CBSE - July 2023

[Condylotomy]

Hey everyone! Just got done talking to one of the OS faculty at my school about the CBSE, and he mentioned it would be a good idea to start studying this summer since I’ll be at level ZERO when it comes to the basic sciences. He’s suggesting I take a full fletched course with a tutor to get me ready haha. This wasn’t my original plan of attack and was hoping to stick to UFAP with heavy sketchy and anki, but he had me feeling like I shouldn’t start there and should start with something like BnB? What would you guys do? I’m just a stinky D1 that doesn’t know where to start haha. I have around 50 screenshots of peoples cbse breakdowns, and all of them are awesome, but there’s not a ton of variety outside of what people prefer to supplement UFAP with and study schedules.

For reference, I only have about a month/month and a half off for summer, and plan on grinding full time the day I get off Xmas break up until I take it in July.

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[teeth!]

Hey everyone! Just got done talking to one of the OS faculty at my school about the CBSE, and he mentioned it would be a good idea to start studying this summer since I’ll be at level ZERO when it comes to the basic sciences. He’s suggesting I take a full fletched course with a tutor to get me ready haha. This wasn’t my original plan of attack and was hoping to stick to UFAP with heavy sketchy and anki, but he had me feeling like I shouldn’t start there and should start with something like BnB? What would you guys do? I’m just a stinky D1 that doesn’t know where to start haha. I have around 50 screenshots of peoples cbse breakdowns, and all of them are awesome, but there’s not a ton of variety outside of what people prefer to supplement UFAP with and study schedules.

For reference, I only have about a month/month and a half off for summer, and plan on grinding full time the day I get off Xmas break up until I take it in July.

I started around this time last year as a D1 - PM me if you want

 

[omfsinthechat]

82 EPC. 4.5 months of studying.

First 2 weeks - all of boards and beyond, to see everything at the start, used friends expiring subscription.

Next month - all of sketchy micro/Pharm and Pathoma using pepper deck and dukes deck, dropped anki once I finished both resources and started UWorld. so only did anki for about 35 days. Anki was a grind. I watched an hour of Pathoma on 2x and took notes, watched an hour of sketchy. And then spent probably 6 hours doing anki. Dukes deck is a very slow going deck and I honestly don’t know if it was helpful. Memorizing a card for how disease x presents and its 5 major symptoms wasnt as helpful as seeing it in a practice question. Pepper deck was great for micro/Pharm. I think using anki with sketchy is where you get real value out of the resource to memorize the sketch. Once I had it memorized, I was comfortable just seeing the picture again and being able to walk through the symbols, still did spaced repetition but not with anki. Anyway, dropped all reviews and new cards after 35 days and don’t regret it.

Took a baseline NBME (25) before doing any practice questions at this point and got a 52EPC.

Next month - 2100 AMBOSS questions by system. Had a 2 week break between semesters, so I would review a full chapter of first aid in the AM then do about 120 questions for that system per day

Next month - 40 UWorld a day. Reviewed 20 Sketchy pictures a day, also started watching all of MedSchool Bootcamp lectures.

Last month - started doing less UWorld, and swapped it out for reviewing/retaking NBME 20-31. Overall I only finish 37% of UWorld at 70% correct it was obviously helpful for learning, but I kept getting questions wrong on NBMEs because I was using UWorld logic or expecting to have more info or key words like UWorld. That’s when I decided to focus on the NBMEs to better learn how they wanted me to think about and approach questions.

Last 2 weeks of the last month- re-read all of Pathoma, reviewed all of sketchy micro/Pharm, reread all of first aid. The last week cram I thought was very useful, having everything fresh was really nice.

Daily schedule:
5AM - 8am- wake up, watch Pathoma/sketchy/bootcamp at 2x speed for about 1hr, get ready, 20 mins exercise, bus to school, anki on bus or review sketches/first aid topics. Usually got in about 2 hours every morning before school.

8am-12pm - classes, would do anki during class if I could, anytime I wasn’t in class or clinic I would be studying. Varied.

12-1:30pm - lunch, always used it for studying.

1:30-5pm - classes- anki or practice questions during class if possible.

5-7pm. Go home, meal prep/cook, walk dog, spend time with family.

7pm-11pm - practice questions/anki.

Rinse, repeat. I got in about ~8hours of studying a day during the week.

Saturdays 5am -7pm studying, sometimes took a 2-3 hour break in the afternoon.

Sundays - no studying. Completely off. Maybe touched a little dental school stuff if I had a test, otherwise did no studying for school or CBSE. Just relaxed/recharged.

During breaks from school I was basically 12-16 hours of studying a day. Last week before exam I went 5am -11pm straight. Maybe 30 min of total break time during the day for lunch/dinner.

Dental school was on the back burner. Crammed the night before exams. Didn’t practice anything in sim lab outside of sim lab. Attended most lectures, but was never really present.

I obviously studied a ton. Total hrs spent in 4.5 months was probably close to 1000hrs. Very unbalanced but decided to start studying late, and didn’t want to retake or stretch studying out for 6 more months.

NBME scores
25 - 90 days out - 52
26 - 64 days out - 68
27 - 50 days out - 72
28 - 35 days out - 66
29 - 28 days out - 68 (started doing NBME 20-24, retaking 25-29, doing less UWorld after this score)
30 - 19 days out - 77
UWSA1 - 14 days out - 237
31 - 7 days out - 81
New free 120 - 3 days out- 85% correct

NBME 20-24 all had about 80-85% of questions correct.

I was making really dumb mistakes on early NBMEs. Kept missing questions because i misread, was going too fast, or just panicked and chose the wrong answer. Once I cut out the errors, stopped overthinking my way out of the correct answer and started seeing more and more official NBME questions to get their logic down, there were probably only 5-10 questions per NBME block where I had no idea what was going on or hadn’t seen the info, and I was ok with that.

