Step I First aid 2012 vs 2013

Started by Bane
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Bane

Bane

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I've gone through most of M1 in 2012 and some of M2 with some annotations.

Worth it to buy 2013 in January with75% of 2012 annotated? Any disadvantage to not?

Buy 2013 and just annotate changes into 2012? Any advice would be appreciated from previous test takers.
 
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Wow you've been giving me and phloston flack all this time for starting studying early and here you are an M2 with 75% of first aid annotated since you bought it in M1. You are the prime example of a hypocrite.
 
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lol dude you are crazy if you think annotating first aid while going through classes is even in the same ball park as the studying you two are doing

not saying its bad though. just saying its ridiculous to think that months and months of dedicated study time is comparable to annotating a few things in first aid during the school year

and with proper reading comprehension, you would see that he would have 75% halfway through his second year. he does not have it 75% annotated already.
 
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My FA was heavily annotated and I found it helpful to just copy the annotations from the old version to the new version while making a pass through the new version. Writing seems to help reinforce stuff for me. If you're not interested in doing that I would just keep the old version, it's not gonna be that different. You certainly don't need to be lugging two almost identical books around.
 
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I had actually read the 2009 version cover-to-cover back in February, but then bought the 2012 version in March and have been using that since. Quite frankly, the newer version is much better, but it was quite annoying copying over the first half of the USMLE Rx annotations from one to the other. Fortunately, since some of the stuff I had previously annotated became common sense after a while, I didn't need to copy everything over, but it still took several hours. I accomplished this most efficiently by doing my second cover-to-cover pass of FA (this time with the 2012 version obviously) with the 2009 version open alongside it. So about every 5 pages or so that I had read of the '12, I would quickly spend a few minutes flipping through the comparable pages in the 2009. This way, it wasn't some unbearable task where I had to spend a whole day doing it. However, the actual writing process, summed, was probably several hours.

The 2009 and '12 editions are very different from one another. Although the '12 has colored images, there are so many errors in it, per the formal errata page on the FA website, that I would definitely buy the 2013 and copy over your annotations, despite all the work you've already done. Plain and simple: right now and maybe even months from now, you won't mind still having the 2012 copy, but when it comes crunch time and you're actually getting close to your exam, you'll be asking yourself why you hadn't optimized by getting the newest edition.
 
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whatdidigetinto said:
Wow you've been giving me and phloston flack all this time for starting studying early and here you are an M2 with 75% of first aid annotated since you bought it in M1. You are the prime example of a hypocrite.
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Lol

I have never done a qbank question, I'm reading FA once as I go though class and writing down notes to as I go. 75% is a projection for January.

sharklasers said:
lol dude you are crazy if you think annotating first aid while going through classes is even in the same ball park as the studying you two are doing

not saying its bad though. just saying its ridiculous to think that months and months of dedicated study time is comparable to annotating a few things in first aid during the school year

and with proper reading comprehension, you would see that he would have 75% halfway through his second year. he does not have it 75% annotated already.
Click to expand...

Thx. Yeah, I'm planning on a single pass through 75% of the material by January. Basically looking at FA along with each course to see high yields.

da Vincis World said:
My FA was heavily annotated and I found it helpful to just copy the annotations from the old version to the new version while making a pass through the new version. Writing seems to help reinforce stuff for me. If you're not interested in doing that I would just keep the old version, it's not gonna be that different. You certainly don't need to be lugging two almost identical books around.
Click to expand...

good point, thx.
 
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Phloston said:
I had actually read the 2009 version cover-to-cover back in February, but then bought the 2012 version in March and have been using that since. Quite frankly, the newer version is much better, but it was quite annoying copying over the first half of the USMLE Rx annotations from one to the other. Fortunately, since some of the stuff I had previously annotated became common sense after a while, I didn't need to copy everything over, but it still took several hours. I accomplished this most efficiently by doing my second cover-to-cover pass of FA (this time with the 2012 version obviously) with the 2009 version open alongside it. So about every 5 pages or so that I had read of the '12, I would quickly spend a few minutes flipping through the comparable pages in the 2009. This way, it wasn't some unbearable task where I had to spend a whole day doing it. However, the actual writing process, summed, was probably several hours.

