i've noticed that a significant number of people who did well on step 1 generally do well on step 2 (i.e people who get 250 on step 1 get 260 on step 2)..i got an average score on step 1..i am hoping to go into a competitive residency and REALLY need to blow step 2 out of the park...im on a 4 month research elective should i re-learn some of the step 1 material so that I have a strong foundation? any advice on getting above 250+ on step 2?
For those that did well..how to improve Step 2 after average Step 1?
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Relearning step1 material isn't really going to help a lot for step 2. Study like crazy for your shelf exams--that's probably the best "early" prep work you should do for step 2.
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I was in a similar situation: average step I (220's), looking to go into a more competitive residency and hoping to take step II early and show a solid improvement. What worked for me was just powering through tons of Step 2 UWorld questions, with a focus on the medicine section.
I set the qbank to make blocks of questions drawn from the medicine section only, and to only include questions I hadn't attempted yet, and then just did a couple blocks a day until I worked my way through the whole thing. Whenever I'd built up a block's worth of questions I got wrong, I'd have it make me a block from the questions I got wrong, and then try to get them right. Some of those you end up getting wrong AGAIN and they just end up back in your "incorrect" pile. When you see them again in the next 'wrong questions block', you either get them right, or the cycle continues until the info sticks.
Then keep going until every single question in the medicine section has been answered correctly. Then repeat the WHOLE endeavor AGAIN by the same process, making a second complete pass through the medicine stuff, following up the incorrect ones, etc.
Then do the same process (but just once) for the OB, Peds, surgery, psych sections (all of which are much more manageable amounts of questions).
I forget the exact numbers in UWorld but figure out how many questions doing all that is (like 3-4k maybe?), how you want to do the blocks (44 questions at a time? I started shortening the blocks to 30-ish toward the end because it was just becoming a bit of a grind), and then do the math on how many blocks you will need to do a day to grind through the 3,000 questions. It works out to be fairly reasonable:
90 questions/day (ie ~2 blocks a day) times 30 days will get you through 2700 questions. So if you have even just two months to do this, you can easily get through what you need to without having to kill yourself studying.
As you do this, questions will fall into one of several categories:
1- Things I know well and get right
2- Things I knew but forgot
3- Things I thought I knew but was confused/wrong about
4- Things I didn't even know at all
(5- Things I knew but got wrong because IMHO the question was poorly worded, heh)
Set it up so you review the answers after you finish the whole block, but not after each individual question. Pay attention to the ones you got wrong and the ones you got right but realize it was just a lucky guess. Even change those guess ones to a wrong answer during the review so that they show up in your incorrect pile and you get a chance to get them right for real.
If you want you can take ultra-brief notes (like xyz disease= xyz treatment/gene/whatever) in a notepad or something. Super brief if you're even going to bother taking any kind of notes at all though. The point is to bludgeon your brain into submission with questions/repetition so that the associations between clinical history in the question and disease/treatment happen almost without thinking (ie "ugh, this looks like another one about hepatic encephalopahy, is one of the answers about lactulose?")
As you repeat through the qbank, you get faster. Some of the questions you saw once and got right the first time- you'll get them right again. Some you saw repeatedly until you learned what you needed to know. Now you know it. Now you don't have to read the whole question; if you remember the answer right away just from having previously seen the question, that's good! If you know by the first sentence that "hey, this is the one where the answer is xyx", just stop and ask yourself: what knowledge are they trying to test? "This question is the one about tylenol overdose, they want to make sure I know the right treatment is xyx". Boom, done. You can get through a lot of questions like this in ~10 seconds and you are still reinforcing what you need to learn. No time wasted reading a big question stem, no time wasted reviewing things you know the answer to.
I had residents who went through a similar thing tell me just lots of questions worked well for them, and also that Step II is medicine heavy so focus on those questions, so that was how I came up with this approach. I felt like there was a little more OB and Peds on my Step II than I expected, but I also probably slacked from the above advice and didn't do many OB questions, and did the Peds section early so I hadn't seen a Peds question in a while, so I might have just been feeling less prepared for those things.
I came out of my Step II feeling a little nervous about how it went (like everyone does with all these tests) and wondering if I even maybe did worse or didn't pass instead of doing better. In the end I got in the upper 260's. Had a First Aid for Step II but never cracked it open. Never went through old notes/slides/books from class. Literally I did not spend any time studying for this test outside of my question banks.
I honestly think a massive amount of questions is the highest yield thing you can do to study for a test that is just a big long day of question blocks. The topics/facts people think are worth spending the time to write a UWorld question about are probably similar to the topics board writers bother to write about. Sorry for the real long post! Good Luck!
I set the qbank to make blocks of questions drawn from the medicine section only, and to only include questions I hadn't attempted yet, and then just did a couple blocks a day until I worked my way through the whole thing. Whenever I'd built up a block's worth of questions I got wrong, I'd have it make me a block from the questions I got wrong, and then try to get them right. Some of those you end up getting wrong AGAIN and they just end up back in your "incorrect" pile. When you see them again in the next 'wrong questions block', you either get them right, or the cycle continues until the info sticks.
Then keep going until every single question in the medicine section has been answered correctly. Then repeat the WHOLE endeavor AGAIN by the same process, making a second complete pass through the medicine stuff, following up the incorrect ones, etc.
Then do the same process (but just once) for the OB, Peds, surgery, psych sections (all of which are much more manageable amounts of questions).
