COMLEX Level 1 Tutor

Level 1 tutors and the help they provide

Dr. Sean Moazezi, DO leads Level 1 preparation. He trained at an osteopathic medical school and sat COMLEX himself. His work combines a personal calendar, live question reasoning and targeted review of the misconceptions that keep coming back.

Chelsi Flippo, MD teaches COMLEX Level 1 and Level 2-CE. Her approach builds the foundation first, then uses clinical vignettes and targeted questions to apply it. Alexandra Llovet also works with Level 1 retakers, as students describe in their reviews. Ask about tutor fit if your biggest obstacle is organizing knowledge or retrieving it under pressure.

Updated October 28, 2026 · The Boards Professor, founded by Dr. Sean Moazezi, DO.

Your first meeting: find the bottleneck

Before assigning a large study workload, we review what you already do. Bring your recent practice assessment, question-bank history, school deadlines and exam date. We look at which systems you avoid, which questions take too long and whether review time prevents you from getting through new practice.

Then we build the first week. Sean can help adjust Anki settings and choose which missed concepts deserve cards. If a repetition system has become a second full-time job, the solution may be fewer, more relevant reviews. If you understand an explanation but miss the next similar vignette, the session needs to address application rather than another lecture on the same fact.

Learn to explain your answer before seeing the choices

In live practice, you identify the important positive and negative clues, form a status check, and grade the options. The tutor asks what evidence supports your choice and what would have to change for a distractor to become correct. That makes your thinking visible and gives us a specific habit to practice.

We organize missed questions by what went wrong: a science gap, a misunderstood finding, an answer-choice trap or a timing issue. The homework follows the error. A content gap gets a focused review; a reading habit gets more coached question practice. You keep a major-misconceptions list so the next session can test whether the change stuck.

Keep OMM and foundational science connected

Tutoring includes osteopathic principles and OMM. Sean’s coaching uses topics such as Chapman reflexes and Fryette principles, with additional time reserved for the concepts you cannot yet apply consistently. Bring osteopathic questions you have missed so the review starts from an observable difficulty.

NBOME describes Level 1 as assessing foundational biomedical science knowledge and osteopathic competencies needed for supervised patient care (NBOME: Level 1).

Our teaching connects mechanisms to the vignette instead of treating every subject as an isolated memorization task. The focus can move from cardiovascular or renal physiology to the reasoning step that several different subjects have exposed. Your practice record determines where we spend the next hour.

Current Level 1 format and result reporting

The examination has 320 single-best-answer multiple-choice questions, divided into eight sections of 40 (NBOME: examination format).

The 2026–2027 bulletin describes one testing day with two separately timed four-hour sessions. It also describes 60 minutes of pooled break time and 16 minutes for pre-exam information and tutorial (NBOME: 2026–2027 Bulletin of Information (PDF)).

Your Level 1 result is reported as pass/fail, with a Formative Performance Profile instead of a numeric score (NBOME: scoring and reporting).

Those facts guide how we discuss endurance and progress. We can rehearse timed question work and use performance patterns to prioritize review. A single question-bank percentage is not treated as an official clearance to test; decisions also need your school’s requirements and the context of your assessments.

Sample six-week Level 1 progression

This illustrative outline is a sample, not a real student’s record. Your tutor changes the order and workload when your baseline or coursework requires it. Osteopathic review continues through the systems work rather than being left to a single final day.

• Week 1: cardiovascular, respiratory and neurology questions, with a baseline discussion of question technique.
• Week 2: behavioral science, gastrointestinal and renal topics; check whether the first week’s mistakes recur.
• Weeks 3–4: endocrine, reproductive, musculoskeletal, hematology, dermatology and infectious disease review.
• Week 5: use fresh assessment feedback to focus on the weakest systems.
• Week 6: mixed practice and targeted recall, with rest before the examination.

Sean’s planning includes one day off each week and shorter maintenance workloads when life interrupts dedicated study. Session notes generally arrive within 24–48 hours. The portal holds notes and goals, and you can send difficult questions between sessions without an additional charge.

Sample daily blocks: begin with due-card reviews, complete a timed 40-question block, then reserve about an hour for reviewing its misses. Use a separate focused content block to repair the main gap. This is an illustrative study sequence, not an exam readiness threshold; your tutor adjusts the number of blocks to the available day.

Checkpoints: discuss your baseline before the first week, reassess around week 3, and review fresh feedback again near week 5. Choose assessment dates with your school and tutor. A checkpoint should change the next week’s priorities when a weakness persists.

COMSAE practice and a Level 1 retake plan

NBOME offers COMSAE Phase 1 self-assessments for this stage of preparation (NBOME: COMSAE).

Bring the assessment feedback you can access, your recent study calendar and your missed-question patterns. We use them to set the next priorities. Do not spend the meeting trying to reconstruct every question from memory; a clear account of what repeatedly went wrong is more useful for planning.

After an unsuccessful attempt, begin with the performance profile and a candid look at the previous routine. Did content review crowd out questions? Did you recognize the concept but change correct answers? Did the plan collapse during a difficult week? We rebuild the routine around the specific problem and check it against new practice.

NBOME’s bulletin limits each level to four scored attempts and no more than four attempts in a 12-month period, counting incomplete or voided attempts in that annual limit. An additional final attempt beyond four requires an explicit request from a medical licensing agency (NBOME: attempt policy, 2026–2027 bulletin).

Coordinate a retake with your school and check official eligibility before reserving the date. Our failed COMLEX guide offers a starting point for that conversation.

Level 1 students describe the support

“He created a personalized study schedule (having someone plan and create a schedule for me was HUGE), helped me set up my Anki, identified knowledge gaps, and introduced a test-taking strategy that noticeably boosted my performance within just a few sessions.”

— Dylan M.

“I worked with Sean while preparing for COMLEX Level 1, and I truly don’t think I could have done it without him. He built personalized study schedules, helped me prioritize high-yield content, and strengthened my overall test-taking strategy.”

— Haris T.

“Not only did they help me come up with a study method that actually worked for me after multiple failed attempts at Level 1, but they made themselves accessible every day for any questions I had or any life difficulties that got in the way of studying. They were confident in me when I couldn’t build that confidence…”

— Olivia S.

Excerpts from our student review collection. These are individual experiences, not predictions of another student’s results.

Studying for Step 1 as well?

Tell us the order of the two exams. We can combine the calendar while preserving COMLEX-specific question work and osteopathic review. Explore Step 1 tutoring to discuss that part of preparation. For your next stage, see Level 2-CE tutoring; the COMLEX tutor page explains coverage across all levels.

Level 1 tutoring price and consultation

Private sessions cost $349 per 50-minute session. The free introduction is a 20-minute phone consultation about your baseline, available study hours and the help you want. Bring your school’s timing requirements if they affect the plan. Book a Level 1 introductory call.