MRCP Part 1

MRCP (UK) Part 1 Exam - My Experiences

Disclaimer:

These are all my personal views, you listen to all other views, but take a decision yourself. That’s what I did too. All the contents here are my personal experiences and honest reviews, and is not intended to promote or advertise any product here. If you find anything here objectional do contact me so that I can review them from your perspective. Thank you.

The journey of MRCP part 1 exam is always sweet and memorable in my life, as I passed it in my first attempt, all on my own, while I was working abroad, took it when I was first eligible to take it, without any formal post-grad residency experience and without resigning from my duty.

Following is my topic-wise breakdown of marks:

1. Cardiology 73%

2. Clinical Hematology and oncology 65%

3. Clinical Pharmacology, Therapeutics, and Toxicology 67%

4. Clinical Science 78%

5. Dermatology 71%

6. Endocrinology 87%

7. Gastroenterology 73%

8. Geriatric Medicine 100%

9. Infectious Disease and GUM 73%

10. Nephrology 71%

11. Neurology 47%

12. Ophthalmology 75%

13. Psychiatry 50%

14. Respiratory Medicine 63%

15. Rheumatology 87%

Estimated number of questions correct (on basis of % answered correctly): 144/200

I have decided to put my exam and preparation experience on q/a format. I am including all the questions asked by you previously.

Why MRCP?

People take MRCP Part 1 for various purposes. Maybe you are in one of those categories.

- You are a foundation doctor or core trainee in the UK and want to enter into Internal Medicine specialty training.

- Bypass PLAB and take the MRCP route for GMC registration for less career downtime later and secure higher pays and position in NHS. (Generally done by MD in Internal Medicine or other Medical Speciality)

- Take PLAB and MRCP side by side. PLAB for a faster route into GMC registration and MRCP to decrease future career downtime while doing non-training jobs in the UK

- MRCP part 1 for the MTI scheme to work in the UK for 2 years.

- Postgraduates in Internal Medicine and its super-specialty, to add-on to their degrees for international recognition and to be distinct among their colleagues in their own country.

I fall into the third category. But whichever be your purpose, no doubt this is the examination of a high stake in many sense.

What is the duration of your preparation?

I started my preparation since the beginning of September (for January 8th, 2019 exam). However, during one full month of September, my preparation didn’t go as expected. Since I was entirely unknown about anything related to this examination, most of the time during the first month went on by asking questions like what is the proper material and question banks for this exam, what to study and whatnot, etc.

In a nutshell, I would say my preparation duration was 4 months.

What are the materials available for the MRCP part 1 examination?

Basically, in any examination, you need two main things for preparation – Proper Notes to read, revise, and review; and a question bank whose previous track records are very strong. People also add reference books, if in case they need to clear confusion during their preparation. Reference books should be the same standard textbooks that you used during your UG, however many preparing on this field recommend Davidson’s textbook of Medicine. I am focusing mainly on notes and banks here.

There are 3 different preparation notes popular for this exam. Namely,

i) MRCP- The only notes you ever need (SudaMedica)

ii) Step Up To MRCP (Magraby Notes)

iii) Notes & Notes for MRCP (By Yousif Hamad)

There are 4 different question banks popular for this exam. Namely,

i) Passmedicine

ii) Pastest

iii) BMJ OnExamination

iv) RCP Medical Masterclass

What are the pros and cons of all these preparation notes?

I have seen my colleagues studying all of it, taking 6 months during preparation, and scoring 740+. I would never recommend you to do the same. Because it’s not like USMLE where 230 in step 1 don’t get matched for residency but 270 has got the higher and sure-shot chance. If you score 540 or 750 in MRCP part 1, your chances into core training and then further specialty training doesn’t significantly differ. However, there are many positive influences, when they see higher scores on your CV.

Each preparation material is important in its own sense.

SudaMedica is very concise and easily doable. Total pages is around 550 and all the high yield topics and points are not missed. But the disadvantage in this book is, it is too concise and random and thus difficult to arrange in our memory. Its conciseness, makes us doubt our own preparation most of the time. When I started preparing from it, I always felt, if this much only is adequate???

