First Aid V Kaplan Medessentials

[Lamborghini1315]

Ok so a good friend of mine who is about to take his step 1 has suggested to use medessentials over first aid. I have to agree with the suggestion because first aid is in no way or form complete and requires a lot of annotation. But here's the question..has anyone tried medessentials and used that to annotate first aid? I believe first aid will round up my learning at the end of the day. I haven't personally tried medessentials yet but heard good things about it...i plan on ripping pages out of first aid and just basically organizing it with my notes in a binder. I want to know how helpful medessentials will be or if it is immensely better than first aid?

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[NolanDNA]

I am using both and i think that MedEssentials is by far the better book. It covers anatomy, embryology, and pharmacology in a way that 1st AID seems to really lack. What I have been doing is going through MedEssentials and then using 1st AID to review mnemonic's, it seems to be working well for me.

 

[Twitch]

The memory aids in FA are great. Medessentials doesn't have that. They do have a v2 of the book out which one of the kaplan folks said had only minor revisions.

combining the two would be a good idea.

Also a thought on Taus's idea of 3 hole punching FA. Buy the ebook version of FA and print it out on regular paper. This way it's a tad more sturdy and not as flimsy as the paper it comes in if you buy the regular version.

 

[Lamborghini1315]

The memory aids in FA are great. Medessentials doesn't have that. They do have a v2 of the book out which one of the kaplan folks said had only minor revisions.

combining the two would be a good idea.

Also a thought on Taus's idea of 3 hole punching FA. Buy the ebook version of FA and print it out on regular paper. This way it's a tad more sturdy and not as flimsy as the paper it comes in if you buy the regular version.

Yea too late for the e-book man, i already have the hard copy. But like taus the 3 hole punching way works very well for me..this way i can add in material i wont be reviewing extensively with books. I agree about using both med essential and first aid..but i have to see if i can manage my time well by doing that and get around other sources. Did any of you guys not worry about kaplan q-bank at all and just stuck with USMLE WORLD?

 

[Twitch]

Kaplan is running that "special" claiming it's 40% off. Not sure how long it'll last but sounds like an okay deal esp since you can delay the start 90 days and get that price. I'm guessing it's a good deal but I have no idea. Perhaps someone who has bought it recently could chime in.

Here is a thought: Why not buy the Qbank now delay it till school starts and use it along side class (I noticed you were class of 2011). Then when you're done with 2nd year switch to UWORLD.

 

[Doctor4Life1769]

Kaplan is running that "special" claiming it's 40% off. Not sure how long it'll last but sounds like an okay deal esp since you can delay the start 90 days and get that price. I'm guessing it's a good deal but I have no idea. Perhaps someone who has bought it recently could chime in.

Here is a thought: Why not buy the Qbank now delay it till school starts and use it along side class (I noticed you were class of 2011). Then when you're done with 2nd year switch to UWORLD.

What do you mean by that? So use UW for only a few months?

 

[Twitch]

The other way around. That is don't start for a few months. OP is class of 2011. He'll step next year.

What do you mean by that? So use UW for only a few months?

 

[Doctor4Life1769]

The other way around. That is don't start for a few months. OP is class of 2011. He'll step next year.

Right, I am also 2011 and was confused, hence my question -- please clarify, thanks!

 

[diosa428]

Right, I am also 2011 and was confused, hence my question -- please clarify, thanks!

He means go through Qbank while you're in your second year, using the questions to help review the material as you're learning it. Then use UW when you're doing hardcore studying for the step, because it's considered a better question bank with questions more representative of the questions on the test. So you'd want to save those questions for your more intensive studying.

 

[Lamborghini1315]

I don't know if i am going to do q-bank though..even if i start early there's a good chance i will still forget most of the valuable info. I am going to stick to questions from review sources early in the year until atleast i start organizing everything for board prep. I might just buy the kaplan q-book for additional questions..also q-bank doesn't necessarily qualify as a productive way of spending your time when you can build up on what you learned in school through more book reading. I will stick to USMLE World...i don't if anyone is doing this but i plan on recording everything i am going to learn through stuff. It should keep me busy during long drives, workouts blah blah

 

[osli]

Making recordings yourself can be a great study aid if you have the time. I did that on my PDA for a few tricky areas last year, and transferred the files to my iPod. Really helped, but was time consuming so I didn't make it a common practice.

 

[Lamborghini1315]

Making recordings yourself can be a great study aid if you have the time. I did that on my PDA for a few tricky areas last year, and transferred the files to my iPod. Really helped, but was time consuming so I didn't make it a common practice.

I hear you..well i will update my progress on that front, i ordered a digital recorder recently so i need to start putting it to test.