How I Studied for the COMLEX Level 1 and USMLE Step 1 Exams

My approach to studying for boards was slightly different from that of my classmates and probably what most people do. If you’ve been following my blog from the beginning, then you already know my bad history with standardized exams which includes taking the MCAT four times, and this scared me into starting extra early with my board preparation and maybe even going slightly overboard with it. For the record (and in my opinion), the MCAT has absolutely no bearing on how a student will perform in medical school or on their board exams, but I wasn’t about to take any chances. So with that being said, while most students start studying for boards 6 weeks to 3 months out, I started my studying 6 months from my exam date, and I have absolutely no regrets.

I had two major goals before I started studying for boards: I wanted to keep my resources to a minimum to avoid getting overwhelmed and I wanted to have done at least 8000 questions before my exam date. I met both of my goals and even exceeded the minimum number of questions I had planned.

Resources

For both exams, I used First Aid for the USMLE Step 1, Pathoma (both the book and videos), UWORLD, USMLERX QMAX, and Combank. I also took all six NBME exams along with the free NMBE exam, and I completed both UWORLD assessment exams. For my COMLEX exam studies, I added in the Saverese OMT book, but did not take any COMSAE or NBOME exams outside of the one that was administered by my school. I did every single question in each question bank listed, and for UWORLD, after my first pass was complete at the end of February I re-did all my incorrect and marked questions. When I was 6 weeks away from my exam, I reset UWORLD and completed the entire bank again on timed, random mode (I used tutor mode during my first pass). I also completed both the USMLE and COMLEX side of Combank, along with all of USMLERX and when all was said and done I believe this added up to having completed a little over 10,000 questions (not including the assessment exam questions). I also dabbled with the Doctors in Training videos, but I wasn’t a huge fan, and I did read the First Aid book completely through about twice. Additionally, I used Picmonic for any topics that I just couldn’t get drilled into my head, since it was a lifesaver for me during my first two years of medical school. If there was anything I would have done differently, it probably would have been getting in another pass of UWORLD because on my USMLE exam, there were multiple questions that were extremely similar and the exam also had the exact same format as UWORLD. I also would have probably read my First Aid book a few more times.

Maximizing the Question Banks

I know a lot of people tend to get caught up about their scores on the question banks, but I focused on using the question banks as strict learning tools. By this I mean I did not get upset with my super low UWORLD scores when I first started, but instead I used it as an opportunity to explore my weaknesses. Also, outside of my first pass of UWORLD I did all of the questions in each bank without assistance so that I could really see what I needed to work on. This meant lower percentages, but I tend to learn from things I get wrong, so more information stuck with me. What I found extremely helpful was reading over EVERY answer choice explanation on questions I got both wrong and right, and I annotated the information I did not know into my First Aid book.   

Schedule

Studying for boards was hard while classes were in session, so I think when I first started I would just do maybe 20-40 questions per night. I treated the upcoming exams as if I were preparing for a marathon, and eventually (towards the end of my exam preparation) I was doing over 200 questions a day. I waited until I was six weeks from my exams to create a dedicated board study schedule, and I previously gave a snippet of what my daily schedule was like HERE, so I won’t go into too much detail about it right now. Our school does not offer a set dedicated board study time without classes, but I was lucky enough to have tested out of the OMM written exams during my last term, so I only had to be on campus for about 3 hours each week during my final six weeks leading up to my exams. This allowed me to really be able to put in full days where I only studied for my board exams, and that was typically between 10 – 14 hours of study time each day. My days were starting at 430am and not ending until 8 or 9pm, so it was an extremely stressful time. I made sure to schedule in breaks so I didn’t go crazy and I also took one day every week where I did absolutely nothing exam related and just relaxed or spent time with my daughter.   

Summary

So basically, my approach to my board exams was questions, questions, and more questions! It is true that everyone studies differently, but doing questions will not only help you figure out what to expect on the exams, but it will help build your test-taking stamina as well. Most people swear by UWORLD, First Aid, and Pathoma and while I did slightly more than that, I’m pretty sure this would have been sufficient. I don’t think there would have been any way to pass either exam without UWORLD, so if you’re on the fence about buying it, just suck it up and get it! Also, if you’re an osteopathic student who only plans on taking the COMLEX, I would still suggest using UWORLD because it is that good.

In my next post I will compare and contrast the USMLE and COMLEX exams, so stay tuned for that, but hopefully this gave you all an idea of how to go about these exams. Feel free to email me if there is any confusion, but hopefully my next posts will clear any of that up. Just keep it simple, do questions, stay positive and everything else will fall into place :-) 

Post USMLE Step 1 and COMLEX Level 1 Reflections

    

Post USMLE Step 1 Selfie

USMLE Step 1 and COMLEX Level 1 are officially complete!!!!! It seriously feels so good to finally be finished with the first parts of my medical board exams. I won't know my scores for about three weeks, but right now I am just celebrating the fact that I crossed yet another big milestone on my journey to becoming a physician. Taking two 8-hour exams in less than a week's time span was a truly rough experience, and I am just happy to be done!