Magraby Notes is more comprehensive, better organized, and easier on memory than SudaMedica. The total pages are around 1300. The flow of text and the proper arrangement of topics including all the high yield points and then a few extras too gives a lot of self-confidence during preparation. But the main disadvantage here is that the guidelines mentioned are outdated.

Notes & Notes by Hamad is the extreme form of study material in comparison to both of the above. It’s the most comprehensive, most organized, and updated book in all sense. However, you must not also forget the fact that it is around 1800 pages thick. The vastness of this book, makes one always have that fearful feeling of, if I am not able to revise it at the last moment, I am DOOMED.

What are the Pros and Cons of these question banks?

Passmedicine has around 3000 + questions. More than, 90% of questions in this bank are of high yield for the exam. Latest Nice Guidelines are updated and presented in the form of a textbook. You can track your progress on the graph. Lastly, the price of a subscription is also very affordable. Its 30 GBP for 4 months and 40 GBP for 6 months. However, people feel that questions are mostly easy, the number of questions are less for adequate practice and you must always add-on the second question bank if you study from this.

Pastest is more comprehensive question bank with over 6000 questions, past papers collection, and a mobile offline app that can sync your account. People feel that this question bank tests more number of topics in more number of ways than passmedicine and makes one adequately prepared for the exam. But, the subscription price is 80 GBP and the subscription lasts no more than the upcoming exam whenever you subscribe to it. I also feel the difficulty and trickiness of the question here are above the level of difficulty of the exam. Most of the questions here are not straight forward with always some extra things you have to know to solve it. However, in the real exam, questions are not that much tricky or twisty as it is in Pastest (barring few exceptions).

OnExamination is always ranked third by most of the people as a question bank for MRCP part 1. The total number of questions is 3200 +, which seems to be less difficult than Pastest and at or slightly above the level of difficulty than the real exams. Questions here are good to practice as it tests your concepts and memory in a more organized manner. But its main drawback is its price. 82 GBP for 2 months, 92 for 3, 103 for 4 months.

RCP Medical Masterclass is the only official question bank, prepared by RCP itself for MRCP Part 1. Questions here are at the level of difficulty of the exam. Prices are 54 GBP for 1 month, 63 for 2, 75 for 3 and 98 GBP for 6 months subscription. However, many seniors who passed this exam, never recommend Medical Masterclass, the reason being its short explanation for the answers. My personal feeling is that this question bank is the most underrated than all.

Now that we know the pros and cons of all, what is your material during the preparation?

In majority, I used Magraby Notes and Passmedicine.

When I went directly into passmedicine, my score used to be around 55-60% at first, but after I started studying Magraby Notes side by side, my score increased to around 80%.

My most whole-hearted recommendation is that, if you don’t study Passmedicine, please do not even think of attending this exam. MRCP part 1, Jan 2019 diet was around 60-70% entirely either the same or within the scope of passmedicine.

Magraby Notes is basically the collection of passmedicine notes, then what is the reason you need to study Magraby Notes alongside Passmedicine?

First of all, Magraby Notes is not just the collection of passmedicine notes, but also the collection of notes from OnExamination and Pastest.

Secondly, if you just study question bank then the main anxiety starts around 2-3 weeks before the exam, where revision for you means redoing those questions time and again, which is a difficult task. You don’t have something fast and ready in front of you in a more digestible manner like a note.

Remember, if you can’t revise, at last, it’s as equivalent as you didn’t study at all. Revision is the Key.

There are some online websites that give free access to passmedicine. Can I use that?

No. I know that there are online websites that give free access to passmedicine. The advantage is that it's free, but the disadvantages are as follows:

i) You always see around 2900 questions there. However online pools are increasing every day. It's around 3100 at the moment.

ii) Latest guidelines are still not updated, so few obsolete questions, are still found in those websites

iii) After you complete a question, but suddenly when you move to the next question, you want to go back in the same question to reread it. If you click the “back” button, you will land up on some random questions but not the same question you just did.

iv) In real passmedicine online, your responses are recorded and the stats from all over the world who correctly or incorrectly answered that questions will be shown. This way you can see how dumb or intelligent you are in comparison to others. :D

v) All your progress in passmedicine is tracked, and you can see the graph of percentile on where you fall, which gives you confidence in your progress every day.

vi) The other free websites sometime get crashed. Just imagine, you want to solve questions and the website doesn’t respond. It will be frustrating. :’(

What was the modality of your preparation?

