hey folks,
i have 6 weeks to take the test. should i just do usmleworld (unused, random timed)? or do kaplan questions too. i think that might be overkill trying to do 150 questions a day, on top of reading and learning the material. what is the best method?? thanks!
Do UW unused, random. Timed or tutor is up to you. Do timed if you think you need practice with timing, but personally I switched over to do exclusively tutor mode about half-way through UW, because it was more efficient. It shows you the answer & explanation right after you click an answer, so the question is still very fresh in your head and you remember why you chose answers and didn't choose other answers, and can correct your thinking instead of just noting you got it incorrect and try to memorize the correct answer. And it took less time to do a tutor block than a timed block (if you go through every explanation, which I did and recommend and is pretty much unanimously recommended on SDN).
As far as 150 questions a day goes, I think that's way too much. You may be able to do a block of 50 in the morning (which I recommend, gets you primed for morning questions on the test day) and a block of 50 in the evening, but that ends up being ~2-4 hours of time already, if you added another one, you're in danger of getting bored, not paying attention, burning out on questions, and wasting time. Not that UW is a waste of time, but doing 5-6 hours of it every day is overkill in my opinion. In 6 weeks you could do 1 block a day and get through UW no problem. I do recommend doing questions every day (it's okay to take a day off here or there though if you can't fit it in or just need a break).
Summary recommendations:
1) Do 1-2 blocks per day of 50 unused random tutor mode
2) Do just USMLEWorld, it is plenty and it is a better use of question study time than Kaplan
3) Monitor your progress. Jot down your % from each block in order so you can see if/how you're improving.
4) Try to get through the whole thing. If you don't, it's not a big deal, but you'll feel more confident going in if you finished it, read every answer, monitored your progress, and are in the range you hope to be by the end (70's-80's%)
5) Doing questions
better is more beneficial than doing more questions. Your goal should be to do as many questions
well as you can.
6) Use an occasional NBME to gauge what range of score you're currently in & to monitor how your studying's coming along. That said, if an NBME score of yours is not what you were hoping for or expecting,
ONLY use that as motivation, don't let it freak you out. Flukes aren't worth derailing your study plan over (as long as it's a good study plan).
