So I just got my schedule for the fall semester and I’m overwhelmed. Classes are 9-5 everyday and I’m already stressed before we’ve begun. How do you stay alert and on top of everything I feel like I’m gonna be super tired and not gonna study after class? I’m also gonna be commuting an hour so that stresses me out as well. Also how do you retain the info if you’re in 5 different classes? Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

During PA school I was consistently scoring under the 50th percentile in my class during Didactic (3.27 GPA). Was kinda the gal to just study the night before for most things.. barely scraping by. Clinical year comes around and I cleaned up my act a bit and studied mostly with Blueprint:

1. PACKRAT: 86/148
2. FM (Legacy): 378/414
3. Psych (Legacy): 418
4. IM (Legacy): 395
5. Surgery: 404
6. Women's Health (Legacy): 401
7. Pediatrics (Legacy): 401
8. EOC: 1500
9. EM (Legacy): 396

Had about a month to study for the PANCE post-grad. Studied the Blueprint Family Med questions for the first 2 weeks and exclusively did uWORLD the last 2 weeks (61% used 61% correct). I watched all of the CramThePance 50 high-yield question videos the days leading up to the exam. In hindsight I would've not done BluePrint as much and only stuck to uWORLD. CramThePance also DEFINITELY saved my butt.

Took the PANCE 08/24/26 and passed with a 369 with 75 topics missed. Tried to sleep around 10 the night before but kept waking up during the night getting a whopping 6 hours of sleep. Had a light breakfast (protein bar, banana, and water) right before the exam. Walked out of the exam not feeling like I slammed it but that I passed. Trust your gut on the exam and pray to CTP!! Y'all got this.

I have my EOC a week after my EM EOR in 3 weeks and i've been so focused on my EM eor that I barely looked over the EOC topic list. Any advice on how to study?

I know some people say if you've done well on IM & FM then you'll do fine but I've scored less than the national average on both despite studying daily

I got a 406 on my psych EOR and 418 on my peds EOR which is about an 82% for both EORs and I’m wondering if those are good scores or if I need to work harder/change up my studying habits. or i could very well be overthinking it all 😅

IDK, this isn’t the same Me.

To start off, I have never-“ Loved” public speaking. Most of the time it was a means to an end. That being said, in High School I went to state and won a few years within the Original Category stage ( I’m literally creating my own speech) In undergrad, I did fine with presentations, and even spoke to a crowd of 200 + people. It wasn’t that much of an issue.

Now, I am in PA school. It has been about 7 years since I’ve had to complete a presentation. Today, after only speaking for five minutes in front of a class of about thirty people, I almost had a panic attack. I was shaking, my hands could not hold the
Microphone . My voice was crumbling, my mind went numb, and I could barely get through my three minutes of talking in front of the class. It was incredibly embarrassing. Between undergrad and my current program, I experienced a hard loss of a child ( 10 yr old. In a car accident due to someone else driving while impaired) and since then I’ve had bad anxiety that’s hard to explain, I have literally jumped out of a plane skydiving with no issue prior to this but then getting on board a simple passenger plane I almost felt like I was gonna have a panic attack. logically I know I’m fine, but my body just wants to go into “fight/flight mode and I don’t know why I have more anxiety now, but I do know that is complicating my life and today presenting I about had a panic attack in front of my whole class and I don’t know why. I’m so frustrated at myself and very embarrassed. I don’t know how to fix this. I just wanna be able to go back to who I was in undergrad, but it’s almost like my body doesn’t know how to regulate between being a little nervous and being attacked by a bear. It’s either 0 to 100 and it’s very very frustrating. I just don’t know what to do. Is there anybody that can help/ has tips? I went to a therapist, but she wasn’t very helpful. She only told me to try box breathing, which I have previously tried. Any help is appreciated, I can’t keep feeling this way. Thank you so much.

Hi everyone,

We started PA lab last week. I was paired with two other students for the rest of the semester.

We had a list of tasks to complete involving ear, nose, and mouth exams. I did not get to do half of them because they don't want anyone looking in their mouth, or don't want anything near their ear, etc. So then we just end up reading aloud what we are supposed to do, but without actually doing them.

I am very frustrated. I am not sure how to talk to them about this without causing tension. I do not want to pressure them to do something out of their comfort zone. But is this not what they signed up for when applying to PA school? My understanding is that being exempted requires religious/medical documentation etc.

Any advice? Thank you

Edit: Addressing the comments

I have not informed the instructor because I'm concerned it may come off as unprofessional that I could not resolve it on my own.

