My Life in JNU

To begin with, the thought of studying abroad had honestly never crossed my mind. My lifelong dream always involved in practicing medicine. After graduating from high school, I had learnt about the medical studies in China to be extremely affordable and excellent with all the practical sessions conducted at the universities for a reliable and a pleasant five years experience. It fueled my desire to pursue my further studies in China.

Throughout my studies in Jinan University, I attained a good deal of scholarship. I still remember learning the Chinese language by spending hours of coherent writing to improve myself since Chinese is a rich and intricate language. Thanks to my lecturer and my Chinese friends at the university for assisting me that I gained fluency in Chinese.

My experience as an international student at Jinan University has shown me fresh ways of thinking, living and viewing the world. I have gotten to see and understand a new culture, distinct values, norms and people which have made me more tolerant and confident. It has also granted me knowledge, friendships and memories that I shall cherish for a lifetime.

Through my international experience, I have broadened my horizons, independence, intercultural competencies and flexibility. I have learned to adapt quickly to new environments and different lifestyles.

It has been a wonderful experience for me so far in China with a lot of ebbs and flows. It has taught me a few life lessons, of which being independent, dynamic and responsible were the significant ones. I think everyone should experience this at least once in life, because as they say “the best-learnt lessons are from experience, not books”. And all that I have learnt from my experience is while in China or any part of the world, you simply have to adapt to your surroundings, feel at home and progress accordingly.

Believing that too much is poisonous; I planned my study precisely so that I do not have much material to look on when examination season arrives. I usually reviewed/revised the materials regularly to update myself and familiarize myself with the course content for this is what I will need during and after the examination.

Considering that two are better than one, as well as there is power in unity and the future is to the organized, I teamed up with some other students to form a study group where we discussed the courses we were learning and supported each other where we missed. This teamwork enabled us to be on par with the teachers and follow the lessons all the time.

Teachers of Jinan University are very well educated and notably qualified with impressive experience in their subjects. They never made us feel that they are teachers at first sight. They appeared to be our friends and then teachers who created an environment of amiability with the entire student body. They are the backbone of Jinan University. The best people of all. Their support aided us to take further steps in the university.

The FMGE Journey 

Having done my MBBS from China, I had to go through this long rigorous grueling process to pass the FMGE. So, without further ado, I'll dive into the details of my dedicated FMGE (Foreign Medical Graduate Examination）study period.

Now, there are several ways to clear this exam, namely:

Self-study: Notes from top coaching institutes are widely available all for free on several study groups on Wechat, etc. Some of my classmates downloaded them, got a printout, and studied them alongside adequate MCQ practise.

Online teaching portals: Subscribe to Prepladder (Marrow is also an option but more NEET PG centric). You can sit at home, complete the videos, practise MCQ's and there you go!

Join a live face to face class at a good coaching centre to excel this exam under the guidance of the best faculty: For instance, I joined MIST (Delhi) which I thought was the most convenient option for me but as we all know the year 2020 has left us all with a limited number of options. Due to this ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, I was also restricted to attend my coaching sessions from my home only in the form of live classes.

Now, coming to the main preparation part:

My main study resource was self written notes of subjects, and online MOCK tests conducted weekly by coaching institute and FMGE Solutions MCQ book. As I mentioned above that the aspirants who wanted to give the exam in August had merely two months for preparation so our coaching institute assigned us a separate batch, we had classes spanning anywhere between 9-12 hours, following which we were supposed to revise our self-written notes before the next class and honestly. In my opinion, this was the key to my success. Here, I would like to mention a very significant point that there was not a single day that I left my revision incomplete, including the MCQ's [FMGE solutions] of the same topic which I revised. Our teachers kept saying REVISION!REVISION!REVISION IS THE MANTRA! Usually, the faculty recommends us that there should be minimum three revisions before the exam.