Post COMLEX Level 1 selfie

As for the exams, I'l probably have to write up a few posts that compare the two, along with my study strategies, and how I worked my way up to being ready for the marathon. Right now, what pops into my head the most was how vague the COMLEX was. I felt the USMLE gave all the pertinent information so that you had no doubt what they were asking, but the COMLEX gave the absolute bare minimum and you basically had to figure it all out on your own. Overall, outside of OMM material, the exams were very similar...just different. Even with the vagueness and uncertainty, I feel that I did a lot better on the COMLEX than the USMLE though. We'll see what happens when the scores come out, but the week I took the USMLE I felt extremely burnt out and even my assessment exam scores took a serious drop that week, so I'm hoping that didn't negatively impact my score. I walked into the COMLEX feeling a lot more confident, so maybe that's why I feel a lot better about it. 

They say that everyone feels like they failed coming out of the exams, but I honestly am not sure how to feel. Walking out of the USMLE, I know that I had marked maybe 50% of the exam which is probably a really bad sign, but I have no way to gauge how I performed because even after looking up some things I wasn't sure about, I'm still confused lol. As for the COMLEX, I marked a huge amount of the exam as well (if I don't know an answer 100%, I mark it), but for some reason I just feel better about it. Right now, I'm just praying that I passed both exams and that the silly mistakes I usually tend to make were minimal. 

But anyway, be on the lookout for a few board exam posts. I know everyone studies differently, so take everything I say with a grain of salt, but hopefully it will help some of you out. And if I performed horribly on the exams (God forbid), then hopefully it will show you all what not to do lol. Either way, I look forward to sharing my experiences with you all, but right now I'm going to celebrate!

Officially a 3rd Year Medical Student and 4 Days until USMLE Step 1!

The smile of a 3rd year medical student :-)

My brain has decided it can't take any more studying for the rest of the night, so I figured I would type up a quick update post. As of today, I can officially say that I am a third year medical student, but I take USMLE Step 1 in 4 days (and COMLEX Level 1 in 10 days), so I still have that hanging over my head. I am just so ready to get these board exams over with and start rotations!

I don't think I'll ever feel ready to take these exams, but I've been told that no one ever does. At this point, I probably won't learn huge amounts of new information in the next few days, so I'm just trying to focus on the little mistakes I make, so that it doesn't happen on exam day. Today I headed to campus bright and early to take an 8 hour assessment exam, and while it wasn't too bad, not being given a score when I completed it was a bit frustrating. I heard it might take a week or so to get the results, so I pretty much feel like I could have spent the time doing practice questions at home and using the feedback to work on my weaknesses a little more since I'll have taken my exams by the time the results come in. Oh well! The good news is my stamina is pretty strong because I didn't even start to get tired until maybe the last 50 questions (it was a 400 question exam), so that's assuring.

In other news, my daughter finished school last week and I was so grateful to have my dad drive in from out of state to pick her up for the summer. I'm thankful to have uninterrupted study time, and I know my daughter is happy to have animals to play with and people who constantly interact with her because for the past few weeks I've been in a deep exam mode. But even when she's away she still brightens my day, and the text she sent me the other day was the best (pic at the end of this post). My family also has a huge Disney World and Universal Studios trip planned, so I'm sure she won't even miss me that much.    

But anyway, that's about it for now. I just bought a pint of Ben & Jerry's ice cream, and I plan on completely zoning out and relaxing for the next hour. My next post will probably be a post-exam update, so hopefully it will be a happy one. Until next time!  

My daughter sends the best texts! :-)

Board Exam Study Update

My daughter is really into Pathoma! LOL

Hi all! I decided to resurface for a bit to give a quick update on how the board studying is going. Right now, I am 19 days away from taking USMLE Step 1 and I'm definitely feeling the pressure! It feels like there aren't enough hours in the day to accomplish everything I want, but I'm slowly working my way through it all. The good news is that my NBME assessment scores continue to improve by a lot each week, so even though I am nowhere near the score range that I want to be right now, knowing that I haven't hit my plateau gives me hope. 

In case you're wondering about my daily schedule, today pretty much went like this:

4:30-7:00am - Four sets of 40 UWorld Questions in random, timed-mode back-to-back (I usually finish each block with 15-20min to spare)

7-7:30am - Made sure the little one got dressed and ate breakfast, did her hair, and then headed out to the bus stop

7:30-12pm - Reviewed all of the morning's UWorld questions (even though I'm on my second official pass, this still takes me forever!)

