257 USMLE, 826 COMLEX, AMA

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MelMcT2009

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Hello! I've had several people ask for my schedule, so I did a write up on tumblr. If there are any other questions feel free to shoot them my way

Schedule in excel form is included at the end.

Melmct2009.tumblr.com
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justabanana said:
How stoked are you about your score? Specialty desires?
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I was pretty shocked haha. It was exciting though.

I'm honestly not sure. Came in thinking peds surgery, but am now leaning more towards a peds subspecialty (cardio or GI probably), or possibly IM. Basically, nothing that requires either of these scores lol.
 
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Is a USMLE score of 257 really high?

I'm a pre-med who's just applied to medical schools so I'm just curious about the standardized tests after the MCAT
 
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MelMcT2009 said:
Hello! I've had several people ask for my schedule, so I did a write up on tumblr. If there are any other questions feel free to shoot them my way

Schedule in excel form is included at the end.

Melmct2009.tumblr.com
Click to expand...
do you mind sharing what school you go to? and do you think you were prepped well for COMLEX and USMLE? I'm applying right now and your feedback would be appreciated!
 
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MelMcT2009 said:
Hello! I've had several people ask for my schedule, so I did a write up on tumblr. If there are any other questions feel free to shoot them my way

Schedule in excel form is included at the end.

Melmct2009.tumblr.com
Click to expand...
The first sentence of the second paragraph gives me hope.
Thank you!
That's all I need right now as Im applying to medical school.
 
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@MelMcT2009

I read your blog (WHICH WAS AWESOME!!) and was wondering 2 things:
(1) Are you in the top 10% of your class (I'm curious about the correlation between class rank and step/level scores) and
(2) It looks like (from what I read on your blog) that you did not use any flash card system (like Anki, Firecracker). Is this true?

Thank you for your time and best of luck in year 3!!!
 
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Ioannes Paulus said:
@MelMcT2009

I read your blog (WHICH WAS AWESOME!!) and was wondering 2 things:
(1) Are you in the top 10% of your class (I'm curious about the correlation between class rank and step/level scores) and
(2) It looks like (from what I read on your blog) that you did not use any flash card system (like Anki, Firecracker). Is this true?

Thank you for your time and best of luck in year 3!!!
Click to expand...

Hey! Yes, I am in the top 10% of the class.

I used quizlet religiously for the first two years. I would convert every class ppt into its own deck.

For dedicated I used a bit of quizlet. The initial plan was that as I read FA I would add facts I didn't know to a weekly deck, and every morning for 1 hour I would review that deck. I kept this up for a few weeks, but waking up that early eventually stopped happening lol. I also used USMLErx flash facts a bit during dedicated for stuff like pharm which I felt very solid on and didn't necessarily want to sit down and read FA sections for hours.

Best of luck!
 
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CCmetal94 said:
Wow that's amazing. Congrats! I'm applying DO with a 27 (equivalent) MCAT and a 3.7 now , and just hoping I can kill boards and land a decent residency lol.
Click to expand...

You'll have no problem getting in! Board scores are all about how hard you work in med school, so if you put the work in, you can do whatever you want!
 
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Congrats on those awesome scores. :) About when did you finish the Kaplan + USMLERx qbanks? I'm working through them now and would ideally like to also do UWorld twice, so just wondering when I should plan to finish those qbanks by.
 
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polylux said:
Congrats on those awesome scores. :) About when did you finish the Kaplan + USMLERx qbanks? I'm working through them now and would ideally like to also do UWorld twice, so just wondering when I should plan to finish those qbanks by.
Click to expand...

Thanks! I didn't finish Rx. I got the bank for free and just used it on the side. I had most of Kaplan done by February I think. Started uworld in feb. Did my first pass feb-may along with classes. Then second pass may-June. I still did a bit of Kaplan and Rx during the spring though if I needed more questions on class material.
 
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MelMcT2009 said:
Hello! I've had several people ask for my schedule, so I did a write up on tumblr. If there are any other questions feel free to shoot them my way

Schedule in excel form is included at the end.

Melmct2009.tumblr.com
Click to expand...

Hey did you use SketchyMicro alone or did you use both SketchyMicro and SketchyPharm?
 
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MelMcT2009 said:
Thanks! I didn't finish Rx. I got the bank for free and just used it on the side. I had most of Kaplan done by February I think. Started uworld in feb. Did my first pass feb-may along with classes. Then second pass may-June. I still did a bit of Kaplan and Rx during the spring though if I needed more questions on class material.
Click to expand...
Thank you for responding!

