Physician Assistant Exam Review

You are here: Home / Podcasts / 160 From 326 to 439: How Taylee Rebuilt Her PANCE Approach in 33 Days

160 From 326 to 439: How Taylee Rebuilt Her PANCE Approach in 33 Days

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Failing the PANCE after doing “everything right” is gut‑punch territory.

Taylee graduated from the University of Washington, used all the big‑name tools (Smarty PANCE, Kaplan, PANCE Prep Pearls, podcasts, Ninja Nerd) and still scored a 326 and failed her first attempt.

In this conversation, she walks through how she stopped just adding more content… and instead changed how she studied, how she read questions, and how she handled test‑day stress inside 33 Days to Pass the PANCE. Five months later, she walked back in and scored a 439.

Same exam. Same brain. Different approach.

[Embed podcast player here]

Who this episode is for

  • PA students who have failed the PANCE or are terrified of failing 
  • Clinical‑year students barely scraping by EORs 
  • New grads who feel “90% there” on content but don’t trust themselves on exam day 
  • Faculty who support at‑risk students and want a different kind of intervention

In this episode, you’ll hear:

  • The first attempt that didn’t work
    • How Taylee prepped in just 6.5 weeks post‑graduation with life stressors stacked on top 
    • Why relying on more content (Kaplan, Pearls, podcasts) wasn’t enough 
    • Going in convinced she’d fail after hearing classmates’ bad news 
    • Blowing through four sections without breaks and running out of time
  • What changed the second time
    • Taking a full month off after failing to mentally reset 
    • Realizing she didn’t need more facts, she needed a better framework
    • Why the cost of 33 Days “being about the same as another exam” made the decision easy 
    • Using the daily lessons, “stay out of the weeds” idea, and sports analogies to finally make sense of how to think on exams
  • Learning to see through questions
    • How she started reading vignettes differently: age, setting, labs, and what’s actually possible in that environment 
    • Using question dissection and practice sets the right way (not chasing “100 questions a day”) 
    • The moment she realized exam writers were pointing her toward the right answer instead of trying to trick her
  • Test‑day execution on the retake
    • Walking in with lower stress (her Garmin agreed) 
    • Using each break, resetting between sections, and repeating “what a privilege it is to be here” 
    • Finishing sections with 5–10 minutes left, flagging fewer questions, and trusting her subconscious training
  • The outcome and what it means going forward
    • Jumping from 326 to 439 (+113 points) and shifting every content domain to the right 
    • Why she’s glad she didn’t barely pass the first time 
    • How this process is making her more confident as a future orthopedic PA

Key quote

“33 Days took me from very anxious and uncertain… to less anxious, very secure, confident in the content that I know.”

If you’re working hard and not seeing it in your scores, this is exactly who 33 Days to Pass the PANCE is built for.