Third Year Readings and COMAT/Shelf Prep

[Osteosaur]

So COMATs are about 40% of my grade and, based on the syllabi I've been provided, I feel pretty lost as far as how to prepare. I've heard UWorld is a decent source of questions. There's also also a vague schedule of readings to do each week (Sabiston's was recommended) as well as faculty lectures with quiz questions.

What's the best way to approach studying at the end of the day once I get home? How much time should I be putting into this each night? Is it enough to just read? Should I fully annotate?

Sorry for so many questions. Finding this aspect way more overwhelming than the actual rotation itself.

 

[libertyyne]

Probably better off asking the DO forum considering I don’t even know what a comat is.

 

[ciestar]

Probably better off asking the DO forum considering I don’t even know what a comat is.

Their shelf exams

 

[ciestar]

So COMATs are about 40% of my grade and, based on the syllabi I've been provided, I feel pretty lost as far as how to prepare. I've heard UWorld is a decent source of questions. There's also also a vague schedule of readings to do each week (Sabiston's was recommended) as well as faculty lectures with quiz questions.

What's the best way to approach studying at the end of the day once I get home? How much time should I be putting into this each night? Is it enough to just read? Should I fully annotate?

Sorry for so many questions. Finding this aspect way more overwhelming than the actual rotation itself.

Sabiston’s? That might be too advanced for an M3 lol

 

[Osteosaur]

Probably better off asking the DO forum considering I don’t even know what a comat is.

Meant to do DO forums, whoops, but what did you do for Shelfs? Cant' imagine the breakdown is so different.

 

[ciestar]

Meant to do DO forums, whoops, but what did you do for Shelfs? Cant' imagine the breakdown is so different.

Primarily UWorld and OME

 

[AnatomyGrey12]

The only comat specific resource I used is the truelearn comat question sets. I would do those until I had gotten every question right at least once.

Uworld, OME, anki deck of your choosing, and truelearn will be plenty. Uworld will be overkill for the comats.

 

[Osteosaur]

The only comat specific resource I used is the truelearn comat question sets. I would do those until I had gotten every question right at least once.

Uworld, OME, anki deck of your choosing, and truelearn will be plenty. Uworld will be overkill for the comats.

I'll check those out. No readings then? Really appreciate your reply, but what exactly did your schedule look like getting home from third year?

I feel like I'm back to square one in terms of learning how to study and do what I need to do, as I have so many things like patient logs and procedure exposures to document. I don't want to bomb the COMAT but it looks like I'm going to have minimal time as it is.

 

[libertyyne]

Anki Dorian deck 2 weeks
amboss complete 2 weeks
Uworld 2 weeks
Last couple of days finish all the practice shelves .
honored everything where I used the above system.
some might call it excessive , I’d like to think of it as insurance .

 

[AnatomyGrey12]

I'll check those out. No readings then? Really appreciate your reply, but what exactly did your schedule look like getting home from third year?

I feel like I'm back to square one in terms of learning how to study and do what I need to do, as I have so many things like patient logs and procedure exposures to document. I don't want to bomb the COMAT but it looks like I'm going to have minimal time as it is.

I spent maybe an hour a day max actually doing comat specific studying. Everything else was just reading stuff up for the patients I was following, or doing more longitudinal board prep.

I honored 5/7 comats. The only ones I didn't were peds because I had some stuff going on the last week that made it very difficult to have time to sit down and hammer in the details that lead to honors, and OMM because, well, it was OMM and not a chance I was going to waste time memorizing CS points and positions.

 

[libertyyne]

I'll check those out. No readings then? Really appreciate your reply, but what exactly did your schedule look like getting home from third year?

I feel like I'm back to square one in terms of learning how to study and do what I need to do, as I have so many things like patient logs and procedure exposures to document. I don't want to bomb the COMAT but it looks like I'm going to have minimal time as it is.

No down time to waste plus you have a day off per week.
On call open anki in browser and grind ,
eating lunch grind a few cards.
sitting through conference discretely do some questions .
do atleast a block per work day and 3-5 on days off.
It’s doable but you have to really want it .

 

[Ho0v-man]

I bought the whiteboard book from OME and watched their videos the weekend before every rotation but IM (bc IM is huge).

Tried to get through all the new cards in Dorian within the first ~10 days. Keep up with cards and tried to complete uworld for that rotation a few days before the comat and worked through incorrects until the test.

Using this system, I got in the above the 90th percentile on every comat except psych but it was my first one and I was still burnt from step 1. I also got a ton of random questions about random surveys on it too.

These tests are freaking random so don’t freak out if it feels like 1/3 the test is outta left field sometimes. The only ones I actually felt good walking out of was IM and peds. OMM is low yield enough to completely ignore. Good luck!

 

[fldoctorgirl]

I bought the whiteboard book from OME and watched their videos the weekend before every rotation but IM (bc IM is huge).

Tried to get through all the new cards in Dorian within the first ~10 days. Keep up with cards and tried to complete uworld for that rotation a few days before the comat and worked through incorrects until the test.

Using this system, I got in the above the 90th percentile on every comat except psych but it was my first one and I was still burnt from step 1. I also got a ton of random questions about random surveys on it too.

These tests are freaking random so don’t freak out if it feels like 1/3 the test is outta left field sometimes. The only ones I actually felt good walking out of was IM and peds. OMM is low yield enough to completely ignore. Good luck!

So, completely ignored any DO-specific qbanks?

Also, how did you manage to get through all of the cards in Dorian in 10 days? Doing ~200 news/day?

 

[libertyyne]

So, completely ignored any DO-specific qbanks?

Also, how did you manage to get through all of the cards in Dorian in 10 days? Doing ~200 news/day?

A lot of the stuff is stuff you already know from step 1, you are just relearning it in a different context.

 

[Osteosaur]

Does anyone know how this deck measures up to Dorian? It looks a little bit smaller and more manageable which sorely tempts me.

(EDIT: Sorry about the giant preview. I just wanted to make it a hyperlink but it keeps converting it)

 

[Ho0v-man]

So, completely ignored any DO-specific qbanks?

Also, how did you manage to get through all of the cards in Dorian in 10 days? Doing ~200 news/day?

Meh, rocked comlex without a DO qbank (did bad on omm though lol). There’s going to be >10 omm questions on all of your comats combined aside from the obvious exception of the omm comat.

Agree with libertyne. Aside from OB and surgery, most of the stuff was covered in your clinical Ed classes or are straight up from step 1.

Also, there’s a lot of repeats in each deck. For instance, a card in the the uworld sub deck of one rotation might be identical to one in the OME subdeck. There’s also duplicate cards in different rotations. Due to time constraints, I prioritized the uworld sections on surgery and IM bc it was getting too unmanageable.

 

[Neopolymath]

So, completely ignored any DO-specific qbanks?

Also, how did you manage to get through all of the cards in Dorian in 10 days? Doing ~200 news/day?

Do not do DO qbanks. Waste of time just like it is for level 1. UW from day 1 third year plus whatever other fun stuff you want to throw in there. Completely unnecessary to honor all comats.

 

[ciestar]

Does anyone know how this deck measures up to Dorian? It looks a little bit smaller and more manageable which sorely tempts me.

(EDIT: Sorry about the giant preview. I just wanted to make it a hyperlink but it keeps converting it)

I used Zanki for M3