Whats a reasonable amount of time to give myself to finish UWorld (first pass) without getting burned out?? I am trying to plan my study schedule! Thanks.
Finishing Uworld
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Burnout is a very variable phenomenon from person to person.... but I'll tell you what I've been doing so that you can draw your own conclusions.
I started out doing 25-50 questions a day (around March 1 or so), and eventually found myself doing about 100 questions a day. I realized that I'd finish UWorld way ahead of schedule, so after I finished about half of it, I bought a subscription to Kaplan (because I wanted to have half of UWorld left over for the last couple of weeks before the test). After that, I did about 1100 Kaplan questions in about 12 days.
Overall, I've done about 2200 total Qbank questions, plus the Kaplan diagnostic (200 questions) and UWSA2 (200 questions), in a little over a month. I've also been spending a lot more time reviewing First Aid and Pathoma.
I've recently found myself approaching burnout, so I think I'll set myself a limit of 50 questions a day, which will give me a couple of extra hours to get ahead on FA/Pathoma, so I might be able to take an occasional day off....
I started out doing 25-50 questions a day (around March 1 or so), and eventually found myself doing about 100 questions a day. I realized that I'd finish UWorld way ahead of schedule, so after I finished about half of it, I bought a subscription to Kaplan (because I wanted to have half of UWorld left over for the last couple of weeks before the test). After that, I did about 1100 Kaplan questions in about 12 days.
Overall, I've done about 2200 total Qbank questions, plus the Kaplan diagnostic (200 questions) and UWSA2 (200 questions), in a little over a month. I've also been spending a lot more time reviewing First Aid and Pathoma.
I've recently found myself approaching burnout, so I think I'll set myself a limit of 50 questions a day, which will give me a couple of extra hours to get ahead on FA/Pathoma, so I might be able to take an occasional day off....
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I don't see how people do so many questions per day. It takes me a solid chunk of my day to get through one block of UWorld. Are you not reading the explanations in detail or skipping over the stuff you know?
mmmcdowe
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4-5 weeks, but that's assuming that you are doing stuff other than UWorld.
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I agree.
During each 10-hour study day (which is 8-9 true study hours after food breaks, etc.), I complete 48 questions from USMLE Rx. Some people do >100 questions per day, but I think they just tend not to re-review as much (i.e. "I know that already..moving on.").
I do tutor mode, but still make sure to answer each question quickly. Then I spend anywhere between 10-20 minutes on each explanation plus re-memorization of the relevant FA material before moving to the next question. And as I said before, each 48-question blocks takes me a day.
Just as an experiment, I've done timed 48-question blocks, and my scores still have come out the same, sometimes even better, so I'm not concerned about switching out of tutor mode, but I find reviewing all of the explanations at the end versus after each question to be extremely boring. I like starting "fresh" with a new question after playing catch up with the review from the current one.
When I get to Kaplan and UWorld, I'll still do those questions mostly in tutor mode, but within the final 8-weeks, when I hit Rx, Kaplan and UWorld all for the second time, they will undoubtedly be timed blocks. The NBMEs will also be timed, obviously.
Listen, to each his or her own, but in the end, it's knowing the concepts deeply, and that takes time and repetition, not just breezing through hundred of questions per day.
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Everybody is different. I usually spend about an hour on a 25-question block... about 20-25 minutes on the questions, and the rest on reading explanations. I find that UWorld questions take longer than Kaplan questions because UWorld questions have more thorough explanations.
If that's not enough time, then that's not enough time... but that's what works for me. I don't have the attention span to spend 10-20 minutes reading every explanation... whenever I try that, I end up getting lost in some other thought. It's been working for me so far, so I'm not complaining.
And I'm not telling anybody else that they should do what I do. I'm just trying to help out by sharing my experience.
If that's not enough time, then that's not enough time... but that's what works for me. I don't have the attention span to spend 10-20 minutes reading every explanation... whenever I try that, I end up getting lost in some other thought. It's been working for me so far, so I'm not complaining.
And I'm not telling anybody else that they should do what I do. I'm just trying to help out by sharing my experience.
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I totally agree. When i was doing Uworld questions, i took me around 2.5-3 hours to do a block of questions (46q) and then review them as well. I was reading every right and wrong answer and was annotating the important/missing information into my fa or onto a separate sheet of paper.
Now i am doing USMLErx question and a block of question usually takes me around 30 minutes to review since explanation are straight forward and right out of the FA. I just read the correct response and then bottom line. If i got a question wrong then if needed, i read the other responses.
