OK, so I have been lurking selfishly on here for awhile now, throughout this whole process of studying for Step 1. Now that I finally have my score back, I thought I would share some info.
Took Step 1 June 19. Felt pretty good afterwards--then I started to think of all these questions I screwed up. By the time I got my score I was confident that I passed but not much else.
Received score July 18: 256/99
NBME Released Items: around 82% (don't remember exactly). Definitely do these! I had 3 of them on my exam, word for word!!
Kaplan In Center Exam score: 80%
Took 75% of QBank. Cumulative score 74% (no repeats). My scores were around 65-70% in mid-April and up to the low 80s just before my exam.
Took all of QBook. Averaged about 80%.
I go to the Univ of Rochester & we're all P/F for the first 2 years, so I don't know my exact class standing. On individual exams, I was usually in the top 20% or so.
Study Methods:
Disclaimer: I know this is really long & gives lots of unsolicited advice. But I've seen some other forums w/questions about how to study & memorize effectively, so I just posted all my thoughts on those topics here, once and for all, before I put this test behind me forever!
I formed a study group in February w/3 other students. We met once a week for 2 hours and presented cases from the UCV series. Each person presented a case, we came up w/differential, reviewed the relevant topic, and found related info in First Aid. We tried to just have fun with this, to get our minds thinking about boards stuff w/o stressing out over it.
From April-May I did Immunology & Micro--a few bugs a day.
I started my "real" studying May 19, with 30 days to study. I had two study partners--really great to have for motivation & breaking up the monotony. We quizzed each other all the time on stuff like branchial arches & drug interactions so it was drilled into our heads by the end of the month.
We had to carpool to the library, which made us all accountable to each other so we didn't slack off. We studied 9-6 at the library each day (breaks from 12-1 and 3-3:30, and more frequently if we were bored).
We did Biochem for 2 days, then did an organ systems approach to go over Embryo, Anatomy, Physiology, Path, & Pharm. Spent a day on Behav Sci & a couple on random things that didn't fit anywhere else. We each took a 3-day weekend. Did a 4 day review of everything at the end. All three of us felt confident after taking the exam (relative to others in our class, at least) and did well above our goal scores.
In the evenings, I worked out, watched TV, and tried to do 50 QBank a night. I definitely recommend doing QBank and then making yourself go over EVERY SINGLE answer explanation right afterwards. It takes a long time at first, but I think this is a good way to get around the fact that QBank focuses on certain diseases more than others.
Books I used:
1. Microcards
2. Immunology from Lippincott Micro book (they have a 3 chapter section that's a quick read w/awesome diagrams and stuff).
3. BRS Path (+ Robbins for pics & to clarify confusing topics).
4. BRS Phys
5. High Yield Embryo (+ Langman for diagrams)
6. High Yield Anatomy (+ Netter for pics)
7. High Yield Biochem (+ Lippincott for confusing stuff)
8. USMLE Roadmap--Pharm (new book by Appleton & Lange). Very succinct & thorough. I was feeling terrible about pharm 6 days before my exam--went through this in a day, reviewed in FA & Pharm was one of my best subjects.
9. High Yield Behavioral Science
10. First Aid--went through each topic in here first, then looked in other sources & wrote any important info in FA, then reviewed FA another time. Used FA only for last 4 days--read straight through it.
Other thoughts:
1. I highly recommend doing Micro slowly, either while you're still in school or for an hour a night or something. People I know who tried to do it in a day or two were overwhelmed by trying to cram it in--all those bugs run together. You may want to do the same with Pharm--it was driving me crazy toward the end.
2. For those thinking about doing an organ systems approach, I highly recommend it! It forces you to integrate knowledge as you go, and to be a more active learner (it's harder to just read through the pages passively, b/c most books are done by system).
3. I am the kind of person who needs to understand the basis of things or I can't memorize them. The problem is, it takes a long time to study like that. If you are like me, I highly recommend using the review books (FA, High-Yield Series, BRS) to determine the topics you will learn, but then using texts (Netter, Robbins) to flesh things out. In the end, it took longer for me to study stuff the 1st time than most people, but less time to review b/c I know things well in the first place.
4. A note about First Aid. It really is the best resource in terms of telling you what the most high-yield subjects are. But it's not well-organized, and has lots of these "one-liners" which are deceptively simple. It's easy to glance through it and convince yourself that you know things when you haven't really let them sink in. So I would recommend taking your sweet time as you go through it, making sure you really understand all the background to what they are talking about, and correlating it in your mind to something else you have seen or read. (I found the need to cross-reference a lot in FA to get the big picture straight.)
I know this just sounds like common sense, but it's easy to get in a hurry and miss things. Here's a good example: "I cell disease," is mentioned only briefly in FA, in an obscure place. I missed it on my first time through, and then it showed up on QBank. I went back, learned it better, & had 2 questions on the USMLE about it. Bottom line: EVERY WORD of that disorganized excuse for a book is important.
And on that note, I'm going out to celebrate! As you can probably guess, I'm on elective now and have WAY too much free time.