I calculated it out and doing all three qbanks completely only gets you to ~9000 questions. How did you get the rest of the way to 12-13k as you noted in your post?
 
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polylux said:
Thank you for responding!

I calculated it out and doing all three qbanks completely only gets you to ~9000 questions. How did you get the rest of the way to 12-13k as you noted in your post?
Click to expand...

Like I said in the blog, I did uworld twice (I also did a little over half of COMBANK). Also counted all NBME COMBANK and Kaplan assessments that I did (I think around 2,400 total)

Anyway, I kept a spreadsheet tracking my question usage for the majority of the time, but got a little lazy with it at the end.
 
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MelMcT2009 said:
Like I said in the blog, I did uworld twice (I also did a little over half of COMBANK). Also counted all NBME COMBANK and Kaplan assessments that I did (I think around 2,400 total)

Anyway, I kept a spreadsheet tracking my question usage for the majority of the time, but got a little lazy with it at the end.
Click to expand...

Did you take any notes on FA, Pathoma, or Sketchy as you went through them? Or did you just watch the videos and read the text?
 
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Event_Horizon said:
Did you take any notes on FA, Pathoma, or Sketchy as you went through them? Or did you just watch the videos and read the text?
Click to expand...

I turned all of sketchy into a word doc the summer before M2. Would reference that occasionally, but the videos are where the money's at. They're good enough by themselves.

I made flow charts and did notecards when necessary when reading through first aid. But I didn't touch first aid much until dedicated. So by then it was mostly all review
 
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MelMcT2009 said:
I was pretty shocked haha. It was exciting though.

I'm honestly not sure. Came in thinking peds surgery, but am now leaning more towards a peds subspecialty (cardio or GI probably), or possibly IM. Basically, nothing that requires either of these scores lol.
Click to expand...

peds surgery isn't a subspecialty?
 
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You mentioned that you put in 11-12 hours of study on weekdays and 14-16 hours a day on weekends. Did you ever find yourself feeling burnt out from such a rigorous/intense schedule? Were you able to do other things outside of school to relax?
 
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MelMcT2009 said:
I honestly didn't feel burnt out, but I'm not sure why. I should have. I don't recommend this amount of studying to anyone. It was overkill. I think I could have gotten the same results with a bit less. I would continue to study the same things over and over and over when I already knew them cold. There were some days when I guess I did get tired of it, but I always managed to push through.

I didn't really do much else during those years. I coached a swim team the summer between M1 and M2, but not much during the year.
Click to expand...

It sounds like you have an inner drive/motivation that not many other students out there have. One of my family members went to a Carribean school and told me he studied roughly 10 hours a day and ended up with a similar USMLE to you.

How much studying do you think would have been enough to achieve a similar end result? I feel that I am the type of person that needs balance in my life to be successful. Congratulations on your scores!
 
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This is really motivating! Thank you so much for sharing your experience.

I'm curious - how did questions go for you when you began to study for the boards? I just completed my first semester of medical school - I did really well on all exams/blocks and really felt I understood the material at the time I was learning it. I'm on break now and decide to look at a few USMLE practice questions for the systems we covered. Wow - I've already forgotten so much!

Did you experience a great deal of re-learning/re-committing the material to memory once you dedicated your time to board studying? If so, does it come back within the dedicated board study time?

I know it must work out somehow, but it's crazy to think I'm only 1/4 of the way through all of the material and can't remember a great deal of the small portion I've learned.
 
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If you were to apply for the ROAD specialities, do you think you would be competitive being a d.o. student but having your stats?

Did you med school have mandatory attendance?
 
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kb0275 said:
If you were to apply for the ROAD specialities, do you think you would be competitive being a d.o. student but having your stats?

Did you med school have mandatory attendance?
Click to expand...

Radiology and aneathesia, yes (aneathesia stats are just average.) derm and Ortho little to no chance even if I had a 270

No we don't have mandatory attendance
 
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I've never used quizlet before, any tips on that? Do people annotate/condense their lectures into digestible bits and put them into quizlet format?
 
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MelMcT2009 said:
Radiology and aneathesia, yes (aneathesia stats are just average.) derm and Ortho little to no change even if I had a 270

No we don't have mandatory attendance
Click to expand...
Is the little to no chance just because of the letters behind your name?
 
