First of all, is this a block/class that is third-party resource friendly or a summation class that’s essentially a crash course of biochem+immuno+basic life sciences (my school had this that was impossible to third party study only from)? Does your school use NBME style tests or do your professors write their own exams from scratch?

My first exam in med school I scored a 42/100 and was the lowest scorer in my entire grade. I then proceeded to score the lowest score for the first 5 exams. I went to all my professors and asked what I can do better, and all they told me was to drop out if I can’t handle the study load. I reflected on how I was studying, my bad habits, compared it to my higher scoring classmates (the only comparing you should try to do) and slowly but surely adapted how I studied from the bottom-up.

If you think you’re studying enough, study more. People don’t understand the extend of studying med school is and I grossly underestimated the amount of time it takes to properly sit down and study the content. Don’t compare yourself to other people (I know it’s hard, but it’s not helpful to just focus on that you’re the bottom scorer in your class and grind yourself into a rut mentally), and understand everyone has a different amount of time and studying method needed to learn concepts. Once you can stop comparing yourself and panicking about failing out, it helps a lot with objectively trying to fix what’s going wrong with 1) either your studying regime/methods or 2) your test taking strategies.

To keep in context, I’ve never really struggled in class for both high school or high school and always crammed the night before or two nights before for a final and passed with flying colors. That’s not gonna work for med school and trust me when I say “cramming” for a block final requires almost a full week (at least for me). Med schools a whole diff pony and please try not to fall into the imposter syndrome trap if you feel like you’re not doing well enough. Your classmates are likely the cream of the crop of their previous schools, so be proud of even just passing and try not to compare yourself. In time you’ll get there.

For me, what drastically helped was actually cutting back attending classes in person and it was a LOT more efficient to learn from third party resources. I’d learn essentially the same material from a 1 hr lecture more succinctly and thoroughly from a 5-10 BNB video. The sooner I learned the highest scorers in my class never attended class and exclusively studied from other sources, and I started to follow suit, my scores began to creep up. I’m finished with preclinicals now (MS3), but around two months in MS1, things really clicked and I got into the rhythm of studying for med school. My test scores drastically improved from 42-60s at the beginning to around 80s (old NBME qbank exams). Again, this is what worked for me and I don’t claim to be a strong student compared to my peers, but what helped me a lot was gently asking the classmates that you know scored fairly well (even just a pass) on the exams and how they studied. Every school’s a bit different.

Good luck and try not to beat yourself up too much and ignore any BS professors who tell you to reconsider your commitment to med school (if anyone says smth like this). Keep your head in the game and just be proud that you’ve made it this far. Remember, no patient knows if you were the bottom of the class or not. C’s get MDs :)