Strategizing
The PG Entrance exams, as I see it, are like a battle for me, and for every battle, I like to have a strategy working towards the goal. The problem is that so far, I have been brought up on a fare of examinations where we are supposed to write out grotesquely long answers to questions with minimal clinical importance. Then, when I temporarily decided to go for USMLE, I studied everything in the hyper-clinical mode, which is just awesome, but absolutely no good for the Indian PG Exams. I had to switch modes once again when parental and family pressure forced me to change tracks entirely and made me travel towards the Indian PG way. Needless to say, I did not give up the American dream easily, and the battle was bitter. But now, after the war is lost and won, the internal conflicts resolved and the period of sulking over, I have decided to throw myself into preparing for the Indian PG exams with all gusto.
The plan is this: every month, I will complete a scheduled list of subjects, based mainly on MCQ browsing from year wise question papers, while referencing the basic texts when the necessity arises. At the start of every month I will outline the goals for the month and proceed accordingly.
But, in order to keep in touch with all the subjects, I have decided to start working on year wise papers as well, at the same time. With two editions of the AIIMS and PGI Chandigarh entrance exams each, one edition of the All India PGMEE, and state PG entrance I have about 6 papers to browse per year, a total of 1300 MCQs per year. And take it down for the last decade or 15 years, and that is a scary number of exams and questions. So the risk of running out of time before running out of reading materials is rather palpably true. My point here is that I am working on the premise that studying subject wise only is probably not the wisest thing to do, because as the time for the exams nears, I will find that I have forgotten the entire crap I had digested the first month of the preparations! Hence, each week, I plan to go through the question paper of one year’s paper. This comes down to about 30-40 questions per day depending on which exam I am taking down for the week, and, in the longer perspective, is not that much of a task.
This is to be reinforced with an obscene number of test taking from at least two PG training institutes. I have seen that I function the best when there is an insane amount of examination pressure on me, and I am pretty sure that after the lethargy of 5.5 years of medical school, most of us Indian medical graduates are not too unlikely. Tentatively, I have decided to start test taking on full papers from February onwards and subject-wise tests from May onwards, giving me some time to get my act together.
There is a detailed list of month-wise break up of subjects that I have made depending upon the test schedules but I am not going to put it up here. Instead, I will use this blog as a step-by-step audit working at a microscopic, daily level. So, in a post on the first of every month, I will outline the goals and drive towards them for the next 4 weeks.
Now that the basic strategy is set (I am sure you understood none of that!) in my next post (due later today) I will outline the general goals for the month of January and the day-by-day break up of goals for the next week or so.
Meanwhile, before I close this post, I would like to mention that I have also opened up a Twitter channel for the blog where I will be posting some of the best MCQs which attract my attention as I go on studying. You can follow me there as well. The link is:
So, till later today, good bye!
