My three months of studying for a 524!

I read a whole bunch of these write-ups when I was getting ready to start studying and found them pretty helpful, so I thought I’d give back by writing my own! I studied for three months while working part-time, so I probably got in an average of 5-8 hours of studying per day.

First things first: I made a plan. I made a spreadsheet with everything I wanted to get done each day, organized by subject. I had a hard deadline for when I wanted to be done to content review (five weeks) but everything else was a soft deadline. I had no qualms about rearranging or adjusting if I just couldn’t get through everything one day. I also took the NS half-length diagnostic to assess what my weak areas were.

Content review

I bought the TBR books for gen chem, ochem, and physics. I actually used them for content review, but even getting these books just for their practice problems would be super useful. Some of their material is low-yield, but I actually found that helpful. There’s full-length C/P sections in the back of the books that also helped me a lot with stamina and timing.

I’ve always been good at reading comp, so I wasn’t particularly worried about CARS. I did Jack Westin every morning and some UWorld, but the bulk of my CARS practice came from reviewing FLs. I will admit that I bought the EK 101 passages book, but I abandoned it after doing a couple practice sections because I found the leaps in their logic completely absurd. I was getting 50% on those EK passages. As you can see, the AAMC passages went much better when I just used my own strategy and didn’t try to force myself to read a certain way.

I also bought TBR books for B/B, but I didn’t find the content or the practice problems very helpful. I would recommend getting a different set of books for B/B.

As a psychobio major, half the P/S section came easy for me. However, I’d never taken sociology. I never saw any good books or resources for reviewing sociology, so instead I used UWorld. I did every practice problem for sociology and then reviewed and defined every term I encountered (even if I got the problem right!).

During content review, every term I encountered that I didn’t know went into an Anki deck (separated by subject). Anki was the last thing I did every night.

I did three Kaplan FLs during content review, which I think is the right time to do the Kaplan ones given how recall-heavy they tend to be. I also did the AAMC sample at the very end of content review, just out of curiosity.

Practice

The last two months of my summer was dedicated to practice. Here’s what a typical week would look like: FL on Saturday (I tested on a Saturday), starting as close to 8am as possible; review FL on Sunday. Every other week I would do a second FL on Monday and review on Tuesday. Every day that I wasn’t taking or reviewing a FL, I was drilling UWorld and TBR practice problems, taking it pretty easy on Friday because I planned to take a rest day before I tested. If I missed a question and learned something new, it went into an Anki deck. Again, every night, I would go through Anki. Remember, content review doesn’t count if you don’t keep reviewing it.

I took 3 NS FLs during this phase. I also tried an EK FL but quickly decided not to do another EK. I didn’t find their FLs very representative.

The last three weeks of practice was dedicated exclusively to UWorld and AAMC material. I did the question packs first just to learn the logic, then did the section banks, and I did a FL every Saturday. I made a spreadsheet to review the AAMC materials and FLs, where I wrote out my thought process, why the correct answer was correct, and how I could have reasoned out the correct answer. Reviewing AAMC questions and their logic was arguably the most important part of this process.

Let me know if I left anything out that might be helpful! Y’all got this!!

Edit: link to study plan spreadsheet in comments, by popular demand :)

Edit 2: whoops my comment got buried. Study plan here :)