My >250 Story

This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.

cdql

Full Member
10+ Year Member
7+ Year Member
15+ Year Member
Joined
Mar 19, 2006
Messages
958
Reaction score
4
First of all, thank you to all the members of this great forum that have aided me in the past couple of months! I picked up a lot of handy advice along the way and it was nice to occasionally (okay, very "often-ly") whine like a little baby and vent some of my frustrations and insecurities about studying for Step 1 here. Just wanted to share my experience, my preparation, and hopefully help others along the way as so many of you have done for me.

Comprehensive Source: FA 2007. What else? I should note that a lot of my classmates had the 2006 version and about three weeks into their studying, got freaked out at the missing information in their versions and purchased the 2007. My personal feeling is that now is not the time to play Scrooge. Pony up the dough for the latest version so you don't have to wonder if having an older edition may have had any effect on your score.

Anatomy: HY Anatomy. It was fairly useless as my exam fortunately contained very few and very manageable anatomy questions. FA, UW, and Qbank were more than enough for me. If I had gotten an exam with more anatomy questions, there's no doubt in my mind I would have been screwed.

Biochemistry: BRS Biochemistry and Lippincott's Biochemistry. These two were also fairly useless as my exam fortunately contained very few and very manageable biochemistry questions. FA and the occasional glance at ONE reference source to fill in any missing details would have been more than enough. Both UW and Qbank's practice biochemistry questions were way too difficult. I could have just lucked out with my biochemistry questions though.

Pharmacology: Lippincott's Pharmacology and PharmCards. These two were also fairly useless. See a trend? FA should cover 95% of the drugs on the exam. For my exam, the focus was more on side effects than MOA. I would use the flashcards to flesh out the details of drugs that FA just lists. For instance, there is a TB drug listed in FA that has no details. It has a very prominent visual side effect and I got TWO questions on that side effect. It stunned me as the questions were in the same block, separated by only three questions, and were worded almost identically. I thought I had gone backwards in my question progression for a moment.

Microbiology: Clinical Microbiology Made Ridiculously Simple. Good book that is well-written and informative. A lot of the mnemonics were really helpful. My exam was very light on microbiology and again, FA was all that's necessary. Again, this could just be a quirk with my exam and I wouldn't recommend using FA as the sole source for micro.

Immunology: How The Immune System Works and Lange's Review of Medical Microbiology and Immunology. Immuno is not my strong suit so I definitely appreciated the simplistic approach of this book. I certainly wouldn't recommend using this as your sole immuno source but if you find yourself tiring, why not spend a day breezing through this? I followed it up with Lange (started from the immuno section and proceeded until the end of the book). A good review for micro as it's hard to keep all those bacteria, viruses, and parasites in your head with just one readthrough of CMMRS. Immunology was quite tough on my exam so I wished I would have gone over BOTH immuno books again. In terms of page amounts, it would have been doable in a day or two. My exam really emphasized knowing the basic concepts of immunology as opposed to memorizing the effects of the different IL cytokines.

Pathology: BRS Pathology, RR Pathology. This was the meat of my exam. I felt nearly 85% of my questions were pathology. I wish I would have listened to Goljan's tapes and spent almost all of my time with RR Pathology. My personal feeling is that BRS Pathology is next to useless. I had originally set aside 5 days to study path and I used just BRS Pathology. Upon visiting this forum, however, I immediately purchased a copy of RR Pathology and spent about an hour a night (at this point, I didn't feel I could afford to spend more time on pathology) going over it. During my last week of review with FA, I'd look up any concepts I didn't understand in RR Path. Diseases involving the gallbladder always tripped me up so I spent a while learning all the material there. 0 questions on the exam. Kidney diseases also trip me up. Unfortunately, I didn't get around to fully mastering that material. And wouldn't you know it? I got at least 5 questions on kidney pathology asking me to identify the disease and then translate that knowledge into what kind of laboratory findings those diseases would cause. Ugh.

Physiology: BRS Physiology. It's a decent book. I still feel it's missing some material but no one at my school or online has ever suggested another book is needed beyond BRS Physiology. I'm guessing I must have skimmed through the book too quickly and missed some points. (I felt the renal section and pulmonary section were both lacking)

Behavioral Science: BRS Behavioral Science. I know a lot of people enjoy using the shorter HY version but again, I did this after a heavy period of science topics so the 2 days I spent with this book seemed like a "vacation". I didn't get too many of the "quote" questions. I feel I do pretty well on those so I was a bit disappointed but at the same time, I've heard horror stories of people getting quote questions where 2-3 answers seem really good. I still had a couple of nasty surprises regarding behavioral science questions so I would recommend reading the larger book to try and cover all those points. I got a question about healthcare billing on my exam. That had better be an experimental question.

