Evaluate my study plan please

This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.

Ronin786

Full Member
10+ Year Member
Joined
Mar 27, 2011
Messages
1,983
Reaction score
2,620
I'm a 4th out of 6 year program student and I'm planning on taking Step 1 this year.

The way my school schedule is, I have something like 45 days off between 4th and 5th year. I also have a month and a half in the summer where I can probably skip class (which won't amount to more than a couple hours a day anyways). That starts in June-August and then my big vacation is from August till mid-September.

I'm planning on taking Step 1 in early September and I was wondering what you guys think of this plan:

Now till June: 2 hours or so a day, so far I've done the first 3 chapters of Pathoma (along with bits and pieces of RR). I'm doing Biochem now and then probably Behavioral, Physio and Embryology all from First Aid. I have rounds, classes and finals coming up so I can't dedicate myself full time here.

In June I'm going on a 2 week vacation to the US, and then when I get back it'll be my summer course. So during that midJune-August time, I plan on finishing up the organ systems and what left in FA with Pathoma while using USMLERx.

Then in the 40 days dedicated time I should be able to do FA another 1 or 2 times and maybe Pathoma again, with the last 2 weeks being High Yield. I'd also do UWorld at this time.

Now do you guys think there are any resources I should be adding or anything I should probably modify? My weak points are Biochem, Embryo and Immunology which is why I'm trying to focus on them right now while I can take them slowly. I'm just not sure when to take the NBMEs and the Self Assessments. Ideally I'd take them before starting USMLErx in June, but I'm worried that since I won't have reviewed Pharma, Micro and the Organ Systems I'll get a bad score and be put down.

Any help would be greatly appreciated and thanks in advance.

Members don't see this ad.
 
It seems like your plan is about in line with a lot of other plans I've seen from people who ended up with pretty good results.

But in order to really assess it, I think you'd be doing yourself a favor if you did an NBME or a UWSA or something along those lines. That'll give you an idea of exactly how far you are from your goal. And then you can invest time accordingly.

Just one suggestion - if you still have several months before your exam, you might be able to use a more comprehensive resource for your weak spots. That's something that I wish I'd done... I'm also particularly bad at biochem/embryo/immuno, and if I could go back in time, I would have done a better job of building a bit of a foundation in those subjects before trying to learn them from First Aid. Now I'm going to try to read HY Embryo in two days, and I think I'll end up just picking and choosing the highest-yield of the high-yield.

But that's just me. Everybody's different.
 
Exam in mid-September?

No questions asked: drop everything and read FA2012 cover to cover. You are going to forget a lot more than you realize, so the importance of a first-pass, followed by repetition while doing the QBanks, is absolutely irrefutable.

After FA, do USMLE Rx.

After Rx, I would normally say do a second read of FA before proceeding to Kaplan QBank. Given you're five months out, after you finish Rx, proceed to Kaplan QBank. Get this done in no more than 6 weeks.

After Kaplan QBank, do UWorld.

Then read FA again, then do UWorld again, then finish on FA in the last two weeks.

The specifics of your timeline are up to you, but having read FA at least twice, once before and once after having finished the three major QBanks (Rx, Kaplan & UWorld) should be your focus. All of the other external resources are not your privilege right now. You're five months out.

I'm going to edit my post here: I recommend stopping Pathoma and starting FA immediately (unless pathology is a profound weak point).
 
Last edited:
Members don't see this ad :)
So are you saying I have too little time to do Pathoma? I thought 5 months would be more than enough time to do Pathoma a couple times interspersed with FA more than once.

For what it's worth, I did stop Pathoma and Im doing FA now. However I'm only doing something like 5 pages a day due to time restraints. I did the basics from Pathoma cause I'm weak in them but Im better in the organ systems. Also Shan I agree on the more comprehensive point, I plan on definitely doing embryo from another source cause I don't know head or tail in that (or frontal from caudal in this case)
 
I think he's just saying that you have time to review all of First Aid several times, not that you shouldn't use other resources. It's always good to supplement First Aid if you have time (and you clearly do).

You should definitely go through all of Pathoma. It's only 35 hours of lectures and you can usually play them at increased speed. I've been doing it alongside FA (I have a lot less time than you), and I think it's been great for nailing down some of the points that are easy to miss when you're just reading a long list of facts.
 
Top