How I Prepared for the AMC MCQ Exam.

I am a Medical Graduate who completed my medical degree in Russia. After completing my degree I decided to move to Australia to start working as a doctor. Little did I know it's a very hard and a long path. I had no one to explain or guide me through this journey so here I am letting everyone know how my journey here in Australia as a medical graduate. I hope my blogs will help the International Medical Graduates to get an idea about the pathway they have to follow if they are planning to come to Australia.

I graduated in January 2018 and I moved to Australia on April 2018. Then I Started preparing for AMC CAT Exam without having any idea of when to sit for the exam and what to study. I checked the AMC website and decided on reading the Handbook of AMC MCQ. I tried to do that for few weeks, honestly that wasn't effective for me at all. I was just reading the questions and answers. Then I decided to find more information about effective ways of preparing for this exams. But It was a very tough task because I personally didn't know anyone who sat for this exam. Then I made a plan on how I will study for this exam and I told myself I will prepare in 3 months by myself and sit.

I heard about a lot of bridging courses we can follow to get through this exam, but I decided to study by myself for 3 months and give it a try. First let me tell you the books you have to get to prepare. John Murtagh latest Edition & Handbook for AMC MCQ. These are the books I referred to prepare for the exam. I'm a person who likes to have books as soft copies so I downloaded them. The most important next thing is to find 1 year of past recalls,I got them from  the Amedex group in Facebook.. This will help you to get an idea of the structure of questions and the topics you have to mainly concentrate on. I recommend to have few study partners who are serious and dedicated to help you through this journey.

First thing I did was Started doing recalls with my study partners. I had 3 partners who I studied with for about 5 hours a day. We found recalls and we started looking for answers to these questions referring  JM. We did this for all 3 months and we could finish recalls from 2017 August to 2018 August. Last Month I did 1 year of recalls with Doctor Seema from the IMG center to confirm my answers. This was very helpful to me at the exam. This gave me a lot of confidence knowing that I have completed almost all the questions I can before I sit for the exam. At night I read the handbook ,focused and wrote down the  important sentences from each question to refer to later during last few weeks. I didn't by heart the JM or Handbook to prepare for this exam. People may ask you to do so. But we all know how hard it is. I tried to make every theory logical and found my own ways to remember the different terms.

Then I subscribed to the AMC question bank and completed all the questions there by doing 90 questions a day. I did this to improve my timings before sitting for the exam. I also studied Only the pictures from the book of Anthology, because we get a lot of similar pictures from this book at the exam. I watched YouTube videos to understand easy ways to do statistic questions. Because statics questions were my least favorite. I revised ECG's, CTG's, Xrays, CT's & Fundoscopy during the last month making my own notes and easy ways to remember. 1 Week before the exam I completed all that I planned in preparing for the exam.

My advice is Last few days try to remain calm. Please don't listen to horror stories of others, because this exam experience is individual to everyone. Don't Compare yourself to anyone. Trust yourself. Don't postpone the exam, Book a date and make a plan to study. You will get through. Good Luck !!

Await for my next blog to find out my experience on the day of the exam. Cheers!!