So for all of my readers (I have 3 so far, HI GUYS!) who are unaware, I am a student of Ross University School of Medicine. My fellow Rossies will tell ya, RUSM puts you through some shenanigans. However, at the end of it, you get your MD, so I guess it’s better to complain less and count your blessings. (Although, to be honest, you would have a lot less to say if you did that.)
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Nbme Cbse Remembered Questions Full The NBME provides a variety of web-based self-assessments to US and international medical students and graduates.Full-Text Paper (PDF): Use of the NBME Comprehensive Basic Science Examination as a progress test in the preclerkship curriculum of a new medical school. Remember me reset password.
However, this is not a post about complaining about my school. It’s about something we Rossies and I’m sure many other medical students have to go through: passing your CBSE after you’re done with MS2. At Ross, they give us three attempts to pass our CBSE AKA “COMP” before we are eligible to take the USMLE STEP 1. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I passed it on my second attempt, and now I am currently gearing up to take STEP in June. I wrote down an e-mail to send to some of my friends still finishing up MS2 with my study plan for COMP as well as other tips and tricks for studying, and I thought I would share it here too. I’m following a modified version of this study plan for STEP, so many of the tips I give here are also useful for STEP as well ?
“My tired friends,
This is a loooong e-mail only because I took the time to reflect on what I thought worked best for me, especially given that I did this process twice lol.
There are a million of these “How to pass COMP” advice things and I’ve read em all. These are the tips that worked best for me, the average person. All of my advice should be taken with a grain of salt. Just because certain resources worked for me doesn’t mean they’ll work for you. Everyone is different and uses different resources. For example, I don’t really use DIT, except for a few specific topics. I find the videos lengthy, and since I’ve gotten used to Becker GuideMD, not necessary. But some people SWEAR by DIT. So by all means, if it works for you, go for it. Just make sure that whatever you choose to do to get through all the material (which after you read this e-mail is basically what I advise you to do), you can do in your designated time frame for studying. Obviously you can pick and choose between the different advice I give to benefit your schedule the best (if you choose to listen to any of it.)
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For those of you entering your last semester, I don’t really know how your COMP is gonna work, although I assume it’ll be the same as this past semester’s where you’ll have the ability to schedule it within a time frame. Now, I personally did not have the time or mental will power on the boat to study for my last semester and COMP at the same time. I assume it’s a lot better in Tennessee with a normal class schedule, so make sure you try to incorporate some of this studying into your daily schedule. i.e. Try to, after studying the slides as we all must do for Ross, to review the corresponding FA chapters. I know you all are going to supplement your studies with Pathoma and sketchy already, but once a block is over, make sure you go back and watch those again. Don’t let the info be purged after an exam. Not only will this help you for the final, but it’ll double as COMP studying. and please, for the love of god, activate your UWorld, and do questions! During the semester, I think it’s better to focus em on the block you’re currently studying. It would be awesome though, especially for those of you in 05, to do a whole bunch of cumulative UWorld questions during that break you get at the beginning. By cumulative I mean, everything you’ve learned up to this point. I wouldn’t recommend including the path and pharm you haven’t done yet until you get to them, only because it won’t accurately reflect what you’ve learned. It’ll probably suck, and believe me, I was scoring awfully when I first started doing all sections/categories on UWorld, so I hated it lol. However, it’ll help you out in the long run. Use your time wisely is really my best advice. Get ahead and you’ll have more time for yourself later.
Without further ado, here’s what I think is the best advice for passing COMP:
- Get through First Aid – whether you prefer just to read it, or (what I recommend) go through it with the Rx videos, just make sure you give yourself time to go through all of it.
- If you do go through the FIRST AID book with the Rx videos, I specifically recommend the following chapters: Endocrine, GI, Cardio, Renal, Neuro, Heme & Lymph and Reproductive. Endocrine and GI are done by Arjun, and he’s bae. He makes awesome videos and just overall kills it with his explanations. And he can be funny too. Sometimes he’s corny, but overall pretty funny. The other people who do the other chapters are okay too, some better than others. Honestly, doing Rx Express helped me limit my annotations to what was important and get through each chapter much much faster than I would’ve on my own. But to each their own, some people find the Rx videos to be too brief, or not explain enough. Honestly, you don’t have a lot of time to get through all of this info! You need something that’s speedy and high yield. While I think it’s super important to get through First Aid, keep in mind I have like three other resources I want you to use to supplement FA and really kill it.
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- The biochem chapter is a BEAST, and the first half of the biochem chapter in the Rx express videos is done by the most boring man alive, however, I think once you get to nutrition, he’s replaced by a much more lively teacher, so if you do the Rx videos like I did, hang in there. It gets better, I promise. This chapter, you might wanna DIT. I didn’t use DIT, but I’ve heard they do a good job for biochem…. try and do biochem early, because you’re going to go back to it a million and four times. It doesn’t matter how intensely you studied it the first time. You will forget things. Enzymes will slip your mind. Little details about genetic diseases you knew only two days ago will be gone. Biochem will make you laugh (from hysteria) and cry (also from hysteria), but the more times you look at it – and the more questions you do on it – important facts will become evident to you, and things will magically start sticking. I promise.