The 2009 and '12 editions are very different from one another. Although the '12 has colored images, there are so many errors in it, per the formal errata page on the FA website, that I would definitely buy the 2013 and copy over your annotations, despite all the work you've already done. Plain and simple: right now and maybe even months from now, you won't mind still having the 2012 copy, but when it comes crunch time and you're actually getting close to your exam, you'll be asking yourself why you hadn't optimized by getting the newest edition.
Click to expand...

Thx for feedback. I should mention that I will likely not do any qbanks until January. So my annotations are more just understanding stuff. I'm sure with qbanks my annotations will triple.

Thx again.
 
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Buy a clean, fresh 2013 First Aid for your dedicated study time and don't write a single note in it until you are in your dedicated study time. You'd be surprised how much of the minutiae your school thought was important that actually isn't important for the exam. It's best to start with a clean First Aid and only annotate into it things from question banks.
 
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Kaputt said:
Buy a clean, fresh 2013 First Aid for your dedicated study time and don't write a single note in it until you are in your dedicated study time. You'd be surprised how much of the minutiae your school thought was important that actually isn't important for the exam. It's best to start with a clean First Aid and only annotate into it things from question banks.
Click to expand...

That's a good call. Definitely only transfer info from practice questions.

However, I do believe annotating from University of Utah Webpath (http://library.med.utah.edu/WebPath/webpath.html) and Robbin's Review of Path questions is a strong thing to do during MS2. I'd annotate from one at the end of every topic/week and the other while prepping for your SoM exams. I had encountered quite a bit of info regarding gene/cellular mechanisms and environmental path from those resources that's superior still to anything I've encountered in the QBanks so far. Some people who have been so kind to have shared with me some of their actual exam's wtf questions had info coming from Robbin's Review of Path, for instance, so definitely go through the first few chapters at the minimum, however I'd focus on Utah Webpath for organ systems questions.

I would get the 2013 as soon as you can, and when you start doing your first cover-to-cover read of it, transfer over all annotations from the 2012 that you don't already know 100%, but I would definitely buy it well before your designated prep period.
 
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Phloston said:
That's a good call. Definitely only transfer info from practice questions.

However, I do believe annotating from University of Utah Webpath (http://library.med.utah.edu/WebPath/webpath.html) and Robbin's Review of Path questions is a strong thing to do during MS2. I'd annotate from one at the end of every topic/week and the other while prepping for your SoM exams. I had encountered quite a bit of info regarding gene/cellular mechanisms and environmental path from those resources that's superior still to anything I've encountered in the QBanks so far. Some people who have been so kind to have shared with me some of their actual exam's wtf questions had info coming from Robbin's Review of Path, for instance, so definitely go through the first few chapters at the minimum, however I'd focus on Utah Webpath for organ systems questions.

I would get the 2013 as soon as you can, and when you start doing your first cover-to-cover read of it, transfer over all annotations from the 2012 that you don't already know 100%, but I would definitely buy it well before your designated prep period.
Click to expand...

I would agree with this. I annotated a few select things from Webpath and Robbin's Review, though I found those more useful for my pathology class than Step 1.

But yeah, transfer any useful annotations you had from before into your new FA. Bear in mind though, OP, that the act of annotating is in and of itself the most useful thing you can do with FA...it's how you learn. So doing too much before you're in Step 1 High Gear Mode yields limited results. So pack your fresh new 2013 FA with the goods only when you're ready to commit to Step 1.
 
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Kaputt said:
Buy a clean, fresh 2013 First Aid for your dedicated study time and don't write a single note in it until you are in your dedicated study time. You'd be surprised how much of the minutiae your school thought was important that actually isn't important for the exam. It's best to start with a clean First Aid and only annotate into it things from question banks.
Click to expand...

Exactly. I went through the same thing as OP (with 2011 vs. 2012). Once I bit the bullet and got 2012 I realized how useless my "annotations" throughout MS2 were. Most of them were low-yield details or facts that I wrote in Sept, but ended up learning by heart throughout the year, thus making the annotation virtually useless for me. There's plenty to annotate from UW, so I'd reserve FA annotations for that and any other sources you deem worthy
 
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