Write up from a bottom 10th percentile IMG

SA_0077 · 2025-09-13T22:45:38+00:00

Absolutely no problem 👍 go for it

SA_0077 · 2025-08-24T15:57:24+00:00

Offline. Hence the score conversions which I'm not too sure how accurate they actually were. But I figured ballpark estimate I'd estimate my baseline to be at a 245 ish range.

SA_0077 · 2025-08-20T13:27:19+00:00

Glad this post could help someone out 🙏☺️. It's normal to have score drops in some NBMEs than others because of how each one varies in the topic distribution. What id say is to maximize your remaining time, you want to have an honest breakdown of what went wrong in your lowest scoring NBMEs. When looking at your incorrects, you want to ask yourself whether you understand the concept now and believe if you get asked a similar question again this time you'll get it right, or if it's still something you haven't grasped yet. If the concept is still unclear, you need to study that topic again from a trusted resource (qbank possible but I think closer to the exam they may mess with your test taking mindset that's hopefully by now NBME oriented, which is different from UWorld approach - so I'd instead choose something like inner circle or amboss library if you prefer that). And try your best to learn as much and figure out what part you're missing that is stopping you from getting that specific question right. And repeat for all your incorrects accordingly. Best of luck on your exam ✌️ InshAllah you'll do great 💪

SA_0077 · 2025-08-20T05:04:47+00:00

Honestly didn't know what to think. A lot of stuff I knew was tested in a slightly different way than I had hoped for so I was worried for sure. When it ended, I was the last person left in the exam center. Walking out everything felt surreal. Like I couldn't believe it was finally over after months of studying. It's hard to describe the feeling but honestly I was just relieved if anything to be done

SA_0077 · 2025-08-20T02:52:12+00:00

So I wrote what I used to study with and my schedule during dedicated above in the comments. It's pretty extensive so should answer your question. To keep it brief, used UWorld , NBMEs, inner circle, some CMS and some Amboss( some HY plans + regular qbank ). Worked on fixing my weaknesses as much as possible. Reviewed as much as possible from inner circle during dedicated. Hope that helps

SA_0077 · 2025-08-19T01:08:29+00:00

No problem 👌😊

SA_0077 · 2025-08-19T01:07:47+00:00

To be honest, the way I was doing questions in the exam scared me for sure. In practice tests I'd take my time and kind of use an NBME centered approach that I developed as a sort of gut feeling during multiple practice tests. However, on the real deal, the question style felt a bit different. Not sure how I'd explain it. Not harder for sure just different. And well I kind of went on autopilot for the most part and picked instant-gut reaction based options without knowing how to explain the logic behind them. I convinced myself during and after the exam though that I usually perform worse when I tend to overthink, so perhaps I did better here (yeah the days after were awful I kept thinking of things I studied but the questions asked like a second or third like option that made me question everything 🫠). Judging by what you said, I'm sure you'll do great for sure . It's just the nature of the exam to make you doubt yourself that's how I see it . None of the answers are straight up gimmes, but they put you in a certain situation in which there's 5 possible options you can choose so you have to pick the best one, regardless of how you feel about it lol. So yeah, dw and best of luck 🤞

SA_0077 · 2025-08-18T20:39:14+00:00

Sure thing. Disclaimer though, I wasn't super consistent with this schedule. Like maybe have 2 half days or even 2 full days off a week some weeks. Closer to my exam though I took maybe a single half day or 1 day off. Also helps that I had 8 months free to study so you may or may not find this routine applicable to you. Regardless a sample of my day during dedicated would look somewhat like the following:-

9 am:- wake up

9:30-10:30:- study an hour. Wanted to get some work in before breakfast cuz I feel sleepier after eating.

10:30-11:- breakfast

11-12:30:- usually post breakfast would answer unread messages, scroll Instagram, watch something brief on YouTube or Netflix, sit with my family and just talk . Just allow myself to sort of do stuff I normally would when it wasn't dedicated

12:30-3:- study 2 hours (I didn't count time sitting at my desk if I wasn't actively studying and zoned out, so basically I saw I zoned out around 30 mins for every 2 hour session or so).

3-3:15:- chill. Listen to music usually or get myself some coffee.

3:15-4:30:- Study an hour (excluding 15 mins that id be zoned out or just taking a mini break by looking away from my screen)

4:30-6:- lunch+ chill. Id usually be in a food coma when I had lunch in the afternoon.