I had shortage of time still I managed to revise my syllabus twice. Now it’s very important to know the content and duration of revisions:

HOW MANY TIMES I READ WHAT:

The exam that was held on 31st August had very unexpected questions as it was completely based on the principles of upcoming NEXT, which will be implemented soon in India.

NOTE: physiology + pharmacology + pathology are the building blocks for internal medicine. You should not directly jump onto internal medicine without having prior knowledge of physio pharma and patho.

Having a glance at the exam that was scheduled on 31st August the coaching faculties have a clear picture of the upcoming exams that they are going to have clinical based questions and less of one liner questions.

Now the preparation also demands a different approach.

1. Physio pharma and patho: These 3 subjects require an integrated approach, choose one system like CVS, Respiratory, renal etc, and try to relate it together from these three subjects and trust my medicine would be a cakewalk for you.

2. Anatomy, biochem (especially cycles), forensic medicine require constant revisions (Like on weekends) as they easily vanish from our memory.  

3. ENT, ophtha , derma , ortho, psychiatry, OBG, surgery, radiology, medicine: these subjects are of the utmost importance as they require maximum number of revisions in addition to plethora of clinical questions ( telegram groups, FMGE solutions, question banks )

4. PSM is a voluminous subject and 20-30 questions or more are expected from this subject. And one should revise PSM religiously everyday.

5. Anaesthesia can be done from any of the one liners book like MIST all in one .

Questions Solving:

I Gave weekly tests (50 questions every Tuesday )+2 mock test in the end of August (all conducted by my coaching institute)

Solved few mcqs of certain topics from FMGE Solutions (Deepak Marwah) every day.

Teachers from my coaching institute suggested: Do NOT waste time solving questions towards last few days. That is your dedicated REVISION TIME! By solving 10 questions, you'll learn 10 concepts but reading 10 pages might get you 30 concepts so that's more HIGH YIELD for exam! This advice seemed contrary to what a lot of other people around me said but I decided to risk it and give this advice a shot, needless to say, it worked for me.

If you feel like changing your answer after marking-AVOID CHANGING it, if it's a fact based ('ratta type') question because that answer usually comes from your sub-conscious mind and 1st hunch is always right. CHANGE IT if it's a logic/reasoning based question if you feel you were wrong the 1st time.

LAST DAY BEFORE EXAM:

Don’t keep too much for this day, see all the images, a pdf file of all the important images which is generally circulated in telegram groups or provided by coaching institutes. Pediatric milestones, IPC’s.

SLEEP:

This is the important element of preparation yet ignored by many. Sleep varies from person to person, I used to sleep 5-5.5 hours daily including a power nap of 20 minutes after lunch. I had completely abandoned my social media accounts be it Facebook, Instagram or any other social media app as they can prove to be a source of distraction for most of the students. During my revision days I used to study using pomodoro technique( 2hours of study followed by 10 min break).

UNWRITTEN RULES:

Revision is the key to success. Dr. Amit Gupta (OBG faculty at MIST) used to say “the speed of recall in the exam is directly proportional to the number of revisions.”

Consistency is very important.

Keep believing in yourself, teachers and your hard work.

I believe a positive attitude is something which will take you to your desired goal.

You’ve To burn yourself in the flames of hard work, every minute of your preparation will open the gateways to success.

Just put your 100% efforts in your preparation and let your faith in god and blessings of parents do the miracles...!

I can not complete this blog without mentioning about my beloved seniors who were always ready to shower their valuable guidance, and kept me motivated throughout my preparation journey.

With this I’ll wrap up this article, I hope it would be quite helpful to all the FMGE aspirants. I’ve tried my best to share my honest experience with you all, still if you have any query feel free to contact me on WeChat. Lastly, I would like to say this is not an easy exam and it needs sheer dedication and smart work more than hard work. I’m sure the one who will be truthful to his/her commitment is definitely going to pass with flying colours. All it takes is that golden three digit number “150” to have that “Dr” in front of your name.

Written by Abhimanyu Dehal

Reviewed by Jiajia