How much will test prep cost?

[GoodmanBrown]

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I thought I'd got a fairly good deal in my test prep materials, spending about $150 on RR Path, FA, etc.

But folks here recommend tons of practice questions (which is very sensible). However, those test questions don't come cheap. I'm a first year, thinking of getting GT for the next year to help me study. It's clear to me that I'm not picking up everything I should for Step 1.

GT (12 months) = $229

And that's just one. It seems like people recommend UW & USMLERx as well.

USMLE World QBank (3 months) = $185
USMLERx (3 months) = $169

So, yeah, has everyone posting here dropped this much? I'm sure some people will post saying, "What is $500 compared to an amazing Step 1 score?" but yeah, it's still not cheap...

 

[justdoit31]

well I didn't do GT mainly cuz I didn't know about it and feel like it wouldn't be worth it since I am testing in June.

I did sign up for the DIT course (around $700) though and I will be using the UW Qbank but my medical school buys all of us 7 months of UW access so I didn't spend money on it- but I would have because it has been really helpful for studying for STEP but also for classes too.

 

[hrandani]

I got off light with books, probably $300 in total. Robbins, FA, RR Path, bunch of other stuff I'm probably going to abandon.

3 Months Rx - ~150 bucks with the AMSA discount.
6 Months UWorld - ~320
12 months GT - think it was about 175, could be wrong.

However the real killer for me is my school's mandatory Kaplan course. That's going to run about 2,300. Not looking forward to that, wish I could just buy their course notes alone instead.

So that's about a thousand bucks for what I consider essential, and about three grand in total. I feel obligated to say, however, that you can't buy yourself a step score. With about 500 bucks you could buy used books and U World and be golden as long as you were extremely dedicated.

 

[unsung]

I got off light with books, probably $300 in total. Robbins, FA, RR Path, bunch of other stuff I'm probably going to abandon.

3 Months Rx - ~150 bucks with the AMSA discount.
6 Months UWorld - ~320
12 months GT - think it was about 175, could be wrong.

However the real killer for me is my school's mandatory Kaplan course. That's going to run about 2,300. Not looking forward to that, wish I could just buy their course notes alone instead.

So that's about a thousand bucks for what I consider essential, and about three grand in total. I feel obligated to say, however, that you can't buy yourself a step score. With about 500 bucks you could buy used books and U World and be golden as long as you were extremely dedicated.

Geez, where do you guys go to school?! Mandatory Kaplan courses, paid UWorld subscriptions...

I feel like I'm getting gyped in terms of board prep, by our curriculum.. 😉 We don't even have shelf exams... And before current year, the MSIIs only had like 3 wks of available dedicated study time to prepare for step 1.

 

[zebalong]

Geez, where do you guys go to school?! Mandatory Kaplan courses, paid UWorld subscriptions...

I feel like I'm getting gyped in terms of board prep, by our curriculum.. 😉 We don't even have shelf exams... And before current year, the MSIIs only had like 3 wks of available dedicated study time to prepare for step 1.

We don't have shelf exams either... it makes it harder to guage how well our cirriculum is teaching us stuff for the step.

 

[hotfusion]

Everything about medical school is expensive, since they like to think that you will make all the money back and more in the future.

That said, if you are a frugal person and if you are willing to spend the time and effort to shop around, you can always find ways to save money.

It's just like everything else in life, you can go for the brand-name stuff (like Kaplan or UW) or you can go for the generic or store-brand products. I have been using WikiTestPrep, USMLExchange, and those PDFs circulating on the web and I think it's just as good as those over-priced products. Since you are a first-year, there is really no reason you should be paying hundreds of dollars to keep a UW or USMLERx subscription for a year. I recommend giving these less-advertised Qbanks a try. The USMLExchange also has a iPhone/iPad app that let you access the entire Qbank offline, pretty neat stuff.

 

[GoodmanBrown]

I got off light with books, probably $300 in total. Robbins, FA, RR Path, bunch of other stuff I'm probably going to abandon.

3 Months Rx - ~150 bucks with the AMSA discount.
6 Months UWorld - ~320
12 months GT - think it was about 175, could be wrong.

Shifting away from cost somewhat, my understanding is:

GT = lots of facts, simple questions, aimed at helping memorize
Rx = good parallel with First Aid (by the same makers)
UW = best Step 1 simulator with questions very similar to the actual test

Other than Rx being a natural pairing with the First Aid book does it offer anything new/different compared to UW? Why go with it instead of just going to UW?

 

[hrandani]

I absolutely recommend skipping Rx. I hated it. It's poorly designed in terms of software, and the few questions that I actually needed an explanation for didn't have the corresponding information or citation, just a bunch of gibberish vaguely related to the topic.

In a few months I'll have gone through Kaplan and UWorld and I can directly compare them, but at the time I bought Rx I didn't know any better and it's what was recommended to me by upperclassmen. Which is why this forum is such a lifesaver.

Edit - I thought similarly that Rx would be a natural companion to FA. That was not the case at all. Despite clips from FA appearing below each answer the correlation is weak, and like I said, most infuriatingly, is sometimes not the right page for the disease.

I'm glad I did Rx, it was a good first run through a q bank and I didn't have to stress about percentages etc. I definitely made improvements in test taking, timing, all that good stuff. But as far as a learning tool goes, it wasn't that great.

Bottom line - I would feel guilty if I recommended it to my friends. There's just better stuff out there and most people don't start as early as I did.