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kb0275 said:
Is the little to no chance just because of the letters behind your name?
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Yup, unfortunately. There's always the AOA match though. I've never been interested in any of these specialties though, so I've not looked much in to it
 
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popopopop said:
I've never used quizlet before, any tips on that? Do people annotate/condense their lectures into digestible bits and put them into quizlet format?
Click to expand...

Yup! I'd turn the entire PowerPoint into a flash card set. Each class got its own folder ("Path 1 Block 1") , and each lecture got its own deck that went in the appropriate folder ("Lecture 1 - reproductive path").

Just turn the lecture in to question and answer format
 
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MelMcT2009 said:
Hello! I've had several people ask for my schedule, so I did a write up on tumblr. If there are any other questions feel free to shoot them my way

Schedule in excel form is included at the end.

Melmct2009.tumblr.com
Click to expand...

I noticed you spent your whole MS2 spring break week on biochemistry. Why did you feel the need to do this?

Was it because, in general, the DO curriculum doesn't cover a lot of biochemistry because it isn't covered on the COMLEX to the degree it is covered on the USMLE? Or do you think biochemistry at your particular school was not taught as well as the other subjects?

In the past, I have been told by others that MD schools (and by extension USMLE) emphasizes biochemistry much more than DO schools (and COMLEX). Is there any truth to this statement?

Side question: is genetics taught under the biochemistry umbrella? Does what I said about biochemistry above apply to genetics as well?
 
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I'm also curious at the biochem, because my spring break is coming up, and based on my UWorld performance I know that biochem is one of my weaker subjects.
 
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MelMcT2009 said:
Yup! I'd turn the entire PowerPoint into a flash card set. Each class got its own folder ("Path 1 Block 1") , and each lecture got its own deck that went in the appropriate folder ("Lecture 1 - reproductive path").

Just turn the lecture in to question and answer format
Click to expand...
Is it possible you give us your quizlet account name so I can see how you made your cards?
 
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SlugMD said:
I noticed you spent your whole MS2 spring break week on biochemistry. Why did you feel the need to do this?

Was it because, in general, the DO curriculum doesn't cover a lot of biochemistry because it isn't covered on the COMLEX to the degree it is covered on the USMLE? Or do you think biochemistry at your particular school was not taught as well as the other subjects?

In the past, I have been told by others that MD schools (and by extension USMLE) emphasizes biochemistry much more than DO schools (and COMLEX). Is there any truth to this statement?

Side question: is genetics taught under the biochemistry umbrella? Does what I said about biochemistry above apply to genetics as well?
Click to expand...

With anatomy, cell bio (at least relevant cell bio), phys, etc, you take them first year but continue to build on them and revisit them during path and pharm, so those topics are getting hammered in multiple times, and are able to stay fresh. Biochem is a different story. Its subject that you do first year and then don't see again until boards, so you're naturally going to be super rusty. A bunch of biochem is just pathways, and that's just not stuff that you're going to remember for an entire year if you aren't using it. So I had basically forgotten all of it. This doesn't reflect my school in anyway. I think it's probably the same for most people.


As far as my actual exam, I will say that I had hardly any biochem on my usmle. I don't even remember a single question (which likely isn't the case. I'm sure there were a few at least). I hear this isn't the norm though. My comlex had several biochem questions, but they were easy.

Most genetics is covered in biochem, yes. A lot in path too.
 
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Do you mind posting one of your quizlet quizzes to see how you made it? (As an example)

Thanks
 
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kb0275 said:
Do you mind posting one of your quizlet quizzes to see how you made it? (As an example)

Thanks
Click to expand...

Sorry Ive missed (or didn't get) these notifications for some reason. I'll try and post one tonight when I'm off of work if I forget just shoot me a message in a few days to remind me!
 
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Do you feel like your undergrad degree helped you build a solid foundation? also what do you feel is more important- quantity of study time or quality? thanks!!
 
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Mr Krabs said:
Do you feel like your undergrad degree helped you build a solid foundation? also what do you feel is more important- quantity of study time or quality? thanks!!
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Honestly...not really with the undergrad question. I absolutely love the place I went to college, so it's nothing against them. Med school info is just so much more in depth, that undergrad stuff isn't very helpful. What I did do in undergrad was develop good study habits. I think that's probably the most important thing you can do.

Quality trumps quantity every day. Doesn't matter if you "study" 12 hours a day if you're sitting there being unproductive.
 
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