3rd year of Medical School will be the hardest year you have. It will be the first time you have to manage both studying and being at the hospital. At the end of each of your Core Rotations you will have to take a SHELF exam. For a lot of students this can be daunting because they’ve gotten used to being able to spend all their time studying for exams their first two years. Learning how to split your time between your rotation and studying can be challenging and at times exhausting. I’m going to give you my tips and tricks for how to prepare and do well on all your shelf exams.
All shelf exams are built differently but the format and the way to study for them is going to be the same. Most schools will tell you to focus on UWORLD as soon as possible and try to finish it before each shelf exam. While Uworld is a great tool and should be used, it will not be of any help to you unless you have a good understanding of the topics to start. I recommend starting by watching videos on all high yield topics first along with taking notes. Once you have a foundation for the subject incorporating UWORLD topic by topic instead of immediately jumping to mixed blocks. For example if I was taking the Internal Medicine Shelf I would start by learning Cardiology which is one of the most high yield topics and then doing blocks of 10-20 questions for it. While doing that I would start reviewing Pulmonology and after I have finished the review for it I would add it to my blocks and continue onwards with additional topics.
The single biggest asset you have for SHELF exams are practice NBMEs. These are exams with real previously used questions written in the same way as the questions you will experience on exam day. I recommend doing every single SHELF exam you have available. Finishing every shelf exam and reviewing them is more important than completing UWORLD. There is a strong chance you will get a question worded similarly or of related topics on your exam. The practice exams also give you a look into how the examiners want you to think when taking the exam. Taking and even retaking each practice exam was the single best decision I made when studying for my shelf exams.
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