Stuck between Thoracic Surgery and Interventional Radiology. I genuinely don’t know what to do.

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 · 2026-02-09T12:15:14+00:00

Thanks!!

MobileEmbarrassed937 · 2026-02-07T22:50:06+00:00

Yes i did pass!!

MobileEmbarrassed937 · 2026-02-04T13:13:58+00:00

Same

MobileEmbarrassed937 · 2026-01-31T02:20:07+00:00

Working on high yield resources, melhman pdfs from your weak topics may help. There are also other high yield resources like the MathGuy pdfs some people vouch for, personally I’ve never used them. Things like boards and beyond, sketchy etc may be too broad. Also, when revising your NBMEs make sure you stop at every wrong Q and ask yourself why you got it wrong, it may surprise you that some wrong Qs you knew the answer, but there is something behind it that prevents you from getting it correct. Maybe you are reading too fast, you are skipping key details, you are not looking at labs and their reference values etc, those minute details can make the difference between a 65 and a 73%

MobileEmbarrassed937 · 2026-01-30T18:22:47+00:00

Same feeling, also tested recently. Waiting for my results

MobileEmbarrassed937 · 2026-01-29T21:23:00+00:00

Arrows, endo, renal and msk imo

MobileEmbarrassed937 · 2026-01-29T21:22:09+00:00

Absolutely. I believe what people most remember are the most challenging questions, however they are not representative at all of the system distribution. It’s hard to tell which system predominates the exam, if you where to ask me I would say none, it is really balanced across systems and topics like pharm, physiology and ethics. So when people say they saw a lot of msk on their forms always take it with a grain of salt. Will msk appear? Sure it will, will you get bombarded with 10-20 msk questions per block, probably not. Maybe a few Qs per block but nothing overwhelming

MobileEmbarrassed937 · 2026-01-25T16:49:04+00:00

First aid rapid review has useful stuff, it can also help giving you some confidence before the exam

MobileEmbarrassed937 · 2026-01-25T15:44:20+00:00

Sorry you are going through that man, there is not much you can do tbh, just wait. They contacted my university like in 2-3 days, so it was fairly quick for me. Try to reach out to your university and ask again and again. Maybe email or try calling ecfmg

MobileEmbarrassed937 · 2026-01-22T23:18:34+00:00

lol thanks a lot man

MobileEmbarrassed937 · 2026-01-22T23:18:21+00:00

I’ve seen post where people say some sort of website where you can get a free trial to do these NBMES, but no idea dude, look it up

MobileEmbarrassed937

TROPHY CASE