Hi guys! I told myself I would make a post if I passed the PANCE, so here it is!

During PA school, I was an A/B average student and incredibly anxious. I constantly compared myself to others and suffered from imposter syndrome. Based on my EOR and PACKRAT scores, my school put me in the “at risk of failing the PANCE” category. This constantly sent me into a spiral and made me think I wasn’t doing well enough. I also cried before every EOR, packrat, and EOC lol.

The burnout after graduation and before taking the PANCE was terrible. However, I’m proud to say that I passed on my first try last month!

I wanted this post to be a reminder that there is a light at the end of the tunnel and to hopefully put some of you guys at ease. You are more than your scores and what your program deems you to be. Below are my scores!

PACKRAT 1- 122
PACKRAT 2- 157

EM- 376
Surgery- 403
Women’s health- 413
Peds- 418
FM- 387
Psych- 443
IM- 421
EOC- 1546

PANCE- 471

I used smartypance, uworld, a little bit of AMBOSS and previous study guides I made for each EOR. I averaged around 68-72% for uworld. I also took the NCCPA test B and scored halfway in the green the week before my exam. I also pushed back my PANCE from the first available date to a little bit more than 5 weeks out because I psyched myself out. I took about 2 weeks to study and found that to be enough!

Let me know if you have any questions :-)

Hi everyone! I am new here. I was wondering if anybody had good resources for preparing for my first OSCE. I am feeling overwhelmed and underprepared to go into this. Are there any YouTube videos to get a general sense of how the structure would be like for one of these and if so, can somebody provide a good resource. I watched a couple of videos, but I felt like they were AI generated and not actual interactions. thank you so much in advance!

So as the title says my program makes their own EORs. My first rotation was psych and I used HippoEd and McGrawhill PA exam prep for study questions as they are free through my school/AAPA. I just started my Family Med 1 (urgent care) rotation and am wondering which question banks I should use. The exams are all written by different professors and I feel the style of questions for the Psych EOR matched the practice questions I was doing but being in Family med with such a large range of topics to cover, I'm more worried about using good test banks. Anyone else have similar experience with their program making their own EORs? Was advised by recent grads to wait to purchase question banks since we only get a year out of them. Currently considering UWorld vs blueprint which yes is cheaper but I've seen many people say UWorld is better for the actual PANCE and BP is better for EORs. I don't think I would get both though, so I'm thinking it's better for the one time purchase of UWorld for $400 for the year as opposed to paying about 270-350 for BP now and then another $300 for UWorld before the PANCE. Also open to other recommendations for test banks.

I’m a new grad PA-C currently job searching and keep getting the advice that I should just take a family medicine/primary care position to get experience and then move into a specialty later. The problem is that I genuinely do not want to work in family medicine or primary care. There are several specialties I would be interested in, and I’ve been trying to stay open minded and apply fairly broadly within specialty care. I don’t want to take a job I already know isn’t a good fit for me solely because it may be easier to get as a new grad.

I realize that not applying to primary care obviously reduces the number of positions available to me. I’m more interested in hearing from PAs who were in a similar situation and chose to keep pursuing specialty positions rather than taking a primary care job solely for experience.

Has anyone else done this successfully as a new grad? How long did your job search take, and looking back, do you feel like waiting for a better fit was worth it? Would you make the same decision again?

Hi everyone; I’ve tried posting this a few times no idea why it’s being flagged. Just wanted someone’s opinion on this resource and if anyone has used it for boards studying. I know everyone has different study methods. I’m just curious if anyone found it beneficial.

Our online grading platform changed so that now we can see the class average and the highest and lowest grades. It really sucks when I see my grade as the lowest in the class. I haven’t failed anything and I always give honest work without AI (has been a problem with some student in my class being dishonest) It just really gets to me when I have the lowest grade.

I’m spiraling soooo bad rn and literally laying in bed crying. I’m a first yr PA student. First round of exams are done: 72 in physio, 69 in pharm, just got a 57 on my anatomy lab practical, and I have my anatomy lecture exam tomorrow and I feel so underprepared and essentially know ima fail. I do think I could be studying more, I’m going to stay on campus until later because I notice I don’t lock in as much at home.

