If I only had all the time in the world...

[franceschino]

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Dear all,

All posts I have come across talk about preparation for Step 1 based on a maximum of a 3 months period.

If you had all the time in the world, how long do you think would be needed to truly crash step 1 and get a 260+ score.

(we may assume a 10 hours per day, 6 days per week)

 

[endofevangelion]

in my humble opinion, the hardest thing about step I is finding the time to study for it amongst the bullsh*t. the reason my school's step I average is relatively low for a top 20 school is because we run around like monkeys around the months of april-may doing stupid PBL/ethics/******ed required classes... when we SHOULD be cramming for this exam. i dont think the standard 4 weeks is nearly enough for a good score. if my school gave us another month off, i guarantee our average would go up by 10 points. but noooo, they want to make us "compassionate" doctors... LOL... idiots...

U of chicago gets 7 weeks to study and thier average is almost 240!

ok enough rambling. i think 2 months of nonstop study is more than enough for anyone, even a monkey liek me with low IQ

P.S: I also want to add that the only medical things i've "learned" these last 2 years came from my intensive study of boards. useless. waste of 2 years of precious life. what a shame.

 

[RapplixGmed]

in my humble opinion, the hardest thing about step I is finding the time to study for it amongst the bullsh*t. the reason my school's step I average is relatively low for a top 20 school is because we run around like monkeys around the months of april-may doing stupid PBL/ethics/******ed required classes... when we SHOULD be cramming for this exam. i dont think the standard 4 weeks is nearly enough for a good score. if my school gave us another month off, i guarantee our average would go up by 10 points. but noooo, they want to make us "compassionate" doctors... LOL... idiots...

U of chicago gets 7 weeks to study and thier average is almost 240!

ok enough rambling. i think 2 months of nonstop study is more than enough for anyone, even a monkey liek me with low IQ

P.S: I also want to add that the only medical things i've "learned" these last 2 years came from my intensive study of boards. useless. waste of 2 years of precious life. what a shame.

I couldn't agree with you more. My quality of life increased 1000+% after I just refused to go to any classes and only studied for boards and I am pretty confident I destroyed my step 1 exam and am ready for 3rd year. A 12 month break from school is also a very good feeling when you're about to go through 3rd year busting your butt doing real work. I know of some people in my class who believed the administration and studied only for the coursework and now feel like they failed the step 1 or have to delay the start of clinicals because they need more time to study.

Bottom line: Your school will teach you what it wants to teach you, which may or may not have anything to do with step 1. It is YOUR responsibility to find the time to study for step 1 if you want to excel, which may include ignoring the 2nd year coursework.

If you want a number to guarantee you a 260+ score, minimum 8 months of studying and skipping class. The smart ones can do it in much much less time but if you are an average to below average student, this should be your target.

EOE: I am also a big fan of eva since high school. The end movie is one of the few I have ever seen that completely blew my mind. Looking forward to the rebuilds if they ever finish being released.

 

[jfgavina]

You wasted 2 years, well my friend I've been wasting 4 years of my life learning too complex concepts and good patient/doctor relationship random facts. We almost don't have pathology, all the pathology we learn is from clinical rotations. It is useless and stupid!! I'd say we waste 3 years and learn 2 years. The other year is non-paid work. And then the life of your patients depend on your autodidactism or your rides to the beach, which obviously are preferred.
My luck is that we have 2 months of vacations and I'm able to study thru september and october. But you learn so much at your med school compared to us in this peripheral european country...

 

[jfgavina]

Bottom line: Your school will teach you what it wants to teach you, which may or may not have anything to do with step 1. It is YOUR responsibility to find the time to study for step 1 if you want to excel, which may include ignoring the 2nd year coursework.

If you want a number to guarantee you a 260+ score, minimum 8 months of studying and skipping class. The smart ones can do it in much much less time but if you are an average to below average student, this should be your target.

Well, medical schools are creating doctors, not step1-acing-beasts, they should find an equilibrium is this.

And I don't agree with the 8 months study. Only robots like pakistan, indian or chinese can do that. We, ocidental-educated can't do this for 8 months lol

And I'm also ignoring my medical school studying. I have surgery I (you can't even imagine the complexity of this discipline, I'm not studying this. If I don't pass I'll study next year) neurology, oftalmology and psychiatry.

 

[RapplixGmed]

Well, medical schools are creating doctors, not step1-acing-beasts, they should find an equilibrium is this.

Not that I don't agree with you. I just was pointing out that some times paradoxically, the priorities of the school to train a well rounded physician and priority of the student to get a good step 1 score conflict with each other because the student may just not have enough time to do both. When push comes to shove, the step 1 comes first.

