How necessary is doing uWorld? ... I havent found it helpful

[SKaminski]

I've been going through 160 uWorld a day (and reviewing them, and making flashcards of those reviews) for about a week now and.... I just don't find them i'm learning very well from it.

I don't like the explanations, they're often lacking. A lot of the questions that I do get wrong, the answers don't actually explain why the wrong answer was wrong (they just explain what the wrong answer is), or I just had sloppy thinking.

I think uWorld is useful for analyzing where i need to pay more attention to questions, and even for how to approach questions, but as far as a learning tool... I think spending 2 hours per block reviewing is a waste of my study time.

I think i'd get more out of my study time by spending time addressing area's of weakness (certain parts of pharmacology, heavy metal poisoning signs and treatments, biochemistry, respiratory/metabolic acidosis/alkalosis) than I would get out of spending more than half of my day (4 hours to test, 6 - 8 hours to review and make flashcards) out of uWorld.

This feels like it goes against everything everybody says. I've heard "Do UFAP". I've heard "Do only uWorld". But i've never heard "Just test uworld and glance over the answers to make sure you weren't missing anything."

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[TwinsFan]

If you don't have a decent base UW can be rough, also if you don't learn well from questions it won't be as helpful.

A few of the people from our school who scored 260+ only used it at the end to test their knowledge, but most (high and low scorers) used it quite a bit to learn from and integrate their learning. I would just go with what feels helpful and is yielding better results (higher qbank scores and more importantly NBMEs)

 

[SKaminski]

No no, i've been doing four blocks a day, and my average has been in the upper 70's. I've got a very solid block, i just don't like uWorld's explanations and don't find it a useful learning tool

 

[AlgernonMed]

If you're not finding it useful, don't use it. Everyone is going to have a different strategy and if you feel like you have a good handle on the material and sense of what the questions might be like, you could probably be using your time doing something else....like NBME's...or taking the test early and enjoying a vacation.