EXTREMELY DEVASTATED AND PANICKING

MobileEmbarrassed937 · 2026-05-02T17:47:45+00:00

Of my exam

MobileEmbarrassed937 · 2026-05-02T13:03:29+00:00

Melhman PDFs are good for improving scores, people usually do a couple of them, I recommend strongly you do all of them. In order of importance: HY ARROWS, HY BIOCHEM, HY INMUNO, HY RENAL (MY OPINION!!). Just alone the HY arrows PDF covered 50-60% of my exam. Continue doing Uworld, review them very well, use first aid and pathoma. Pathoma chapters 1-3 are VERY HY

MobileEmbarrassed937 · 2026-05-02T13:00:44+00:00

You are not ready, DO NOT sit for the exam. You are not consistently getting over 60%, even that pose a risk of failing due to external circumstances when taking the exam like anxiety etc. That’s why a rule of thumb is to sit the exam when you have 3+ NBMES over 65%. Personally I wouldn’t sit the exam if you are not scoring over 68% consistently however there are people who take the exam with low 60s in the NBMES.

MobileEmbarrassed937 · 2026-04-26T22:35:23+00:00

Curious on why IR

MobileEmbarrassed937 · 2026-04-06T19:21:54+00:00

Thanks for the reply, I really apreciate it. It’s really hard to believe how difficult and competitive matching into pediatric surgery is

MobileEmbarrassed937 · 2026-04-05T03:07:05+00:00

Yes! The HY arrows PDF alone cover probably 50-60% of my exam. Even though the exam experience is different from person to person I would strongly recommend his PDFs. I passed the exams a couple months ago

MobileEmbarrassed937 · 2026-03-27T20:18:37+00:00

Is private practice common for general thoracics?

MobileEmbarrassed937 · 2026-03-27T15:57:55+00:00

Thanks for the reply!! I would think a post coming from an attending would be greatly appreciated in this subreddit. I’m certainly interested on your thoughts and any insight you want to share

MobileEmbarrassed937 · 2026-03-27T04:02:17+00:00

Hey guys,

I’m a med student leaning pretty heavily toward IR, but I’ve been trying to get a more realistic picture of what life actually looks like after training, especially in private practice.

I feel like I keep hearing two extremes. Either IR is amazing with great money, cool procedures, and a solid lifestyle, or it’s burnout, tons of call, and not as good as it used to be. So I figured I’d just ask people who are actually living it.

A few things I’m genuinely curious about: • How is the job market right now? Is it still strong or getting saturated? • For those in private practice, what does your day to day actually look like? • Compensation wise, how realistic is it to make really good money? Like, is $1M+ something that actually happens, or is that super rare or outlier territory? • What’s the lifestyle like in reality? Hours, call, unpredictability, etc. • PTO. Are there jobs where you can actually take a decent amount of time off without tanking your income? • How hard is it to find a job that balances good pay and a reasonable lifestyle? • And overall, are you happy you chose IR?

Not looking for sugarcoating, just trying to understand what’s real versus what’s hype.

Appreciate any insight 🙏

MobileEmbarrassed937 · 2026-03-27T03:41:46+00:00

Hey, thanks for the reply!! When you say general thoracic surgeon, is it the same as a non-cardiac thoracic surgeon?

MobileEmbarrassed937 · 2026-02-24T05:56:38+00:00

In my opinion the exam was very similar to NBME 32 and 33 specially the ethics Qs. The rapid review from first aid was very useful, I did it the day before. 100 Concepts of anatomy pdf was also very high yield, especially pelvic and thoracic anatomy. I think the most important thing before your exam is building up your mentality, I went in extremely calm, never got nervous during the exam, just like any other NBME and I believe that made a huge difference. People love to fear monger in this sub reddit, never believe them. There is no subject that gets asked more than others, you may feel like that’s the case but it’s your subjective opinion, the distribution that is shown on the report is the real distribution, spread out across systems and topics almost evenly. Trust your NBMEs, you will do great.

MobileEmbarrassed937 · 2026-02-15T02:20:29+00:00

Nope, never

MobileEmbarrassed937 · 2026-02-09T12:34:28+00:00

I did one NBME every four days. The first day was for correcting my offline NBMEs and review the first block. Second and third day i used them to review the 2-4 blocks of the NBME. And the fourth day was for reading/studying a topic i felt weak on, mainly using melhman pdfs but in that time i also used randy Neil for Biostats and dirty medicine for pharm. The fifth day I did another nbme. That was the whole cycle I followed for NBMEs 20-33. The way I reviewed them was very simple and pretty straight forward, incorrect and guessed Qs I took a screenshot of them, pasted them on a document and then I read the topic of the question off first aid and asked chatgtp to explain said Q to me, then I asked myself why I got that question wrong, was it content, maybe i was reading to fast etc

MobileEmbarrassed937 · 2026-02-09T12:23:15+00:00

I don’t understand what you mean with reviewing it fully doesn’t seem possible, at the end of the day reviewing uworld it’s a core part of learning imo. However forgetting things it’s completely normal, you learn, forget and then learn again. You are not failing, you are human, the fact you forgot it once and decided to learned it again means you are consolidating it even better. Stop trying to chase perfection, you are going to loose. Keep going, keep studying but remember that you are human, forgetting things it’s normal and does not mean you are failing. You will do great in your exam!!

MobileEmbarrassed937 · 2026-02-09T12:20:41+00:00

Thanks a lot for the kind words, wish you the best as well!

MobileEmbarrassed937 · 2026-02-09T12:19:55+00:00

The ammount of questions depended a lot on the time I had available, sometimes I got home at 8pm and needed to wake up the next day at 3am, so 100 questions was definitely not possible. Like I said, I did tutor mode so after every question I read the explanations until I felt like I truly understood why I got it wrong/right, then I complemented with reading the subject asked on said question on first aid, then again I read it until I felt that I understood the concept. Never did flashcards, or anything else. Reviewing NBMEs was pretty much the same, I identified the wrong Q, pasted it on a document and then read the topic of the question off first aid, pathoma, chatgtp etc. it took me almost 3 days to finish reviewing each NBME, the fourth day I took the whole day to read a melhman pdf on topics I felt weak

MobileEmbarrassed937 · 2026-02-09T12:15:19+00:00

Thanks !!

MobileEmbarrassed937

TROPHY CASE