I was working full time, however, my hospital was the new startup and was not busy most of the time. I could get an ample number of hours during the duty and during my off days to study. My dedicated number of hours for study, each day was around 5-6 hours, though my materials were alongside me 24 X 7. I now felt, if I was not working full time, I could have managed to study all in around 70-80 days also. But for those who work and study at the same time, 100-120 days is the best amount of dedication you need for this exam. If you are more experienced and A grade students during your UG, you can do that even in 60-80 days. But don’t rush too much, take it easy and one step at a time, you know yourself better than me.

I used to study the particular topic from Magraby notes then solve passmedicine questions online. Since Magraby notes have an outdated guideline, I used to annotate it with the latest guideline from passmedicine online. I used to annotate important and difficult questions from passmedicine also in Magraby Notes. Magraby notes don’t have figures, so wherever I felt that part needs a pictorial concept, I downloaded from various sources and annotated it as well there. All the important and volatile points were highlighted in my notes. I prepared by Magraby Notes as my sketchbook, which I can revise later in much less time before the exam. I used to solve around 50-60 questions a day from passmedicine and discuss around 15 difficult, conceptual, and other varieties of questions from our private Facebook group.

I completed passmedicine and Magraby Notes first read in 75 days, the first revision of Magraby Notes on the next 20 days and the second revision of Magraby Notes in the last 10 days. I didn’t do the second read of passmedicine, rather started discussing random questions from Pastest, Medical Masterclass, and OnExamination. However, those questions from other question banks that I did later, were very few like around just 500 and were studied only during my discussion in the Facebook group.

Last 1 week of the exam, I started doing mock tests from Pastest Past Papers. I did around 5 sets Pastest Past papers and scored around 65-70% in all of them.

1 day before the exam, I did my best to simulate the exact event on the real day of the exam. I woke up in the morning at around 6 am. Freshened up myself, I took the same breakfast that I would also take the next day and started my final mock test at around 10 am. 10 am to 1 pm, I completed my first set of the mock exams, then went on to take the lunch. Again from 2:30 pm, I did my second set of mock exams and completed it at 5:30 pm. This gave me the massive boost in confidence on my time table that I had planned for my judgment day. My strong recommendation is that you also follow this same pattern of routine one day before the exam. If your exam has different timing than mine, you follow the same. Always do this last mock exam from MRCP official website. These 200 sample questions on the MRCP website are the closest to the real exam. I found at least 10 questions, ditto copy in the real exam from this sample questions. So please, do not solve this question during your preparation days. I scored 75% on this exam. My real exam result was 72%.

What is that private Facebook group? Was it effective?

This is the third thing, after Magraby Notes and Passmedicine that I would recommend you to do. Please enroll yourself in either a Facebook group or a WhatsApp group and dedicate at least around 1 hour time in this group every day. Your group must contain genuine members from different nations, those who are always punctual and those whose exam is on the same diet as yours. I was blessed to have such a group during my preparation. If you can’t find such a group, make one by yourself. At the end of the day like around 10 pm to 11 pm or whichever time is comfortable for most of you, start discussing at least 15-20 questions in the group. Ask around 2-3 members to present questions on one particular day and rest of the members to actively participate in answering them. Then the question presenter at the end explains each and every question they presented in the group.

This is one of the example, you can develop your own modality as well. This group will make you feel all the time that you are not the only one on this journey and keep you motivated.

What is the passing score for MRCP Part 1?

This is a good question. Part 1 exam has altogether of 200 questions (100 in each paper), but the pass mark is, however, an overall scaled score of 540. This way the highest score that one can achieve is 999. And this is where we all get confused, and all of us want to know how this overall scaled score is correlated.

