In coming M1, what do you wish you did from day 1 to prepare for boards?

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shur711

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Like the title says, I'll be starting in around a month and i want to start off on the right foot. What resources do you recommend, how should I use them, what should i pair with studying for lecture exams, etc.

Thank you!
 
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Read online journals. Like 10 a day and memorize them. Those will also be on step 1. Get through FA and UW and PATHOMA as many times as you can too. And on top of all that, know everything from your classes. Even the esoteric details. Anything and everything is fair game for step. Those test question writers are evil bastards.
 
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shur711 said:
Like the title says, I'll be starting in around a month and i want to start off on the right foot. What resources do you recommend, how should I use them, what should i pair with studying for lecture exams, etc.

Thank you!
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  • Take neat, excellent notes. For example I'd have a powerpoint of lets say 40 slides. I'd write out the details (and draw anything if needed) and try to fit it on 1 sheet of paper front and back. It allowed quick review the day of the exam of multiple lectures, and also allowed me to keep the big picture in mind while still having all the details. When I wanted to start spaced repetition at the end of a semester/year, it wouldn't take me that long to read my notes so I have some knowledge of the flashcards I would be doing. For example a lot of people say do Brosencephalon or Firefracker or Zanki (or Dope or Lightyear or whatever is the new "IT" deck) and a lot of people find it daunting with the amount of cards. And it can be. In fact a lot of people complained about Zanki's biochem deck being too much but since I had all of my notes.... I just read through my metabolism and medical genetics notes all the way from first semester in a day or 2. Then I did the entire Biochem section for Zanki in a day and it went pretty smoothly. (Biochem is the largest section behind Neuro in Zanki!)

  • I tried using spaced repetition throughout first and second semester (tried Bros, Firecracker, Zanki) but usually the cards wouldn't align with the order in my classes and I didn't feel like suspending and un-suspending hundreds of cards per exam just to try to get it to match my class exactly. So your mileage may vary

  • Also if you are a table person in terms of memorizing microorganisms/drugs/anatomy then make your own that works for you. That's the way you will remember it best and it will be handy for a quick review for boards. You won't be remembering the 2 or 3 different tables your professor takes from the various hodgepodge of sources they take it from a year from now. You will remember the one you made and you have stored on your computer.

  • When you start your micro or pharm class, if you take it 1st year, use Sketchy alongside the course. Sketchy is very good at giving a base and is a board source as well. They have a workbook you can buy if you want to take notes.

  • If you are systems based you should do Pathoma alongside your class. Get the subscription and annotate the book so you don't have to watch it many times. This also goes for Sketchy, and since watching videos takes time making good notes the first time around saves you so much time.


Don't neglect things because people online or your classmates are all saying "It's not high yield". Just learn it well and make good notes out of it and you will be ahead of the game by far. Sometimes I know the answers to stuff in new classes because of random details from another a course (things gradually start connecting and it's really awesome) or know an answer by instinct because of something that was stuck in my head from way back. Helps your reasoning skills too.

I would start a spaced repetition program like Anki (I use the Zanki deck but they have many, many comprehensive ones) maybe at the end of 1st semester for the subjects you have already taken, but try to keep it light if it interferes with your current classwork which is your #1 priority. This will keep stuff fresh.

Second year add in the question banks (UWorld, USMLERx, Kaplan) and First Aid and continue the trend. It's a slow and steady thing with emphasis on the steady: take good notes and build a good base then it will make your M2 so much easier.
 
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scrublyfe21 said:
Honestly wish I'd started using/ learned how to make my cards in Anki earlier. I started 2nd semester and my grades shot up, so I kept using it and got better making them as time went on. Now I'm in dedicated and just put all on Cram mode and while I fly through my newer cards, the older ones have to be edited to be useful at this point, and I have to use other resources for my 1st year classes like anatomy and biochem because I didn't have good cards already. TLDR; Make good notes now, using some sort of spaced-repetition method, so that they're already made by the time you get to dedicated.

Don't listen to anyone telling you anything is "low-yield". Literally any fact that you see can be tested on, and like someone said above, they all build, so you'll see questions on Q-Banks that you get right not necessarily because you know the answer, but can rule-out the other 4 choices. I can remember 1st year drawing out the oxidative phosphorylation pathway and having a 2nd year come up and tell me "You're learning that in too much detail, just focus on the names/ word association". Then I did my first NBME in May, and guess what the first question was? A labelled diagram of oxidative phosphorylation asking where X-poison interrupted it.