And I don't agree with the 8 months study. Only robots like pakistan, indian or chinese can do that. We, ocidental-educated can't do this for 8 months lol

LOL. I am chinese but I totally understand what you mean. It sucks for us too. Its just that... the test is set up so that people who are "average" can't possibly get a high score like that unless they put in this amount of time. Bottom line is you can't hope to get into the 90th percentile unless you actually do more work than 90% of the people out there.

 

[dozitgetchahi]

I couldn't agree with you more. My quality of life increased 1000+% after I just refused to go to any classes and only studied for boards and I am pretty confident I destroyed my step 1 exam and am ready for 3rd year. A 12 month break from school is also a very good feeling when you're about to go through 3rd year busting your butt doing real work. I know of some people in my class who believed the administration and studied only for the coursework and now feel like they failed the step 1 or have to delay the start of clinicals because they need more time to study.

Bottom line: Your school will teach you what it wants to teach you, which may or may not have anything to do with step 1. It is YOUR responsibility to find the time to study for step 1 if you want to excel, which may include ignoring the 2nd year coursework.

If you want a number to guarantee you a 260+ score, minimum 8 months of studying and skipping class. The smart ones can do it in much much less time but if you are an average to below average student, this should be your target.

EOE: I am also a big fan of eva since high school. The end movie is one of the few I have ever seen that completely blew my mind. Looking forward to the rebuilds if they ever finish being released.

8 months...maybe. I think 4-6 is doable if you get on Gunner Training early and start banging out question banks early on.

Personally, I think the most "guaranteed" way to hit a 260 is to start hammering out 46 qs/day in January while loading all the cards into GT and/or doing the daily GT reviews as well. This insures you plow through at least 8000 qbank qs + the 8000+ questions that GT includes. For as glorious as FA is in some ways, reading it alone is way too passive and inefficient early on. Plus, without something like GT that keeps hammering at your weaknesses you just forget way too much while doing multiple passes of FA. The real learning for this exam comes from questions....

PS: I agree with your points about ignoring the admin/curriculum...I effectively started doing this 6 months out and I couldn't be happier with my decision. Step 1 truly comes first.

 

[franceschino]

Thank you very much for all the replies. It seems that we range from a 2 months to a 8 months period... Quite a difference!

The 8 months period do you mean full time studying without going to lectures - because that is what my question was referring to.

Anyone else who wants to add some info would be great (esp if 250+ score : ).

F

 

[DoctwoB]

Studying for step 1 or classes doesn't have to be either or.

For 2nd year, I plan on not going to class, doing GT daily, Qbank, first aid, RR, Goijan audio, and BRS physio along with classes, and then studying from the syllabus.

Studying for step1 will cover the majority of what you need to know for class, and the syllabus will hammer home the remaining points (which could still be on step1, just probably lower yield).

 

[jfgavina]

LOL. I am chinese but I totally understand what you mean. It sucks for us too. Its just that... the test is set up so that people who are "average" can't possibly get a high score like that unless they put in this amount of time. Bottom line is you can't hope to get into the 90th percentile unless you actually do more work than 90% of the people out there.

I'm glad you understood my point. Not that I'm being a racist, it's not that. I'm not talking about "chinese" as a race, I'm talking about the education! So a chinese educated in a ocidental culture will have the exact difficulty as any other in these cultures!

 

[ScubaStarved]

Attribution error much?

As to your other point, about not learning anything in school, I now feel very fortunate to have been exposed to 80-90% of USMLE relevant material in lecture, but do suspect that this is also quite standardized. If you feel your school did an exceptionally poor job in preparing you, why not call them out by name instead?

 

[endofevangelion]

Feinberg School of Medicine.

Because of the variant nature of genetics, not everyone is "blessed" with the same memorizing abilities. Some can regurgitate better than others. That being said, I believe my school's curriculum sucks mainly because of its inflexibility. Too many required classes. Therefore, those with sh*tty memorizing abilities (like me) get penalized. If they made everything optional, I would be much happier.

Why did U of Chicago's decide to give the students more study time this year?

 

[DoctwoB]

Feinberg School of Medicine.

Because of the variant nature of genetics, not everyone is "blessed" with the same memorizing abilities. Some can regurgitate better than others. That being said, I believe my school's curriculum sucks mainly because of its inflexibility. Too many required classes. Therefore, those with sh*tty memorizing abilities (like me) get penalized. If they made everything optional, I would be much happier.

Blaming genetics for being a bad memorizer is a crutch. Just find something that works for you (reading, speaking, audio, drawing, questions, combo of all of the above ,etc.). I used to really consider myself a "bad memorizer," but found that if I wrote out a study guide, then read the study guide aloud while studying, and then drilling myself with questions I can get the info to stick. You just need to engage more senses.

That being said, I fully agree that required activities suck (though can be necessary, its impossible to have a PBL if most people no show), and should be kept to the minimum of things that are very high yield.

