 After a few weeks of studying thousands of questions done, I finally took my internal medicine boards. Here's how they went. Let's break it down. Hey friends, welcome back to channel. In case you're new here, this is going to be the finale of my internal medicine board series. If you haven't watched the first two, I essentially am studying or I was studying for my internal medicine boards as an exam that I have to do to get my licensing after finishing residency. It was a pain. So today we'll talk about the overall studying that I did after the second episode and essentially all the questions that I was able to do plus the ones that I wasn't. Talk about exam day, what well, what surprised me and frankly what I would have done differently. And then finally we will get into final tips on what type of things that you should know, especially if you're studying for your internal medicine boards for really any board exam that you need to do for your career. Let's review a little bit of the context at this point. So in series number one or episode number one, I talked about this entire plan that I wanted to do of my studying and all the questions that I wanted to cover. And I was frankly just very over ambitious. I didn't really account for going on a two-week vacation in Europe with my wife, starting my new job, moving to a new city and lots of other kind of life obligations in the midst of studying. And as I've said in past episodes, and I'll mention more clearly at the end of today's episode, is that I definitely would have started studying much sooner than I did, but overall it was just fine. First let's go ahead and get started with the review schedule that I had intended for myself. I just want to go over the Excel sheet that I've shared in the past two episodes and this will be a free resource that I'll link down below that you guys can sign up for within the MedVault. That's absolutely free. But essentially what I did is I wanted to use two resources, which I'll talk about later in this video, being a big step in your world and I'll tell you which ones I enjoyed more for yourself, but I intended to try to use both of them. And so essentially I created a spreadsheet that went over how many questions each of them had, as well as how many I had roughly completed, and then talking about roughly how many questions were left to do. Doing that I was able to then plug in my test date and also use Excel to then keep track of the current day, and then it was able to tell me how many days I had left till exam. So for example, if I said the test was, let's just say it's going to be a month from now, then it basically populates the rest of it, where it knows how many questions I have remaining, and then tells me roughly how many days. Now, everyone procrastinates, including myself. And so I included both a buffer for how many days I wanted to study, as well as how many questions I wanted to do. So you guys can see I kind of give my percentage of a 20%. It's just glided off the whim. But basically means that out of 32 days, I'll probably study 25. That gave me a question roughly in this example of 36. And then simply also, if there's going to be days that I study, I may not do all the questions that I intended to. So I also gave myself a buffer on just the amount of questions. Again, pick 20 to 25 in this example. So now instead of doing 36 questions in this example, I set myself to do 46. Now, when I was doing this, usually my numbers came out to anywhere from 80 to 120 questions. Keep in mind, I hadn't started my job at that point when I had made this. And so the intention was to do more questions up front. That way when I got closer to test day, I was ideally doing more questions and already ahead of the pace, even if I studied less frequently than I wanted. But I intended to study daily. Now, lastly, I kind of created a schedule between the early parts of July and all the way up to my test date, where I was going on vacation with my wife for two weeks in Europe, which was amazing. But I intended on doing some questions during then. And then I wanted to kind of ramp up on two weeks of vacation that I had before starting my new job. And then finally starting that first week of work, I wanted to ramp back down. And the goal should be to finish all of those questions. And as you watched the first two episodes, you saw the questions that I had set up myself to do and where I was after about a week and a half or a month and a half, excuse me, of doing this. In addition, I was also able to say how many questions were left in each resource. So how many you will have questions of cards that were left because each day was just assigned a cardiology day, a dermatology day. And then I went forward going to the next slide. This was going to be my review plan. So essentially, I kind of copied this over and adjusted as needed. But then I also said which topics I'd covered on which days based off of the amount of questions in that previous example that I showed. If there were going to be 40 questions that I did a day and I had to do 120 questions, that means it was going to take me three days to do cardiology. And that was kind of the plan. Now at the very end, I put what I actually did during those first few months. And the big thing I realized is trying to do U-World and any type of studying when you're on vacation is a big no-no because it just doesn't happen. I literally did like 10, 20 questions on the entire two week vacation that I was on. So I was severely far behind, but I also had purposely under planned. And so I only wanted to do 20 times two weeks, so