(This post was originally published on 3rd April 2015. It was added to my blog by taking permission from the writer. Thank you, Dr. Nadia Khan, for allowing me to add your post to this blog)
Dear All,
It has finally sunk in that I have passed the exam .For all those who are planning to appear for PLAB 1 in due course must be wondering how and from where to study. I truly believe that this forum has all it takes to pass the exam. Please see my personal experience below;
I appeared for IELTS exam on 10th Jan 2015 & started gathering material from the PLAB Facebook page, until I received IELTS result on 24th Jan 2015.
I gathered all material from the file section of this forum. Particularly, drive of Dr. Abu Hamza named as “All what you need for IELTS and PLAB” was really helpful. I downloaded Samson’s notes, Samson’s mocks and all other mocks that are present in this drive. Along with these, there are other old mocks in the file section which I downloaded too.
I used to divide my day into two halves. In the first half, I used to go through Samson’s notes thoroughly and in the second half I used to do mocks. I started with “1700 mocks” first. While reading mocks, I also used to develop understanding of “options” given in the questions by looking them on OHMC, OHCS or www.patient.co.uk. I jotted down important points from these sources on Samson notes. Quite frankly, I didn’t get enough time to thoroughly go through these books.Also,its better to do mocks with clear understanding. As I have noticed that some mocks were repeated in the exam & some mocks were twisted. So merely remembering keys is not going to help. If you are unsure about something then you should post on this forum and seek opinions of other doctors. Also, it is very useful to see questions posted by other members.
After finishing Samson notes & mocks once, I started revising them. I revised these notes,1700 mocks and Samson mocks twice. Please also note that there are some wrong keys in the mocks too & if you are not convinced with the answers then post them on the forum to clarify any doubts. In my personal opinion, going through mocks is very important as this develops your skills of solving questions.
Two weeks before exam, I started doing Samson mocks again with the time limit to put myself in the similar condition as exam–since I did these mocks before, I used to set time limit of 2:15 hours.
Finally, two days before exam, I skimmed through the difficult questions of 1700 mocks (which I answered wrong before) and few topics of CNS, CVS,RESP and GIT. Please try to finish exam 10 minutes before so that you can quickly go through the questions on which you have doubts.
Please bear in mind that the way I prepared for the exam is not set in stone—so you can plan after analysing your strengths & shortcomings.
I hope it helps.
Nadia Khan.
