First of all, congratulations on making it this far in your medical school career! You are now entering your third year of medical school, and the combination of studying for Shelf exams, Step 2, and honoring your clerkships is daunting at best.
The organization and time management of M3 year can seem nearly impossible, which is where Blueprint’s Med School Study Planner comes in. If you’re looking for a completely FREE (yes, free!) way to schedule your Step 2/Shelf preparation with the click of a button, then this smart study planner is your new secret weapon.
Say goodbye to spreadsheets and hello to a study planner that automatically schedules (and reschedules) your tasks so you can spend less time planning and more time studying. Here’s our quickstart guide to get the most out of Blueprint’s Study Planner during your M3 year!
Step #1: Create Your Calendars
As an M3 student, you’ll need to balance Step 2 preparation with your shelf exam studying. So, the first thing you should do is create two calendars: a calendar for Step 2, and a calendar for the next shelf exam you will be taking. You will be asked to select a date for each.
For now, just make an estimate of when you will be taking Step 2, and add in you should have the exact course exam date already.
Step #2: Enter Your Resources
Next, you will need to enter which resources you will be using. Blueprint’s Study Planner has a full index and taxonomy of all the top resources for USMLE Step 1, Step 2 CK, and Step 3), COMLEX (Level 1 and Level 2 CE), Shelf exams, and your medical school course work. Whatever you’re looking for, you can probably find it in Blueprint Study Planner (even your course textbooks). You can also explore resource bundles based on data from thousands of active learners!
At this point, your study planner will create a calendar that evenly distributes your resources throughout your study period.
As you can see, you have a great deal of flexibility by being able to move tasks freely and mark them based on how much you were able to do!
The Magical “Rebalance” Button
One of your most powerful tools is the magical “Rebalance” button which automatically recalibrates your calendar to make sure all of your tasks are completed by the date specified. So, if you fall behind in your studying, just click the “rebalance” button and your schedule will redistribute your unfinished tasks to future study days.
This is excellent if you have a particularly busy clinic day or a surgery that runs a little long and can’t complete the same amount of studying every day—we get it, you’re human!
Step #3: Customize Your Study Schedule
In the top right of your screen, you’ll see an “Edit Schedule” button. Once selected, you can navigate to the schedule you would like to set parameters for and add your study start and end dates.
Study Plan Dates
In the “Study Plan Dates” tab, you can reselect the dates which you input previously based on changing schedules.
Time Off and Workload
In the “Time Off and Workload Tab,” you can input recurring days off (i.e. every Sunday), vacations and their dates, and you can manipulate days of the week to be “Light, Normal, or Heavy” workloads.
For example, if you have lecture and small group every Monday, and Thursday, make those a “Light Workload” day. If you always have Fridays off, make that a “Heavy Workload” day. This will allow Blueprint Study Planner to be as flexible as possible depending on your day-to-day- life.
You can even select a particular day to be a “catch up day” to finish questions or other assignments without worrying about other tasks. After any change made, Blueprint Study Planner will rebalance to keep you on track for success.
Subject, Systems, and Resource Order
The “Subject, Systems, and Resource Order” tab allows you to choose if you want to go by subject and in which order, if you want to complete one resource at a time, or if you want to go by organ system.
“Overload” Warnings
Importantly, Blueprint Study Planner will estimate how much time per day you will be spending studying and will give you warnings when it is too much. Please take these warnings seriously—sleep and self-care are almost as important as studying itself! Plus, you can’t take a test if you’re falling asleep at the keyboard.
Ultimately, getting through the trials of M3 year with shelf exams, Step 2, and clinical rotations is challenging. Hopefully, this short tutorial to Blueprint’s Med School Study Planner will help you utilize it to its fullest potential to achieve your goal!
Looking for more resources for M2 year? Check out these other posts on the blog!