roughly about 140 questions or 200 questions. And so I wasn't that far behind in terms of questions there. But that did make me, as you guys probably saw in episode two, that I wanted to do about 160 questions instead of 120. Unfortunately, I realized I tried to do 160 questions even when you're on your best behavior is not really that possible. So bottom line where we get to is I was not able to finish this entire review schedule. And what I'll show in a second, it really didn't matter. I wasn't able to get all of U-World done. My goal was to be able to get through all of MixApp and all of U-World and then be able to do the missed questions from both resources. So I kind of had a final review. But ultimately I finished all of MixApp and all except 300 questions in U-World. And I did completely fine, which I'll share about in a second. So as we saw in episode number two, I was already very behind in my studying because frankly, I only studied like one day on my vacation. So that was like 140 questions that I had to catch up on. Number two, I didn't realize how hard it was going to be to do 120 questions and much less 160, which is what my updated count came back to after my inefficient vacation studying. And that was very hard to stick to. So eventually I had to make a decision is I knew that either I wasn't going to be able to do all of the U-World questions or I wasn't able to do what I wanted to is to come back to all the questions a second time. I ultimately chose that I want to do as many U-World questions as possible and before go doing my mistakes because I had a strategy in the background of how to go for it. So long story short, I finished all my mixed up questions. Good there. I went through my U-World questions with the goal of trying to do 120, really 160 every single day to be able to finish U-World and ultimately wasn't able to do it. I've had left about 300 questions before test day and I didn't really have a time to go back through all my mistakes. And so then I essentially made a different variation of what I wanted to do, which is I started using Anki while I was doing U-World to capture all the mistakes that I was making. And if there was a question that I missed because I just didn't know something or I blatantly made a mistake that I probably would have made on test day, quickly made an Anki card about that fact and just moved on. And the goal was is to be able to do that Anki card a day or two before the actual day of the exam and do as many of them as possible, which was very, very helpful. So although I wasn't able to do my second review of the mix up and U-World questions I missed and I wasn't able to do all the U-World questions, I still was able to do like 900 plus the 1200 mix up questions, which comes out to about roughly about 2000, 2100. And frankly, it was more, more than enough because now let's get into the actual test day. So to go over the structure of test day, that this is the part that scared me the most is most people said that the test would be anywhere from nine to 10 hours, which felt extraordinarily long, particularly for the amount of questions that you were given. You have four blocks of 60 questions each that you're given two hours for during each block. So two hours for 60 questions, take a break as long as you need it, and then go to the next one. You had a total of about I want to say 100 minutes for the entirety of the day of blocks. Most of my breaks would be anywhere from like 10 to 15 minutes and then I had a 20 minute lunch break. The thing was, is when I started doing the questions, compared to both mix up and U-World, the questions were significantly shorter. They're also significantly easier compared to both mix up and U-World. Maybe it's because U-World gets a little bit more tricky into the details and mix up does too. More often than not the answer choices were different enough that as long as you kind of knew what they were trying to get to, you would be able to answer it. Now, if you weren't sure about the diagnosis or what they're trying to get to, then sure the answers looked very similar. But if I had an inkling of like this is the diagnosis, none of these would make sense for that diagnosis. This is the answer. It was a lot easier to do kind of process of elimination. And so with that being said, two hours for 60 questions, frankly felt like a lot extra time. Most of the blocks I was, frankly finishing with about 50 to 60 minutes left. And that's with doing all the questions, reviewing all of my mark questions, and then doing another pass through of all the questions really quickly to say like, I actually overall feel pretty comfortable with this. And that means that I finished the test significantly faster. I got there at the testing center at around 730. My test started at eight o'clock and I was out of there about like 132 o'clock tops. Most people from the test proctors say that they spend all the way from five to six PM. Did not want to do that by no means. And I felt comfortable walking out of the test that I likely pass. Maybe there are some questions that I missed on, but it wasn't frankly a big deal. And so that brings me into some of the final tips to kind of close out the series. Number one is just doing as many questions as possible and having a system of collecting those mistakes is probably more important than trying to do mix-up, view world, et cetera. You're going to learn what topics you keep missing on. When I studied those Anki cards that I had missed and those are basically a collection of all the ULT questions that I missed, it was like three to 400 