How much time do you spend studying?

[bowlofmushypeas]

---

Members do not see this ad.

Haven't started 3rd year yet but I'm having a hard time gauging how people find time to study amidst spending hours upon hours in clinic. In particular, I'm wondering about IM since that'll be my first rotation. It's 6 weeks long at our school. My plan currently is somehow reading through Step Up twice and get through World questions plus reading up on patients, etc. Considering the length of everything, this seems impossible right now since Step Up is longer than FA and I did about 1500 qbank questions during my time solely dedicated to Boards studying.

How much do you read / how many questions do you try to do each day? Also, any edits on the resources I'm planning on using?
Thanks!

 

[vicinihil]

You have to find that balance where it doesn't seem like you're slacking off but also not devoting 100% of your free time to the wards because you'll fail the shelf if you don't study. What they do on the wards is not what you see on the test for the most part. They never do just 1 lab on a patient but a panel of labs and the shelf will ask you for the SINGLE right laboratory test. That being said, you also need a good clinical grade to excel in the clerkship.

My strategy was to set a goal for yourself daily. Eg (Read the CV chapter in Step-up and doing the MKSAP questions for CV. After that, do 100q's in UWorld. Then sleep) This makes me more efficient to set a plan and a goal and spend any spare moment throughout the day doing this.

 

[bowlofmushypeas]

I think a plan's definitely a good idea. My problem is I don't know what a reasonable plan is during a normal day. I'm sure I'll get no work done on busy busy days, but in general, how many pages and questions can one hope to get through on a given day?

 

[ZagDoc]

A good goal I was recommended, and which I have found translates well into residency, is that your goal should be to do at least and hour of reading/studying a day aka 7 hours a week. You can accomplish that however you want. Read every night or go for 4 hours on your day off then read lightly throughout the week, or slack off completely and dedicate you day off completely to hitting the books.

I found that goal translates well for most clerkships, your sub-i, etc.

 

[ArcGurren]

Yeah an hour a day works fine. Then ramp up your studying the week prior to your shelf exam... depending on where you are you may have a week before or a few days before but either way it should work.

Tailor your studying to cases that you've seen that day/that week.

 

[JamesBond15]

This is probably a silly question. But looking at USMLE World's website they don't have questions labeled as "for clerkship" or anything. So which World questions are we talking about?
Don't tell me I have to do the step 1 questions again.

 

[2012mdc]

This is probably a silly question. But looking at USMLE World's website they don't have questions labeled as "for clerkship" or anything. So which World questions are we talking about?
Don't tell me I have to do the step 1 questions again.

step 2 ck is the q bank u want