I’m not great at cramming, so my study plan probably wont work for some of you. There are people that only study for about a month before the test and do fine, I (unfortunately for my time) am not one of those people. Here’s what I planned out for Phase I-
I know everyone’s institution does Gen Path prep differently. At ours, by the time you’re ready to prep for boards you have a summary of Robbins and Cotran and Zachary and McGavin (if you want our summaries, let me know in the comments). I was also gifted a really useful resource, that hopefully you’ve heard of- the Famke Aeffner and Cynthia de Vries 2013 compilation of R&C (8th ed) and McGavin (5th ed). Although it’s getting a little old, it’s largely still relevant (again, comment below if you’re interested in a copy).
So I reorganized my textbook summaries to follow the Aeffner and de Vries summary and planned to start studying six months before the test (Mid-Sept). There are 8 sections in those notes, so three weeks a section is 24 weeks (of the 26). Plus starting one month before the test going through each section again in three days. That way I have about a week before the test to go through the things that are not making sense and read review articles.
Here are some links to great practices tests to utilize:
JPC tests: https://www.askjpc.org/vspo/studycenter.php
IHC Database (you need to ask the site creator for access, but the gen path questions are amazing): https://www.ihcdatabase.com/
If you attend the gen path course by CL Davis they do provide a practice test (or two?) – not sure if they give everyone access to those.
Let me know below if you have comments, suggestions, resources, or tips on getting through the next month before the big day!
Happy studying all!
