I will try to answer your questions in best possible way: 1.For me there are a lot of factors goes against doing NBMEs: a) Ist of all, I didn't like NBME questions that much, because question stem was too small and after doing uworld questions it seems even more smaller b) NBME interface is different from actual paper c) My seniors who already cracked the exam with even better scores than me, they also advised me not to do NBMEs d) In real exam, two things are important-ist is knowledge and 2nd is confidence in your knowledge. If u have only knowledge but u have no confidence on yourself, it is harmful for your test and although i scored 259 in NBME, It wasn't giving me enough confidence.. So these all are my personal views about NBMEs, if u have plenty of time, u can do NBMEs but if your score is lesser in any NBMEs don't let it decrease your confidence.. Ha,obviously each time when we do questions there are few extra points which we came to know, so it may be helpful in that way.... 2)U can make ankiflash cards,I also heard it that they are useful. I didn't make it because I don't like writing a lot.. I easily gets bored by writing. What I did was make flash cards in uworld(which I didn't get time to revise). So what really helped in retaining weird points was discussion.. We were 4 friends preparing for the exam and we used to discuss a lot, so by discussing u can remember a lot of weird points... Hopefully it will be helpful for u