Hello! I’m Talal and I graduated from UIC with a B.A. in Economics and a minor in Biological Sciences. During college, I was a science tutor for the Honors College and worked as an undergraduate research assistant for 3 years.
I am currently in my final year of medical school at the University of Illinois. During my second year of medical school, I remember feeling overwhelmed by the quantity of information and resources to prepare for Step 1. Unfortunately, I was disappointed with my...
Hello! I’m Talal and I graduated from UIC with a B.A. in Economics and a minor in Biological Sciences. During college, I was a science tutor for the Honors College and worked as an undergraduate research assistant for 3 years.
I am currently in my final year of medical school at the University of Illinois. During my second year of medical school, I remember feeling overwhelmed by the quantity of information and resources to prepare for Step 1. Unfortunately, I was disappointed with my Step 1 performance and knew something needed to change for Step 2. This is when I began shifting my attention from the number of resources to quality. I spent most of my time doing practice questions which helped me see the most high-yield material in different ways. I became better at test-taking and was able to get many questions right just by process of elimination and avoiding test-writer traps. I stopped using pre-made Anki decks and instead started making custom-made Anki cards that addressed my individual weaknesses. After doing all this I was pleased to achieve a 25+ score improvement from Step 1, scoring 250+ on Step 2 CK and honoring the majority of my clerkships in medical school.
I have tutored students in courses including introductory and cellular biology, general and organic chemistry, and biochemistry.
After doing over 11,000 questions alone and with other students, I have learned how to dissect a question and extract the most important hints/clues to favor one answer over the rest. Likewise, I have learned how to avoid common test-taking pitfalls that students like myself struggle with. As your tutor, I will work hard to not only emphasize the most important teaching points from a question but also provide feedback to make you a better test taker.
Given that practice questions allow us to efficiently review a large amount of information in a testable format, I offer my tutoring sessions in 1 or 2 hour blocks where we will review (in tutor mode) subject-specific NBME style questions. I will provide