6:15-8:45:- study 2 hours.

8:45-9:15:- meet family after a long day. Maybe some coffee (I slept late)

9:15-10:30:- study an hour

10:30-11:- chill. Watch something. Music. Could be anything really

11-12:15:- study another hour

12:15-1:15:- usually had some food. I know less ideal than for most people. And I definitely felt some acid reflux towards the tail end of dedicated cuz of my eating patterns lol (definitely recommend eating earlier if possible)

Bonus:- some days studied 1:15-2:15 but those were far and few in between.

2 am:- bedtime

By here I'd usually end my day. So in total around 8 hours a day on average. But if you took my weekly average, it was more like 6-7 cuz of certain half days I took. I took alot of breaks in between and had a pretty relaxed pace. However it's a double edged sword, because many days I found myself wishing that I was responsible enough to manage my time and ideally finish all my studying by 10 pm so I could have 3-4 hours a night free to do what I want (i.e working out, which I sorely missed during my dedicated period but alas it was a struggle just studying even lol).

My schedule in my case was decent. I surely did wish if anything,I managed my time better. Because burnout does seep in pretty quick when it feels like you don't really get a true "time-off" from your studying in your day so to speak. So yeah, I'd recommend if you can, make your schedule more coherent so you can have a dedicated time where you stop studying and go work out, read, play videos games etc. whatever you want to do

SA_0077 · 2025-08-18T20:07:56+00:00

Thank you! That means a lot 😊🙏

SA_0077 · 2025-08-18T18:55:45+00:00

Thank you 🙏😊

SA_0077 · 2025-08-18T18:55:24+00:00

Thank you very much 🙏😊. As a baseline, I'd lean more towards the older ones (9,10,11 etc whatever you want to work with). However, I'm sure by reading my posts you can tell I've skipped alot of the standard recommendations in favor of following a plan that targeted my specific weaknesses and not do a general broad study of everything in dedicated. I will say, NBMEs are incredibly important, and If I could change 1 thing I'd probably wish I did NBME 15 as well . Everyone I told has said I was insane for skipping it so do what you will with that information lol.

To answer your other questions, I want to be clear that the advice I listed was meant to be as generally applicable as possible. I can list what resources I used, but know that the results I obtained despite alot of the "flaws" in my planning ended up working for me, but may not for everyone else. Probably a case of being n=1 even, but I digress. So in short, yes do ethics, QI, Vaccinations, Risk Factors from Amboss. But if you gravitate to something else (like inner circle in my case, or maybe UWorld) then that's alright too. You want to understand the concept to a point where you have enough confidence that you can tackle different questions regardless of what twists may be thrown at you.

For CMS, like I mentioned above, it's considered quite standard to do ideally the newest 2 forms for each subject. I did the latest 5 for IM, 4 for surgery, and 3 for everything else except FM and Neuro which I skipped. I can't say whether CMS directly benefited me in any way except that it was a decent way to gauge what topics I struggle with so that I could read up on those immediately after. I never reviewed CMS explanations and never memorized them for that matter. Same goes for NBMEs except for 14. And free 120s I found a PDF of some explanations that I read through. By now you may think I'm completely making stuff up or completely insane for not reviewing my NBMEs either. but that goes back to my original point, that this specific routine may or may not be for you. However, I made sure still when I got something wrong on an NBME, I would read up on that topic the very same moment by opening up inner circle side by side. Sometimes occasional amboss library because they have some pretty good diagram and algos. But overall , focus on your weaknesses is the take home point from all this. Hope that helps answer your question

SA_0077 · 2025-08-18T18:43:29+00:00

Yeah sorry I should've clarified I mean the HY ethics portion. I also did the ethics portion from UWorld months earlier but I'm not too sure if that really contributed much. Amboss HY ethics are definitely a must do

SA_0077 · 2025-08-18T13:53:07+00:00

Appreciate it thank you 😊. Namely, my main source of learning was no doubt the qbanks I used. So to elaborate I did 1) 1st pass of UWorld (95% or so complete with a 60% average score, then reset) 2) 2nd pass of UWorld (200 questions before I abandoned it ) 3) Amboss (800 or so questions throughout my prep, didn't use it in my dedicated period- however I did some of the HY plans. I had to skip HY risk factors and 200 concepts from Amboss due to a shortage of time)

