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.

How to Use Blueprint’s Med School Study Planner to Prep for All Your Med School Exams

Finally, you’re done! You spent hours on Excel creating a study plan, and you’re letting out a sigh of relief. But your joy is short-lived: your professor adds another suggested book to your reviewing list, a friend insists a lecture series is a must-have based on their experiences prepping for Step, or you get an

Apr 20, 2023

5 Note-Taking Methods to Keep You Organized During Medical School

As a medical student, staying organized and retaining vast amounts of information is crucial for success in exams and clinical practice. Memorization and improved understanding of so much information can only come through repetition, and doing this in an effective way will require some serious organization skills. In this post, we’ll dive into five note-taking

Feb 23, 2023

3 Tips to Help You Study For Your Internal Medicine Shelf Exam

As a med student, shelf exams serve as important milestones for you to measure your learning progress and identify areas where you need improvement before Step 2. Shelf exams are often seen as a dry-run for the USMLEs and provide you with valuable experience in taking standardized exams. By evaluating your understanding of the material,

Dec 13, 2022

How to Ace the Surgery Shelf Exam

The general surgery clerkship is known for being one of the most challenging rotations for third-year medical students. You spend long hours in the wards and operating room, navigate a hectic schedule with frequent calls, and find yourself left with little time to study in between. After weeks of this busy schedule on different surgery

Nov 17, 2022

Best Shelf Exam Study Resources: A Comparison & Breakdown

Balancing your clinical responsibilities with studying for shelf exams can be daunting. What’s more, there are so many resources it can be equally intimidating to figure out how to study. However, your shelf exams are crucial for setting yourself up for success on Step 2 (especially important now that Step 1 is pass/fail), so it’s

Nov 03, 2022

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

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

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