Before discussing the exact correlation, let me clarify to all of you, the exact reason why RCP decided to mark your score this way.

There are 3 diets of part 1 exam in a year. Every year thousands of graduates take this exam. In such a case, if they start giving marks to you in the percentage out of full marks of 200, then it will be impossible to compare a candidate’s score of one diet to the other. For example, suppose in the 2015 September diet, the paper was easy and an average guy scored 150 out of 200. In the 2018 January diet, the paper was tough and a brilliant guy was able to just score 125 out of 200. This makes the comparison of two candidates (who are clearly of different capabilities) unfair. To overcome this disparity, they brought this concept of equating since 2008. In this process, they rate the difficulty of examination and give you a three-digit score which is comparable across any two different diets. This way they decided to set a score of 528 as a pass mark, but again decided to increase that to 540 from the 3rd diet of 2018, believing that a slightly higher standard is desirable to better assess the candidate’s ability.

Now let’s come to the main point. What exactly is the number of questions that you need to answer correctly to pass?

As the difficulty of examination in the various diets varies, this number of questions to answer correctly varies too. From 2015 to 2018, when the pass mark was 528, one needed to answer 110 to 126 questions correctly. This was the general maximum and minimum trend of passing score at that time. Since 2018, we have had already few diets examinations till now and the trend of pass mark has varied from 120 to 125.

So at any given diet, you can make a rough estimate, that if you can confidently answer 125 + questions in part 1, you are in a safe zone.

Share your experience of the exam day.

My MRCP (UK) Part 1 Exam Venue
Ramada Plaza Hotel, Chennai

On my exam day, I followed the same schedule of the earlier day. I woke up at 6 am, took a rapid glance at Magraby Notes, had breakfast, and went to the exam center. I booked a hotel room at around 50m distance from the center (my exam center was not in my home country)

Dress comfortably, but don’t forget to take a jacket with you even if the climatic condition is hot. Your exam is mostly on a conference hall of a 5-star hotel which has a strong air conditioning system. After an hour or so, when the ambient temperature gets decreased by the AC, you don’t want yourself to start shivering and then solving questions. When not in use hang your jacket behind you in the chair.

You don’t have to take any stationery with you. Everything like pencil, sharpener, eraser and a water bottle is provided at the center. Just take your exam admission document (emailed by RCP), primary ID (Passport) and one secondary ID (just in case, as an alternative,) [see the MRCP website regarding No ID No entry Policy, where you can also find the list of acceptable ID proof that can be shown on the exam].

Listen to all the instructions carefully, keep an eye on the time (generally a digital clock is kept in front at the location visible to all the examinee), and fill up the answer sheet with your personal details carefully when you are told to do so.

When you start solving questions, remember that this is ‘best of five’ type of question. You have 5 multiple choices. One is the best answer and the other 4 is not just the distractor, but may also be the correct answer which is relatively less appropriate in that particular situation. So make the habit of ruling out the option rather than choosing the answer. If you directly choose an answer, there is a high chance you land up in less correct form, as all the options are closely poised. Always check at last if you left any of the boxes vacant in the answer sheet. I advise you to choose the answer in the question paper itself and copy that in your answer sheet at the last 30 minutes. Time is usually adequate for most of the candidates.

Work hard in silence, let your success make the noise. 
Thank You

Important Links:

Part 1 Exam overview:https://www.mrcpuk.org/mrcpuk-examinations/part-1

Part 1 Exam official news and updates:https://www.mrcpuk.org/mrcpuk-examinations/part-1/news

Part 1 Exam dates and fees: https://www.mrcpuk.org/mrcpuk-examinations/part-1/exam-dates-and-fees

Part 1 Exam International Centres: https://www.mrcpuk.org/mrcpuk-examinations/part-1/international-centres

Part 1 Exam format: https://www.mrcpuk.org/mrcpuk-examinations/part-1/format

Part 1 Exam sample questions: https://www.mrcpuk.org/mrcpuk-examinations/part-1/part-1-sample-questions