Potentially Adjusting Study Strategies

[s432000]

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Hi everyone! When I first started med school, I came across a Reddit post that recommended the following work flow:

Do Anking review cards -> 3rd party relevant material for the day -> do relevant anking cards -> watch in house lectures for the day -> practice questions

Following that advice has honestly gotten me through my systems courses during first year and my first semester of second year (finishing classes with mid 70s-80s at an Honors/pass/fail DO school. However the downside is that I’m studying from 6 am - 9 pm everyday (breaks and pomodoros included) so it is time consuming. Admittedly, Ive never actually felt burnt out cause my job experiences somehow managed to be more stressful than med school.

I stumbled upon a recent post where someone does third party and then they only skim in house lectures to see what may be missing from third party material. Pretty much, they only pay attention to in house lecture material that are not covered in third party instead of doing all in house material even if there is overlap between in house and 3rd party material. In my case, I'll still make myself watch entire lectures even if there is 100% overlap between third party and in house material.

I feel like this would help me save time studying and although boards is coming up soon now, I don’t know if this is an adjustment that is worth making. I wanted to get other perspectives on if yall had in house exams, how did yall balance out third party material with in house? Also wanted to know if yall think it’s worth messing with my study routine at this point?

Thanks in advance 🙂

 

[JimKimSlim]

If your med school exam is created by your lecturers, then spend more time on in-house lectures and their clinical framework. If exam is just third party, use UWORLD/AMBOSS.

 

[Hollow Knight]

Depends on your goals. I would at a bare minimum do pathoma and sketchy micro/pharm and the relevant Anki just so you pass step 1. If you care about your class rank, spend more time on your professors’ stuff. If you just want to get a high step 2 score, third party is where it’s at.

I don’t want to dox myself but my school has us do 40+ hours a week of workshops and the like. So I just did third party and showed up to classes. I didn’t have the hours in the day to look at my profs’ PowerPoints and I’m doing just fine clinically. But I’m not going to be AOA either.

 

[Hollow Knight]

To answer your question, I balanced third party with in-house by ignoring in-house material. But I want to do primary care so that stuff is pretty irrelevant to me anyway.

Even if you want to do derm or ortho, you still shouldn’t ignore the third party stuff though. Step 2 is infinitely more important than class rank for matching.