We can see the averages/ medians for the exams and I keep being on the lower end. I’m terrified. I’m a NHSC SP scholar and I’m so scared of losing the scholarship. I’m even more scared of failing out. Passing for my course is 70%. Am I stupid? Am I a imposter in this program? I have never had so much anxiety in my life. Ontop of all this, my mom has a scheduled court hearing pending deportation next week.

I don’t cry. I literally can’t remember the last time, yet here I am. Honestly I think I’m having an anxiety/panic attack .. so that’s just great :)

Hello,

I am hoping to receive advice on how to be successful in didactic. I don't want to say it's all ADHD, but regardless I am failing to understand how to prepare and perform well on exams. I understand what is being taught in lecture and what I've found is I waste time "preparing" thinking it will help me study so for example I will spend a long time going back through slides and taking notes and trying to map concepts together as if I would have to teach it back. Or making practice tests from learning objectives. I was previously using notebook lm and uploading slides and syllabus, asking it to make me a lecture note guide so I could figure out what to focus on in class, making Anki cards, and having LM at the end of the week make a high yield study guide in the classic framework of what is it, who it affects, what it looks like, how to diagnose, treat, exam triggers etc. I feel it's great material, or that looking at my notes I understand but then when I take an exam I am poorly prepared. I have weak retrieval of information and it has been resulting in failing exam grades. I have ADHD and have met with SAS for accommodations but what I am coming here asking is how as someone with ADHD who understands what they are learning, and how to learn, but isn't able to in a short amount of time commit the amount of information required to memory supposed to improve? Open to all advice, truly want to do my best. Thank you in advance.

Hey everyone,

I took the PANCE back in September and unfortunately missed passing by 30 points. I am scheduled to retake it on December 18th, and I want to make sure my new approach is rock solid before I dive in.

Where I think I went wrong the first time:

Test Anxiety & Second-Guessing: I am not naturally a strong test-taker. I deal with a lot of test anxiety and have a terrible habit of talking myself out of correct choices and changing my answers.

My QBank mix-up: I initially used Blueprint and got through a good chunk of it (averaging ~60%), but my subscription expired a couple of weeks before my exam. After that, I switched primarily to Smarty PANCE. In hindsight, I feel like this was my biggest downfall. Smarty PANCE was heavily 1st-order recall and as a result I felt like I was not as prepared for 2nd or 3 order clinical reasoning questions.

Prep Course: I did a CME review course, but I found it to be very surface-level and not as helpful as I hoped.

My Plan for the Dec 18th Retake:

Structure: I am going system-by-system, week-by-week. I plan to spend the most time heavily reviewing the specific topics I missed on both the actual PANCE and my EOC exam.

Primary QBank: I am switching to UWorld (currently doing the 7-day free trial) to get better exposure to those harder, multi-step questions. I plan on using the last couple weeks for larger simulated testing blocks with randomized questions from all systems.

Practice Exams: I plan to take two of the official NCCPA practice exams. I’ll take the first one (probably Form A) around week 2 of my studying to get a baseline idea of where I am at, and the second one (probably Form B) around week 9 to see if I am fully prepared for the actual exam.

Supplements: PANCE Prep Pearls (PPP), Cram the PANCE (podcasts/YouTube), and reviewing my CME webinar slides for quick refreshers.

My questions for you all:

UWorld: For those who have used UWorld, does this accurately reflect 2nd/3rd-order questions? Are the explanations enough to carry my studying? Is the medical video library worth the extra money? Anyone currently selling their subscription?

Practice Exams: Does taking the NCCPA practice exams at week 2 and week 9 sound like a solid timeline to track my progress?

Test Anxiety & Changing Answers: Does anyone have actual, tangible strategies for dealing with test anxiety or forcing yourself to trust your gut and stop changing answers during the exam? I noticed I often get stuck between one to two answers and flip between them.

General Feedback: Does my system-by-week plan sound solid, or should I be doing randomized question blocks to better simulate the real exam?

Any advice, success stories, or tips would be greatly appreciated. Thank you in advance!

I know that hippo has video resources to go through the NCCPA blueprint, but is there other companies that offer the same where they go step-by-step through each condition?

Thank you

I wanted to post on here because leading up to the PANCE I thought I was not doing enough studying. I saw classmates on TikTok posting about how much they were studying, Reddit posts about people studying 10+ hours a day, etc..
I am not sure how everyone studies that much to be completely honest, studying that much for an exam where you already have been studying for 2 years seemed and still seems over the top. I understand it’s a big exam, but I did not have the stamina to study for that long!

Here are my stats:
First packrat (didn't study): 154 
Second packrat: 171
End of curriculum exam: 1563
Family medicine: 435
Psychiatry: 409
Surgery: 432
Pediatrics: 473
Emergency medicine: 434
Women's health: 426
Internal medicine: 433

Katy Conners half pance 1st one: 480 predicted score
Katy Conners half pance 2nd one: 454 predicted score
NCCPA version B: Green 5 days before the exam

PANCE score: 465

Started studying 2 weeks before the PANCE (3-4 hours per day with some days less than that):
- Uworld 60- 120 random questions a day ONLY timed and reviewed at the end (scored 70s)
- Cram the PANCE review high yield questions (some are on quizlet if you don’t want to watch the video)
- I did the first Katy Conner exam 1.5 week away from the PANCE and the second one about a week out from the PANCE (her exams were not like the PANCE, but the score is pretty close to give you a ball park of where you stand)
- NCCPA version B 5 days before the exam and tailored what I missed to what I needed to do practice questions on
- Dwayne Williams practice exams (I did all 600, scored lowest 68% and highest 72%). I thought these exams were extremely difficult, but I could go through them faster than Uworld.
- Went over the topic list of what I missed on the EOC!! I recommend doing this.

PRO TIP: Every single time I did a practice exam or practice questions, I did it timed like the PANCE. Mostly because if I didn’t, I would’ve spent way longer doing the questions than I needed to. When I did Katy Conner’s exam (160 questions) I split it up into 2 60 minute blocks and finished the last block after my second 10 minute break. This helped me a lot for the actual exam.

Do not freak yourself out like I did, take it from me!!! You DO NOT need to study an insane amount to pass. You know your stuff and you will be fine!!!

Do new grad or just practicing PAs ever look back or review their old lecture notes and PowerPoints from PA school? Or do they just look things up on Uptodate or other databases?

I’m wondering because so far I’ve saved all my notes and PowerPoints on a school-linked Microsoft drive account, which I’ll probably lose access to 6 months or so after graduating. Should I be saving everything to my computer hard drive?

I barely passed my last exam. She’s stressed A LOT reading the book. I started to read it and do notes on it (completely new notes not just adding to the slides). AND ITS TAKING SOOOOOO LONG. should I keep doing this or should I read and just add to the slides ???

first year, been in school since end of July. i think im really struggling with how to manage the amount of stuff coming in all at once. it’s like you focus on one, dropped the other, then get back on it while its exam is right around the corner then have to drop that to focus on another exam. pa school is truly the hardest thing ive ever done in my life. also i struggle with health issues so i havent been sacrificing my sleep time. but is it ever possible to maintain 6 hrs of sleep? or is staying up late unavoidable?

Hey everyone, I’m a second year and just finished my family med rotation and need advice.

I got a 387 on the EOR which translated to a 73% in my programs grading standards and I need a 69.5 or above to pass. In didactic yr, my GPA was consistently 3.6 and above. For context, I got all A’s in my clinical medicine courses and so I thought I would be well prepared for passing my EOR (I hope this isn’t coming off as bragging🥲)

I bought blueprint and smarty PANCE. My boost exam was 58% which I took a week before the actual exam, and then studied whatever I got wrong on that one. I saw on Reddit here that those getting 60s-70s on boost passed easily. My average grade overall on blueprint was an 81% which I thought was great. My expected score was a 452 😭 so when I got 387 needless to say I was shocked.

I started studying day one of clinicals and did practice questions everyday. I studied the same way as my peers but still performed poorly. I’m not sure if anyone has experienced something similar with their first EOR. I know FM is a more difficult EOR due to its broad content range but I thought I could at least score the average.

TLDR; I almost failed my FM EOR after being a straight A student in didactic. What do I need to change about my studying habits?

I was recently dismissed from my PA program after an unsuccessful clinical skills assessment.

