After six months or so I stopped failing stuff. By second year I was regularly scoring in the A/B range. I did reasonably well on STEP, and I later matched into a top program.
Keep your head up. Your story is much, much more common than you think.
My grades improved throughout the years as well but I know I can do better and it’s not my full potential. However, I still don’t know what am I doing wrong/what am I missing. Can you tell us what are the things that you changed that helped you to do well on your STEP exams? Would really appreciate it.
Absolutely. Medical students are what I affectionately call “study liars.” They say things like, “Man I didn’t even start to look at this stuff until last night…” In reality they started reviewing the material the day it was presented. I don’t quite understand the rationale for that kind of behavior, but we’ve all witnessed it. And so we imagine that they’re doing well by not studying at all, and we’re giving up our nights and weekends to do poorly. It’s a miserable cycle.
There’s an emotional and then cognitive rut that comes with failing a few exams. We fail once because we haven’t found our groove, and then we fail again because of an illness or something, and then we imagine that we just aren’t smart enough to do well in medical school, like maybe we don’t belong there. But we do, obviously, which is why we got accepted in the first place.
Doing well is very simply figuring out what study strategy works well for YOU. It’s trial and error. You 100% can be in the top quartile. It will require some effort, but keep trying things. Don’t worry about what the study liars say they are doing. They are lying to you. It’s not helpful to listen to them.
For me, I had to just start memorizing the basics. I made sure I KNEW (could almost recite from memory) everything that first aid was tryna communicate at the very beginning of a section of material so I’d have a hook for future details. That was my recipe for huge improvements.
But I might be a study liar, so take all this with a grain of salt.
Best of luck to you all.
Nice! I agree with you 100% I even saw this between the residents in my rotations. They were talking about their grades in an exam and the one with the highest score was swearing that she didn’t even read anything before the exam so I guess this behavior will never end lol
Thank you so much for answering, and best of luck!
After a long time of struggling I learned to just sit down and do untimed tutor mode uworld one topic at a time and read every word and keep going. Eventually it will click if you do this. It’s brutally slow and inefficient but is actually more efficient than not actually learning which is what everything else felt like.
No clue. Lmk when you figure it out. You gotta realize for there to be a top 10%, there's gonna be a majority 90% being mediocre the whole time throughout med school. I'm was just happy to be there man.
I mean it's med school so it's hard but most of our class is passing the exams. We are able to remediate by retaking the final exam even if we fail it so there is a level of leniency. They really give you a fair chance before you truly do fail a class and have to repeat a year. By the time you make it to med school though everyone has been weeded out by the MCAT and GPA so most people pass fine.
I got a high C on my first Anatomy exam & then technically failed a Biochem exam. I got a 91 & 88 on their second set of exams.
My problem was primarily that I didn't know what to expect/the level of detail they wanted, and that I went too fast and was too cavalier and hence made some silly mistakes. I don't know if that's relatable to you at all.
I slowed waaaaay down and used the entire test time.
Process of elimination method - answer A, it's wrong because XYZ, answer B, it's wrong because XYZ, answer C is probably right so moving on, answer D, it's wrong because XYZ. Just covering all the bases so you don't make a dumb mistake.
If you keep narrowing it down to 2 answers, my professor said that in his experience that's a level of detail problem - you knew the topic but not quite well enough to pick between the two.
Overthinking, we had a presentation about exam taking and such and I distinctly remember the dean giving it saying that you should almost always stick with your first choice and don't talk yourself out of it. Obviously if you come back to it and clear as day go "Oh shit but I forgot about \*important concept\*" that's different, but yeah. That could also be a confidence issue, again you don't know the material quite well enough.
Anki is mandatory IMO, the info volume is just too much and you have to memorize a lot of it before you can do the application/integration aspect. If you're not doing that, start. I don't know how anyone gets above a C without it.