Neuroanatomy: HY Neuroanatomy. I thought this was an excellent book. I only spent two days with it but I wish I would have spent more. Neuro is definitely well represented on the exam and while I felt I did well, I would have liked to turn those questions into "slamdunk" questions with no uncertainty at all. As this was a 1st year course for me, I really ought to have spent a bit more time in reviewing the material.

Weird Stuff: BRS Cell Biology and Histology and HY Cell and Molecular Biology. I read the first four chapters of BRS Cell Biology and Histology. The book is horrifically dense but I did get a handful of questions that I probably could not have answered without having gone through the BRS book. It might be a good thing to read in the final day of your exam prep as crammable material. At the recommendation of people on this forum, I also picked up the 1999 copy of HY Cell and Molecular Biology. While I didn't have any questions pertaining to the book's material, it's a very short read and well-worth the time in the event you do get questions. Amazon is a great place to pick up this older and briefer edition for a very fair price. I remember paying $2 for the book and $3 for shipping.

Embryology: HY Embryology. I'm torn regarding this book. I personally hated it and spent most of my study time skimming through it. But I did get more embryo questions than I had anticipated. That being said, I'm not sure spending more time with the HY Embryo book would have gotten me those points anyway. All in all, I'd recommend sticking with FA or exploring another studying option.

Test Banks: I did 100 UW questions, 50 Qbank questions, and 25 IV Qbank questions each morning. As you can see from my percentages though, the 25 IV Qbank often got neglected if I felt tired or if something on TV caught my eye. I also completed NBME Form 2 after I had gone through all my review books. I made sure to leave a week of review after this practice exam in the event it didn't go smoothly. Finally, I completed the 150 Free Questions halfway through the weeklong review period.
IV Qbank = 38% completed, 80% correct
Qbank = 100% completed, 70% correct
UW = 100% completed, 72% correct
NBME Form 2 = 650 (~248)
150 Free Questions = 90% (~260)

Summary: 6 weeks to study, 1 day off. Daily schedule = 8 hours of review books, 3 hours of questions

Score: >250 (I would have loooooved a 260 but I would have to slap myself if I were to say that I was even the slightest bit disappointed with my performance)

Members don't see this ad.
 
whats the point of posting your score as >250?
 
whats the point of posting your score as >250?

I dunno. I figure there's no need to get into itty bitty specifics in case there are any online stalkers out there :p

Close friends at school and family can know the exact number but that's about all the people I feel comfortable disclosing that info to.

Besides, the range is clearly 250 < score < 260 :D,
so hopefully someone aiming in that range can make use of the advice I gave!
 
whats the point of posting your score as >250?

blz,
congrats on your excellent score. You are pretty intense about the studying but apparently it paid off for you. Great job.
 
Members don't see this ad :)
blz,
congrats on your excellent score. You are pretty intense about the studying but apparently it paid off for you. Great job.

yea i have no clue what i wanna do, so i wanted to do as well as i could to leave my options open. its only 6-8wks of your life, try as best as you can.
 
Hopefully you don't mind me asking.....Was your MCAT score as spectacular as your USMLE score is? The reason I am asking is that I am NOT a good standardized test taker, but have done great in medical school largely due to hard work. I know that I am probably going to have to spend more time studying the material than those who study hard & are also good standardized test takers. Thanks!
 
Hopefully you don't mind me asking.....Was your MCAT score as spectacular as your USMLE score is? The reason I am asking is that I am NOT a good standardized test taker, but have done great in medical school largely due to hard work. I know that I am probably going to have to spend more time studying the material than those who study hard & are also good standardized test takers. Thanks!

I got a 34 on my MCAT (probably doesn't translate into a spectacular score) but I should also say that I didn't spend a whole lot of time studying for it.

I think good standardized test takers are at an advantage here as a lot of the questions do require educated guesses and the ability to quickly eliminate obvious incorrect answers.
 
now i'm just curious where the screen name "cdql" comes from . . . initials? acronym? random?


It's initials but someone had already taken that name so I had to add an odd letter into the mix in order to make the name work. Q is pretty odd ;)
 
Hi cdql i egarly waited for your experience,thanks for sharing its very simple and straight but useful...congratulations >250 highly impressive :thumbup:
:luck:
 
great study plan...

i scored 260/99 and took the kaplan intenseprep, in addition to doing USMLEworld, USMLERx, and many of the pre-test book series. If anyone has any questions about these resources, I would be happy to help!
 