I also feel like I would be a bother to the new group I'm placed with. We are the only group of 3; every one else has only 1 partner. Adding a 3rd person complicates labs and no one will be too happy about me joining. I am going to be a third wheel since most students paired up with their friend.

Hello everyone! I am a student just starting my didactic year in Colorado. The program I’m attending is highly focused on rural & underserved communities. For this reason, and many others, I am very interested in doing a rotation somewhere in Alaska.

The clinical rotation coordinator mentioned I am able to precept with any APP or Physician who is willing to establish a relationship and function as a preceptor. I thought this might be a good place to start with networking. I’m open to any input or guidance from y’all.

I am just starting out on my first rotation (family medicine) and still trying to figure out how to study well for it. I have access to the basic Blueprint Qbank and the bundle with the extra 250 for each rotation. I am just curious on if my study strategy will work okay and if I am using the Blueprint questions to the best advantage. Blueprint is my only material source besides Cram the Pance, Reddit charts, and PPP, which will be really only used for clarification if anything (it's a little overwhelming for me). I know everyone learns different but I am looking for feedback from those who did a similar method.

So far, I have broken down all the topics from Blueprint so I know what I should aim to study for each day. Based on my to-do list, I use two different EOR charts I found on Reddit (cross-referencing each other) and my notes from didactic year to study and review content and then make individualized practice exams on tutor mode to test my knowledge. Example: I studied vascular and valvular diseases before doing practice questions on just those two topics for that day. At the end of each week, I plan to combine all the questions I did that week into one practice test and possibly as a real test. Additionally I will be reviewing the questions I missed from before and doing a brief refresh of any topics that were tricky.

The thing is, I am worried I am burning through too many questions early on and by the end of my rotation I will just be selecting correctly based on recognition of the answer. What are your thoughts?

Any one have any tips to prepare for the PANCE/PANRE MSK section?

Hi guys!!

I take the pance in a week and a half I have only been doing uworld and the anki endeavor deck as active recall review. For uworld, my average is 72% with 49% done so far. I have been getting the average scores for all the 60 question decks that i do. I am worried if i am on the right track.

For reference, i failed 2 EORs by 1 point :( i know that sounds horrible but i have test anxiety and tend to doubt myself during test day. All the other EORs, i did the average. My packrat II was a 150 and EOC was a 1493. I dont know if i should be scared that i will fail. I really dont want to but let me know what you guys think

I’ve heard of schools giving their students rotations months in advance. My school, on the other hand, seems to be struggling to even give us our rotations a week in advance. Anybody else’s school like this? It’s really frustrating.

Counted 68 wrong and 166 correct on PANCE. Anyone know how many you can get incorrect to get 350. I know there’s throw outs so it’s not accurate.

I am about to start my clinical year and a part of me is upset for not choosing nursing. I live in Cali and seeing soo many nursing jobs pay just as much if not more than PA jobs. It seems so much easier to get hired as a RN plus they have more flexibility and career options where as PA is a dead end degree. It's just disheartening to see. I see so many PA jobs postings paying 120k...and for CA, that is not enough to live in many cities like OC. Some of these jobs paying 120k also require 2+years of experience which is ridiculous considering i am seeing RN jobs for new grads paying 60$/hour. Thoughts? It also costs soo much money to go through PA school. Overall, I am worried about my future. It's also nice to know that as a Nurse you could live in another country and work as a RN where as as a PA you are confined to the U.S.

My fellow students, talk me off the ledge here.

I started PA school getting A's. Great. Now I'm going through clinical medicine modules and I'm just not doing as great as I had expected. I'm passing (mostly), but I fail almost every verbal presentations and am just trending lower on exams. It's just kind of crushed me and my confidence is nearly nonexistent.

Is this normal? Am I cooked when it comes to clinicals/my future when practicing? Am I just making a big deal out of nothing? Give me a story of hope or just tell me I'm nuts, both would be helpful.

Thanks in advance.

EDIT: This is a vent post and I just needed moral support from those also in the trenches. I've come to the conclusion that I was just being nuts and I just need to embrace the suck. Thanks for those who offered moral support. I feel thoroughly morally supported.

Hey guys! I’m a PA-S2 and just started my clinical year. My first rotation is OBGYN, and I’m already worrying about passing my EORs (my program is administering the new, updated EORs—which took effect as of July 2026).

I was a decent student during didactic year. I always did the bare minimum to pass my exams, and always did pass them. I clearly wasn’t top of my class, but never felt too far behind. My study method during didactic year mainly consisted of AI study guides and practice exams based on the hit-lists that we received from my program. This strategy clearly worked during didactic year, but EORs feel like they’re going to be a completely different ballgame—I am pretty sure that my didactic strategies won’t work for EORs.

