Stop Guessing What’s Wrong.
The solution isn’t more questions. It’s not another review book. It definitely isn’t working harder.
I run every one of these myself. That’s why there are only five. When they fill, they fill.
You’ve done the work. You’ve bought the stuff. And the numbers still don’t move. This isn’t a content problem. It’s an approach problem, and no one’s ever helped you with your approach to the work and to your exams.
You’re not lazy. You’re not stupid. And you’ve tried everything. It’s just that everything was a version of “more.”
Working hard isn’t your problem. Getting something back for all that work, that’s the problem.
If you’re on probation or “at-risk.” If your EORs are bumping along the bottom, or worse. If you’ve taken the PANCE twice and your score didn’t move. Then this is for you!
You’ll probably see yourself in more than one of these.
-
01
You failed the PANCE once. You walked out thinking you passed. Then the report came back a few points under. You can’t name one thing you’d do differently, because you did everything.
-
02
You failed it twice, or more. The second score looked a lot like the first one. You worked harder in between. You stopped telling people. And somewhere in there you stopped being able to tell whether the problem is the plan or whether it’s you.
-
03
You’re dying in didactic. Second bad exam, then probation. You’ve tried it all and nothing is sticking. Everyone tells you to take care of yourself. Nobody tells you what to change. Your next exam is Friday. That’s the exam we plan for.
-
04
You’re on rotations and missing EOR cuts. Sometimes by one question. Studying after a full shift for an exam nobody around you is taking. What you want is somebody to identify your weaknesses and show you the path through it.
-
05
You got decelerated, or put on the list. Your program director doesn’t believe you’ll finish. Now you’re a year behind, repeating work you already did, at full tuition, carrying that sentence around.
Five different clocks. Same thing underneath.
“I failed two EORs and was on my way to being kicked out of PA school. I’m sure my program wanted me gone.”
“I failed the PANCE four times. I was scoring 95% on [a popular and difficult question bank] and couldn’t get a 350 on the PANCE.”
If you’re 9 to 12 months out and cruising on your exams, you don’t need this. Keep doing what you’re doing.
Here’s what everybody told you to do.
More questions. More content review. Another pass through the book. A second question bank, because the first one “wasn’t enough.” A three-day cram course. A tutor. Study harder. Sleep less.
You did it. I know you did, because you’re here.
The marketing has gotten so good that everybody’s got seven different question banks now.
You’re trying to fill a swimming pool with a teaspoon.
You make hundreds of trips per day and the water line doesn’t move. You walk faster, but you start spilling half the water on the way. Now what?!
You start to worry maybe you’re not cut out for this. (Hint: you are.)
More tutoring, the next review book or question bank or cram course, none of it seems to help, because they’re handing you two or three spoons to carry water.
Nobody has asked why you’re using a spoon.
That’s also why I don’t do 1:1 tutoring. It doesn’t work. Tutoring is more content from a new angle, and you have that 100x over.
What works is showing you where the closest fire hydrant is, and helping you hook up the hose.
This is figuring out where your biggest problem is, and then teaching you the ways to solve YOUR problem. Not a problem in general. Yours.
Your score isn’t one skill. It’s six. Almost nobody is losing points in all six, and five of the six don’t get better when you study more.
“You are correct, it’s not the content knowledge that is the reason for failing the exam (twice), it’s learning how to take the test.”
One session. One plan. That’s the whole thing.
No course attached. No module library. No upsell built into the call.
You don’t have to walk in and defend yourself. I’m not grading how you studied, and I’m not asking you to justify a score. I take a history. That’s what I do for a living, and it’s a different conversation than the one you’re bracing for.
What you did. What you changed. How the questions actually felt in the chair, where the time went, what you did with the ones you narrowed to two. Then we rule things out until what’s left is the problem.
Studying, you can do alone. Objectively analyzing your own performance and figuring out where to put the effort, you can’t. That’s the hour.
That’s what $300 buys, and it isn’t the letters after my name. It’s pattern recognition.
- The name of your biggest problem. Not “study harder.” The actual thing, in words you can repeat to somebody.
- Where to put your time so it turns into points, on the days you actually have and not the days you wish you had.
- A protocol for what to do in the chair on test day, including when the panic hits.
- If you’re still in school: what to change before the next block, not after it.
Everything I find goes in writing. If you’re a retaker, the plan runs backward from your test date. If you’re in school, it runs backward from Friday.
- 1You take a seat below.
- 2Within one business day I email you times and a few short questions. No documents, no uploads.
- 3We get on Zoom. I ask, you answer, and we find the problem.
- 424 to 48 hours later, your written plan lands in your inbox.
You’ve already spent more than this on things that never told you why.
All sales final, no refunds. When you book, a seat comes off the board and nobody else can have it.
Take one of the five seatsBrian Wallace, PA-C.
I’m a practicing multispecialty Physician Assistant. Not a former one. I take histories on real patients every week. Honestly, this is the same job pointed at a different problem.
I’ve been helping PA students for over 15 years. The Six Skills are mine. They came off call after call with people sitting exactly where you’re sitting.
I’m on every one of these calls, and afterward I’m the one who sits down and writes your plan. Add the days I’m in clinic and the students I already have, and five is what I can hold. It is what it is.
Everybody’s told you to keep going. Nobody’s told you what’s wrong and how to fix it.
“I have a horrible test taking ability, sub par study techniques and a master at second guessing myself. I knew the material which was why I couldn’t understand why I failed.”
What I’m not going to tell you.
I’m not going to tell you one session fixes this. It doesn’t. The work after the call is still work, and it’s still yours.
I’m not going to promise you a score, or a number, or a pass. Anybody who does is selling you the same certainty that already let you down.
I’m not going to tell you the problem is that you didn’t want it enough, or that you need to rest more, or that you should just believe in yourself. You’ve had all of that. It’s not treatment.