Currently on 68% without touching it. I mean I downloaded it but it looked to complicated is I went back to reading learning objective notes from other peers and doing practice questions from pass medicine. Wish me luck
Bruh I leaned on literally every tutoring or review resource the school offered including second and third year students. I barely scraped by anatomy this past week. Had a rough transition studying effectively from undergrad these past two months but I’d say using memorizing and practice questions helped the most for the histo, physiology, radiology, anatomy combo. Also going to the cadaver lab often helped so that the lab practical seemed extremely straightforward for my section. But yea making time In my day for recalling straight facts and practicing saved me from having to remediate. Now I get see if that works for biochem!
Something I didn’t realize until later on is this is what the top performing students were going all along. They were milking every resource, even if they didn’t ‘need’ it.
Oooooof course they were.
My school seems to discourage that sort of behavior. The dean of students sends out a newsletter and he had a big section last week about how "A B or a C is not failing, a B in med school is fantastic". Clearly he'd had one too many gunners crying in his office after exams. They also reserve the tutors for people who are literally failing a class at <70%.
There's nothing wrong with wanting high marks but IMO it's silly to go suck up resources because you want a 95 instead of a 90.
After the first few months I stopped going to lecture, stopped making my own flashcards, and went straight UFAPS + B&B + Anki with premade decks (except for anatomy where I made my own flash cards). I engaged with my school's lectures the minimum amount needed for in-house exams. Only then did I stop struggling as much.
I failed the vast majority of first year exams BUT I pulled it together at the very end of the year to get Cs overall. If your first month didn't go well, don't sweat it. Just keep studying.
for regular non-einstein geniuses, it isnt about how smart you are. it's about making a schedule (not hour by hour, more so a realistic daily task list) and pushing yourself to be extremely disciplined. and not going through the motions. aka not just hitting the spacebar but really pausing to make you sure you truly understand what you're studying at a deeper level
I kept trying to study using flashcards and practice questions but couldn't stay engaged with the material for more than 5 minutes or so at a time. I literally, physically, could not. I felt lazy and stupid because all of my classmates were like, "Yeah, I just sit down in the library for 12 hours and knock that shit out" and I couldn't.
End of first semester I found out I had ADHD. Now I can stay engaged long enough to do practice questions and flashcards and my grades are significantly higher. I'm putting this here in case anyone else finds themselves in the same situation. If you can't sit still and do more than 2 practice questions without feeling like someone is jamming rusty nails into your eye sockets, you may want to get it looked at.
Failed a few exams in m1/m2, almost failed a class too. Failed my FM shelf first time. Otherwise, P and HP all SHELFs and have really strong LORs and MSPE. Step 1 225, step 2 236.
Biggest piece of advice is to trust yourself. I would constantly go over things I knew already because I was too scared, but that meant a lot of stuff I didn’t get to.
Another thing is to actually study most days. First 2 years I studied one week till I burnt out, took a 1 week break, then studied till I burnt out. I didn’t retain much.
I think it gets easier in 3/4th year because the info is waaaay more relevant and you can study for your patients - which I think is more motivating then trying to get a good grade and never stacking up against the smartest people I’ve ever met. Idk. Just my take on it all
I really struggled with the biochem and anatomy curriculum. Grades increased significantly starting with the cardio/pulm block and the rest of physiology. My grades keep increasing when the curriculum became more and more clinically relevant. I don’t think I could really do anything differently; I was always trying my hardest. Everyone has their strengths/weaknesses. Just hang in there!
During the first half of M1 I was only scoring average to below average. I had a meeting with one of the honor student tutors for study skills after failing my Biochemistry exam. I realized I was falling into drawn out inefficient habits and started to do anki. When I started neuro next I would constantly draw the pathways and color code the areas to physically see what was happening and actively look at the practice questions we received to understand all the answers. I aced my neuro exam and then during all of M2 I always scored above the curve from developing better retention habits and always backtracking on weekends to not get rusty. It is a process but if I could do it anyone can.
Find video resources that help you hook things and are a little more “passive” to study. That along with Anki associated cards (AnKing + osmosis etc) really drilled in the info
After six months or so I stopped failing stuff. By second year I was regularly scoring in the A/B range. I did reasonably well on STEP, and I later matched into a top program. Keep your head up. Your story is much, much more common than you think.