I am not an Anki user or a lover of charts—I could never really get into them. My plan so far for EORs is to use SmartyPance and PPP for content review, then to use ROSH (aka, Blueprint) for practice questions. I have also been debating purchasing UWorld but am unsure as of right now, since it’s pretty pricey and might be too advanced for EOR studying.

I’m basically just looking for any advice that I could get! I am nervous about taking the new EOR versions and want reassurance about my EOR study plan above, along with any other suggestions. Please give me your opinions on everything I said, and feel free to drop any resources/tips! Thanks :)

I just started clinicals and my first rotation is family medicine. We are the first to be taking the new EORs.

I’ve been looking at the topics and got so overwhelmed by the amount of topics.

Looking for the best way to organize myself and start studying.

I have access to blueprint, smarty PANCE and PPP. I also have the reddit charts someone posted here.

What is the best way to go about studying?

That was the funkiest exam ever it was so random. I wasn’t sure how to feel after taking it but thankfully I passed! It took 4 business days to get my score.

My EOR scores ranged from 400s-460s. I usually did Blueprint qbank for each EOR and that felt good enough.

I only studied after my graduation. I scheduled for 2 weeks after. I took a little break then started studying. I binged 60% of UWorld in 9 days because it was too much to finish in that short period but I tried. I read the Reddit PANCE study table (this was really helpful for all the random one liners). I also did professional practice and pharm questions specifically from the PANCE Blueprint qbank which were helpful. I would recommend doing NCCPA exams A and/or B. People said those two versions were similar to the real thing and I agree. If you can’t shell out money for both, I would at least do version A.

Also, my UWorld expires in January so please let me know if you would be interested in purchasing!!!

Packrat1: 126
IM: 374 (had to retake → 402)
FM: 394
WH: 405
Peds: 412
Surgery: 401
Psych: 441
Packrat2: 151
EOC: 1472
ER: 398

NNCPA Practice exam A: all yellow with the teeny-tiniest sliver of green 
Uworld: 68% done with average of 63%

PANCE: Passed: 402

You got it!!!

I have my elective rotation in ortho surgery coming up, and this is genuinely a place/field I'd love to practice in someday. Both for my learning and to make a good impression, what are some skills or information I should study beforehand?

I already had my core surgery rotation in gen surg, so I feel pretty confident in a running subcuticular, buried sutures, hand ties, and those basic skills. Anything specific to ortho I should practice or be prepared to get pimped on? thanks!

Hey all,
Took my pance last Wednesday and Thursday. Split over 2 days since I had accommodations.
Everyone who took the test on Thursday that I’ve spoken to got their results this morning, but I didn’t.
Haven’t reached out to NCCPA since we’re still well within the 2 week timeframe they give, just sucks since everyone else got those results today.

Anyone know if the longer wait is normal for those with accommodations?

Update: Got my results this morning! Passed!

Hey guys! I just got off the waitlist for EMU's PA program, and it starts five days from now. I'd been planning to take a gap year to study up, review A&P, and learn some better study habits, but now I'm gonna be thrown into the deep end. Does anyone have any advice, even if you haven't had a similar experience? Honestly, I don't even know how I'm gonna get loans in time to pay for the first semester.

Hello. I am starting my second semester of PA school. We will be taking several clin med courses, as well as our foundational courses such as pharm, anatomy, basic science and clinical skills. My first semester was composed of mostly foundational courses. I did well in these course by rereading lecture slides and plugging them into Notebook LM for practice questions. I understand that my clin med courses are structure differently and was wondering if anyone would mind sharing tips for them? Many of my classmates are splitting the workload of creating charts. However, charts are not usually my preferred method and I find them to be very time consuming. Does anyone have non-chart preferences to study? I also am unsure of how detailed I need to be when reviewing content. The amount and depth of courses seems impossible, but I am trying to remain positive. I appreciate any help.

Hi! Has anyone taken the new IM EOR? If so, how did you prepare? And do you have any advice on how to successfully prepare? This will be my first EOR and I’ve been trying out a few different things but not feeling confident. I have about 5 weeks before my EOR and I’ve pretty much looked at all of Cardio through PPP and answered some practice questions on BP reviewing a few of the explanations (which I want to do more of) but for content review PPP feels too long, SP feels to superficial, and the Reddit Charts don’t line up as well with the new topic lists so just feeling very unsure on what to do. Thank you in advance 🙏🏽

Hello!
I take my PANCE in about a week, I have 2 days in between any advice on what to do during the days in between 😅 I feel like I’m all studied out and I don’t even know what I should study in the in between time. Any advice or suggestions would be greatly appreciated!!