It’s a completely different issue to actually do it. Why do some students study full-time for a year (or even longer) without any improvement in their scores? They haven’t yet learned how to master topics and/or are forgetting things they’ve already studied.īut…how do you know if you’ve learned the “Magic Formula”? It’s easy to say that you need to master something and never forget it, then learn how to apply it. Once students figure out how to consistently master new material while simultaneously remembering everything they’ve studied previously, you have what I call the “Magic Formula” – the ability to reliably increase your score by studying for longer. those who are scoring at or below the average is that students with higher scores consistently develop mastery of material and can retain it effectively.Īsk yourself a simple question: is your studying leading to steady, durable score improvements in the areas you’re focused on? Let me repeat this for emphasis: the biggest difference between students who score 240/250+ vs. What is your general aim? Anything that you learn, you must move beyond memorization of rote facts, and learn in a way that you can apply and integrate the information on your exam. I’ve written a guide on how master topics for the USMLEs here. The most important determinant for consistent improvement of NBMEs is whether you can master new material and make it a part of your ongoing foundation. Magic Formula, Part 1: mastery + retention (forever) If you’re studying more than 10 hours a day in a dedicated fashion, but your scores still aren’t going up: read the next section on the “Magic Formula” – or what it takes for you to reliably turn time spent studying into consistent improvements in your score. If this is impossible because of other obligations, you will likely need a longer time-frame over which to study, and to use something like spaced repetition to allow yourself to build a large framework of knowledge over a long period of time. If you can’t consistently study more than eight quality hours a day: figure out a way to increase it. If you find yourself in this situation, assess how much dedicated time you’re actually able to spend studying. This bears repeating: students who don’t see their score improve, particularly if they’ve never seen their score improve by very much, are likely stuck in one of these two categories. If it’s far below this, or worse, if your score is lower than your previous NBMEs, your problem is likely either 1) your studying is ineffective, and/or 2) you are not able to focus properly on your studying. How much improvement you can expect is going to vary, but we would hope that with a month of studying, you would add at least 10 points your score. The question behind this is: is your studying working? In other words, have you figured out a way to reliably increase your score? Specifically, what is your score relative to your previous NBME exams? Is your progress satisfactory? Is your studying working? Assess score improvement (or lack thereof) relative to your time spent studyingįirst, you need to assess the broad trajectory of your 3-digit score. Here I share my advice for how to read through your NBME Practice Exam results, and how to read it to figure out the best ways to improve your score in the time you have remaining. I’ve found there are many different reasons that hold students back. I have gone over hundreds more NBME Practice Exams with them, and have seen remarkable results with the students I have worked with: roughly a 40 point improvement on average in students I worked with individually, including students who had already been studying for months beforehand. I have worked with hundreds of students, many of them either in individual or the Online Course. To read NBME Practice Exams: Ultimate Guide for the USMLEs and Shelf Exams, click here. So you’ve just taken an NBME Practice Exam (or have been taking multiple): what do you do next? You have your potential 3 digit score for the USMLE, but where do you go from there? How are you supposed to review it? How do you interpret the different parts of the results? How do you use that assessment to focus on weak areas without sacrificing your areas of strength?
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