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fa21212 said:
Does anyone go to a medical school where the faculty actually teaches really well and you can actually get a good Step 1 score without having to rely on a bunch of outside materials?
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Nope.

fa21212 said:
there are substantial variations in Step 1 scores leading me to believe that there are perhaps some school specific factors that lead some student to have an easier time performing well whereas other schools may not care as much and may not have ever put in the time or effort to carefully analyze their curriculum to see how effective it actually is.
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Step scores are on you as the student. Studying medicine requires a very large amount of intrinsic motivation and wherever you go don’t expect the school to get you a high Step score. You have to go out and get it yourself.
 
I have to disagree with the notion that the onus is on the medical school to become a review course for Step 1. Should they give you the time and resources necessary to succeed on Step 1? Absolutely. But as much as review materials like Pathoma et. al are wonderful adjunct resources, they are review materials. Simplifying the entire pre-clinical curriculum solely for high-yield Step 1 material would ultimately water down medical education and would be a disservice to us in the end.
 
fa21212 said:
I've heard plenty of horror stories of faculty teaching to their own irrelevant research / ignoring Step 1 and others such that people stop going to lecture or even watching lecture videos and just rely more on Step 1 prep materials to even prepare for preclinical exams during M1 and M2. Does anyone go to a medical school where the faculty actually teaches really well and you can actually get a good Step 1 score without having to rely on a bunch of outside materials?
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Med school basic science faculty are there to teach their subject, not to prepare you for Step I. That's on you.
 
fa21212 said:
Sure, that completely makes sense. I know that I'm going to have to spend a lot of time studying for classes and so if I do, I would rather have that time spent on useful things that would be helpful for the Step 1 rather than random things that may not be as useful.
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The beauty of Step 1 is that there is no way to tell the difference between the two.
 
fa21212 said:
Hey Guys,

I've heard plenty of horror stories of faculty teaching to their own irrelevant research / ignoring Step 1 and others such that people stop going to lecture or even watching lecture videos and just rely more on Step 1 prep materials to even prepare for preclinical exams during M1 and M2. Does anyone go to a medical school where the faculty actually teaches really well and you can actually get a good Step 1 score without having to rely on a bunch of outside materials? If you do go to one of these schools, please let me know the name of the school.

Thank you for your help!
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This is definitely the WRONG type of thinking when it comes to medical school. The point of medical school is NOT to teach you to do well on STEP1 but to provide you with the basic knowledge necessary to be a COMPETENT physician. Will the faculty teach you unnecessary and esoteric stuff? Unfortunately yes. Will you use everything you ever learned in medical school in practice? Most likely not. But that's just how life works in general. You will never know what information you'll use down the line. You think that glycogen storage disorder is useless information for you? I'm sure it's deadly important to the patient dying from it right now.

It's unfortunate that med school experience has been pretty much distilled down to STEP1 scores given how important it is to residency selection. But ultimately, to echo everyone else on here, your STEP1 performance is basically on you. No one else is responsible for how good or bad you do except for you. Spoon feeding information is over. And guess what? That's how the real world works. You're responsible for taking care of your patients and no else. When **** hits the fan and you're the only doctor available that patient dying or surviving will rely on what's in your head. So do yourself and your patients a favor and approach med school with more than just "I gotta do well in STEP1" mentality.
 
If you look at median MCAT vs median STEP 1, there are definitely schools where for whatever reason the students perform better (Mayo, Baylor, Case) or worse (Hopkins, Stanford) than one might expect, but this seems to matter little for match results.
 
First Aid is a review book, wouldn't try to learn things for the first time out of it. But boards&beyond and Pathoma work well as teaching resources, not just review. I don't think there's any school with curriculum or lecturers better than what B&B or Pathoma offers you. Students all over the country use them for a reason. I have had multiple units in first year where I abandoned the school's lecture curriculum completely and just used Sketchy/Pathoma/B&B/other resources and was glad I did.
 
Preclinical coursework does two things:
1) teaches you how to learn and work efficiently
2) provides a small amount of basic science background that may be useful to you in your future specialty

All of the accredited US medical schools achieve these ends adequately. Some programs are better fits for a given student than others. Go where you think you will be comfortable and motivated to do a ton of self learning.

For step 1, just use the tried and true resources (pathoma, sketchy, uworld, first aid).


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