Alhamdulillah, I have managed to pass PLAB 1 in November 2018. I will try to share my experience for this exam for future Plabbers.
Preparation Time
Two and a half months.
Score
139 out of 180
Study Material
- Samson’s Notes.
- Sush Unit 1700 questions, chapter-wise.
- Plabable online question bank.
- Pass Medicine online question bank.
- Dr. Khalid Saifullah’s 1700 questions.
- Recalls.
- Mocks.
- Clinchers.
Samson’s Notes, Sush Unit Files and Pass Medicine
I started going through Samson’s notes. I used to read chapters from the notes quickly, then jump to the same subject from Sush Unity files. I used to follow this up by solving the same chapter’s questions from Pass Medicine. Later, I found that Pass Medicine was a waste of time. For the rest of the chapters, I studied only from Samson’s notes and Sush Unity files. This took 6 weeks, which is a lot of time. But the bright side was that I managed to finish both Samson’s notes and Sush Unit files completely in addition to 70% of Pass Medicine questions, which is not bad after all.
Second Read of Samson’s Notes and 1700 by Dr. Khalid
I went through all of Samson’s notes quickly & followed it by solving the 1700 questions file made by Dr Khalid Sailfullah.
Third Read of Samson’s Notes
I gave Samson’s notes another super-fast read.
Plabable
I subscribed to Plabable website and started with solving mocks. I felt that some questions kept repeating so I shifted to solving it subject-wise. Once I finished all the questions, I went again through the marked questions and the ones that I answered wrong the first time.
Swamy and Samson Mocks
I tried to solve a few mocks from Swamy and Samson but I found a lot of questions with unconvincing answers. So I did not try to solve more mocks.
Clinchers
I went through some clincher files. I made my own bullet-point clinchers which really helped me picking answers really fast in the exam.
The Exam
I managed to finish the exam with 45 minutes left.
Conclusion
Plabable is by far the most important source. You will have a lot of questions from Plabable because it is just a refined version of the 1700 file. You have to understand the concept not just memorize the answer.
Passmedicine is a well-established site. The thing that I liked the most was not the question bank they provide, but the explanation of answers. You can search through it easily which is a blessing that Plabable does not provide. Moreover, their explanations are marvellous and updated with the latest guidelines. I liked it very much. I do not recommend it if you are short of time, but I highly suggest to subscribe just for the explanations which was the only source I used as a reference.
At the end, I would like to say that the exam is easy & doable but do not underestimate it.