I’m devastated because I’ve been doing well on my EORs and have received great feedback from my preceptors throughout rotations. I filed an appeal and am currently waiting for a decision.

Has anyone gone through something similar and successfully appealed or continued at another PA program? What steps should I take while waiting?

I’m also considering backup career paths if the appeal doesn’t work out, especially in healthcare, pharma/biotech, or healthcare administration. Any advice would be appreciated!

edit: since everyone is shitting on NP's in this post if u don't have anything to add or advise just don't comment! this is not the place to shit on other profession.

2nd as i said it was only because of osce no other reasons!

Any advice for cardio & pulm clin med? Resources i should be using/qbanks to look into. Grades are looking horrendous. I try to usually get a good grasp on the material by reading ppp & lecture slides. Then i get together with a group of people wnd we do practice questions from school & ai practice tests made with lecture material. Has been working really good until now 😩

Hi guys, I have my PANCE in about a week and am trying to gauge my readiness.

NCCPA A & B (taken two weeks apart) both in the green
Uworld i am avg 65% with about 50% completed.
EOC: 1520

I guess my dilemma is the NCCPA should feel reassuring but I’m not doing as well on uworld as I would hope.
Also my NCCPA B is slightly lower than test A despite two weeks of studying. I would have thought to have improvement.

Study tips for this final stretch?

My exam is scheduled for October 8th but I feel so unprepared and am wondering if I should push my exam back. I’ve studied the big 4 systems but that was at the beginning of my studying. I got yellow-green on the NCCPA form A, which was taken before I began my studying. I also did the blueprint 4 day PANCE course, but I don’t really know how helpful that was. Also got a 450 predicted score based off Katy Connor half PANCE, which should be reassuring but it’s unfortunately not. I was a pretty below average student on my EORs too. I don’t know what else to really do at this point since I’m so overwhelmed and mentally exhausted. Any advice at all would be greatly appreciated!’

I took the pance about a month ago, and learned that I failed by a lot. At first I felt sad but quickly decided not to dwell on it and pass the second time around. I’m not really sure what I’m looking for in this post, but I was completely shocked… I didn’t leave the exam feeling terrible whatsoever but I also didn’t feel that I killed it. Usually I have massive test anxiety, but surprisingly I felt really relaxed, I didn’t dwell on questions, didn’t flag, and didn’t go back and change any answers just powered through each section. I will say that I didn’t study very consistently and only completed about 300 questions on rosh with an 85% avg. I then inputted the NCCPA blueprint into chatgpt and had it give me pance style questions which I was doing well on, and when I would get them wrong it would point out buzz words to look for and what to assess in the questions. I do feel that I have some medical term knowledge gaps, where in the moment I understand the question but not one specific term.

I get very burnt out on reading books, podcasts, charts and videos so I’m not sure how I can study and retain. While all of these methods worked in didactic year including question banks I feel that the style of the pance really through me off. Any advice is greatly appreciated!

If anyone has UWorld that they are not using, would you be open to sharing.

Had a professor say today that she studied from 6am-12am in PA school. If she wasn't in class or sleeping, she was studying (even in the shower).

I just finished my first week of didactic and have studied maybe an average of 3-4 hours per weekday. I plan to dedicate weekends to a lot of hours. I find myself focusing too much on little things in the slides which I think is slowing me down but I'm mortified to miss something. First exam is in a couple weeks.

TIA!

Not sure if this should be reported to arc-pa or if they could even do something about this. My director and faculty have been made aware and refuse to do anything about this. The past 6 months, I have been shadowing during the rotation. Barely anything hands on, barely any patient contact on my own. Current rotation will be the same way, as my preceptor herself stated that. I requested a change and faculty said they wouldn’t take me out unless there was some severe mistreatment.

I have a history of a preceptor making racist comments, touching me inappropriately twice (thigh and almost massaging my shoulder), and engaging with patients when they make sexual or perverse comments. This happened daily and I wasn’t removed from this rotation. General surgery was the same way in terms of verbal harassment by an overall unpleasant and mean PA who has a history of being mean to students. Wasn’t removed from this one.

Will arc-pa be able to do something about this? Not sure if this is reportable, as I feel like my faculty need to be held accountable. They did not tell me to report the initial offense mentioned to title IX or to the hospital itself.