(Reposting from a MS1 thread this morning, advice for upcoming test takers this year)
>250+, >650+ scoring MS3 student here. Took USMLE/COMLEX this past June.
My advice mirrors some of the above as well as some of my own:
1) Understand physiology from every angle you possibly can, not just the angle/table/mnemonic your PhD teaches. I emphasize understand physio, don't "learn it." By the time you take step 1, every body system should read like a story in your head, not a table of values. Physio is the basis for pathology (basically physio gone wrong), pharmacology (how does drug X affect normal physio), toxicology/micro (protein toxin X affects normal gut physio by reversing Cl- ion pumps, etc). Rapid, accurate recall of phys/mechanisms during the exam make answering higher order questions so much easier.
2) (personal advice) Don't cram for step 1, treat studying for it like a marathon, long and steady. There will surely be conflicting advice on timelines, but this is mine and it worked. I was extremely comfortable approaching my exam date compared to my peers. I was regularly taking time to have a beer/relax with family up until 2 days before my exam.
I started doing UW questions at a comfortable daily rate 6 months before my exam date. I slowly increased the daily intensity up until ~10 days before my exam.
3) Resources: Don't get carried away, and prepare to stop listening to your panicked peers about their studying. Set a plan and stick to it. You'll be surprised how many people are still experimenting with resources 1 month before their exam. Foolish, imo.
Here is what worked for me. If you invest time in these resources, I guarantee they contain all you need for a 250+ step 1.
1) UWorld Qbank: Use it early as a learning guide, not an assessment tool at the end (many people "save" it until later, I don't agree). Do a consistent amount of questions per day, and start early. Use tutor mode, untimed. Understand every answer explanation equally, correct or not. Each question has 4-7 small paragraph explanations, they are golden. If you study them all, each question is like studying 5 questions. The biggest correlation to a student scoring well is by far # of questions completed. Try to get through UW twice. (I made it through UW 1.6x, plus I completed ~1000 Rx qbank questions = >4K questions completed)
2) Step Journal: Made this up myself, worked great. Create a running .doc file containing a few bulletpoints of every weak boards topic you come across. At the end of your study period you'll have a concise list of all your problem topics, that's golden. For me - I used it alongside questions, with any answer (right or wrong) I didn't fully understand got an entry in the journal along with a few bullet point HY words about that topic. If you're reading all the explanations right & wrong, you'll come up with a ton of entries. (My final journal file was 11pt font, >100 pages long) Towards the end of your study period with a couple weeks left, print this sucker out and browse through it every night as you fall asleep. You just rehashed all your weak points.
3) FA: Don't read it, reference it. Use it like wikipedia, every time you come across a subject you don't fully understand in a different resource, make it a point to reference every instance of that word in FA (using .pdf version is very nice for this, just Ctrl-F search for every instance of the word within minutes). I used two screens for studying. One was my FA pdf, one was questions / step journal. The last 6 days of my study period, I stopped all other activity and just read through FA. I picked up a few pointers, but mostly I already knew everything written. It was a warm blanket of reassurance. Also I find "annotating FA" to be a worthless endeavor. Wasted time that you could be doing more questions.
FWIW: I had many classmates who made it their goal to "read 20 pages per day" - meanwhile I was doing questions, sketching out physio charts, learning sketchy medical. I think my idea was better.
4) Sketchy Medical: If you want to know answers to bacteria, parasites, etc - Use sketchy medical. It's a visual mnemonic library with narrated videos talking you through every important feature of every bug. It's smart, it flows really well, it's extremely high yield, and it's reasonably priced compared to other resources. It requires some repetition, so start early. If I was doing it again, I would use SM alongside micro class during MS2.(I'm not kidding when I say that I felt like I was cheating every time I had a practice/real questions about bugs. I destroyed micro questions. It made micro for USMLE a joke).
5) Goljan Audio Files: Put these ~37 audio files on a portable device with headphones, and go for a long walk outside with this guy. He has a way of integrating topics together in ways you haven't thought of yet. Goljan time became my exercise during step studying. I converted his files to 1.5x speed, and would go for 3 hours walks in the country listening to him and sweating it out. 10/10 would do again. He's funny, it's good info, and I found it really enjoyable contrasted against all of my other resources.
6) PATHOMA: Use it from the start of path class until end of step studying. Great resource!
7) NBME Practice Exams: I completed 5 of these during the last 8 weeks of study, mostly 10-25 days prior to exam. Great predictor of score. Confidence booster if you've studied correctly.
