Advice For Usmle-new Med Student

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Miss155

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Hi

I am a new med student and I have started to think about my USMLE. I was wondering if you could give me some great advice so that I can start preparing for the upcoming exam while I am still taking the basic classes. Thanks.
 
Agreed, the best thing you can do for yourself right now is to study hard in your classes and learn the material. You can start worrying about Step 1 in the middle of 2nd year. If you rock your class exams, you'll rock your boards. They're testing you over the same material you're being taught, not random information (well, usually not anyway). Reviewing for the boards is more about putting the information you learned in years 1 and 2 into a clinical framework, but until you have that knowledge the framework is useless.

good luck!
 
I've heard people say grab a copy of the current (or last year's) First Aid and annotate it as you go through the info in your courses. Don't write everything your class covers (or anything close to it) because most of it will be low yield at best, useless at worst. But if there's any nifty things profs say that help you remember a concept, jot it down. Then when you've totally forgotten cardiac physiology spring of 2nd year, you have some mental reminders.

Trick is, the current edition FA is systems-based, and I think every older edition was subject based, so maybe you want to get the newest one so it will be most similar to what the Boards will be like when you take them. Alternatively you could make little notes in the Grid books/BRS series. But some don't like BRS (or at least not for all subjects) and everyone seems to praise FA, so I'd go with that.

Otherwise, do nothing Board-specific. Do your best in classes, try to ace them and really Know your material, then when you sit down end of 2nd year, you're studying but it's a lot of review too (because you already know it). Cramming for Step 1 is probably not wise, or very productive... neither is studying for it at the start of 1st year!
 
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