Hi, I am starting on my first rotation which is psychiatry this Monday. I have Amboss and will be getting UWorld soon. I wasn’t able to keep up with anki in preclinical and just did bootcamp videos and took notes and that worked fine for me. How did others study for their shelf? Is it doable without anki? How did people review their wrongs and learn content while doing question banks?
Hey guys, I just got my P this week and I wanted to share what worked for me. Got some great advise on this community and just wanted to add my 2 cents if it helps anyone.
My dedicated study time was 7 weeks, it ended being close to 8 because I got sick 4 days before my exam and had to push it 5 days out from original date to make up for the last few days.
I will start with timelines and scores.
School diagnostic CBSE- Mid March- 61
3 weeks after this- NBME 30- 72
2 weeks after that- NBME 31- 74
1 week later- NBME 32- 70
1 weeks after that- NBME 33- 75
3 days out- F120- 71
Resources I used- FA, Bootcamp, Sketchy, Pathoma chapter 1-3. I did not USE ANKI (yes I wanted to emphasize this because people always think without ANKI it’s too hard, but I did and so can you). I did watch all of Bootcamp right before my dedicated except for biostats, ethics, and Pathology sections. During my preclinicals, I would take notes on Bootcamp images and it worked. Bootcamp GI is too long, so you don’t need to see it. I ended up reading FA more for GI than studying from my notes for that. Except that Bootcamp is great, Dr. Roviso and the team is goat. I used sketchy only for bugs and diabetes drugs. I had divided sketchy into days, I would watch 3-4 bugs each day. Next morning I would wake up and first thing I would do is click through numbers on skecthes (you need subscription for this and highly recommend it). Clicking through and testing my recall took like 20min in the morning, but it hammered the bugs for me. Dirty medicine is underutilized, definitely do it for Biochem. I used it for psych content and substance abuse section was great. By far the best 40min video to capture all. Vitamins section isn’t as good for dirty medicine so use FA. And I can’t empathize how important Vitamins are. Even if you don’t do any biochem and just do vitamins, you will get majority of biochem questions right on your exam.
UWORLD- I had completed 80%. I am very slow with review and I could only do max 80 questions a day, and by max it’s like I will take 6-7h to do those and review those. I read every line every explanation and it was helpful, after a while you just start to filter but I started super slow. I tried taking notes for incorrect ones and found myself writing down everything, so I stopped that. I came across another person’s post here and they recommended to do the question and after reviewing ask yourself what is 1 thing that you needed to know and if you can’t answer that then you haven’t really gained anything. That advise stuck with me, just doing a question and consciously making yourself recall that 1 make or break information was really helpful and it saved me time. You woudnt remember all of it, but the logic behind it is that if it’s high yield it will be repeated enough times in UWorld questions that you will remember that information. If it’s low yield, sure I didn’t remember, but it worked for most high yield things.
Game changer for me- I stopped UWorld 2 weeks before my exam. Purely shifted to NBME exam practice, reviewing my NBME exam notes, and content review. I know it feels a little scary to not get constant questions raps close to exam, but trust me UWorld questions style and NBME questions style is different. In order, to adapt to NBME I decided to just focus on that and it helped me a lot. My score jump from 32 to 33 was from this change.
For NBME reviews- I took the evening the day I took NBme and the next full day to review 1 exam. I would write 2-3 lines on questions I got wrong or the topics I kept seeing across forms. I used ChatGPT and Claude, just turn on the memory feature and it will adapt to your responses over different chats. ChatGPT was extremely helpful, NBME explanations aren’t the best so I would reason with ChatGPT and that solved a lot of doubts I had. I barely opened first aid during NBME review; mostly used for content refresher.
I took my exam after the format change, I did not simulate exam environment on my practice NBMEs. The only difference was on 20 questions you just had to blaze through questions and not get stuck because spending 30 seconds on something you aren’t unsure about will make you have less time for 3 other questions that you could have easily solved.
Exam experience- difficulty wise it was similar to F120, wording wise similar to NBME 32 and 33. More like 32, the stems were unclear. The stems were definitely longer than what you would have seen by the time. And yes, that’s not true for all questions, majority are manageable. Each block had 3-4 “what the hell are they asking” questions and you just need to pick the best answer you think is appropriate. Ethics for me wasn’t too bad, UWorld ethics is enough. I say this because NBME form ethics was relatively easy and real exam was more difficult than that, but very similar to UWorld for me. Biostats was reasonable- very similar to recent NBMEs for me and definitely watch Randy Neil. There were 5-6 doctor’s note type questions- the trick I figured during exam was read question- if it’s risk factor you don’t need to read whole thing. You can read chief complaint and labs and can get to most diagnosis. Final order- read the question first- then look at chief complaint, demographic- then labs- if you can’t come to a diagnosis then look further, but starting here will save you some valuable time.
This exam is terrifying, but it is absolutely doable. I truly have faith in every single one of you, and I know you are capable of getting through this. Don’t let a bad NBME, a rough practice block, or a disappointing score define your confidence. It is far better to struggle, learn, and make mistakes now than on test day. Keep your head down, trust your preparation, and keep moving forward because one day, one block, one concept at a time.
As I got closer to my exam, I realized that the knowledge was there. The real challenge was test-taking itself, and I have never considered myself a naturally great test taker. I think many people feel exactly the same in those final days. The anxiety, the self-doubt, and the flashbacks to mistakes are all part of the process.
But remember this: your worth as a future physician is not determined by a single score. The compassion you show patients, the effort you put in every day, and your willingness to keep learning matter far more than how well you perform on one exam. Great doctors are built through perseverance, humility, and dedication not perfect test-taking.
No matter what happens, be proud of how far you have come. You have already accomplished things that once felt impossible, and you will continue to do so. Keep believing in yourself, keep grinding, and trust that all of this hard work will pay off.