Hi cdql i egarly waited for your experience,thanks for sharing its very simple and straight but useful...congratulations >250 highly impressive :thumbup:
:luck:

Thanks! :D
 
great study plan...

i scored 260/99 and took the kaplan intenseprep, in addition to doing USMLEworld, USMLERx, and many of the pre-test book series. If anyone has any questions about these resources, I would be happy to help!

How is the Kaplan intenseprep different from the regular Kaplan classes & notes? Thanks!
 
Members don't see this ad :)
cdql,

how much time was spent on Questions each day? I see you completed Uworld and Qbank in 6 weeks along with other doing many more questions.

I tried to fit in those 100 UW questions, 50 Qbank questions, and 25 IVQbank questions into 3-3.5 hours each morning. I would intentionally save the 25 IVQbank questions for the end so that in case I got tired or just plain worn out, I could skip it without feeling too bad. (IVQbank is quite useless. There's a reason Kaplan throws it in for free with regular Qbank)

I didn't do a very good job of going over the answers as my concern was oriented towards getting through a minimum of 100 UW/50 Qbank questions per day. (It may have been more productive to finish fewer questions but make sure I really had those concepts mastered. This is yet another reason why I prefer UW. The one line summary at the end for answer explanations was really helpful for a rusher like myself)
 
If you had to do it again, would you get both QBank and USMLE World question banks again? I have heard many individuals just say skip QBank and do USMLE World, but I wonder if QBank helps hammer some of the nitty gritty details in your head? I was originally thinking of doing both, but have heard a lot of people dissing Kaplan QBank. Your thoughts? Thanks!
 
If you had to do it again, would you get both QBank and USMLE World question banks again? I have heard many individuals just say skip QBank and do USMLE World, but I wonder if QBank helps hammer some of the nitty gritty details in your head? I was originally thinking of doing both, but have heard a lot of people dissing Kaplan QBank. Your thoughts? Thanks!


If I had to do it again and I had the same exam, I think UW would have been more than enough.

That being said, everyone gets a different exam and it would be hard for me to convince someone to solely go with UW (I remember hearing the advice to skip Qbank as well and I couldn't go through with it)

Qbank definitely has a lot of nitty, gritty questions and most of them are quite unhelpful but sometimes it's just nice to have a different set of questions to practice with. (I would say Qbank's microbiology questions, biochemistry questions, and pharm questions are way too tough. Anatomy was surprisingly decent though!)

If you feel comfortable bypassing Qbank though, go for it! :thumbup:
 
what kind of information is different in 2007 FA? i keep hearing 2006 is the better version of FA

Also, congrats! on a >250 score....im praying for >240
 
what kind of information is different in 2007 FA? i keep hearing 2006 is the better version of FA

Also, congrats! on a >250 score....im praying for >240

Thanks! There are a couple of tables added in 2007. I'm not sure which one is the better version but I would always take the one with more information in it and in this case, that would be the 2007 version.
 
Thanks! There are a couple of tables added in 2007. I'm not sure which one is the better version but I would always take the one with more information in it and in this case, that would be the 2007 version.

I just sat thru a Kaplan Sales pitch at my school today. Coudn't turn down the free lunch. I am having a hard time deciding what question bank to select. From your posts, I can see that you are fond of USMLE world. Can you tell more about the pros and cons of each? Kaplan was offering $100 off the Qreview and extended the time period from 6 months to 9 months.

Also, do you have an opinion of Step Up to USMLE Step 1?

Thanks!
 
I just sat thru a Kaplan Sales pitch at my school today. Coudn't turn down the free lunch. I am having a hard time deciding what question bank to select. From your posts, I can see that you are fond of USMLE world. Can you tell more about the pros and cons of each? Kaplan was offering $100 off the Qreview and extended the time period from 6 months to 9 months.

Also, do you have an opinion of Step Up to USMLE Step 1?

Thanks!

I liked USMLE world because I felt the questions were closer to the real thing. The diagrams in USMLE world were fantastic, I liked the brief one sentence summary during days when I didn't feel like reading through the paragraph-long explanations, and the format is the same as the real thing.

The only reason why I picked up Qbank is because my school had been recommending it for years and years. If you have the cash and the time, I'd recommend both. (Personally, I felt uncomfortable just doing USMLEWorld) I don't remember anything outstanding about Qbank but at times, it was just nice to access a different bank to get different style questions.

