A spam-free thread about sources to use for Step 3!

[jjbmsiv]

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As match day approaches, this young man's mind turns to thoughts of how terrible step 3 will be in light of a otherwise wonderful residency program (in theory). Now that some guy won't be shoving a magical mystery CD down my throat, and that many interns have just taken step 3, I thought it would be time to ask for ideas about sources.

First Aid for step 3: consensus seems to say this one is a winner because of that great section in the back about the clinical cases. A negative is that there seem to be a decent amount of errors throughout, and to some this is completely unacceptable (and not without merit).

Crush for Step 3: consensus seems to be that this is a nice overview, but lacks the substantial detail that step 3 questions require.

Any others? Help the class of 2007 out? Thanks! 🙂

 

[Trisomy13]

As match day approaches, this young man's mind turns to thoughts of how terrible step 3 will be in light of a otherwise wonderful residency program (in theory). Now that some guy won't be shoving a magical mystery CD down my throat, and that many interns have just taken step 3, I thought it would be time to ask for ideas about sources.

First Aid for step 3: consensus seems to say this one is a winner because of that great section in the back about the clinical cases. A negative is that there seem to be a decent amount of errors throughout, and to some this is completely unacceptable (and not without merit).

Crush for Step 3: consensus seems to be that this is a nice overview, but lacks the substantial detail that step 3 questions require.

Any others? Help the class of 2007 out? Thanks! 🙂

Just got notification today that I passed.

I did not use First Aid. Didn't like the format for steps 1/2.
I bought Crush Step 3, read a few sections, started to feel like it was going in one ear, out the other. I have the Underground Vignettes books and flipped through them casually. I carried around old faithful (Boards&Wards) in the hospital to review some hot topics.

By and large, my biggest resource was doing questions from Swanson's (review for family practice boards). That book has 2100+ questions broken into specialties, and I probably managed to get through about 1500, focusing on my weak areas (kids, koochies and old koots).
When I was sick of that book I did a few practice tests from Step 3 NMS question books because they are in test format (topics scrambled) to keep me switching gears.
For CCS I shelled out some cash for the one-week subscription to usmlesteps123 and did about half of them. the cases are easy, once you understand the format and what types of issues/orders/etc they are looking for. The practice cd or download from the usmle is probably more than adequate in retrospect. the cases are fairly bread and butter and you should be able to handle them if you are at least halfway through your internship.

I passed with a decent score. Not setting any records in either direction, but over 200 and good enough considering I only studied in earnest for a week (a real week though, dedicated vacation time).

If you are a question-based learner, I recommend this approach.

No secret cds needed.

 

[Brian Pavlovitz]

Well, I had to take this beast twice (thinking, like a fool, that a lowly pathology resident could pass 3 months into his program without studying-- HA! 😉 ) Here's what I did to prepare the second time around:

Combination of First Aid and Crush. I liked and was familiar with the format of First Aid for the other 2 steps. Great CCS cases in the back, too. Crush, I think, had some more details that FA didn't.

I took a week of vacation and did Kaplan Q-bank. I was at about 58% correct having done a majority of the questions, so I was a bit scared. Do blocks of at least 40 to get into doing longer question sets.

USMLE CD: always a good primer for the actual exam. Had an x-ray image on my exam that was directly from the disc. CCS cases are, of course, great for using the computer interface.

One week before: I bought the NBME clinical exam ($45) and did form 1. For those who haven't used them, it will give you a performace profile as the actual exam does, plus a raw score. I scored very close to my actual score on Steps 1 and 2, and scored exactly as I did for Step 3. I scored a 191--not stellar, but who cares?? I think this is $45 well spent.

Hope that helps! This exam is tough, no matter what anyone tells you, but not impossible. If I can pass, so can you!!! Good luck.

 

[jjbmsiv]

Thanks for the advice, guys! I'm going into psychiatry, so I'm a little worried that my relatively decreased medicine/floor time is going to translate into one bitch of a time on this exam. Both of your words have been really helpful, so thanks!