Anki cards that I had made. And I did them the night before. A lot of those questions showed up on the test and I felt so much more confident because I had made the mistake. I've reviewed the Anki card and then I saw it again. So that part made the process much easier. So instead of trying to get through all of mix-up and all of ULT, more importantly, I think it's much more important to collect your mistakes and have a system ideally where you're doing it, like on a weekly basis or a monthly basis, depending on how long you're studying, but definitely the week before your test where you're reviewing those mistakes, you're going to be able to go to test day much more confidently. Tip number two is to don't let the test stress you out. I think the timing, the amount of questions, the people on Reddit that are freaking out about this, definitely add a level of anxiety that doesn't need to be there. Once you see what I mean in terms of the questions, majority of the people who take their words actually pass in their first time. As long as you're taking it seriously, you're doing your set of questions, you're practicing your repetitions, that's pretty much really all you need. So don't let excess anxiety start to build up. I know it's definitely easier said than done, but take from my example all the questions that I plan to do. This complicated study plan that I had created for myself and overall wasn't needed because even though I underperformed on the study plan, I felt like I was much more prepared on the actual exam. Tip number three, ULT or mix-up. Now my answer to this is really going to depend on what your institution gives to you for free. If you get one of those for free, that would be the resource that I recommend. Frankly, if I had done mix-up, then I probably would have just done just fine. If I had done just ULT, I would have done just fine. They're both really good resources. I feel like ULT is a little trickier than the actual board exam, and so then when I took the board exam, I felt a little bit more calm. And so personally, I found that mix-up had questions that were really well aligned to the board exam or completely out of left field that weren't tested, and you had to just be able to be prepared for both. And so do I think that you need both coupings? Frankly, no. If you have an issue with test-taking, then maybe it makes sense to spend extra money to take for the other board exam, but definitely finish first one before you buy the other one, which is what I did. But I had my institution pay for mix-up, so that's what I used first. And then I went ahead and bought ULT just to kind of see if I was ready. And for reference, I was usually getting anywhere from a 60 to a 70% on my 60 set of questions. And overall, my percentile was like in the 60, the 70%ile of all the test-takers using ULT. Tip number three is definitely start your study schedule a lot earlier. If you are somebody who is going to need that extra bit of help, whether it be through another QBank or using a text like the board basics, you want to be able to know that much sooner. And the best way to do it is to really get into those questions as quickly as possible. So if you're in residency, I recommend definitely for the block that you're on, that you're trying to do as many mix-up or ULT questions, depending on which block or QBank you have access to during that block. Even if you don't get through all of them, just doing them will help you get through tons of questions, help you do better on the rotation, but then also help you prepare for your board exam with that extra pressure. Now, as you're getting close, I would at least recommend starting your board setting two months before. It doesn't have to be full force the first four weeks, but at least you're just doing questions, even if it's like a block every other day. And then your month before the test, really amping it up to where you're doing, you know, two blocks, ideally of 60 questions each. And as you're getting closer to your test day, then I would definitely recommend doing two blocks within a short period of time together so you can work on that stamina. I felt very well-prepared because of lack of preparedness. I had forced myself to do 60 questions. Another 60 questions just to do the amount of questions. So my stamina was not a problem, but if you're somebody who struggles with test anxiety, or somebody who struggles with focus later on in the test, then definitely a two to three month period would be much more appropriate for you. So I know I probably missed things on the series of any questions you have, drop them in the comment section down below or message me on Instagram at the MD journey. I'm more than happy to help. But one of the questions you're probably asking is like, what is your score? Like, how well did you do? Unfortunately, although it's an electronic exam, you don't get your score back until like three to four months. So I'm still waiting, but again, I feel pretty confident that the past is going to happen. If it didn't, I'll let you guys know. If it didn't, I'll also let you guys know. But as always, my friends, hopefully you guys enjoyed today's episode. Make sure you like and subscribe if you're watching this on YouTube. I listen to the podcast because yes, we do have a podcast on the TMJ show. Make sure you hit that follow or subscribe on your favorite listening platform as well as leaving an honest review on iTunes. But as always, my friends, thanks for being a part of my journey. Hopefully I was a little up to you guys on yours and I'll see you guys in the next one. Peace.