Shelf troubles

[pillowsnice]

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So I'm 2 rotations into my 3rd year and both shelf exams I've done average, which is only high enough for a pass at my school. I've had "honor" type evals as said by the clerkship directors, but the shelf always tanks me. My questions are:

1) how bad is having passes throughout third year? I'm considering EM at this moment, so nothing like optho or derm.

2) I'm doing uworld and other questions, but I'm not learning it apparently. I feel good before the exam, but I always dont do as well. I do the 4 nbme exams too and always do better on these than the actual exam. I'm not really sure what to do at this point

 

[y123]

Average on shelf is not bad at all. Don't forget 50% of US MD students score below average.
You will be fine for EM with passes with no other red flag
You are only on your second rotation in Feb? Your 3rd year started in Jan?

 

[ciestar]

Hey, you’re me.

Anki helped me tremendously studying for these things. Do allll the questions you can. Idk what rotations you’ve done but some rotations use other resources. I really liked UWise for obgyn and for FM you need AAFP. The more questions the better, obviously. If you’re a reader, some books are great for these things and cover so much of what you need to know. (Now, I have only finished a book for a clerkship once lol)

My scores improved throughout the year.

 

[ciestar]

Average on shelf is not bad at all. Don't forget 50% of US MD students score below average.
You will be fine for EM with passes with no other red flag
You are only on your second rotation in Feb? Your 3rd year started in Jan?

Many schools are adopting the 1.5 year preclinical curriculum.

 

[pillowsnice]

Average on shelf is not bad at all. Don't forget 50% of US MD students score below average.
You will be fine for EM with passes with no other red flag
You are only on your second rotation in Feb? Your 3rd year started in Jan?

Yep we started in January.

Hey, you’re me.

Anki helped me tremendously studying for these things. Do allll the questions you can. Idk what rotations you’ve done but some rotations use other resources. I really liked UWise for obgyn and for FM you need AAFP. The more questions the better, obviously. If you’re a reader, some books are great for these things and cover so much of what you need to know. (Now, I have only finished a book for a clerkship once lol)

My scores improved throughout the year.

I used anki for my last shelf and idk if it was the abundance of cards that were in the deck, but it didn't help me very much this time. Throughout preclinicals, anki helped a ton, but I'm just not sure what happened this time...I'll continue to keep using it though

 

[pillowsnice]

And once again I took another shelf and got below the percentile cut off for high pass 🙁 I honestly don't know what to do. I do well in the practice NBMEs and feel like I understand uworld, but these shelf questions just seem more vague and more complicated. My clinical scores were good again, but the shelf is preventing me from getting a score higher than pass.

 

[mistafab]

I would stop wasting your time on practice NBMEs. That is precious time you could be studying instead of gauging where you are. Each NBME is like 160 questions without any explanation. That could have been 160 extra practice questions with explanation OR a few hundred anki cards to remember those facts and learn those “next steps.”

If you are willing to try something new and see how you do, then I would Zanki + UWorld +/- rotation specific source depending on what you have coming up. I have honored every shelf and rotation so far by keeping it simple and being efficient with my time. It is difficult, but mostly it takes a strategy to be successful in third year when your time is very limited.