Real deal felt awful. But every practice NBME felt just as bad, just had to trust my recent uptick in score and hope it all worked out.

Last note- my schedule looks super unbalanced, and it was. But I also made time for big events. Attended 2 weddings, visited family during my break, saw multiple concerts. I still studied a lot, but I didn’t beat myself up if I didn’t hit my daily study goal or finish all 40 UWorld questions.

hey man! congrats on the excellent score. Do you mind sharing exactly how you approached your final 2 weeks?

 

[Gustavo dos Santos]

hey man! congrats on the excellent score. Do you mind sharing exactly how you approached your final 2 weeks?

First week I had finals, second week I was off. During finals week I split up the chapter of Pathoma over 6 days and re-read all of it.
I split up all of the sketchy Micro and pharm sketches (annotated pictures, not the videos) over 12 days and checked those off day by day. I split all of FirstAid up over 6 days for the second week and read those day by day. So it was ~3 chapters of Pathoma plus 8-10 sketches (can’t remember the actual amount) per day the first week. Second week was ~120 pages of FirstAid per day and 8-10 sketches. It would take me maybe an hour to read through about 10-12 pages of FirstAid and make sure I understood most concepts and could recognize smaller pieces of info.

The last day I also went through pictures of all of Pixorize Biochem and Immunology in maybe 2-3 hours.

Nothing really remarkable about it. Really just a solid 2 week cram. Woke up at 5am and studied until 11pm. Took maybe a 30 minute break for lunch and dinner.

Just found it helpful to have seen everything within the previous 12 days.

 

[omfsinthechat]

First week I had finals, second week I was off. During finals week I split up the chapter of Pathoma over 6 days and re-read all of it.
I split up all of the sketchy Micro and pharm sketches (annotated pictures, not the videos) over 12 days and checked those off day by day. I split all of FirstAid up over 6 days for the second week and read those day by day. So it was ~3 chapters of Pathoma plus 8-10 sketches (can’t remember the actual amount) per day the first week. Second week was ~120 pages of FirstAid per day and 8-10 sketches. It would take me maybe an hour to read through about 10-12 pages of FirstAid and make sure I understood most concepts and could recognize smaller pieces of info.

The last day I also went through pictures of all of Pixorize Biochem and Immunology in maybe 2-3 hours.

Nothing really remarkable about it. Really just a solid 2 week cram. Woke up at 5am and studied until 11pm. Took maybe a 30 minute break for lunch and dinner.

Just found it helpful to have seen everything within the previous 12 days.

Thanks so much for the detailed reply, I'm trying to decide on a final pass through First Aid or continuing to review NBMEs, I think I will do a little of both. Thank you so much! Best of luck to you in the application cycle

 

[FosterWallace]

Does anyone know if the CBSE is usually curved down like the NBMEs? I got a 68 EPC on 29 but my raw score was 70% correct, for example.

 

[Mirizzi]

Does anyone know if the CBSE is usually curved down like the NBMEs? I got a 68 EPC on 29 but my raw score was 70% correct, for example.

Almost certainly will be curved upwards on the real deal; July 2023 had my score increased by 1%. I think it might have been higher in Feb 2023 but I am unsure.

Edit: Feb 2023 CBSE was curved somewhere around 2%
Ediit 2: July 2023 may have been curved by 0.5%

 

[DMD12345]

Almost certainly will be curved upwards on the real deal; July 2023 had my score increased by 1%. I think it might have been higher in Feb 2023 but I am unsure.

Edit: Feb 2023 CBSE was curved somewhere around 2%

Mine was the same as raw in July, and it was curved up a few in the prior Feb

 

[Gustavo dos Santos]

Does anyone know if the CBSE is usually curved down like the NBMEs? I got a 68 EPC on 29 but my raw score was 70% correct, for example.

My EPC score was the same as my raw % score. I’m not sure that there is a standardized curve for the whole test. I think it may be person to person depending on what you get right and what you miss idk

 

[teeth!]

Does anyone know if the CBSE is usually curved down like the NBMEs? I got a 68 EPC on 29 but my raw score was 70% correct, for example.

How’d you find out your EPC on an NBME? Did you take it online? Or offline?

 

[Anonamoose]

How’d you find out your EPC on an NBME? Did you take it online? Or offline?

You get EPC when you take it online, I would think there would be a calculator out there but it really doesn't mean anything, since we don't know how their curve is determined. And according to the report those EPCs are based on a 2022 cohort of students who take those forms so its not even relevant to people who recently took it.

 

[teeth!]

You get EPC when you take it online, I would think there would be a calculator out there but it really doesn't mean anything, since we don't know how their curve is determined. And according to the report those EPCs are based on a 2022 cohort of students who take those forms so its not even relevant to people who recently took it.

Appreciate it - thanks. Makes sense

 

[FosterWallace]

Does anyone know if the CBSE is usually curved down like the NBMEs? I got a 68 EPC on 29 but my raw score was 70% correct, for example.

Furthermore, do you guys think its realistic to get this up to a ~75 by Feb 3? I get a lot of micro and biochem questions wrong, I think I can cram that stuff hard before the exam...

 

[Mirizzi]

Furthermore, do you guys think its realistic to get this up to a ~75 by Feb 3? I get a lot of micro and biochem questions wrong, I think I can cram that stuff hard before the exam...

You can def increase your score; you have plenty of time to improve your weak points in micro.

You got this!

 

[FosterWallace]

You can def increase your score; you have plenty of time to improve your weak points in micro.

You got this!

Thanks bro