12-1pm - Took a break to eat lunch and caught up on last night's episode of Fear the Walking Dead

1-4pm - Did two 40 question sets of USMLERX questions on tutor mode in the subjects of MSS and Embryo since my latest NBME listed those as my weak spots. I also took a break when my daughter got home to help her with her homework/discuss her day and I had a little extra time, so I did 10 Combank questions on the USMLE side.

4-5pm - Watched a chapter of Pathoma (had to speed it up a bit because 1x is too slow for me)

5-6pm - Dinner with the little one (I cooked last night and had leftovers, so it didn't take the entire hour) and then finished up some outside business

6-7:30pm - More Pathoma and got the little one ready for and tucked in bed.

At this point, I've pretty much covered everything on my list for the day with the exception of reading a chapter out of First Aid, and it equals a little under 11 hours of study time with all the breaks subtracted (I literally calculate and write down how much time I spend on every individual thing). Not sure if reading that chapter is going to happen tonight though, because I have an 8:30pm conference call that will most likely go until 10pm, and then I'm calling it a night!

My schedule is super exhausting, but since it seems to be working for me, I don't want to change it too much. I do need to get to a point where I am doing more questions per day since the COMLEX will be 400 questions (compared to only 280 with the USMLE), but I'll just have to slowly increase the amount over the next 3 weeks. Tomorrow I also have my very last written exam of medical school (yay!) for my Primary Care Skills course, so I'll have to put an hour towards my schedule in the morning towards studying for it and another hour towards taking it.

Anyway, this post pretty much sums up my life nowadays in a nutshell. I'm about take a quick shower before my call begins, so I hope everyone has an amazing week!

A Little Board Exam Study Motivation :-)

Super short post tonight as I just finished with my studying for the day, but I started at 4:30 this morning, so I'm exhausted! I came across this picture though and just had to share. Seeing this gave me a little extra fire to keep going with the board studying, and I'll definitely be looking at this whenever I need a little inspiration or an extra push to keep going over the next month. For those of you on the board study grind with me, hang in there! Nothing great ever comes easy, and anything worth having is worth working hard for. Wishing everyone a productive week! 

Getting Ready for the USMLE Step 1 and COMLEX Grind!

Study Selfie!

Happy Friday! I finished my last set of basic science exams today, which means the bulk of my second year of medical school is officially complete. That means no more all day mandatory lectures ever again and more time to study for my upcoming board exams! The only courses I will have to worry about from here on out are Primary Care Skills on Tuesdays and Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine labs on Thursdays. That means I’ll spend no more than four hours on campus each week, and I am so happy for the chance to finally be able to focus!

In case you’re new to the blog and confused about all the board exam talk, six weeks from now, on June 4, 2016, I will be taking the marathon 8-hour exam known as USMLE Step 1, which is the first in a series of medical board licensing exams. Six days after that, on June 10th, I will be taking yet another 8-hour licensing exam known as COMLEX Level 1. Not only do I need to pass the COMLEX to graduate, but both of these exams will pretty much play a huge role in me being able to match into the future residency program of my choice. So, yes, the struggle is definitely real right now!

The past few weeks have been a bit rough dealing with balancing lectures, studying for boards, and handling the million other things on my to-do list, so I am looking forward to having a better schedule. I’ve been waking up at 4:30 most mornings to do my readings and questions, and then a lot of time spent in class was dedicated towards finishing up questions, with evenings being dedicated to reviewing the material. It’s pretty much been the only way I could get everything on my list accomplished in one day. I’ve also started going to sleep around 9:30/10pm, which was super rough at first because I’m used to staying up until 1 or 2am, but I think I’m starting to get used to it. Going forward I’ll most likely keep my current sleep/wake schedule and that’ll give me a chance to still have a few free hours every night to relax and handle my mommy responsibilities and other outside stuff. Plus, I’m noticing that my brain has decided to stop working after 7pm, so it all works out, LOL.

As for the actual board prep, I’m still keeping it pretty simple. My major resources are UWORLD, First AID for the USMLE, COMBANK and Pathoma. I sprinkle in a little Goljan every now and then, and I may incorporate a little DIT for some of my weak points. I learn best from questions, so my goal is to do as many as possible between now and my exam dates. I finished my first pass of UWORLD at the end of February, so I’ve been going through my incorrect and marked questions. Tomorrow makes six weeks from my exam date, so I plan on resetting UWORLD and starting fresh. I haven’t finished all of COMBANK yet, but apparently we will have to do questions from it as part of a class grade, so I am trying to save what I haven’t completed on the COMLEX side for that. Depending on how much I get accomplished, I might also buy a 30-day subscription for the Kaplan Qbank, and I will also be taking all of the available NBME and UWORLD assessments before my exam date. I took my first NBME assessment before AMEC and was not happy with my score, but I did have a 20 point improvement when I took my first UWORLD assessment last weekend, so hopefully I can get up to the score I want. This week was lost studying for class exams, so I won’t be waking up to take an assessment tomorrow morning, but I will be back on track with the weekly weekend assessments starting next weekend. I also plan on taking two NBME assessments the week before my exam because I really need to build up my stamina.  