I never got a chance to use Step Up to USMLE Step 1 so I can't offer any advice about it.

Hope this helps!
 
i thought this was a rather helpful guide

bumping for the benefit of MS2's who are just about to embark on the horrid journey that is USMLE Step 1 prep

:D
 
i thought this was a rather helpful guide

bumping for the benefit of MS2's who are just about to embark on the horrid journey that is USMLE Step 1 prep

:D

I applaud the OP for working hard and achieving an awesome score; however, I would like to offer the other perspective to these kind of guide. When I first started studying for step 1, I lurk and read a lot of personal experiences like this and got all worked up, bought lots of books, thinking that this is the norm. Even got advice from some of the top scorer on this board, all were very good. Looking back, I personally think this is excessive. I got all overwhelmed and never touched most of those books. True, my step 1 score is not as high as the OP (241), but if I can calculate the ratio of Step 1 score/tears&sweat, I think I'd lose had I exert myself at the OPs level. Ultimately, it's all going to based on the individuals motivation and ability to memorize lots of crap on the short term, but on the average, I think SDN misrepresent the amount of time studied and books used for this test. Many (dare I say most?) people (incuding myself) did well, not as well as the OP and 75% of SDN, but enough to fall into the average score of most competitive field.

Take an NBME test, see where you stand, if it's good enough for what you want to go into, then it's probably good enough. I think the law of diminishing return applies to Step 1 also. Best advice I can offer someone is to get 1 resource and use it throughout the year if you want to start a little early.
 
great study plan...

i scored 260/99 and took the kaplan intenseprep, in addition to doing USMLEworld, USMLERx, and many of the pre-test book series. If anyone has any questions about these resources, I would be happy to help!

I am also registered for the kaplan intenseprep course, however, I am having trouble deciding whether going the lectures will be a good use of time, considering classes are from 8-5 and I already have the lecture notes. Did you attend the lectures? Were they helpful. Thanks in advance
 
I applaud the OP for working hard and achieving an awesome score; however, I would like to offer the other perspective to these kind of guide. When I first started studying for step 1, I lurk and read a lot of personal experiences like this and got all worked up, bought lots of books, thinking that this is the norm. Even got advice from some of the top scorer on this board, all were very good. Looking back, I personally think this is excessive. I got all overwhelmed and never touched most of those books. True, my step 1 score is not as high as the OP (241), but if I can calculate the ratio of Step 1 score/tears&sweat, I think I'd lose had I exert myself at the OPs level. Ultimately, it's all going to based on the individuals motivation and ability to memorize lots of crap on the short term, but on the average, I think SDN misrepresent the amount of time studied and books used for this test. Many (dare I say most?) people (incuding myself) did well, not as well as the OP and 75% of SDN, but enough to fall into the average score of most competitive field.

Take an NBME test, see where you stand, if it's good enough for what you want to go into, then it's probably good enough. I think the law of diminishing return applies to Step 1 also. Best advice I can offer someone is to get 1 resource and use it throughout the year if you want to start a little early.

I would agree as well. I used fewer resources (although it's nice to know which ones are good and tested), fewer question banks, and was still able to do similarly (a bit worse)

Always nice to read about how intense other SDN posters are :D (a lil anxiety-provoking too)
 
When you stated that you had the ~70% on Qbank/World, was that in your last few sets of 50q random blocks, or is that overall?

The reason I ask is that I'm about 5-6 weeks out from my exam and I'm right around 56%. I'm still finishing up my second year coursework, but it'd be nice to know that I'm on the right track :).

Also, if you had to pick 1 of the Biochem resources (BRS/Lippincott), which would you go with? I'm torn right now between those two and the 2002 kaplan notes that I had passed onto me by a friend.
 
I finished with an overall % around 70. But like you, I definitely started in the lower 50's. Eventually, upon using up all the questions, I hit repeats which helped to raise my %

Regarding biochem, I used BRS and sparingly at that. FA really covers most of the big topics.
 
Hey All,

I'm new to this USMLE game. Would some be so kind as to write out what some of the acronyms stand for?

FA for example?

Endeavoring to get on top of this all, as early as possible.

Cheers.
 
Hey All,

I'm new to this USMLE game. Would some be so kind as to write out what some of the acronyms stand for?

FA for example?

Endeavoring to get on top of this all, as early as possible.

Cheers.

hang around for a bit and you'll start to pick them up.