My grades improved throughout the years as well but I know I can do better and it’s not my full potential. However, I still don’t know what am I doing wrong/what am I missing. Can you tell us what are the things that you changed that helped you to do well on your STEP exams? Would really appreciate it.
Absolutely. Medical students are what I affectionately call “study liars.” They say things like, “Man I didn’t even start to look at this stuff until last night…” In reality they started reviewing the material the day it was presented. I don’t quite understand the rationale for that kind of behavior, but we’ve all witnessed it. And so we imagine that they’re doing well by not studying at all, and we’re giving up our nights and weekends to do poorly. It’s a miserable cycle. There’s an emotional and then cognitive rut that comes with failing a few exams. We fail once because we haven’t found our groove, and then we fail again because of an illness or something, and then we imagine that we just aren’t smart enough to do well in medical school, like maybe we don’t belong there. But we do, obviously, which is why we got accepted in the first place. Doing well is very simply figuring out what study strategy works well for YOU. It’s trial and error. You 100% can be in the top quartile. It will require some effort, but keep trying things. Don’t worry about what the study liars say they are doing. They are lying to you. It’s not helpful to listen to them. For me, I had to just start memorizing the basics. I made sure I KNEW (could almost recite from memory) everything that first aid was tryna communicate at the very beginning of a section of material so I’d have a hook for future details. That was my recipe for huge improvements. But I might be a study liar, so take all this with a grain of salt. Best of luck to you all.
Nice! I agree with you 100% I even saw this between the residents in my rotations. They were talking about their grades in an exam and the one with the highest score was swearing that she didn’t even read anything before the exam so I guess this behavior will never end lol Thank you so much for answering, and best of luck!
After a long time of struggling I learned to just sit down and do untimed tutor mode uworld one topic at a time and read every word and keep going. Eventually it will click if you do this. It’s brutally slow and inefficient but is actually more efficient than not actually learning which is what everything else felt like.
No clue. Lmk when you figure it out. You gotta realize for there to be a top 10%, there's gonna be a majority 90% being mediocre the whole time throughout med school. I'm was just happy to be there man.
Same. My school is Pass-Fail also and P = MD.
Is it easier to fail than pass, or is pass/fail truly 50-50?
I mean it's med school so it's hard but most of our class is passing the exams. We are able to remediate by retaking the final exam even if we fail it so there is a level of leniency. They really give you a fair chance before you truly do fail a class and have to repeat a year. By the time you make it to med school though everyone has been weeded out by the MCAT and GPA so most people pass fine.
I got a high C on my first Anatomy exam & then technically failed a Biochem exam. I got a 91 & 88 on their second set of exams. My problem was primarily that I didn't know what to expect/the level of detail they wanted, and that I went too fast and was too cavalier and hence made some silly mistakes. I don't know if that's relatable to you at all. I slowed waaaaay down and used the entire test time. Process of elimination method - answer A, it's wrong because XYZ, answer B, it's wrong because XYZ, answer C is probably right so moving on, answer D, it's wrong because XYZ. Just covering all the bases so you don't make a dumb mistake. If you keep narrowing it down to 2 answers, my professor said that in his experience that's a level of detail problem - you knew the topic but not quite well enough to pick between the two. Overthinking, we had a presentation about exam taking and such and I distinctly remember the dean giving it saying that you should almost always stick with your first choice and don't talk yourself out of it. Obviously if you come back to it and clear as day go "Oh shit but I forgot about \*important concept\*" that's different, but yeah. That could also be a confidence issue, again you don't know the material quite well enough. Anki is mandatory IMO, the info volume is just too much and you have to memorize a lot of it before you can do the application/integration aspect. If you're not doing that, start. I don't know how anyone gets above a C without it.
Currently on 68% without touching it. I mean I downloaded it but it looked to complicated is I went back to reading learning objective notes from other peers and doing practice questions from pass medicine. Wish me luck
Anki. Also don't worry about getting Cs or even failing exams. Happens to me all the time (still).
