How To Prepare For APMLE Part 1 Boards

The American Podiatric Medical Licensing Examination (APMLE) Part I can feel like it is lingering over your head for the first two years of podiatric medical school with the few months prior to the exam being the most intense of all. Although there is a beneficial component to the anxiety, as it allows you to stay on top of your studies, at times the stress can seem debilitating. I hope the following words of advice are beneficial to second-year students or anyone planning to take the exam in the near future.

As you begin your second year of studies, I recommend printing out the “Exam Content Outlines” found in the Candidate Information Bulletin published on the APMLE website. This outline gives you a breakdown of every subject on the exam, the percentage of the exam each subject represents and topics within each subject that you may see on the test. While you take courses such as pharmacology, microbiology and pathology in your second year, use the outline to create somewhat of a study guide. This should be beneficial to you in those respective classes. When it is time to buckle down for the purpose of focused studying for board exams, you will not have to waste any time drafting study guides or notes. Additionally, set aside a few hours a week as early as the start of second year in order to revisit first-year courses and their topics from the outline.

My first year was a learning curve in the sense that it took me a while to figure out what study methods worked best for me. As second-year students, you should know by now what works for you. You made it this far so trust yourself, take those acquired study skills and try to maximize the results not just for the exam, but beyond the exam as well. I cannot emphasize this enough but it is very important that you learn to retain, instead of merely to regurgitate, information for one of your course exams.

One way of learning to retain involves understanding what you are learning. Courses such as pharmacology and pathology incorporate a lot of physiology. By understanding the former two disciplines in depth, you are simultaneously reviewing much of the physiology you learned during your first year. Another way of learning to retain involves “repetition, repetition, repetition” as my anatomy professor would always say. Make sure you take a few hours during the week to review everything you learned recently. You will be surprised at how much of it you can recall when the time arrives for dedicated study for board exams.

No matter when you decide to start studying, you definitely should not procrastinate. Students will give you all sorts of advice on creating an efficient study schedule but one thing you will hear across the board is that it takes everyone a week or two just to figure out what works for them. Most students end up changing their game plan almost entirely at some point and you want to account for that time with a buffer, which is why starting early on is important.

Lastly, do not forget to breathe. Work hard not only so you can do well on the exam but so you can take well-deserved breaks during your studies without feeling too guilty about them. Even if you are not a group study person, it helps to study next to a colleague so you motivate one another.

This next year will be a challenging and rewarding one but before you know it, you will be in clinic witnessing the product of all your hard work. In the meantime, congratulate yourself for getting this far and use your accomplishments to propel you through this mission.

Follow Rami Basatneh on Twitter at @RamiBasatneh .