I forget the exact numbers in UWorld but figure out how many questions doing all that is (like 3-4k maybe?), how you want to do the blocks (44 questions at a time? I started shortening the blocks to 30-ish toward the end because it was just becoming a bit of a grind), and then do the math on how many blocks you will need to do a day to grind through the 3,000 questions. It works out to be fairly reasonable:
90 questions/day (ie ~2 blocks a day) times 30 days will get you through 2700 questions. So if you have even just two months to do this, you can easily get through what you need to without having to kill yourself studying.
As you do this, questions will fall into one of several categories:
1- Things I know well and get right
2- Things I knew but forgot
3- Things I thought I knew but was confused/wrong about
4- Things I didn't even know at all
(5- Things I knew but got wrong because IMHO the question was poorly worded, heh)
Set it up so you review the answers after you finish the whole block, but not after each individual question. Pay attention to the ones you got wrong and the ones you got right but realize it was just a lucky guess. Even change those guess ones to a wrong answer during the review so that they show up in your incorrect pile and you get a chance to get them right for real.
If you want you can take ultra-brief notes (like xyz disease= xyz treatment/gene/whatever) in a notepad or something. Super brief if you're even going to bother taking any kind of notes at all though. The point is to bludgeon your brain into submission with questions/repetition so that the associations between clinical history in the question and disease/treatment happen almost without thinking (ie "ugh, this looks like another one about hepatic encephalopahy, is one of the answers about lactulose?")
As you repeat through the qbank, you get faster. Some of the questions you saw once and got right the first time- you'll get them right again. Some you saw repeatedly until you learned what you needed to know. Now you know it. Now you don't have to read the whole question; if you remember the answer right away just from having previously seen the question, that's good! If you know by the first sentence that "hey, this is the one where the answer is xyx", just stop and ask yourself: what knowledge are they trying to test? "This question is the one about tylenol overdose, they want to make sure I know the right treatment is xyx". Boom, done. You can get through a lot of questions like this in ~10 seconds and you are still reinforcing what you need to learn. No time wasted reading a big question stem, no time wasted reviewing things you know the answer to.
I had residents who went through a similar thing tell me just lots of questions worked well for them, and also that Step II is medicine heavy so focus on those questions, so that was how I came up with this approach. I felt like there was a little more OB and Peds on my Step II than I expected, but I also probably slacked from the above advice and didn't do many OB questions, and did the Peds section early so I hadn't seen a Peds question in a while, so I might have just been feeling less prepared for those things.
I came out of my Step II feeling a little nervous about how it went (like everyone does with all these tests) and wondering if I even maybe did worse or didn't pass instead of doing better. In the end I got in the upper 260's. Had a First Aid for Step II but never cracked it open. Never went through old notes/slides/books from class. Literally I did not spend any time studying for this test outside of my question banks.
I honestly think a massive amount of questions is the highest yield thing you can do to study for a test that is just a big long day of question blocks. The topics/facts people think are worth spending the time to write a UWorld question about are probably similar to the topics board writers bother to write about. Sorry for the real long post! Good Luck!
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justforposting, that was one of the best posts I've read here.
I'm wondering as an IMG how suitable this strategy might be for me because I have a similar timeframe (2 months) to take Step 2 as well. Just got done with Step 1. Currently trying to slog through Master The Boards before starting Uworld but after reading your post, am tempted to ditch MTB and go straight to questions. Would appreciate input from other IMGs too.
I'm wondering as an IMG how suitable this strategy might be for me because I have a similar timeframe (2 months) to take Step 2 as well. Just got done with Step 1. Currently trying to slog through Master The Boards before starting Uworld but after reading your post, am tempted to ditch MTB and go straight to questions. Would appreciate input from other IMGs too.
I agree - brilliant post by justforposting.
I couldn't really add anything to it. I used multiple books for individual Step 1 subjects, used the QBank to test myself and never really paid much heed to the answers and ended up knowing a huge amount of low yield facts. Scored respectably (low 240s), and promised not to repeat that mistake again.
I studied only a fraction as much for Step 2, used a very similar method to the one above, and came out with 256. I would add that I used MTB II and found it extremely good for the exam. It doesn't take long to get through and, in my opinion, is worth it. Apart from that, you wouldn't go too far wrong using the above method.
P.S. I'm a European IMG in Final Year of Med School.
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Thanks for the input, Syncity. Cheers!
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Justforposting: Your first post was a great one.. Keep it up!
justforposting this is the best post i have read too thank you for sharing it with us and thanx Syncity for you input! Can you guys plz tell me if kaplan Qbank is worth the time in your opinion or should i keep Uworld as the sole Qbank and do it thoroughly?
I did 70% of Kaplan QBank and can wholeheartedly say that it added nothing whatsoever to my preparation. Neither the question style nor the information provided in the explanations reflect the real exam. If you were to go with justforposting's method, it obviates the need for Kaplan entirely. In fact, I'd say that Kaplan QBank just added more confusion than anything.
Different people feel differently about this, however.
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Thanks justforposting -I'll repeat that this was a great post! Thank you again.
I'm in the same boat as the above: only average step I (220) and I want a competitive residency and I'll have to steam-roll the step II.
I've been plowing through the Uworld qbank, but any recommendations on reading materials? Crush the Boards? MTB? First Aid?
Thanks a lot guys.
I'm in the same boat as the above: only average step I (220) and I want a competitive residency and I'll have to steam-roll the step II.
I've been plowing through the Uworld qbank, but any recommendations on reading materials? Crush the Boards? MTB? First Aid?
Thanks a lot guys.
