How I Passed MRCGP AKT at the Second Attempt: Dr Ify Okoronkwo

I was not sure where or how to start. I was not even sure when I would next want to attempt the exam again. This exam is time consuming, tasking and far from cheap. 

I decided to reach out to Dr Arora with my dilemma and he was very kind to respond swiftly. He encouraged me to go 100% all in IF I was in the right headspace and felt that the time was right. He advised that I was not going to be starting from scratch this time, but that I was starting with a solid baseline of 60% – which actually is not bad at all. He also advised that I would probably need to put more structure into what I was doing this time – in essence have a plan and stick to it. That piece of advice was so pivotal to my success as the first step to getting anything done is believing that you can.

To put my reading in perspective I downloaded the latest free Arora Daily AKT planner to give some structure to what I was doing. This was so helpful as I was able to keep track of what I needed to do each day, thereby eliminating the mistake of random studying.

Also this time rather than just focusing on question banks alone, I did a mixture of studying and testing myself alongside. 

For knowledge and studying I used the Arora online courses as a guide for clinical learning, and built on weak areas with reviewing the NICE guidelines. The clinical crammers were helpful in highlighting so many topics that can easily be overlooked.

As I did this combination I started to see an improvement in my scores in fact almost a steady daily increase. Other resources that I used included the RCGP curriculum, RCGP exam feedback reports, RCGP self test, RCGP EKU, Arora 30 day challenge Youtube videos as well as other AKT related Youtube videos. I must mention though that the RCGP curriculum is large and it may be impractical to finish, so I gave more time to my weak areas and built on other aspects that I felt more confident in. 

By nature I am an audio-visual learner and I tried to incorporate this as much as was possible in my study time. If a concept was too abstract for me I would find a Youtube video to learn from, make charts or little diagrams about it. Mnemonics also became my best friend – I made mnemonics for all sorts of things which for me, was much easier than cramming lists of causes and side effects. 

In hindsight I also realise that for my first attempt I had been more focused on the clinical aspect of the exam and only studied admin and statistics when I was ‘less busy’ (the funny things we do as trainees!). Second time around I switched the script and gave extra focus to the admin and stats section. These were quite easy marks to gather and I was leaving nothing to chance. The Arora admin and statistics online package which I subscribed for was super helpful. For example the admin package became my bedtime story every night – I would go through this from start to finish for over a month. It definitely paid off as I scored 85% in admin. To get all of the Arora Online courses as part of the AKT Ultimate Package click here.

My final strategy was to join a small study group in order to revise topics and go over some volatile concepts.  This was extremely useful as it helped to consolidate things that I had studied during the day. Revising with peers brings a different angle to learning as you are forced to explain things in simple terms, testing that you fully understand a concept. It also helps bring back to memory things which you had studied but somehow forgotten. Also for me the study group was a good place to revise my (many!) mnemonics. 

I should also say that preparation was also made easier second time around by the fact I was in a less demanding rotation and had no personal stressful circumstances. This immensely contributed to my overall success.