To start with, I read my textbooks well during my MBBS days. Yes. I lost track and did not touch my books in my internship for 1 full year, but from my first year till my final year, I read only the best books. I cannot overstress the importance of Robbins. It’s such a beautifully written book! It’s not only informative but also engaging and entertaining. In my opinion, every student of medicine must complete that book end to end! Especially the general pathology part. I will keep buying every new edition of that book for the rest of my life even though I am not choosing pathology as a speciality. That’s how much I love that book! Of course, other books are important too. I read the whole of haematology, nephrology, cardiology and neurology from Harrison and the rest of the chapters from Davidson. Speciality surgery topics like Neurosurgery, Paediatric Surgery and Urology are well written in Sabiston. I wish I read more of that book, but didn’t find time. Bailey and Love is good for the rest of the chapters. Ortho from Maheshwari with some select chapters like peripheral nerves and tumours from Apley. Likewise Katzung for Pharm, Ganong for Physio, BDC and Netter’s for Anat, Ghai for Paeds, Dutta for O and G, Dhingra for ENT, Parson for Ophthal, molecular biology and metabolism from Harper, etc. the routine. Probably the one text book that I did not read properly was Park & Park. I never touched the MCQ books during my MBBS days. I preferred reasoning and intuitive learning over mugging for the sake of some or the other university/entrance exam. By the end of my internship, all that stuff was at the back of my mind but a full 1year of “no touching books” policy made retrieval difficult. When I joined IAMS in March 2013, I was still naïve and strongly believed that text book reading alone would get me through. All I did from March to May, 2013 was to revise the familiar chapters from the standard textbooks, especially the first and second year subjects and notes and materials for short subjects like Skin, Anaesthesia, Radiology and Psychiatry ( I did not read these subjects well during my MBBS days). I got an encouraging result (AIIMS 193) at the end of just 2 months. But what I failed to realise was that the May 2013 paper was different. It not only had few repeats, but also had very few repeat related questions. The highest was only 66% and with just 58% I got rank 193. This led me to believe that unlike popular opinion, repeats do not play a role at all. For the next 6 months, from May to October, 2013 all I did was to read only textbooks and IAMS notes and materials, newly for short subjects. In addition, I used to keep myself up to date newly approved drugs by the FDA and newly published research on PubMed and jwatch.org. After all that prep, the November 2013 paper was a shock! It had some 20 direct repeats from the most recent May paper alone and many more from other previous AIIMS and AIPG papers. I did not even know that they were repeats until I got out of the exam hall! It was only then that I understood the importance of repeats! Moreover I failed to revise properly in the last few days. In that 1 month gap between AIIMS and AIPGMEE, I did only the previous papers of AIIMS (AA), AIPG (MK) and PGI Chandigarh (Manoj). It did wonders to my result. The repeats complemented the previously laid foundations from textbooks and brought out a rank 41 in AIPGMEE last November. JIPMER Feb 2014 did not need any additional preparation. The same stuff sufficed. But for May AIIMS 2014, I put in some extra effort. I re did all my repeats and read all the repeat related topics from standard textbooks. For example, I read ROP, Diabetic Retinopathy, etc. from Yanoff and Ducker; NEC, HIE, Management of LBW and Preterm babies etc. from Nelson and so on and so forth. I also read all the neonatal management protocols on the WHO-AIIMS collaboration centre website. Also, this time I made sure that I revised almost everything 10 days before the exam. Especially the short subjects, P & SM and muggy topics in other subjects like Forensic sections, Paediatric milestones, etc. The result was AIIMS rank 11 in May 2014. After leaving NIMHANS, from August to November, 2014, I did not do anything special. I just revised whatever I read before. Revision is probably the most important part of anybody’s prep! Short term memory does play a very important role for many hard to remember topics.