Board Exam Preparation: 9–12 Months Out

Why Starting Early Changes Everything

If you’ve begun planning your board exam preparation 9 to 12 months out, you’re already ahead of most exam candidates. Take a brief, rare moment to give yourself a pat on the back.

The fact that you’re starting now means you have the flexibility to study smarter, as well as with less stress and with a more assured positive outcome. To study smarter means to study more effectively and more efficiently.

Studying early gives you the time and confidence to plan your prep right. Starting late often hurts less from lack of time and more from ill-considered study, a kind of study born from a rushing past planning out what should be learned and the best way of learning it. This leaves those with the least time left for study often ending up spending their limited time least effectively.

Allow me here to share some tips on your exam prep study process.

Break Up Your Prep Into Step 1 and Step 2

The best way to overcome hesitancy or frank exam prep procrastination is to break up the prep into two parts.

Step 1 entails familiarizing yourself with the exam scope and setting out a prep plan. Step 2 entails systematically studying the topics in the way you’ve planned out in Step 1. Although Step 2 is the more time-intensive step, it is Step 1 that serves to make your Step 2 efforts much more effective and efficient.

The added irony is that a) because Step 1 comes first, it is the step where exam prep procrastination takes hold and prevents all further progress, and yet b) Step 1 is quick and easy to do, AND its completion decreases procrastination for undertaking Step 2 while greatly improving Step 2’s effectiveness and efficiency.

In this way, taking the easy first step opens up progressing through the harder second step.

In Step 1, review and get comfortable with the exam format. Understand the major exam topics. Review the exam blueprint in detail. Begin noticing which topics you know much about and others that you’re less familiar with. Then, assess your intuitions by taking a pretest that’s designed to let you assess strengths and weaknesses on all the main exam topics.

Once you have a prep plan, you’re ready for Step 2. Establish a light, steady study rhythm. Two to five hours a week is plenty. This pace gives you time to absorb and return for refreshers – as you should do as part of your ‘interval learning,’ which is also called ‘spaced repetition learning.’

Two Complementary Points to Keep in Mind

Be Flexible: What you planned out in Step 1 is your best initial guess at what kind of studying will be most effective for you and at what amount of study time you should allocate. As you proceed through your studies, monitor your study and your ability to maintain the pace you established. Revise as necessary. And, because you have started early, you actually have the time to make adjustments without falling into a frenzy.
Be Habitual: When you start studying, it’s extremely helpful to conduct your study habitually, establishing the times and places for study and then maintaining them. Again, adjust as needed. If and when you break your study pattern, don’t beat yourself up. Instead, get right back into those patterns without further ado.

Now, when you are preparing for your boards, you need a resource or two. After all, what is it you’re going to prepare from?

The Pass Machine and Its Role in Your Study Prep

Here, let me share how a structured course, like one from The Pass Machine, will help you achieve effective and efficient study that then converts to board exam success:

It provides a pretest that shows you, through realistic board-style multiple-choice questions, your level of preparedness on the topics around which your board exam is built.
The high-yield lectures present all exam-relevant information while excluding anything not board-relevant. And these lectures, being designed for board preparation, are organized, comprehensive, and explain the areas of information that are frequent points of confusion. Further, the lectures themselves include many board-exam MCQs to demonstrate how the knowledge you are acquiring will need to be deployed on the exam.
The large Question or QBank includes MCQs that are board-reflective, are balanced in terms of topic coverage, have realistic response options, and include explanations. The QBanks can be used in two ways – and you should use them in both ways for the greatest benefit. They are used in flashcard mode, in which you review and answer one question at a time, and review the correct response and answer explanation. This is the study mode of using a question bank. The second way a QBank from The Pass Machine is used is in Exam Mode, in which you set your practice exam parameters – number of questions and topic areas – and answer all the questions. This is the mode that provides practice in moving through a realistic exam. It desensitizes you, allows you to assess your pace, and shows you your areas of strength and weakness.
And, not to be underestimated, The Pass Machine opens a community of other exam candidates who are looking for and giving advice, looking for study partners, or simply looking for a community undergoing the same stressful exam prep.

The Next Step Is Yours

If you or a colleague has an upcoming exam, this is the time to research exam prep options, including The Pass Machine. We’ve served tens of thousands of physicians preparing for their boards. The Pass Machine has withstood the test of time.