Why Dedicated Doctors Fail to Crack NEET PG
We talk with several dedicated doctors every day who ask us for advice on how to crack NEET PG. There are some common traits we see in these doctors. Start by taking this quiz to check if you are like them:
If you scored 5 or 6 in this quiz, you most likely have a lot of untapped potential that you can unlock by preparing smarter. You have fallen into the usual traps that we have observed in other dedicated doctors like you. These traps will make you fail in NEET PG.
The Failure Traps
1.You don’t consider your weakness for deciding what to study. You typically study by subject, dedicating a fixed amount of time for each subject. You quickly go through all the questions available on the subject and move on to the next subject. As a result, you have put equal effort into each topic and concept in the subject. You might have improved a bit, but not good enough to get to the top ranks. Time is your most precious resource, and you have not been smart about investing it.
The smart dedicated doctors who succeed in NEET PG always focus on their weak topics first and don’t move on until they have improved.
2.You get too many simple questions wrong. You obsess over the controversial questions, researching the answers on the internet and discussing them on Whatsapp groups. Meanwhile, even though you know that the “Prometric Era” when difficult questions got rewarded higher is OVER, you are still not asking yourself why you are getting simple questions wrong and not doing anything to fix this problem.
The smart dedicated doctors recognize that nearly everyone gets simple questions right and getting them wrong will cost them their rank.
3.You don’t practice enough MCQs. You spend most of your time reading notes. You restrict your MCQ practice to taking the Pre-PG daily test or other test series. Even when you take these daily test series, you don’t focus on analyzing the results and questions you got wrong. You are happy when you do better and sad when you don’t, not realizing that is just regression of luck — you are not improving.
The smart dedicated doctors know that you have to learn the process of eliminating wrong answers, and the only way you can do that is by practicing MCQs and analyzing your mistakes.
4.You do not revise regularly. You keep going through tests and questions without reviewing things you got wrong. Often you memorize the answer without considering why you got the answer wrong in the first place.
The smart dedicated doctors realize that improvement comes from understanding why you make mistakes and revising things you got wrong at regular intervals.
Conquering Trap 1: Conquering your weaknesses
Let’s start with the first trap. We will use this post to tell you the most effective ways to use your Pre-PG stats to guide your preparation driven by your weak topics. We can assure you that you will spend less time (your most valuable investment during preparation) and significantly improve your proficiency (your most sought-after return). In other words, we will teach you how to get the best Return on Investment.
The anatomy of Pre-PG Stats
To use our stats section efficiently, you need first to understand it. Your topic-level PrepDNA is a large part of this puzzle. We released PrepDNA on Pre-PG about a month back, and our users love it. The number of doctors regularly looking at the stats section has doubled since we released PrepDNA. This focus on stats is excellent news since the stats section is the most crucial piece of your preparation puzzle.
Pre-PG Stats is your “personal coach” that keeps a close eye on your performance and tells you the brutal truths — where do you stand and what should you study.
PrepDNA tells you your percentile rank for each topic compared to others on the Pre-PG platform. PrepDNA is the only place where you will find this information at a topic level. You usually know your strengths and weaknesses at a subject level, but the real insights on what to prepare next come from identifying strengths and weaknesses at the topic level.
Daily Progress tells you your historical performance at a daily level. Daily progress score is based on your proficiency level and allows you to judge what is realistic for you to target.
Success Rate tells you how many questions you have been getting right in the last 40 questions you attempted. To crack NEET PG, you need to get the easy and moderate questions right.
Three Paths of Daily Progress Charts
Let’s start with the Daily Progress chart. We analyzed daily charts of users who appeared in NEET PG last year and came up with three archetypes show in the chart below.
Doctors who have weak fundamentals belong to the first category. Not knowing the basics, and not doing enough to learn the basics from notes, they are seldom able to break beyond the 50th percentile. Some of these doctors work very hard, even practicing thousands of MCQs every week, but unfortunately, they can’t improve without grasping the fundamentals.
The second category includes dedicated doctors who have a firm grasp of fundamentals for many subjects and are willing to work hard. These doctors score high on the quiz at the start of this post. They know their potential but are not able to figure out why they can’t break out over the 85th percentile mark. If you are part of this category, you will gain most from following our advice.
Doctors in the third category are also dedicated, but they also have a smart preparation strategy. These smart dedicated doctors figure out how to keep improving their proficiency to hit the top 2 percentile. The journey is not simple and requires conquering each of the four failure traps. And the journey starts with overcoming your weaknesses.
Let Your Weakness Guide You — Learn From an Example
Focusing on weaknesses is very counter-intuitive. Most successful people know it is essential to play to their strengths to achieve their goals. But competitive exams like NEET PG are different since they are designed to be highly selective. You need to be in the top few percentiles to get your dream branch, and your weaknesses will hold you back from getting there. I admit this is not like real life, but you need to internalize this fact if you want to crack NEET PG.
Consider the example of one of the doctors with whom we have been working. Let’s call her Rachna (not her real name). Look at Rachna’s Surgery PrepDNA given below. What topic should she focus on first? I asked her the question.
“I start my Surgery practice with my strong topics like Trauma and Breast. They make me feel confident, and I am still improving on those”
Pre-PG User
What do you think Rachna’s daily progress chart looked like? You guessed right. It was flat since there is only so much you can improve on if you are already strong. I asked her to flip her thinking and start focusing on the weak topics first.
If you see a lot of red and orange on your topic-level PrepDNA, you have a lot of headroom for improvement. These are opportunities hiding in plain sight. Start here, and you won’t regret it.
Let’s get back to Rachna. She started working on topics where she was not at a level that she considered good enough.
Within a day of focusing on these weak topics, she started seeing tremendous improvements in proficiency. The daily progress graph is an example of how, after staying flat for a while, practicing the weakest topics led to a spike in proficiency.
The Takeaway: Step-By-Step Process
1.If you are starting out on Pre-PG, choose a subject to focus on, and attempt about 200 questions for the subject to form a baseline for the subject. You need to reduce the gray area shown on your PrepDNA. Skip to step 2 if you have a well-developed PrepDNA for the subject.
2.Look into your topic-level PrepDNA for any subject where you are focusing. You should already know which subjects you are weak at since every test series gives you this information. But knowing your weak subjects is not actionable. The real preparation happens at a topic level, and you need to know your weak topics.
3.Choose 2–3 weak topics with mostly red or orange PrepDNA to focus on every day. These will be towards the left of your subject-level PrepDNA chart.
4.Diligently attempt MCQs of these topics until you get to PrepDNA level you find acceptable. You have to ensure you are getting 9 out of 10 simple and moderate questions correct. Always read explanations of easy and moderate questions that you get wrong.
5.Revise regularly, doing Daily Revision every day and Deep Revision every week. These will make you go through all the questions you have got wrong earlier
6.Once every topic is above the 50th percentile level, you will comfortably be in the top 5,000 ranks. You should then start focusing on your strengths to differentiate yourself from the pack and get to the the top ranks. That will be a topic for another post.
Other Failure Traps
Our later posts deal with the other failure traps on Pre-PG.
Conquering Trap 2: Getting easy questions right
Read about why getting the easy questions right is a required to get to the top 10,000 ranks
Conquering Trap 3: Practicing the right way
Read about using deliberate practice to crack NEET PG:
Conquering Trap 4: Revising regularly
Read about the Revision features on Pre-PG, how to use them effectively, and why:
