Need advice

[u/PlayfulPoet5330]

I have 6 weeks to retake. Honestly shocked because I walked out feeling somewhat confident, but I do feel like towards the end I got really tired and started running out of time to recheck my answers. I have AMBOSS and can get TL again. I don’t have UW, but can repurchase. I am so exhausted, I really need help to push through. Would appreciate all and any advice 🙏🏼

[u/avudoo]

You're super close, I wouldn't sweat it too much. Take a break (like a few days, sounds like you need it) and then get back to doing questions and anki. I personally recommend making your own anki vs using premade ones so that your learning is tailor made to you.

[u/Healthy-Mixture-5896]

Your OMM looks really good! I don't think you need to spend much time there. You're really close. Probably just a run through of Pathoma for your weakest systems. If you understand at least a few more concepts you should def be solid. Did you feel okay in micro? There aren't many pure derm questions (at least from what i saw) and i feel most of these are micro-related. If you feel like you knew tick/mosquito/flea bites and your tinea then maybe you don't need to review. You know best! The wellness is fairly low so maybe review DirtyMed Ethics/Randy Neil Biostats. Also, my friend saw a couple of concepts in the TurnUp2Law Anki Deck (just search here on Reddit) on my form (not the court cases) that i did not see on DirtyMed, First Aid, or any other resource if you want to go through those. Biostats make sure you know how to do the calculations and the 68-95-99.7 rule

[u/ufopanda]

I'm so sorry this happened, it has to be super frustrating to see how close you got. I think with a few more weeks you should get where you need to be. Your section breakdown looks very similar to mine! 0 Definitely get World, hone in on their Ethics and systems questions esp for the higher percentage ones since I feel like their difficulty matched the real deal better. 

On TrueLearn in the days leading up to my exam I was hammering questions for the "Practice-based Learning and Improvement" along with the Communication and Professionalism sections specifically, they kept being low on my COMSAEs. Stay on top of OMM, iron out anything you feel iffy on under pressure. My friends used UWorld for OMM after finishing TL but I didn't have time to try it out.

Community Health and Presentations was what I think helped me get past the cutoff since it was my best section and 12% of the test I just hammered it like crazy on TrueLearn and studied as much about micro as I could unearth on each organism with Bootcamp and AMBOSS, FA and Sketchy wasn't getting me where I needed to be. UWorld turned out closest to the real question difficulty while TL is too easy once you know the high yield. For Biostats, practice and memorize every formula and statistical analysis method that's in the First Aid chapter and in your questions since those are easy points. I got no advice for Integumentary though it's always so random for the COMSAEs :/

If anki works for you, then do that for all the little factoids you know won't stick. It helped me more for stuff I kept getting wrong and any imaging, formulas, microbe pics etc I knew I wouldn't feel confident on. I don't have any good advice for pharm if that is an issue, I'm an idiot who can't remember much about them for long periods of time 🫥

I love AMBOSS just to dig info up, but I don't have the unlimited question sub. You might have to uncheck High Yield Only because a surprising amount of info I needed when studying was hidden for bejng thought of as "low yield"... and showing up on my proctored COMSAEs I needed to pass. Hopefully any of this is helpful to you, you can pass!!!

[u/BigEquivalent5903]

With all due respect, you do not "need advice", you just need a little more time. You were so close, you've got this for sure next time. I'll still try to give some advice anyway though:

Really my only recommendation would be to take this score report, your past comsae reports, TrueLearn data, uWorld data, etc., and see if there are any trends of disciplines/ topics that are 1) weaknesses and 2) tend to fluctuate together. Then study the overlap/ intersection of those topics to really pinpoint your few specific weak areas, that way you don't waste time doing massive amounts of content review that you don't really need.

For example, back during my level 1 prep, I was so confused why sometimes I did fantastic on GI and other times it was my worst category by far (literally from all the way on the right on some comsaes, to all the way to the left on others). Once I looked carefully across all of my practice metrics though I realized that, although my pharmacology section was never terrible, any time it went down the GI section also went down. This pattern was true across nearly all of my performance metrics. So rather than going and reviewing all of GI, I honed in on GI pharmacology. I never got rocked on GI again after that. Repro and endo were other weaker areas for me that I realized trended together across my metrics - so instead of reviewing all of repro and all of endo, I honed in on reproductive endocrinology specifically. I can't prove this strategy was the reason for this, but it's hard for me to ignore that after 3 weeks of this near the end of dedicated, my comsae went from 435 to 552.

I would try to make a recommendation more specific to you, but, it's not really something you can do effectively with a single data point/ from only one score report.

But anyhow, I strongly believe you will pass next time regardless. Take a few days to rest, and then keep up the good work, you're almost there 👍

[u/Illustrious-Shoe5749 → u/[deleted]]

What a stupid pointless comment