot]

I am looking for some advise and maybe reassurance because I feel my plan is not good enough. Its hard to stick to it, as I feel like adding this stuff or omitting that all the time.

 

[RedSoxSuck]

I am an IMG. I have done MBME 12 form and got a 196, since then I am freaking out,(my biggest mistake was taking NBME at 4:00 am after a 3hr sleep at night, I did at least 6 to 8 Qs wrong just because I didn't read the question well). I originally planned to take my exam on May 30,2012, but now I have extended my date and will take it in late June.
Now, I am doing around 50 pages of First Aid and around 100 MCQs UWorld daily and also read 2hrs Behavioral sci. and genetics from BRS Beh sci. and Kaplan genetics lecture notes respectively for 2hrs daily, as these are the areas of my weakness. Also I look into RR Pathology for my areas of weaknesses and pictures. My further plan is to take NBME 11 on 21st May and see my progress.
Please comment is this enough study plan for a day or I need to do more study daily. My goal is something near 240( or at least break a 230).

First of all relax. Good thing you pushed back your test date. So you are doing 50 of fa, 100 uworld questions and 4 hours daily on genetics and behavioral. How are you managing that? Because if you are doing uworld correctly then it should take you little more than 2 hours to answer the questions and then another 3 hrs minimum to review. So that's 9 hours so far. Then you are reading 50 pages of FA daily. That's just insane. I highly doubt you are being effective enough to retain everything. So i would think you are doing way too much in a day. Your plan is more like a express way to insanity.


What are your weak areas? If its path, look into pathoma. Watch pathoma lectures and please for heavens sake take the time to annotate everything in ur pathoma book from the lectures. That should take you are 50 hours. Lectures are 36 hours total and if watched at normal speed then you can watch them in 50 hours. Atleast that's how long it took me. Then review pathoma along with fa. Approach it systematically. Do a section from pathoma then do the same section from fa. For example, review cardio lecture from pathoma and then do Cardio embryo, anatomy, path, pharm an phys from fa. After that do questions related to the system covered that day.

As far as questions go, is this your first time doing uworld? How much have you done? How are you doing it? Random, non random, timed? How are you scoring?

Your schedule seemed way to unorganized to me. Atleast they way you described it. Your new schedule depends on what you have done so far an what are your weak areas. I haven't taken the step but I had been struggling alot but now it's better. I haven't taken an nbme recently so I can't be 100% certain. Others are more than welcome to chime in.

 

[peace zealot]

First, I am doing just 2hrs for Behavioral sci and genetics (I got around 10Qs wrong only in Beh sci.). It takes me 6hrs to do 100 MCQs of UWorld and another 3 to 4 hrs for FA (maybe I should reduce the number of pages and concentrate on stuff more).
For pathology I have used RR Pathology along with Goljan audio.
I am doing UWorld second pass, mostly tutor mode, around 75%.

 

[RedSoxSuck]

First, I am doing just 2hrs for Behavioral sci and genetics (I got around 10Qs wrong only in Beh sci.). It takes me 6hrs to do 100 MCQs of UWorld and another 3 to 4 hrs for FA (maybe I should reduce the number of pages and concentrate on stuff more).
For pathology I have used RR Pathology along with Goljan audio.
I am doing UWorld second pass, mostly tutor mode, around 75%.

So it seems like your weakness is behavioral. And you are targeting your weak areas daily which is good.

 

[medstud87]

You have enough time to jump to 240 or so. When is your new test date.

For Behavioral Science look into Kaplan Videos and BRS Behavioral Science. Use both.

 

[peace zealot]

I have a plan to take the exam in the last week of June.

 

[peace zealot]

I am trying to memorize some irritating tables in FA esp. the ones in virology, pharma and biochem. Somebody has posted "The Last Aid" here, that's really helpful if you are a mnemonics person. I hope things will eventually stick to my memory.

 

[peace zealot]

I was looking at the Taus method and I kind of liked the last 2 week plan. I have almost 6 weeks till my exam. Has anybody used the Taus method recently, can you share your experience please.

 

[peace zealot]

I took NBME 11, scored 217 and I think at least I am improving. In these 3 weeks I revised immunology, behavioral sciences courses from Kaplan and all of First Aid but did not do much UWorld. Now, I am 5 weeks away from the Big day and my plan is to hit around 150 UWorld Qs and First Aid and a little bit RR Goljan along with audio. I will take NBME Form 13 at the end of this month.
Do you people think this plan will take me to my goal? I am so much scared and my goal seems to be impossible.

 

[peace zealot]

I have 3 weeks till my exam, and here is my progress,
NBME 12 : 196
NBME 11 : 217
NBME 13 : 224

My plan is to do lots of UWorld, old NBME forms and FA for these 3 weeks. I need some advise regarding how much should I focus on Questions vs FA during this time and also, what would be more helpful, doing 3 to 4 blocks while reading explanations superficially or should I go over explanations in detail. I really want something around 240.