Lastly, if you hear about something being "high-yield", know it cold.
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I am starting to use Anki for medical school. Any tips on how to utilize anki and making flashcards that are not overwhelming?
 
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Medicine&Kilos said:
I am starting to use Anki for medical school. Any tips on how to utilize anki and making flashcards that are not overwhelming?
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I learned as I used it so my first few months of cards were rough, but eventually I hit a good pace and good system for making them. My advice would be:

-Don't put too much info on one card; For example for neuro I used to type out the pathway of pupillary constriction, and just cloze-delete which side stuff happened on, and would end up with 5 or 6 facts on one card. Instead I should have just made a card that said "Draw out the pathway of ...." and made that as a one-sided card.

-Every class' cards will be different. For biochem you might find that copying a pathway, and then using image occlusion to block out cofactors, substrates, products, enzymes, related diseases, etc. works well. For anatomy you might just make one for a muscle and then ask yourself the innervation, blood supply, and action.

If you send me a message I can send you some examples of my old vs. new cards so I can better explain how I got the most out of it.
 
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Resources you should buy:

Sketchy Medical
Boards and Beyond
Pathoma

Resources you should download:

Zanki (Anki deck)
Pepper deck (for sketchy)

Start Zanki now, try to complete it before the end of summer before you start M2. Do 50-75 cards a day and keep up with the reviews. This will put you into an excellent spot to crush step 1. Then, fall semester of M2 you can start doing Q bank questions (start with RX, then move on to Kaplan). Finish Kaplan by winter break and you can then start UWorld in January. Do 2 passes of UWorld during January through your dedicated. Apart from Zanki, I highly, highly, highly, recommend starting sketchy micro/pharm right now. This is something that I wish I knew starting M1. The most important subject in M1/medschool is Microbiology. Micro unlocks pharm. Know your micro cold and you will see the benefits in all of your other classes. Pathology becomes much easier, pharm becomes infinitely easier.

The basic strategy for Zanki is, watch Boards and Beyond and then do the corresponding Zanki cards. Be consistent with this and you will start seeing the rewards. Start with decks that you will be doing in M1, like Biochem, physio, neuro, micro, etc. Go hard during winter semester and your breaks to complete the rest.

I did this during M1 and I'm so glad I did. I am just finishing up Zanki right now and have started doing Q bank questions. I took a baseline NBME and I'm at 232. This is without ANY UWorld. This is purely Zanki, Sketchy, Pathoma and a decent amount of USMLErx. I still have a year until I take Step 1 and all I have to do now is keep up with my reviews and do Q bank questions. It has made M2 a lot less stressful because I put in the time early.

If you have specific questions, just PM me. But yeah don't listen to the people telling you just to chill and wing it when you get there. Start doing stuff now and it will pay off later.
 
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Did nothing for step studying during M1 other than following along in Pathoma and reading FA before end of block exams. If I could go back, I wouldn't change a thing. Just do well in classes.
 
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As others have said, just focus on your classes. I took Step 1 after 3rd year (so I had the advantage of already taking shelf exams), but did not study for Step 1 until my 7-week dedicated period and scored a 262.
 
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Terence McKenna said:
Resources you should buy:

Sketchy Medical
Boards and Beyond
Pathoma

Resources you should download:

Zanki (Anki deck)
Pepper deck (for sketchy)

Start Zanki now, try to complete it before the end of summer before you start M2. Do 50-75 cards a day and keep up with the reviews. This will put you into an excellent spot to crush step 1. Then, fall semester of M2 you can start doing Q bank questions (start with RX, then move on to Kaplan). Finish Kaplan by winter break and you can then start UWorld in January. Do 2 passes of UWorld during January through your dedicated. Apart from Zanki, I highly, highly, highly, recommend starting sketchy micro/pharm right now. This is something that I wish I knew starting M1. The most important subject in M1/medschool is Microbiology. Micro unlocks pharm. Know your micro cold and you will see the benefits in all of your other classes. Pathology becomes much easier, pharm becomes infinitely easier.

The basic strategy for Zanki is, watch Boards and Beyond and then do the corresponding Zanki cards. Be consistent with this and you will start seeing the rewards. Start with decks that you will be doing in M1, like Biochem, physio, neuro, micro, etc. Go hard during winter semester and your breaks to complete the rest.

