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For IMGs in the middle of UWorld who are tempted to keep some questions back "for later".
By Dr. Marish Asudani · Published
No. UWorld is a learning resource you do once, system by system: unused, 1 system, tutor mode, untimed, 20 questions a block, every question in the system. The questions you save were never opened, so they show up brand new late in your prep and your scores drop. A system is finished when all 5 checks below are true. Your timed, mixed practice comes from your NBMEs.
99% of IMGs won't do this"I'm saving some questions for random mode." I hear it every week. It sounds disciplined.
It is how you end up learning a system 3 weeks before your exam.
Most IMGs decide a system is done because the days ran out. My students decide it on 5 pieces of evidence. Here is why, and here are the 5.
You study a system for 5 or 6 days, do about 70% of its UWorld, and move on feeling finished. But the 30% you skipped was not held back. It was never opened.
Here is what happens next. You will never complete that system. Those questions, and those marks, come towards the end. Those topics are new, because you've never done them. So when you finally do them on random, your scores drop, and you decide UWorld is not useful at all.
Random mode tests whether you can recognise a system out of context. It cannot teach you something you never opened.
Random mode also feels productive, but every block jumps from 1 system to another, and nothing consolidates. When you do 1 system at a time, the reps stack on top of each other and the patterns lock in.
UWorld is not a first-pass or second-pass resource that you rush through to say it's done. It's a learning resource. You do it once, and you do it in system mode, because while you do it you're learning a system and assessing how much of it you understand and retain.
It also comes last in a system, not first. My system method, in order (the full version, with the order of the systems: how to study any system →):
Tap any step to open it.
Try the First Aid Guide on renal, freeThe page-by-page teacher for First Aid, step 2 of the method above. Renal is free.
Open renal →The settings, every block, during the systems:
Wrong answers and right-for-the-wrong-reason answers get bookmarked, and after 2 blocks every bookmark is traced back to its First Aid line and highlighted. The full RPSR method →
▶How to solve UWorld and AmbossMy video. Watch it before your first UWorld block. It's on your Vault schedule as a task.A system is finished when all 5 are true. Not 4.
Clear that system's FA Foundation AnkiOpen the deck, pick the system you just finished in UWorld, and clear it while the pages are still warm.
Open FA Foundation Anki →Nothing, in total. It moves. A system run properly takes a day or 2 longer than a system run to 70%, and it removes the 3 weeks of emergency relearning the 70% version leaves you with at the end.
How many days each system gets, and in what order (easy systems first, cardio last): how to study any system → · e.g. renal in 6 days →
You finish UWorld system by system, and your timed, mixed practice comes from your NBMEs, after every system is done.
It starts in the dedicated week before your first form: 2 timed, offline blocks of 20 from NBME 26 every day. Offline, always: online gives you 50 questions in 75 minutes and inflates your score by 4 to 6%. Then NBME 27, 200 questions, 10 blocks of 20. Every block after that is mixed and timed, which is exactly the random practice you were trying to save questions for.
The whole NBME system, offline, in one place: NBMEs offline: the complete system → · Your first form: taking your first NBME →
Open your current system in UWorld and look at the completion percentage, not the score. If it isn't 100%, that system isn't behind you. It's in front of you, waiting.
On the Vault, the schedule tracks every UWorld block per system for you: solve, log the score, review, block by block, until the system is done.
Want a day-by-day schedule that tells you exactly what to study next? The Vault builds it around your exam date.
Build my system-by-system schedule →When is a system actually finished? — the checklist in full.
How to solve UWorld: RPSR — Read, Pre-solve, Solve, Review.
How to use Mehlman — the step before Anki in every system.
How to use the Vault Anki decks — Foundation vs Booster.
Completing First Aid — the 4 readings.
NBMEs offline — where your timed practice comes from.