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- Sketchy – whether your favorite is pharm, micro, path or all 3, make sure you incorporate it into your studies. I cannot tell you how many micro/pharm questions I got simply from remembering the sketches. As an example for how I used it: for the microbiology chapter of first aid, you’ll notice that sketchy follows the order of the bugs exactly as it is in the book (viruses are a little wonky, but that’s because sketchy has more detail than the first aid book does). So, what I did was I read through FA’s info on the bugs following the order of sketchy’s chapters i.e. gram positive cocci in FA first, THEN after I read through FA’s info, I went to the sketchy videos and watched the whole chapter, pausing to annotate the book. So for the microbiology chapter specifically, I would recommend annotating just with sketchy. I don’t think there’s any real need to Rx video that one. Unless you find yourself with the time to, in which case, you’re a superstar.
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- on that note, I also skipped the Rx videos for all of the pharm in each chapter and annotated with notes from sketchy pharm. For some chapters I had to flip around and find the drugs because they weren’t organized the same way as sketchy, but almost all the drugs were there.
- on that that note, the FA pharm chapter is CLUTCH. at the end of it they have tables on tables of just important high yield information. I would recommend looking at the end of that chapter (after the cholinergic and sympathomimetics etc.) last to kind of bring everything together and review some high yield facts that I promise will show up on your CBSE, without a doubt.
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- An Ode to Pathoma: For pathoma, I would recommend picking and choosing chapters that you find he does a really good job in, or if after you went through a FA chapter and still have no idea what the hell was going on in the path you just read, do the pathoma. Some pathology sections in FA are very well done, especially in conjunction with the Rx videos, so there were some Pathoma chapters I skipped, for times’ sake, for example: cardiovascular and respiratory. Those are two (really, three, because vascular path is its own chapter) very long pathoma chapters that I didn’t want to go through after intensely doing the path in FA, and I personally happened to feel as though the doctors in the Rx videos did a good job in those chapters. and so, I moved on, and ended up doing well on those sections regardless (sorry Dr. Sattar, don’t get me wrong, you’re still bae.) But there are chapters in Pathoma that I could not do without. MSK, Skin, Neuro, Repro, Renal, even Endocrine (even though Arjun also does a bomb job, endocrine is one of those chapters that repetition and hearing it multiple ways is necessary). What I did was when I finished a pathology section of FA, if I deemed it necessary, I watched the Pathoma from beginning to end, highlighting and annotating my pathoma book, before moving on to pharm.
- So as you can see from my last two bullet points, while it is completely necessary to get through all of FA, don’t take *too* much time, because I want you to also get through the sketchy and pathoma too. The last point I would like to make on the above: DON’T SLEEP ON BIOSTATS AND EPI. Review it well. Review the formulas. Make them make sense to you. Once you get the equations down, those are simple points you can get easily. For STEP studying, people recommend going through a biostats/epi/social sciences review book like Becker or Kaplan in addition to the UWorld Biostats course. For COMP, you’re most likely not gonna have time for that, but I’m letting you know this now so you can remember TO LOOK AT IT PLEASE. You’re going to get plenty of questions on it on COMP, so review it, review the questions you get on it, pleeeaase. I’m being so annoying about it because I know it’s something a lot of people neglect, I think because Ross kinda neglects it during our curriculum, but really they are points we shouldn’t be missing.
- Finally, at some point throughout your day, I want you to sit through 40 UWorld questions. Yup, everyday, a block of 40. You can do timed, or timed tutor. I recommend doing timed bc even if you’ve never had a problem with time on an exam before, it’s just good to just practice how quickly you need to think and make connections. On the COMP, each section is a block of 40.
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- I want you to select all categories, all subjects. even if you hadn’t reviewed it yet.
- It doesn’t matter if you start your day with the questions, end your day with the questions, or decide to do a block when you feel like you wanna rip apart your FA book. Just make sure you do em everyday.
- Now, it’s very important that you read the explanations. Even if you get it right. I can’t tell you how many times I got questions correct for the wrong reasons lmao. It’s important because you don’t want to feel like you know something when you actually don’t and then get a different question on the same topic and get it completely wrong.
- To correctly review your questions, you gotta set aside a block of a couple hours. Because for each question I want you to open the corresponding page in FA and review it there too. Now this doesn’t have to be immediately after the block of questions, or even during if you’re doing timed tutor. If you do them at the end of the day, you can save the review for the next morning (I often did that). Or if you’re struggling through a topic and feel like you need to do something different, you can go back and review a test. That’s fine, because then you’re optimizing your time. Just make sure you try and do it, and don’t drag your feet! Remember, time is of the essence.