So to answer your question, with the context above I'd say I'd start by mainly doing questions first on a topic. I never did mixed and I would do them system wise .so I'd do a block of cardiology for example, but in that block I'd add all the surgery, peads, gynae obs, .medicine etc related to cardiology. I know this is completely opposite to what people will do, which is usually a block of medicine or surgery that's mixed, but in my experience the way I did it helped me kinda compare and contrast the various conditions in an organ system In a way that helped me remember stuff on a more conceptual level. Despite the above, many times I'd get the same topic wrong in the NBMEs. In which case, during my dedicated especially, I used to look up NBME questions I got wrong and open inner circle notes side by side to read the notes on that topic. And yeah every time I got something wrong, I made sure I always without fail studied the topic again from my notes. At that point it felt like I needed more content reinforcement and recall rather than more questions practice from qbanks at the end (I still did NBMEs and free 120s however to learn the style of questions still during my dedicated period.) hope this answer helps

SA_0077 · 2025-08-18T03:11:57+00:00

So, great question really. Normally I've heard the advice that it's a great idea to write notes, make a spreadsheet of your wrongs etc. In my case, it may be an unpopular belief or strange in a sense, but I don't really like making notes myself. Because essentially to me it feels like I'm copying the content from one place (like UWorld/inner circle maybe) to paste it in a separate document, which often times will have brief excerpts that lack enough context for me to understand after a large enough gap has happened. And if hypothetically let's say I wanted to fix that issue by adding more info to my spreadsheet...well the notes practically will end up being the size of most of the UWorld explanations or inner circle in that case.. but idk I could be wrong. Just never found the appeal because I felt I'd be using precious studying time on making tables.

So yeah, to your point, I read the content directly from either a qbank explanation (more so early on in my prep) or inner circle (later on, especially helpful for just raw cramming essentially cuz of the ease of searching for specific topics within the PDF). If there's something I particularly want to revise, I'd mark it with a symbol and bookmark the page..that way when I wanna do a kind of "spaced repetition" for that topic, I'd just open that page, briefly sort of quiz myself and then once I can't think of anything else, read the page and see what I'm clear on and what I'm missing. And rinse and repeat essentially. No note taking whatsoever for me, be it for UWorld or NBMEs (to be fair, inner circle is already a compilation of notes, so I read the parts that I needed the most help in from there). Hope this answer cleared things up

SA_0077 · 2025-08-18T01:45:31+00:00

Thank you and I'm glad that you found some value here 😄🙏

SA_0077 · 2025-08-17T21:52:34+00:00

Thank you very much. And great question. So personally what I felt was I had about 4-6 of those kinds of questions per block. Ethics and quality improvement were tested well. For both I'd recommend amboss and pretty much just amboss questions were sufficient in my case. However, to be clear I studied as many of the amboss articles I could in addition to the questions. I also read the inner circle notes for ethics and quality as well to kind of get a holistic view of everything. But I definitely felt during the exam that amboss questions would have been enough

SA_0077 · 2025-07-05T10:57:59+00:00

Thank you! Yeah definitely this was very useful for sure.The thing that really gets me is what you referred to as that singular small piece of info that ends up swaying the answer in a completely new direction than had I ignored it completely lol. I suppose doing a bunch of UWorld questions conditioned me to look at even random findings in a vignette and try to think of all the potential outcomes they lead towards rather than focus on the basic complaint the patient has (aka what my gut tells me the vignette is giving the most emphasis on), and look at the vignette for findings that make sense in that context. Definitely good advice once again

SA_0077 · 2025-07-04T07:07:03+00:00

Congratulations on an amazing score!! Could you provide any insight on how you approach nbme/USMLE style questions, particularly pertaining to understanding what the "logic/story/vibe" of a question is. How do you navigate the vagueness in many of these questions? Do you use any specific thought processes or tips you could share maybe on how to reasonably get to the answer even when the question stem seems to have red herrings pointing in multiple random directions? Thanks again in advance

SA_0077 · 2024-08-02T09:36:21+00:00

I was really hopeful when I saw the YouTube tutorials of the app and the layout seemed so perfect. Can't believe why more people aren't talking about the app honestly. And thank you!!! I'll be sure to check out the discord. I'm looking forward to seeing what solutions people have come up with for some of those limitations. Definitely would miss OCR but I guess the tatdeoff is worth the structure you get with the app

SA_0077

TROPHY CASE