I did this during M1 and I'm so glad I did. I am just finishing up Zanki right now and have started doing Q bank questions. I took a baseline NBME and I'm at 232. This is without ANY UWorld. This is purely Zanki, Sketchy, Pathoma and a decent amount of USMLErx. I still have a year until I take Step 1 and all I have to do now is keep up with my reviews and do Q bank questions. It has made M2 a lot less stressful because I put in the time early.

If you have specific questions, just PM me. But yeah don't listen to the people telling you just to chill and wing it when you get there. Start doing stuff now and it will pay off later.
Click to expand...


They're an MS1. Chill dude
 
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This is directed to non-US IMGs. It is general advice and it might not apply directly to your circumstances. But this is what I would 've done differently myself as a student of a Greek med school.

- Familiarize yourself with USMLE-related resources as soon as you can. Chances are that this is a totally different exam from what your exams for classes are going to be. It requires application of knowledge and mastery of concepts, mechanisms, ideas rather than just pure memorization and you need to get used to thinking this way. We 're not talking about QBanks and review books here of course. Kaplan is literally gold here to do alongside your classes for basic sciences. I would trade my biochem, anatomy, physio classes etc for Kaplan videos + lecture notes any day without a second thought.

- Do not study for your class exams from USMLE-oriented books. Kaplan is great to build a foundation and a general understanding of topics, but it still remains a book created for a different purpose. So use it as a complementary resource, which aids in better understanding of concepts. During the exam period, leave Kaplan totally aside and focus on what the teacher recommends as a resource. Not doing this just costs you grades for no reason, even if the extra stuff they sometimes make you memorize seems useless.

- Do not leave knowledge gaps. This is a huge mistake that pretty much everyone is guilty of doing (at least in my experience) except maybe those i-am-a-dedicated-gunner-from-day-1. If your class exam looks like "Write what you know about the Krebs cycle", it's inevitable that you will focus on certain stuff more than others, because you deem them to be high yield, based on many factors eg emphasis during lectures, older exam questions etc. This leads to knowledge gaps because you don't take the time to get in-depth and focus on mechanisms and processes that you think won't show up on your class exam anyway. And even if they do show up, the cost-effectiveness of studying stuff that shows up every year is far greater and usually guarantees you a passing mark, so you might not even bother studying that stuff at all. But all these gaps eventually add up. That's part of the reason why even top 5/10% students would fail or barely pass the exam if they took it without any preparation, at least from my school.

- Don't rush to take the actual exam. Having taken the exam in MS4 (equals to US MS2) with a great score is a huge accomplishment and creates many opportunities for electives, that you can only get as a medical student. But don't forget that as an FMG, your Step 1 score is the strongest card in your hand. The work (and dollars) that you have to put in in order to make up for a bad or mediocre score is much much greater than just taking the exam a bit later and they still do NOT guarantee you matching. Honestly good luck to FMGs trying to match with 200s and 210s. You 're gonna have to be lucky enough to find and spend a considerable amount of time creating really strong and meaningful connections. And at the end of the day, there will always be a more competitive applicant waiting by the corner.

There are also some advantages to taking the exam as a graduate:
  • Your clinical experience will help you make diagnoses so much easier. Step 1, although being a basic science exam, is still clinically oriented and you 're often expected to make a diagnosis as part of the solving process.
  • You can focus on studying for Step 1 full time with no time restraints. You still have to pass classes during med school and this takes a big amount of time to be accomplished on its own. Imagine adding to that the burden of studying for an exam which is in a different format from what you 've seen so far, in a different language, often with a lot of memorization-focused extra material (eg rare genetic syndromes you otherwise might not ever hear in whole life) added to what's needed for your classes. Oh and on top of that, this is one of the most competitive exams you can find out there.
  • As previously mentioned, having a dedicated period of studying for Step 1 studying during med school might lead to falling behind in classes and eventually finishing med school later than normal. Imo it's easier to explain a gap post med school rather than during it. For example, you can take on a light research project right after graduation that will only consume a small part of your time dedicated to studying and present that as an activity to fill gap in your CV. I have no evidence to back this up really, but if I were a PD, having taken 7 years to finish med school instead of 6 would ring some kind of bell.
 
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Didn’t start anything board related till after MS1 but if you think you can hack it out try Zanki. I didn’t use it but it might help u keep up with ms 1 knowledge through the year. Then add in ms2 stuff as you go thru second year and UFAPS

You can hit 260+ without board studying first year and really I wouldn’t advise it besides zanki. Just do good in classes
 
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