Medical school exam: how I prepared for my first exam

It’s been a few weeks since I wrote my first medical school exam so here’s a rundown of that experience. Funny enough, I’m getting ready for our 2nd exam, which is in just a few days. I’ll start by describing the format and procedure for writing the exam online and then I’ll go into some of the things that I think helped me do well.

Writing a medical school exam online

The exam was administered through ExamSoft, which is the same program that we use for our weekly quizzes. Unlike the quizzes, there was a monitoring feature that recorded us during the entire exam. We couldn’t look away from the screen at any point, otherwise the system flagged us for cheating. Just like a live exam, no items were permitted. No phone, food, water, headphones, etc.

The monitoring aspect of the exam worried me a little because I can’t sit still for too long. In fact, I was fidgeting and moving positions every few minutes. However, I didn’t look away from the screen at any point so I think that’s why I didn’t get flagged.

The exam was divided into 3 sections, and each section was about an hour long. There was a specific check in time for each section and a generous 45 minute break in between. So my first section started at 10:30 am and I was done my last section by 3pm.

What worked well for my first medical school exam

Keeping up with daily and weekly material

My medical school system is not pass/fail. There is a minimum pass score for each exam and each term, so it’s important to do well. I scored 97% and I think a lot of factors contributed to this result on my first medical school exam.

What helped me most was keeping up with the lecture content day-to-day and week-to-week. There were definitely days where I fell behind. Right now, I’m about 2 days behind for this upcoming exam. (That’s mostly because I’ve had to spend the last few days looking into housing arrangements on the island). But overall, I have stayed on track with the daily content. Making sure I understand the lecture content and how it fits into the bigger picture.

Because there’s so much content each week, it helps to have everything done by Sunday night and start anew on Monday. This includes catching up on lecture reviews, getting through practice problems, and finishing the weekly quizzes by Sunday night. Even though we have until Monday night to complete the quiz, I’ve learned it’s best to get it all done by Sunday. I’ve noticed that when I let work carry into the following week, things pile up quickly and it’s very easy to fall behind.

Having a study group

Joining a study group and starting exam review 1 week before the exam was very helpful. Group studying takes up a lot of time so I don’t like it for daily studying. But it was great for exam preparation. For example, I had been struggling with genetic testing techniques and knowing when to use which method. My peers did a great job of going over that material and explaining the unique aspect of each technique.

On the flip side, when I was able to help my peers with topics they found troublesome, this helped reinforce my understanding of the topics. Like equilibrium potential (hello hypo- and hyperkalemia) and signal transduction cascades. Finally, group studying kept me accountable and forced me to do lots of practice problems since we did them as a group.

Prioritizing exercise and sleep

Maintaining my workout routine and sleep schedule were really important. This helped me have energy throughout the day (on most days). And in turn, this helped me learn and stay focused. The workout was a great break from studying. Also, I think this routine is what helped me stay relatively calm and push through when the work became overwhelming.

In order to get in the workout and be able to sleep on time, I did have to sacrifice on other things. For example, I had no time for Netflix. I only watched things here and there during dinner. But this sacrifice was worth the overall sanity and calm I felt going into the exam.

I’m going to wrap up this post right here since I need to get back to studying for my 2nd medical school exam. My experience for the upcoming exam has been different so I’ll try to write about it for next week.

What helps you prepare for a big exam?

-M

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