Please help: 2 months till step 1 and only half way through FA 1st pass

[Imogen]

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I feel exceptionally awful right now and could use some advice. I have 8 chapters of FA left to do to complete my first pass, but I only have 2 months of study time left. My very first practice NBME before any studying at all was a 180 (converted score). Starting in April, concurrent with school, I did a review of all of Pathoma and then starting in May I did the first 8 chapters of FA and Rx for those chapters. According to my "schedule" I was actually supposed to be done with my 1st pass of FA now, but I just went way too slow. I would get confused reading FA and spend forever trying to look stuff up, annotate, etc. I now feel like a complete idiot for taking so much time to get through the first chapters and I don't know if I'm in big big trouble now.

I had originally planned to use the time after my first pass of FA to do all of UWorld, and do a second pass of Pathoma/FA. Now, I have until August 10th to do the rest of FA (8 chapters), all of Uworld, and hopefully a 2nd pass of everything. I was thinking that if I can get myself to plow through 3 chapters a week from here on out, then I can be done by end of June and still have the entirety of July for UWorld and starting my 2nd pass. But considering how long doing the first 8 chapters took me, this feels incredibly scary and I'm worried that this means I'm just not going to learn half of FA well.

Any advice is appreciated. I am aiming for a 23o but now I'm scared that I won't even pass because I've been studying wrong.

 

[pd1112]

Take another nbme and just see where you're at score-wise. Other than that, chill out on worrying about being behind. I was going to do 3 passes of FA in my dedicated time. My test is 4 days away and I haven't finished my first pass. You're going to get behind, it's inevitable. Worrying about it only makes it worse. But if you're still not passing at least after this next nbme, then yeah, you need to change something up, but 2 months is forever. I'd be more worried about burnout than anything else.

 

[seminoma]

I feel exceptionally awful right now and could use some advice. I have 8 chapters of FA left to do to complete my first pass, but I only have 2 months of study time left. My very first practice NBME before any studying at all was a 180 (converted score). Starting in April, concurrent with school, I did a review of all of Pathoma and then starting in May I did the first 8 chapters of FA and Rx for those chapters. According to my "schedule" I was actually supposed to be done with my 1st pass of FA now, but I just went way too slow. I would get confused reading FA and spend forever trying to look stuff up, annotate, etc. I now feel like a complete idiot for taking so much time to get through the first chapters and I don't know if I'm in big big trouble now.

I had originally planned to use the time after my first pass of FA to do all of UWorld, and do a second pass of Pathoma/FA. Now, I have until August 10th to do the rest of FA (8 chapters), all of Uworld, and hopefully a 2nd pass of everything. I was thinking that if I can get myself to plow through 3 chapters a week from here on out, then I can be done by end of June and still have the entirety of July for UWorld and starting my 2nd pass. But considering how long doing the first 8 chapters took me, this feels incredibly scary and I'm worried that this means I'm just not going to learn half of FA well.

Any advice is appreciated. I am aiming for a 23o but now I'm scared that I won't even pass because I've been studying wrong.

You can do a full pass of FA, Pathoma, and UW in 8 weeks no problem. 230 is definitely a reasonable place to be in 8 weeks. FWIW, My most recent NBME was ~40 points higher than my first NBME ~6 weeks ago before I did any studying. Not quite 50 like you're hoping for, but it's not an unreasonable amount of points to improve by. Getting through FA the first time is the slowest, and it's especially slow if you're trying to do it along with school work.

 

[theacks1]

I did not open First Aid until the start of my 5 week dedicated period. Few people's studying goes according to plan, and as long as you are being productive, once slowly may be better than twice quickly for you. I'd second the notion of taking another NBME and using the subject breakdown to gauge your improvement in the areas that you have already done. Ultimately, the exact method of studying you use doesn't matter as long as you are learning the material and eventually get used to how to approach the material in question form.

 

[pd1112]

Also keep in mind that the increase in scores from sub 200 to 220s-230s is much easier to accomplish than the 230s to 260s transition. Just keep chugging, that's all you can do. That sounds like advice for a freshman in college, but it applies to step 1 too.

 

[Imogen]

Thank you for the reassurances everyone. Will try my best to just stay calm and chug along as advised. 7 chapters left... Already hating how incredibly hard it is to get through a chapter every 2 days (or try to, really). I don't know how some of you do it!

 

[bringslite]

Focus on organ systems rather than single subjects (easier done if your school is on organ-based curriculum). There are 10 of them (I think). Some are dense, others are not. So figure out how long it would take for each one.