How should I manage without Marrow ?
Having attended a lot of competitive exams (enough for a lifetime, maybe more than one), I can confidently say one thing - while making notes, revising n number of times will definitely help you get through your competitive exams, itll not give you an experience of whats going to stare at you through the computer screen at the exam hall. Be warned - long answer. I will give the take-home message in case you are impatient to read the whole thing. It doesnt matter whether you use online apps, attend classes, make great notes. Humans forget, and unless you are a God or a close extraordinary prodigy, you will forget much of what you learned. Hence the need for multiple revisions. At the end of the day, your aim is to clear the exam, and to do that you need to solve MCQs. Practice makes perfect. Whether you do achieve that using an online app or you solve MCQs physically from MCQ books, or you make your own MCQs and solve, it doesnt matter. Your choice. Anything under the sun is possible if you have the time, patience, and courage to do it. And please don't ask me is there anyone who did it, I dont know. I have a question as a reply to the last part. Does it matter if no one did it? You can always be the first if you want to be. For those of you who like to read Long version: I have used the online apps that you mention above (I wont take names - thats not the purpose of this answer). What I felt was, solving questions are the closest you are ever going to get to NEET PG or AIIMS or any competitive exam for that matter. Solve, solve, solve. Why? You already know why. You just havent given a thought on it. Medicine (19 subjects, 11 organ systems in each give or take a few) is enormous. Theres absolutely NO ONE who can remember everything. While revision helps in revisiting and partially contributes to your retaining capacity (which I might add, is subject to the individuals potential), you cant comprehend to ace these competitive exams without solving MCQs.Simply put, you cant run before you learn to walk.How many times have you thought, Should I be reading and remembering this? I guarantee your answer is more than a few times.Well, how do you answer that question? Practice. You cant just read and not practice and expect to do well.Its simple math - Do 100 questions a day - thats 20,000 questions in 200 days of your preparation. Thats equivalent to 67 NEET PGs (approximating to the nearest whole number).Dont tell me it's not possible with all the studies that you need to finish. The fact is you are never going to finish. Your aim is not to know the entire knowledge of medicine under the sun! Your aim is, at the end of the day, get through the exam with a rank that you have in your mind and get it done. Simple.Anyone who says otherwise is kidding themselves and misleading others. Time to learn is while you were doing your degree, not after your degree, and when you are planning to crack competitive exams...and.. Come on, the people setting up NEET are also human. You can only test so many topics in a competitive exam for undergraduates in medical subjects. They have another name for this in the real world, high yield topics. Theres only so much they can ask!Argument: But they can ask anything under the sun, thats why we attend classes and all!Reply: Sure, they can. But they dont! Why do we have repeat questions at all if they can ask any question under the sun?80% of the topics have been repeated almost every other year. This is because you cant test an undergraduate more than that! Itll go more than the postgraduate level if they do, so rest assured, they dont.Yes, there are going to be new questions in every exam for which you need to know the concept to solve. But they are a handful. Theres so much we dont know, but we also know the facts that we SHOULD know. SoDont lose the Moon trying to count the stars.Solving MCQs give you whats analogous to muscle memory to crack the exams. It gives you the patience to sit through 3:30 hours without a sip of water or a visit to the restroom and the ability to focus throughout that time. You sit through 300 questions a day for the next 200 days; the NEET PG exam will be just like any other day for you. This might sound odd to you because no one has told these things from this viewpoint. If someone already has, good for you. Vide supra for the take home. Take care. Stay safe and all the very best.