I've talked to people who've taken the tests b/4 and they seem to be divided into two camps. there's one that will memorize informations from FirstAid or BRS books. The other will rely on doing as many practice questions as possible. I fall in w/ the latter group.
I took 2 months off to totally devote to USMLE studying. My day would begin w/ me doing 100-150 questions in the morning followed by a two hour lunch break then resume reviewing the answers by 3pm. The reviewing would take me til 10pm. I started out w/ Kaplan Q-banks. I did most of Q-banks in test mode but grouped the questions in specific subjects. For example, I would only do 50-questions blocks of Physio until I finish all Physio questions. By the time I'm done w/ Q-banks, I was pretty confident w/ all subjects. I proceeded to IV-Qbanks. I did this q-banks in the same manner as before except I mixed in all subjects. USMLEWorld q-bank was next and was completed just like the IV-Qbank.
The hardest part of this method of preparation for the exam is the reviewing of the answers. As you can see above, it usually take me 7 hours to review 100-150 questions. The reason why it took so long was because I used this time to explore in details subjects and questions that I did not have a full comprehesion of. The books I used for my references were Kaplan's subject books, microbiology made ridiculously easy, anatomy made ridiculously easy, and ofcourse FirstAid. Emedicine.com was also very helpful and a very quick way to find info quick. Just google "disease name" w/ emedicine.
So to tell you what a typical review-the-answer session was like, I'll give you an example. Say I'm reviewing a question that concerns an anti-arrythmic drug and I have a very ahallow understanding of all the drugs in this class. I would take out FirstAid and read up on that section (by the way I used a 2003 version for 2007, I heard there's a change in the book's formating in 2007) to get a general understanding. Then I would go to Kaplan's Pharm book and read a lil' bit more about the subject. Then I would take sometime to memorize all the drugs in this category. The next time I get a question in this field, I don't have to review as much.
During my 2 months of isolation, I did take every other weekends off to party or relax. I don't think I would have made it w/o these breaks.
I hoped that helped and good luck!
