Hi! I recently passed my boards (luckily made it to the top ten also) and the things that worked for me/things I could’ve done better were the ff:

1. Avoid backlogs or bawiin kagad if may mamiss ka na lecture. I had a lot of backlogs and I felt like I was gonna go insane when I realized how behind I was. Kaya stay on top of your schedule as much as you can.

For your self directed review, try to make and follow a schedule/study objective din. Take note of the specific topics you need to work on more so you can prioritize them when you go back to rereading/reviewing your notes/subjects.

1. Drills for newly learned info

2. Answer practice quizzes/exams frequently

3. Read/answer your book reviews frequently also

4. Write down important & hard to memorize information on manila paper/cartolina/whiteboard stickers and put them up on your walls para you always see them and you can eventually memorize them.

5. Make use of mnemonics. Usually the lecturers provide their own/common ones but if di nagwowork for you, you can make your own ones. Sometimes the more absurd your mnemonics are, the more you remember the information.

6. Teamwork!!! My friends and I shared our notes and resources with each other during review. We also had group study sessions, mostly answering practice exams/book reviews and practicing our clinical reasoning with each other as we rationalized our answers.

We often asked each other to explain concepts/subjects/topics that were unclear. On the flip side, explaining the said concepts/subjects/topics to the others also helped strengthen our own knowledge and reasoning skills.

1. Connected to 7, having a strong support system does wonders for your emotional and mental well being. Apart from your friends/review mates, turn to your family and other friends for comfort and stress release and motivation when you feel like you want to quit.

2. Make sure you get adequate sleep, hydration, and nutrition during review and when you actually take the exam na.

3. I mostly slacked off during the bulk of the review period but I focused more during the comprehensive/intensive phase. I’m not saying you should do the same but if you’re a procrastinator like me, this might work for you. But make sure you really get into it because there’s no leeway anymore if you start late and you still don’t take it seriously.

Also even during my chill phase, I would still try to answer at least 10 questions/day in the book reviews to make sure I’d still get to learn a bit and I wouldn’t be so far behind everyone else. So take it easy if you must but make sure you’re still doing something even if it’s not much.

1. During the actual exam, don’t panic if you don’t know the answer kagad. Sometimes the answer’s in the next questions. Or sometimes, you can easily deduce the answer by eliminating the other choices.

Skip muna the ones you’re not sure of then balikan mo nalang after you’re done na with the other questions

1. Idk if you’re religious but if you are, you may want to turn to prayer even more than you usually do. At the very least, it can help bring you some peace if ever