Blueprint Med School Blog (formerly Cram Fighter & Med School Tutors)

The blog for Blueprint Medical, supporting your MedEd journey with our exam study planner, tutoring, residency consulting, and advanced boards.

What’s the Best Med School Study Planner?

Matriculating into medical school is an exceptional feat, and all who manage it should feel an enormous sense of pride and accomplishment. Once you enter those hallowed halls of preclinical lectures, small group sessions, physical exam essentials, and patient interactions, many students wonder one thing: “How do I succeed on Step 1 and Step 2?”

Oct 13, 2022

How to Study For Shelf Exams: A Tutor’s Guide

As you progress through medical school and the structure of your educational curriculum evolves, how you learn will also change. The most dramatic transition happens when you start your clinical rotations. In the process, you move from classroom-based or online learning with content developed by your medical school (e.g., lectures, online modules, and labs) to

Sep 27, 2022

How Long Should You Study for Step 1?

“Your Step 1 score is the most important part of your application.” For many medical students, this was the message we heard throughout our preclinical years. According to a 2021 NRMP survey, residency program directors cited USMLE Step 1 scores as the number one factor in granting an interview. Now, you may be wondering: if

Aug 23, 2022

Does Step 3 Matter?

As you adapt to being an intern, it’s easy to push Step 3 out of your mind. Some residencies don’t require you to take it until your third year, which can be tempting, but not the best idea! Your upper-level residents will tell you, “Don’t worry about it. No one cares about Step 3, and

Aug 18, 2022

How to Retain Information in Medical School

Ask anyone in medical school, and they’ll tell you that it isn’t the actual content that’s hard. “Then what’s hard?” you might ask. It’s the sheer amount of information that you are expected to retain. Luckily, we have three effective study strategies for medical school that you can start using immediately to help you retain

Aug 11, 2022

Day in the Life of a Medical Student: Clinicals

Congratulations on making it to clinicals! It’s been a challenging road thus far. You’ve endured hours of lectures, anatomy labs, and the colossal hurdle of Step 1. Now, you have the opportunity to take everything you’ve learned over the past two years and apply it to “the real world,” so to speak. I remember the

Aug 09, 2022

Day in the Life of a Medical Student: Preclinicals

So, you’re starting medical school preclinicals. Those were the days! This is one of the periods of training that I look back upon fondly. On the long road of medical training, you rarely have the type of freedom you’ll find as a preclinical medical student. The sheer amount of independent study time and flexibility to

Mar 10, 2021

Using Study Blocks to Align Step 1 Resources with Your Course Topics

We discuss a lesser-known but powerful use case for Cram Fighter’s study blocks feature. Among Cram Fighter’s many useful features for building and organizing a USMLE Step 1 or COMLEX Level 1 study schedule is our Study Blocks feature. Study Blocks are specific schedules within your overall “life” schedule or calendar, used to define units

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