This article is adapted from Dr Koshy Jacob's "Building Revise Radiology in Public" series on LinkedIn.

The hardest thing about preparing for the FRCR 2A isn't the difficulty of any single topic. It's the sheer size of the curriculum and the nagging question of where to put your limited time. Most candidates answer that question with instinct and hope. There's a better way, and it starts with being honest about how haphazard the usual approach really is.

How I prepared, guesswork included

When I sat the 2A, my preparation was honest in some ways and quite haphazard in others. I studied around the topics I kept getting wrong in practice questions, I used Dähnert's Radiology Review Manual when I needed to read something in more depth, and I relied on whatever past questions I could get hold of to sense what the exam might look like.

Study groups helped enormously. Hearing how someone else approached a topic or explained a concept often embedded it in a way that reading alone never quite did. It was collaborative in a way I'm not sure exam preparation always is now.

There was also something that made my situation easier than today's. When I sat, the 2A was modular: you could take the body-system components separately, spreading the pressure rather than facing everything at once. That option no longer exists. Since the exam was reformed into a single synoptic assessment of two papers sat together, there's no way to break it up, and it's worth acknowledging how much harder that makes things for the current generation of trainees.

Even with those advantages, the truth is there was very little science to my preparation, and a lot of guesswork about which topics were actually worth investing time in.

The problem with instinct-and-hope

That guesswork is the real enemy. When you can't tell which topics carry weight, you either try to cover everything, which is impossible in the time you have, or you follow your instinct and hope you've bet on the right areas. Either way, a large part of your effort is spent on the wrong things, and you don't find out until results day.

The curriculum tells you what the exam could test. It doesn't tell you what it actually tends to test, or where a well-prepared candidate should concentrate. That gap is where most preparation quietly leaks time.

A more evidence-informed approach

This is what I've been thinking about, because our Global Programme Director and 2A Lead, Dr Syed Shahzad Hussain, spent a month building something I never had. Without going into how he did it, he identified 2,400 questions that give a well-prepared candidate the highest possible chance of passing the 2A, organised into 20 focused packets that reflect what the exam actually tests rather than everything it theoretically could.

Those exact questions won't appear in your exam, of course. But worked through properly, reading the wrong options as carefully as the right ones and reading around every gap they expose, the 20 packets amount to an evidence-informed route through the 2A rather than the instinct-and-hope method most of us relied on. The point isn't to memorise 2,400 answers. It's to let a well-chosen set of questions show you exactly where your understanding needs to be.

How to actually use them

Whether you use our packets or any good question set, the method matters more than the material:

• Attempt first, read second. Let the questions expose your gaps rather than trying to read everything in advance.

• Study the wrong options. Understanding why the other four answers are wrong teaches more than confirming the one that's right.

• Read around every gap. When a question reveals something you don't fully understand, that's your cue to go deeper on that specific topic.

• Work in a group where you can. Explaining a concept aloud, or hearing someone else's approach, embeds it in a way solo reading rarely matches.

The bigger picture

These 2A packets are also the first glimpse of something larger. Later this year we're launching Core, a subscription designed to support the whole of radiology training rather than just the weeks before an exam, with case reporting, AI feedback, and structured learning that stays useful from day one of training to the final sitting.

The thread connecting both is the same: preparation should be guided by evidence about what actually helps you pass and become a good radiologist, not by guesswork.

The 2A packets are now available, and anyone with an existing Revise Radiology subscription has access as part of what they already have. Explore our FRCR 2A preparation to work through them properly.

Thinking beyond the exam? See how Core supports the whole of your training.

This article is adapted from a post in Dr Koshy Jacob's "Building Revise Radiology in Public" series on LinkedIn.

Originally shared by Dr Koshy Jacob on LinkedIn. Follow the series there