Shelf exam

Imagine you’re a new MS3 just starting out on clinical rotations. You’d like to eventually pursue a career in surgery, but your first clerkship happens to be in psychiatry. You go through the motions of the rotation, taking detailed histories and obtaining collateral from your patients. Generally, you perform well and receive solid evaluations from read more…

Matching into residency is the ultimate goal and arguably the purpose of medical school. The years spent in the library—starting with the basic sciences and physiology, proceeding to clinical medicine and rotations, and followed by subinternships—are all to get you into a program that will train you to become an attending physician. It’s important to read more…

It’s common for students to feel overwhelmed or even panicked when put under the spotlight for a high-stakes, timed, multiple-choice test. Many questions can be tautological or filled with distractors, irrelevant information, and a slew of lab tests and diagnostics that obscure the case and the correct answer. However, having a systematic approach can demystify read more…

The best way to learn medical content is to have real patient encounters that expose you to a real person with an emotional connection to the case, workup, and outcomes. This is why the clinical year of medical school exists, so you can begin to encounter patients and hopefully continue this learning throughout residency. However, medical read more…

Studying for the shelf exams and Step 2 can be an intimidating endeavor! Your goal this year is to get ready for residency and match with your dream program, but what do programs care most about? Rotation grades (for which the shelf plays a major role), your Step 1 performance (which is now pass/fail as read more…