- For those of you who like to use multiple question sources (although I personally think UWorld is all you really need for COMP studying), I would recommend doing Becker questions. We get em for free and they are also really good, and I would definitely recommend alternating between them and UWorld for STEP studying. Rx Qmax questions are also a good study tool. However, I often feel like they give waaaay too much information/buzzwords in their question stems in comparison to NBME. NBME does do that sometimes, but I feel like Qmax is a little guilty of babying you at times. I think that they’re a good indicator of how much you picked up from First Aid, though, which is a plus. I use them often to do specific sets of questions when I’m in bed. I’ll do a set of 5 or 10 on tutor mode focused on what I was just reading about before I stopped studying. Often it’ll help solidify what I just read, and by the end of it, if I was struggling to fall asleep before, I definitely will be ready to knock out lol.
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- So to summarize, I would like you to: read/follow along in Rx express the anatomy/physiology and then pathology sections of a FA chapter, follow that with the pathoma chapter should you deem it necessary, read the pharm section of that chapter, annotate with sketchy, and at some point throughout the day, a set of UWorld questions. Now, for most chapters, you’re probably not going to get through all dat in one day. Which is fine. I would recommend using a cram fighter schedule or making one yourself (which would probably take you a LONG time, but if you’re adamant about not paying for another app like cram fighter, it’s an option) to make sure you get through everything as quickly as you need to.
- One more thing & I cannot stress this enough: do practice NBMEs. If you don’t have the super secret screenshotted ones, I can send them to you. I also have other semi-illegal UWorld screenshots if you need. However, I do recommend at least once, shelling out the $60 to do one online. They are insanely accurate. How you score on an NBME practice exam is almost exactly how you’re going to score on the COMP if you were to take it in the next couple of days. I know from experience, because that’s exactly what I did. The score breakdown is also useful in telling you what you’re doing well, and what you need to review again or take a different approach to. I want you, in your schedule, to set aside at least one, but optimally two days just to do an NBME and review the answers you did not get. The more of them you look at, the more you’ll realize certain questions are always asked in some way, shape, or form, and making these connections will lead to your success.
Disclaimer: During my second COMP attempt, I was enrolled in the online Becker course. TBH, I found it too difficult to stay on top of my COMP studying and follow the course. Towards the last three weeks before my COMP, I completely pushed Becker aside and focused solely on COMP. I’m glad I did too, because there was A LOT that I needed to see, that I wouldn’t have had I stuck to the course. I personally needed to let it go. I am currently reviewing the Becker books now for STEP studying, following along with GuideMD and supplementing with FA, and they are good, don’t get me wrong. However, they are extremely detailed. I don’t know if I would recommend them for COMP per se. STEP, yes, but I have more time now to do them right. COMP, mm I don’t know. For me, it didn’t work, but that could’ve been because I could not find the time for them.
Take care of yourself guys. Take breaks when it feels like your eyes are gonna fall out of their sockets. Eat right and exercise – if you feel good, you’re gonna have a better attitude about studying and life in general, lol, which can be hard to have when you’re studying day in and day out. Get sleep. Remember it’s necessary to consolidate the information you’re packing into that overworked brain of yours. Plant trees if your phone is a distraction (download the app Forest and you’ll see what I mean). or just cut yourself off from social media. If you’re spiritual at all (even somewhat minimally like me lol) take some time to meditate and pray… it’s more for its sound mind effect. If you ever need a pep talk, you can always call me or text me (…though I may not be as encouraging during the first couple weeks of June lol).
Good luck my babes!! You got this!
Kat ❤
P.S. If you do fail the first time though, I want you to remember it’s not the end of the world. All of you know me, and know I don’t like to make excuses for myself. I’ve always been the type of person that if I fell short, I fell short because I didn’t try hard enough. But studying for COMP and for STEP really makes you step back and evaluate your situation and factors you just don’t have control of. For me, after an emotionally taxing semester on the boat, I didn’t give myself enough time to step back and take a breath. I didn’t give myself much of a break. I went home, hung out with my family for a few days, celebrated my birthday, and then got right into it. At the time, it felt as though I had taken a long enough break, it was nearly a week. But I didn’t take into account how mentally tired I was. I was burnt out, and it took a toll on my studies. Chapters I was supposed to get through quickly took me nearly a week to get through, and at that point I still wasn’t absorbing all the important information. Despite my clear deficits, I came close to passing my first time. I think that made it even worse, because I hated myself for it, and I was in a deep funk because of it. Now, months later, I can tell you that if I had bounced back just a little quicker, I may have passed, but I just couldn’t have, because I simply wasn’t emotionally or mentally ready. Much of the stuff I learned studying for COMP the first time I had to relearn the second time because I wasn’t really learning, I was cramming, and inefficiently at that. My whole point to this personal spiel: push yourself, but don’t push yourself to the point of burning out. It’s real, I’m sure you know by now. Be nice to yourself, know your limits. It’ll help you more than forcing yourself to complete a task that you’re just not going to do correctly in that moment.”
If you have any questions or comments regarding my advice for the CBSE & STEP, or have any suggestions yourself, please leave ’em below!
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