USMLE Evaluate study plan for a below average student with 8 weeks?

[lilek22]

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So far in medical school I've been a slightly below average medical student and I am ok with that. I just want to do well enough on the step 1 to be able to match into OBGYN. I'd ideally like a 230 but I am not sure if that's really high or not. I don't even know what the average is for the step 1.

The resources I have are: Pathoma, DIT, First aid, USMLERX, Kaplan, UWorld, Micro flashcards, and pharm flashcards. I have 8 weeks to study, hopefully 8 hours a day, with 1 day off a week.

First two weeks:
Pathoma
Annotate first aid w/ pathoma

Last six weeks:
DIT, 25 day plan w/ 3 hours of lecture a day
UWorld, 2 blocks a day
Annoate first aid w/ DIT and UWorld
Microbio and pharm flashcards (when I get a handle of what is actually important)
2-4 NBME exams

So far I have had a horrible time reading over first aid, it just goes right through me and I can't absorb or memorize much of it. I'm hoping that watching lecture videos will go better. I realize that my first two weeks are a little light and I would like to add to them, I am just not sure what.

Any advice would be appreciated.

 

[Cytarabine]

Way too much. Waste of time annotating all that stuff into FA. If anything, annotate UW, and don't go overboard. Drop the flashcards. UW 2 blocks a day is a lot. I would anticipate long days just to make it through 3 hours of DIT and nothing else along with that. You also have yourself annotating all that crap into FA, but you didn't say anything about making passes through FA?

 

[Flamen04]

Your schedule is nice on paper, but unrealistic in real life.. Just doing 2 blocks of uworld will take you like 8 hours lol

 

[lilek22]

Thanks for the advice. I am only annotating FA because I am not getting anything out of just reading it... I am going to try to do pathoma this month before school ends and then I'll look into just doing DIT and Uworld.

 

[oingoboingo]

I can't get myself to "read" First Aid either. DIT is helping me get through it but I'm not annotating so much from DIT, only from UWorld.

 

[TraumaMed]

I have a similar amount of time to study. What would you all say is a reasonable amount of time to take for a first pass of first aid? I was thinking about 20-25 pages a day while doing the corisponding chapters in Pathoma.

 

[notbobtrustme]

Your schedule is nice on paper, but unrealistic in real life.. Just doing 2 blocks of uworld will take you like 8 hours lol

yea, if you get like a 20% lol. shouldn't take more than a couple hours.

 

[Cytarabine]

2 blocks took me more than 8 hours and i averaged in the mid to upper 80's

 

[orchitisphlebitis]

I'm nearing 30% completed of Uworld. The blocks are still taking me FOREVER. Like 6 hours to review. I'm getting high 60s-mid 70s on them. It's like for every question I have to check if it's in First Aid, then annotate if it's not. There are just so many details in it. Is it important to put all the details from the explanations into my FA?

 

[addy]

I'm nearing 30% completed of Uworld. The blocks are still taking me FOREVER. Like 6 hours to review. I'm getting high 60s-mid 70s on them. It's like for every question I have to check if it's in First Aid, then annotate if it's not. There are just so many details in it. Is it important to put all the details from the explanations into my FA?

you made me feel good about my performance and how long it was taking me to review questions. Thank you, friend.

 

[sadaca]

yep uworld used to take me FOREVER. The more you do it the easier it gets. Now I do 3 blocks and go over them in a day. Before it was like one block in day . Practice practice practice

 

[Dr Dazzle]

Does uworld provide reference pages for FA where the material is covered? Is there any point to just reading FA, when you can do a question and refer back in FA if needed.