For Those Who ONLY used First Aid & Qbank...

[kalico]

Hi,

I noticed that a lot of people used 4+ books to study for Step 1. It is way too late in the game to hear lectures on why I should do the same.

Right now, I am just interested in seeing how folks did who just used First Aid & Kaplan Qbank. If you are willing, please post either your score or how you fell within the mean if you used this study plan.

Thanks

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[Carbon]

Hi,

I noticed that a lot of people used 4+ books to study for Step 1. It is way too late in the game to hear lectures on why I should do the same.

Right now, I am just interested in seeing how folks did who just used First Aid & Kaplan Qbank. If you are willing, please post either your score or how you fell within the mean if you used this study plan.

Thanks

I used First Aid and QBank primarily and textbooks/class notes when I had questions about stuff. I scored in the 250s. Here's how I studied:

I had a study partner, and we studied for 4 weeks. We took the exam on a Thursday, so our schedule looked like this:

Thursday: full-length practice exam (7 random 50-question QBank blocks)
Friday am: FA Anatomy & Behavioral
Friday pm: QBank questions (100-150) on anatomy & behavioral
Saturday am: FA Biochem & Physiology
Saturday pm: QBank questions (100-150) on biochem & physio
Sunday am: FA Microbiology
Sunday pm: QBank questions (100-150) on micro
Monday am: FA Pharmacology
Monday pm: QBank questions (100-150) on pharm
Tuesday am: FA Pathology
Tuesday pm: QBank questions (100-150) on path
Wednesday: review whatever section had the lowest scores this week & take another 100-150 questions on that section
Thursday: full-length practice exam (7 random 50-question QBank blocks)

Lather, rinse, repeat x4 until the real thing.

After every question block except on Thursdays, I would go through the ones I missed and the ones I got right only by chance or guessing and take notes on that question in a spiral notebook. Then at the end of each night I would copy those notes into FA so they were there for the next time I read through that section. On Thursday nights I'd go through and take notes on all 7 blocks at once and then re-write those notes into FA--the idea there being to make the full-length practice test as realistic as possible.

I felt that repetition was a good tactic, and it worked for me. My study partner and I would alternate weeks at each other's home, starting at 8am every day. We were usually done with the FirstAid reading by 1pm, and then we'd split up to do our questions. That way we didn't get sick of each other, but we still had to be accountable to each other for every day of studying and we could ask each other questions if there was something that wasn't quite clear.

Hope that helps.

 

[kalico]

Thanks for such a detailed response, and congrats on that wonderful score!

 

[ondansatron]

I also pretty much only used FA and q-bank, with a little bit of BRS path sprinkled in. Result? 244/99. Pretty respectable I think.

see my post in the 2005 official step 1 scores thread for more details.

 

[dynx]

I wouln't use it...but carbon's plan doesnt sound at all bad. I used more resources but I would think that with just FA and Qbank (no textbooks/notes to annotate like carbon) you could probably hit the 240s, IF you have good test taking skills (which is key) and a good knowledge base (also key)