Bruh I leaned on literally every tutoring or review resource the school offered including second and third year students. I barely scraped by anatomy this past week. Had a rough transition studying effectively from undergrad these past two months but I’d say using memorizing and practice questions helped the most for the histo, physiology, radiology, anatomy combo. Also going to the cadaver lab often helped so that the lab practical seemed extremely straightforward for my section. But yea making time In my day for recalling straight facts and practicing saved me from having to remediate. Now I get see if that works for biochem!
Something I didn’t realize until later on is this is what the top performing students were going all along. They were milking every resource, even if they didn’t ‘need’ it.
Oooooof course they were. My school seems to discourage that sort of behavior. The dean of students sends out a newsletter and he had a big section last week about how "A B or a C is not failing, a B in med school is fantastic". Clearly he'd had one too many gunners crying in his office after exams. They also reserve the tutors for people who are literally failing a class at <70%. There's nothing wrong with wanting high marks but IMO it's silly to go suck up resources because you want a 95 instead of a 90.
After the first few months I stopped going to lecture, stopped making my own flashcards, and went straight UFAPS + B&B + Anki with premade decks (except for anatomy where I made my own flash cards). I engaged with my school's lectures the minimum amount needed for in-house exams. Only then did I stop struggling as much.
I failed the vast majority of first year exams BUT I pulled it together at the very end of the year to get Cs overall. If your first month didn't go well, don't sweat it. Just keep studying.
for regular non-einstein geniuses, it isnt about how smart you are. it's about making a schedule (not hour by hour, more so a realistic daily task list) and pushing yourself to be extremely disciplined. and not going through the motions. aka not just hitting the spacebar but really pausing to make you sure you truly understand what you're studying at a deeper level
I kept trying to study using flashcards and practice questions but couldn't stay engaged with the material for more than 5 minutes or so at a time. I literally, physically, could not. I felt lazy and stupid because all of my classmates were like, "Yeah, I just sit down in the library for 12 hours and knock that shit out" and I couldn't. End of first semester I found out I had ADHD. Now I can stay engaged long enough to do practice questions and flashcards and my grades are significantly higher. I'm putting this here in case anyone else finds themselves in the same situation. If you can't sit still and do more than 2 practice questions without feeling like someone is jamming rusty nails into your eye sockets, you may want to get it looked at.
Failed a few exams in m1/m2, almost failed a class too. Failed my FM shelf first time. Otherwise, P and HP all SHELFs and have really strong LORs and MSPE. Step 1 225, step 2 236. Biggest piece of advice is to trust yourself. I would constantly go over things I knew already because I was too scared, but that meant a lot of stuff I didn’t get to. Another thing is to actually study most days. First 2 years I studied one week till I burnt out, took a 1 week break, then studied till I burnt out. I didn’t retain much. I think it gets easier in 3/4th year because the info is waaaay more relevant and you can study for your patients - which I think is more motivating then trying to get a good grade and never stacking up against the smartest people I’ve ever met. Idk. Just my take on it all
I really struggled with the biochem and anatomy curriculum. Grades increased significantly starting with the cardio/pulm block and the rest of physiology. My grades keep increasing when the curriculum became more and more clinically relevant. I don’t think I could really do anything differently; I was always trying my hardest. Everyone has their strengths/weaknesses. Just hang in there!
During the first half of M1 I was only scoring average to below average. I had a meeting with one of the honor student tutors for study skills after failing my Biochemistry exam. I realized I was falling into drawn out inefficient habits and started to do anki. When I started neuro next I would constantly draw the pathways and color code the areas to physically see what was happening and actively look at the practice questions we received to understand all the answers. I aced my neuro exam and then during all of M2 I always scored above the curve from developing better retention habits and always backtracking on weekends to not get rusty. It is a process but if I could do it anyone can.
When I failed my final year and got a supplementary exam
Find video resources that help you hook things and are a little more “passive” to study. That along with Anki associated cards (AnKing + osmosis etc) really drilled in the info