FA - First Aid for the USMLE
MMRS - Microbiology Made ridiculously simple
HY - High Yield
BRS - Board Review Series
UW - USMLE World question bank

That should get you started.
 
great study plan...

i scored 260/99 and took the kaplan intenseprep, in addition to doing USMLEworld, USMLERx, and many of the pre-test book series. If anyone has any questions about these resources, I would be happy to help!

hi
how did you alocate your time as far as doing questions after spending 8-4 in kaplan intenseprep. I am taking it now and I am having a hard time finding time to to qbank questions when I get home. I do the questions in the book to emphasize what we covered that day and after that I have don't always get to qbank questions. I am less than 4 weeks aways from my test date and I will have a full 3 weeks just for questions in a week. Any advice would be appreciated. Thanks
 
I've always found questions to be more useful than plain studying. I would set aside 203 hours each night to see if I could get through a set of Qbank or USMLEWorld questions.
 
Another bump for this thread that I found highly useful. True: it's not for everyone considered the massive amount of books used.

But I remember reading through this last year (I took my Step 1 365 days ago to the day) and found it a great resource.
 
I wanted to ask all the SDN heavy hitters who got a 240+ (congratulations!), if you guys managed to have time to do a ton of UW questions along with note-taking from the UW explanations into First Aid, or if you just focused on doing as many questions as possible and only reading the explanations. Right now, it's taking me about 3 hours just to simply read the UW explanations for each hour-long block! Were you guys able to retain information simply by reading the UW explanations?

Thanks so much for your help!
 
Last edited:
I wanted to ask all the SDN heavy hitters who got a 240+ (congratulations!), if you guys managed to have time to do a ton of UW questions along with note-taking from the UW explanations into First Aid, or if you just focused on doing as many questions as possible and only reading the explanations. Right now, it's taking me about 3 hours just to simply read the UW explanations for each hour-long block! Were you guys able to retain information simply by reading the UW explanations?

Thanks so much for your help!
obviously it will take longer if you want to get the *most* out of the UW explanations, but its up to you to decide how much time is worth it. for me, i would just glance through the question set, reading through just to ensure that i was understanding everything. if i answered a question right and was thinking through it correctly (ie not just guessing), then i figured there was no reason to look at it further. other times, id miss something on porphyrias or gastritis or whatever, realize i had no clue about that topic, and spend some time solidifying my knowledge on it before i got back to UW.

you can easily get tangential and spend an entire morning reviewing a set or you can go through it in an hour; you just gotta figure out what level of returns youre comfortable getting back.
 
and have in mind that in the beginning it takes much more time to review since u arent finished with ur studies and u dont know many subjects but this will change, it did for me at least. now it takes me about 45min to 1 hour max to review the questions but i have to say that i am leaving a few days at the end of my studies to review my marked questions.
 
Thank you for your responses! i am also hoping to review questions I got incorrect on UW during the last week, as well as "live & breathe First Aid" :)
 
You will see a lot of repeat topics throughout UW. It's a good idea to take notes but I think that if you do a good read through of the answers, you will see the same themes come up over and over again.
 
You're right, instatewaiter -- i have noticed that. i've been focusing on Path/Phys/Pathophys so i wasn't sure if that was also the case for other topics. Plus, they usually give a quick summary of each of their incorrect answer choices, which has been helpful for memorization.
 
Like the OP, my focus was always on how many questions I could get through as opposed to how many of the explanations I read.

I would thoroughly go over the explanations to questions I had gotten wrong but even then, I often found myself skipping to the summary sentence provided by UW.

Still seemed to work out well due to the sheer number of questions I got through.
 
I wanted to ask all the SDN heavy hitters who got a 240+ (congratulations!), if you guys managed to have time to do a ton of UW questions along with note-taking from the UW explanations into First Aid, or if you just focused on doing as many questions as possible and only reading the explanations. Right now, it's taking me about 3 hours just to simply read the UW explanations for each hour-long block! Were you guys able to retain information simply by reading the UW explanations?

Thanks so much for your help!

I think it's more important to actually read the UW answers than annotate. I tended to gloss over the questions I got correct anyway. Would rather focus on reading the answers to the questions I consistently get wrong.
 
I wanted to ask all the SDN heavy hitters who got a 240+ (congratulations!), if you guys managed to have time to do a ton of UW questions along with note-taking from the UW explanations into First Aid, or if you just focused on doing as many questions as possible and only reading the explanations. Right now, it's taking me about 3 hours just to simply read the UW explanations for each hour-long block! Were you guys able to retain information simply by reading the UW explanations?

Thanks so much for your help!
See my new entry in the 2008 Step 1 thread.
 
Top