Gotta run - PM me if that didn't make sense.
>250+, >650+ scoring MS3 student here. Took USMLE/COMLEX this past June.
My advice mirrors some of the above as well as some of my own:
1) Understand physiology from every angle you possibly can, not just the angle/table/mnemonic your PhD teaches. I emphasize understand physio, don't "learn it." By the time you take step 1, every body system should read like a story in your head, not a table of values. Physio is the basis for pathology (basically physio gone wrong), pharmacology (how does drug X affect normal physio), toxicology/micro (protein toxin X affects normal gut physio by reversing Cl- ion pumps, etc). Rapid, accurate recall of phys/mechanisms during the exam make answering higher order questions so much easier.
2) (personal advice) Don't cram for step 1, treat studying for it like a marathon, long and steady. There will surely be conflicting advice on timelines, but this is mine and it worked. I was extremely comfortable approaching my exam date compared to my peers. I was regularly taking time to have a beer/relax with family up until 2 days before my exam.
I started doing UW questions at a comfortable daily rate 6 months before my exam date. I slowly increased the daily intensity up until ~10 days before my exam.
3) Resources: Don't get carried away, and prepare to stop listening to your panicked peers about their studying. Set a plan and stick to it. You'll be surprised how many people are still experimenting with resources 1 month before their exam. Foolish, imo.
Here is what worked for me. If you invest time in these resources, I guarantee they contain all you need for a 250+ step 1.
1) UWorld Qbank: Use it early as a learning guide, not an assessment tool at the end (many people "save" it until later, I don't agree). Do a consistent amount of questions per day, and start early. Use tutor mode, untimed. Understand every answer explanation equally, correct or not. Each question has 4-7 small paragraph explanations, they are golden. If you study them all, each question is like studying 5 questions. The biggest correlation to a student scoring well is by far # of questions completed. Try to get through UW twice. (I made it through UW 1.6x, plus I completed ~1000 Rx qbank questions = >4K questions completed)
2) Step Journal: Made this up myself, worked great. Create a running .doc file containing a few bulletpoints of every weak boards topic you come across. At the end of your study period you'll have a concise list of all your problem topics, that's golden. For me - I used it alongside questions, with any answer (right or wrong) I didn't fully understand got an entry in the journal along with a few bullet point HY words about that topic. If you're reading all the explanations right & wrong, you'll come up with a ton of entries. (My final journal file was 11pt font, >100 pages long) Towards the end of your study period with a couple weeks left, print this sucker out and browse through it every night as you fall asleep. You just rehashed all your weak points.
3) FA: Don't read it, reference it. Use it like wikipedia, every time you come across a subject you don't fully understand in a different resource, make it a point to reference every instance of that word in FA (using .pdf version is very nice for this, just Ctrl-F search for every instance of the word within minutes). I used two screens for studying. One was my FA pdf, one was questions / step journal. The last 6 days of my study period, I stopped all other activity and just read through FA. I picked up a few pointers, but mostly I already knew everything written. It was a warm blanket of reassurance. Also I find "annotating FA" to be a worthless endeavor. Wasted time that you could be doing more questions.
FWIW: I had many classmates who made it their goal to "read 20 pages per day" - meanwhile I was doing questions, sketching out physio charts, learning sketchy medical. I think my idea was better.
4) Sketchy Medical: If you want to know answers to bacteria, parasites, etc - Use sketchy medical. It's a visual mnemonic library with narrated videos talking you through every important feature of every bug. It's smart, it flows really well, it's extremely high yield, and it's reasonably priced compared to other resources. It requires some repetition, so start early. If I was doing it again, I would use SM alongside micro class during MS2.(I'm not kidding when I say that I felt like I was cheating every time I had a practice/real questions about bugs. I destroyed micro questions. It made micro for USMLE a joke).
5) Goljan Audio Files: Put these ~37 audio files on a portable device with headphones, and go for a long walk outside with this guy. He has a way of integrating topics together in ways you haven't thought of yet. Goljan time became my exercise during step studying. I converted his files to 1.5x speed, and would go for 3 hours walks in the country listening to him and sweating it out. 10/10 would do again. He's funny, it's good info, and I found it really enjoyable contrasted against all of my other resources.
6) PATHOMA: Use it from the start of path class until end of step studying. Great resource!
7) NBME Practice Exams: I completed 5 of these during the last 8 weeks of study, mostly 10-25 days prior to exam. Great predictor of score. Confidence booster if you've studied correctly.
Gotta run - PM me if that didn't make sense.
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