We share our insights, including study planning stats, about how med students create shelf exam study schedules.
Updated March 2025
The shelf exams are standardized subject-specific exams created by the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME). They contain a wide range of questions that have been retired, or “shelved”, from previous USMLE exams. Some questions bear great resemblance to the ones you may come across on your USMLE tests. These questions assess your scientific and clinical problem solving, and you will encounter shelf exams at several points during your time in medical school.
The complete subject list of the NBME “off-the-shelf” subject exams is shown under their major categories in bold.
Medical students most often use Blueprint’s Med School Study Planner to build study schedules as they prepare for the USMLE Step 1 board exam, but we also support building granular daily study schedules for the seven Clinical Science Shelf Exams.
For example, below you can see a breakdown of the shelf exams that Blueprint Study Planner learners studied for most often in the past 12 months:
Med School Study Planner can help med students build study plans for each one of these seven Clinical Science Shelf exams. We support hundreds of shelf exam resources including books, lectures, Qbanks, and flashcards, and you can always request to add your favorite resource or create a custom resource if it’s not already available.
In the tables below, we’ve ranked the five most popular study resources for each shelf exam as of February 2025. The ranking is based on how often other students have added these resources to their shelf exam study schedules using Blueprint’s Med School Study Planner:
These aren’t necessarily the best resources, they’re simply the most frequently used ones, so they may serve as a good starting point as you select your own study resources. Alternatively, you can validate your shelf exam resources by looking at what other med students are using most often.
If you have shelf exams coming up, use Blueprint’s Med School Study Planner to build your personalized shelf exams study schedule.
And for more tips and advice on how to study for shelf exams during your clinical rotations, check out our blog post: How I Balanced My Clinical Rotations with Shelf Exam Studying 💙
