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.

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

Aug 07, 2017

Your MS3 Survival Guide: How to Ace Your Shelf Exams

Here’s how one successful med student created a study schedule to prepare for his Shelf exams. Note: In March 2020, we published another medical student’s recommendations for building shelf exam study schedules and succeeding in your third year of med school. Read the interview here. Third year is a long road of challenges, including Shelf exams,

Jul 12, 2017

Cram Fighter Partners with BoardVitals to Provide Shelf Exam Resources

Learn how Cram Fighter and BoardVitals are teaming up to bring medical students early access to some new resources as they prepare for Shelf exams. We’re excited to announce our new collaboration with BoardVitals, a leader in online medical and healthcare specialty exams and continuing education. Through our collaboration, BoardVitals will provide benefits to Cram

Jan 27, 2016

Get a Blueprint Prep Coach to Help You Build the Perfect USMLE or COMLEX Study Plan

We launched a coaching service to help our users get the most out of their study plans. We’re happy to announce the launch of our new coaching service. We added this service to lend a hand to current Cram Fighter who need a little bit more guidance when preparing for the USMLE or COMLEX. Coaches

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