How long shelf exam

The questions are not just your typical multiple questions wherein you just have to eliminate all the wrong answers. Thus, it requires critical thinking. Of course, you have to factor in as well that the shelves are timed. Since shelf exams are retired Step 1 and 2 questions in the first place, you can expect it to be similar to the USMLEs. The Steps are challenging in its natural form. One could be driven to insanity with the immense stress and responsibilities a medical student has to bear as he goes on with his clinical rotations.

With a shelf exam waiting for MS3 students after each core rotation, this means that they have to balance life within the clinical and academic setting. The question is, how is it possible for you to juggle your rotations and studies? Below are some of the tips you can rely on so that you can adequately prepare for your shelf exams.

The shelves will test you on the bread and butter of medical conditions. These are easily witnessed as you conquer your 4-week rotation.

Make reading and studying a daily habit of yours. This enables you to adequately layout everything you have to study throughout your rotations and helps you avoid unwanted periods of cramming and procrastination. Of course, the purpose of creating a schedule in the first place is to help you balance and squeeze in all the material and content in a very short amount of time. Not everything has to go as planned. This is something that you should know by heart by now as a med student in your MS3.

Therefore, reducing time to be anxious and utilizing more of your time to actually sit down and read. Connecting the dots from my previous point, you also have to understand that there will be variables affecting your study timeline that are way out of your control.

You are still your own person. Change of plans is bound to happen. Just make sure that you become creative to find some time to squeeze in a study session as long as your body and mind permits so. Only a few high yield review materials can do the job perfectly of preparing you for the shelf exams. Practice questions are pretty much just what they are, a way to simulate the shelf exams.

However, the power these practice questions hold in preparing you for the shelves can not be undermined. Knowing the material can be acquired by reading, but mastery usually comes along by doing practice exams over and over.

Thankfully, the NBME provides us with practice exams as well. These are your best chances of gaining a glimpse of the contents of the actual shelf exams. Make sure to take your practice exams weeks before your shelf. Keep the Right Perspective.

Balance Group and Solo Studying. Are shelf exams curved? There is no curve. For the scaled score, a 70 on an easy exam should equal a 70 on a hard exam.

They adjust the scaled score based on difficulty level. The exam is criterion based, which means there is not a limit to the number of students who can pass or get a certain score. How do you study for shelf exams?

Try to take at least one practice exam a week or two before the shelf exam. No matter what your score, remember that you still have one to two weeks of studying. If you can't fit one in that far in advance, try not to take a practice exam in the last few days before the real deal.

My main resource for this exam was Step Up to Medicine. The book was very wordy and long-winded but it does provide a thorough overview of the most high yield topics in internal medicine.

I carried Pocket Medicine with me while in the hospital and would study each case i saw on the wards. This book is a quick study reference and its small size makes it a perfect book to tote around in your white coat. I have never read any of the other books in the Blueprint series, but after hearing that OBGYN was one of the more difficult exams I wanted a thorough resource to use to prepare for the test.

If you find yourself strapped for time while preparing for the shelf, either read the summary page at the end of each chapter or pick an alternate resource like Case Files. To access this question bank, create an account on APGO using your institution email address. Focus on gynecology for the shelf. It seemed a large amount of my questions focused on urogynecology so make sure you understand the difference in diagnosis and treatment of the various types of incontinence.

Also Be aware of diagnosis and treatment of the most common STIs. Pediatrics Shelf. I believe my Pediatrics Shelf was by far the most difficult exam I have taken all year. Do not waste your time memorizing vaccination schedules or developmental milestones for this exam. Family Medicine Shelf. This shelf exam was a hodge podge of topics, but I felt the test was relatively straightforward. If at all possible, try to take this shelf exam later in your 3rd year after being exposed to a wide variety of medicine.

There are no UWorld questions specific for Family Medicine. I would recommend using your. Under the medical student tab there are 10 question quizzes that test on a broad range of Family Medicine topics. Each question has a detailed explanation. While the AAFP questions have good content, the style of questions are much shorter vignettes than that of the shelf.

I would recommend focusing on preventative medicine. Reviewing the AAFP guidelines are sufficient for this exam. I also recommend reading the Step Up to Medicine ambulatory medicine chapter and the preventative medicine chapter in Step 2 Secrets. Surgery Shelf. The NBME shelf exams were originally scaled to a mean of 70 and a standard deviation of 8. Keep in mind, this is not recalculated every year.

The actual average in a given year has tended to creep up and is usually somewhere in the low-to-mid 70s. The exam is a web-based test consisting of questions, the majority of which are single-best answer multiple choice questions, administered over 2 hours and 45 minutes. Why is it called a shelf exam? However, the majority of clerkships in the U. How much does Nbme cost? Are shelf exams standardized? All this arbitrariness can feel unfair and frustrating to medical students, which is what makes shelf exams so important.

As a standardized multiple choice test examining everyone on the same material, the shelf exam is the only truly objective tool for evaluating students on their clinical clerkships. How do I prepare for Nbme shelf exams?