That’s pretty much it for board prep. I am definitely requesting prayers, positive vibes, support, and most of all patience and understanding as I shut myself away and become unavailable over the next several weeks. I won’t be posting on here as much until after I finish my exams, but since blogging relaxes me, I’m sure you’ll hear from me a few times before then. I also appreciate all the emails I receive from you all, but there will be some huge delays in my response time, so don’t get upset if it takes a while to hear back from me. I’ll also be trying to avoid other forms of social media (mostly Facebook) because it is a huge time suck! Five minutes always turns into an hour for me when I’m on there, so I might check every now and then to make sure I’m not missing any information from my class or rotation group, but that will be about it. Pictures are quick and easy though, so I’ll probably keep posting to my Instagram account :-)

But other than that, I hope everyone has been having a wonderful week and that your weekend is even better. The little one has been begging me to have a picnic, so I might attempt to do that tomorrow (along with my First Aid book in tow). Outside of that, these goals aren’t gonna happen by themselves, so the study grind is on!

Med School Year Two, Second Term in Full Swing!

In love with my new mug!!!!

Happy New Year! We started back classes this week after a nice 11 day holiday break, and I am already exhausted!!!! Our second term actually started Thanksgiving week, but this week we began our Reproductive & Genitourinary Medicine (RGU) unit. The material is interesting and not too bad, but being full swing into my board exam study schedule and having had full day mandatory lectures this week starting at 8am, it’s really taken a lot out of me. Over the break I was able to wake up early, knock out my questions, review the content, and be done early enough in the evening to relax a little. With classes added on, it’s a lot tougher, especially since I learn better outside of the classroom, but I’ve been focusing most of my board prep on what is currently being covered in class, so the lectures were a good reinforcement.

148 days to go until sh*t gets real!

Speaking of board exams, I am now officially registered and scheduled to take the USMLE Step 1 on June 4, 2016 and the COMLEX Level 1 on June 10, 2016!!!! I just about cried having to shell out the money for both of these super expensive exams, but knowing that I’m close to conquering an important milestone in my medical career has me super excited. Not going to lie though, I am extremely anxious about scoring well and making sure I prepare in the best possible way. Everyone has a different way of studying, so there isn’t any correct way to prepare for the exams other than keeping it to a minimum and doing what works best for you. So far, I am sticking with UWorld, First Aid for the USMLE Step 1, and Pathoma. I’m also required to use Combank for my classes, so I have been going through that as well. I’ve already hit the 1000 question mark, and I should be finishing my first pass of UWorld next month. I’ll add in some other question banks at a later time, and I’ll take my first NBME self-assessment either next month or the beginning of March to see where I stand. Right now it takes me 3 hours on average just to get through around 30-44 questions, but I am mostly using the question banks as a learning tool. I attempt to answer the question on my own in tutor mode, and then I go through all of the explanations for the answer choices (both right and wrong) and either annotate in my First Aid book or take notes in a separate notebook. It’s extremely time-consuming, but I’m hoping to get faster as the months go by. At the very least, I can say studying for boards has helped with my most recent class exams, but I’ll make sure to keep everyone posted on my progress. 

ECG Fun!

Outside of board exam studying and school, there isn’t much in the realm of updates. This week in clinical skills we learned how to do glucose testing, urinalysis, and ECGs. I can tolerate a ton of pain, but getting my finger pricked is the worst! I also don’t know why I thought we would be given pretend urine to test, so it was a bit awkward when we were handed cups, and told to head to the bathroom to collect our specimens. I learned that I was a bit dehydrated that day, so I’ve been stepping up my water game all week. My favorite part was working the ECG machine and learning how to set a patient up. Reading an ECG is still a weak area for me, but at least I know how to properly set one up! In OMM, we worked on our ultrasound skills for extra credit, and my group was able to get a really nice image of my classmate’s bicipital tendon. I posted the picture on Facebook, but then had to quickly go back and add hashtags when my mother asked if I was pregnant (Really, Mom?!?!...Sigh…lol). I also had to add hashtags after someone asked if I was ok after posting the above ECG picture, so I’ll adding a lot more clarification from now on when I post pics to social media, LOL. 

This is a bicipital tendon, NOT a baby! LOL

Anyway, I think that is about it. My daughter currently has her friend spending the weekend with us, which means she gets company and someone to talk to, and I get to study uninterrupted. I have my study schedule set to have breaks on the weekends, but since I have an exam next Friday and I won’t be doing any board exam studying the two days prior, my plan is to knock out the missed days this weekend. I probably won’t post again until I have my official scheduled break next weekend, so until next time!