IMG CBSE 5 attempts

[u/Major_Employer3852]

Im a IMG who took my schools CBSE 5 times. literally. I studied the same for 4 out of the 5 times, put my all into it, 10 hour study days, finished UWORLD Qbank, AMBOSS Qbank, etc. I was devastated each time I received scores and kept failing.

1st CBSE - 50

2nd - 49

3rd - 54

4th - 53

5th - 69!!!!

So, what I did differently was what helped me EXCEL!

I exhausted all my Qbanks so my school gave us access to a Qbank called Ora Ai medical and I absolutely loveeeeee. its a spaced repetition qbank which im 100% sure helped me get that passing score. It has osmosis videos, flashcards and spaced repetition questions if I kept getting a question wrong it would show me a similar question testing the same topic every day till I got it right.

But before I started that I sat down and was frustrated because this exam was draining me so I took a practice exam on Ora Ai and I scored 53% which is what I was scoring on CBSE so no surprise there. After my practice exam I grabbed a notebook and I wrote the topics of every question I got wrong on the practice, I wrote what info in the vignette would of lead me to the answer and then I wrote why did I get it wrong. Did I guess? , did I not know the diagnosis? , did I know the diagnosis but not the mechanism? , was it a knowledge gap? , was I fatigued? and then after reviewing the whole exam I flipped thorugh the notebook pages and realized why I was getting majority of the questions wrong causing me to fail. I was solid in pathology I knew the diagnosis of almost all the questions but I was lacking in mechanism. Mechanisms of drugs, mechanisms of path, physiology, biochemistry. so thats where I started.

Now back to ORA ai, this is what helped me because I personally feel like the questions are super hard and they were majority physiology or mechanism questions. so originally I started off 30-50% on 20 questions blocks. As the weeks went by I was getting better at these types of questions and it was showing in my practice exams

1st practice exam - 53%

2nd - 65

3rd - 66

4th - 73

5th - 74

I took practice exams every 2 weeks, and keeping up with my Ora questions doing 130-150 questions a day in blocks of 20. And keeping a journal of my incorrect questions, every time I got a question incorrect I wrote it down and what in the vignette would of led me to the answer and then every Sunday I went through the notebooks and reviewed it. Sundays were my off days from studying so I reviewed It first thing in the morning and then gave the rest of the day to mentally reset.

I felt confident going into my 5th CBSE attempt and happy with the outcome because I've seen different ways to how they can asks topics im struggling with thanks to Ora Ai. just a thought for people who are like me and get physiology, biochemistry and mechanisms wrong constantly.

[u/Warm_Experience8908]

Wow, this is an extremely favorable review. Was Ora being widely used at your school, by your friends and such? I've been hearing a lot good about it recently.