Hello everyone,
I’m really happy I passed PLAB 1 on the 18th of Dec 2017. It was a blessing and I can not believe I’m writing my experience to you all. Thank God I scored 165, which is something I never dreamt of. I will try to place my study plan and my whole experience in an organized way.
My Time Frame
Two months (Sept and Oct). But I took some time before that to do my own research about the exam, collect material, organize it into folders and how to study. I took leave from work but believe me they weren’t purely dedicated to studying; I faced a lot of distractions.
Material
I followed Naseer’s guidance for study sources and it helped me a lot.
1) 1700 Dr. Khalid’s: twice. First one systems-wise from a book available in the main PLAB group and the second one from random 1707 corrected.
2) Samson’s notes once.
3) Samson’s question bank system-wise: this source is not available. I took it from a friend who attended Samson academy.
4) PLABable (only 4 exams). You will find these in the main PLAB group. I used them in the last few days to practice time management. I did them in two hours instead of three so I could be comfortable in the real exam. That practice helped me a lot; I managed to finish within two and half hours. I wasted the last 30 minutes looking at people.
5) I used Oxford and patients.co.uk only for reference.
My Plan
One and a half month before the exam, I went through Samson’s notes first (say cardio notes). I read them, then I solve the related Samson question bank system-wise and finally 1700 system wise. I went system by system.
In the last 2 weeks, I did 1707 random version, and 4 exams of PLABable. I scored between 145 to 155 usually. That was reassuring.
On the day of the exam, I walked out of the exam room really convinced that I did really bad. I even expected myself to fail. I found the exam very tricky and hard so you can imagine how stressed I was waiting for the result.
Result Day. Then it was the big day I opened my GMC account with shaking hands to see that I passed with a score of 165.
It was a tough journey but my hard work paid off. I’m not the type of people who spend long hours among books, l get bored easily, I spent hours on Facebook and WhatsApp. I was distracted by many things for weeks. But if I can do it you can do it too.
My Advice
1) It’s an easy exam if you have a good plan.
2) I never did Swammy’s mocks or Samson’s mocks (I did the question banks as I mentioned) but if I had time I would have done them. The more questions you practice the better you will do in the exam.
3) PLABable is very useful. If I had time I would have done it extensively (there are 8 available but I did 4 with without going through explanations). It contains very useful and elaborated explanations.
4) Please do 1700 as many times as possible. It’s our lifeline.
I wish sucess to everyone!
(This post was originally written on 25 December 2017. It was added to my blog by taking permission from the writer. Thank you, Suha Abdulhai, for allowing me to add your post to this blog)