 

[endofevangelion]

Blaming genetics for being a bad memorizer is a crutch. Just find something that works for you (reading, speaking, audio, drawing, questions, combo of all of the above ,etc.). I used to really consider myself a "bad memorizer," but found that if I wrote out a study guide, then read the study guide aloud while studying, and then drilling myself with questions I can get the info to stick. You just need to engage more senses.

That being said, I fully agree that required activities suck (though can be necessary, its impossible to have a PBL if most people no show), and should be kept to the minimum of things that are very high yield.

im not using it as a crutch.

say you have 2 medical students. one has a really good memory, the other has a really crappy memory. you make them attend the same classes, jump through the same hoops, etc., then give them equal amounts of time to study for step I. in those conditions, obviously the one with superior genes will prevail.

on the other hand, if the schedule was more flexible (optional classes), the dumber medical student will have the freedom to dedicate all of that saved time to studying for the step I, and in the end, both students will have the same score!

 

[RapplixGmed]

As to your other point, about not learning anything in school, I now feel very fortunate to have been exposed to 80-90% of USMLE relevant material in lecture, but do suspect that this is also quite standardized. If you feel your school did an exceptionally poor job in preparing you, why not call them out by name instead?

I think many of us are not saying that the school is not covering the step 1 material, its just that they're adding a TON of extra stuff too and its not immediately obvious in class what is on the boards and what is just stuff that might be useful in 3rd year. Admittedly it is also not the responsibility of the lecturer to point out these board relevant facts either. It is the students' responsibility.

If I had all the time in the world, I would love to be able to go through only the school's curriculum and master all of it. I'm just not smart enough though so I am forced to focus on the high yield stuff.

There are people who are able to do what the school asks of them and excel at it in addition to step 1. These people make up maybe 20-40% of the class. You have to decide for yourself whether you fall in that group.

The OP asked what it took to guarantee a 260+ step 1 score. I stand by my assertion that I can guarantee that score to even a below average med student given that they had 8 months of dedicated step 1 studying. Most people can get away with much less time (maybe 3-4 months for the average student) but I think even the bottom of the class at many schools will be able to pull it off with 8 months.

 

[DrBowtie]

I'm going to go against the grain and say that it is impossible to guarentee for anyone a 260. The test isn't all straight recall of facts. There is innnate decision making involved.

 

[winkleweizen]

I probably would have done slightly better if I studies Twice as long, but I dont think it would be worth. Not for me atleast, some of the questions are just so out there and uncommon that it really isnt worth it.

 

[winkleweizen]

I'm going to go against the grain and say that it is impossible to guarentee for anyone a 260. The test isn't all straight recall of facts. There is innnate decision making involved.

Ill agree with this. Although i think there may be a couple of people at each school that can pretty much hit a 260+ on any given day.

 

[kjamess]

in my humble opinion, the hardest thing about step I is finding the time to study for it amongst the bullsh*t. the reason my school's step I average is relatively low for a top 20 school is because we run around like monkeys around the months of april-may doing stupid PBL/ethics/******ed required classes... when we SHOULD be cramming for this exam. i dont think the standard 4 weeks is nearly enough for a good score. if my school gave us another month off, i guarantee our average would go up by 10 points. but noooo, they want to make us "compassionate" doctors... LOL... idiots...

U of chicago gets 7 weeks to study and thier average is almost 240!

ok enough rambling. i think 2 months of nonstop study is more than enough for anyone, even a monkey liek me with low IQ

P.S: I also want to add that the only medical things i've "learned" these last 2 years came from my intensive study of boards. useless. waste of 2 years of precious life. what a shame.

I was always under the assumption that it was actually uchicago that had a step 1 average near the national mean (b/c of the curriculum i think?) and that northwestern was the one with the average nearing 240. I guess things have changed.

 

[RapplixGmed]

I'm going to go against the grain and say that it is impossible to guarentee for anyone a 260. The test isn't all straight recall of facts. There is innnate decision making involved.

There is definitely lots of decision making involved but this can be practiced too. I've done 18k practice problems and I would argue that 100% of the questions on my step 1 required decisions that I had already practiced in my qbank marathons. There was only one question where I was thinking "I don't understand what is going on here" rather than "I can see the page on FA where this fact is but I can't recall it... damn" and I remain convinced that I must have just somehow misread that one question. The only reason I got any questions wrong at all was that my memory failed me on ~10% of the questions and that could have been fixed had I studied for more time (I only hardcore studied for 4 months). Thats not to say that studying for the last 4 months compared to the first 4 months in my proposed strategy isn't incredibly low yield because it is, but it would have still closed the gap significantly and who knows, for the slower learners the last 4 months may still be high yield.