Is this possible/reasonable?

[happylunchbox]

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Hi all...long time lurker (like so many) but first time caller...and I'm wondering if any of you sage/savory step 1 gurus have any suggestions on how I should proceed...

I've spent the last two weeks doing a pass through FA and hitting 1000 UW questions. I'm only doing random/timed 46q blocks and my average is in the high 50s. I tend to either get a 70% or a 50% on a block and I usually psych myself outta 2-3 easy questions per block (the ones that 80% of people get correct hehe) due to my inability to believe that UW would ask a straightforward question. Anyway, I recently took UWSA1 and got a 210. My weakest point is biochem.

My exam is about 2.5 weeks away and I'd love to hit the 220s--do you think it's possible?

I'm planning on finishing the rest of UW in the next ~8 days and then trying to go through FA again (1-2 times). Also, I totally despise metabolism and am thinking about forsaking it since it doesn't sound like the actual exams these days are pathway/enzyme heavy--and the section in FA sucks...is this a stupid idea? Is there a better quick/dirty source for biochem other than FA?

Does this plan sound reasonable? Would you do anything different?

Thanks in advance!

 

[Fillabuster]

Hi all...long time lurker (like so many) but first time caller...and I'm wondering if any of you sage/savory step 1 gurus have any suggestions on how I should proceed...

I've spent the last two weeks doing a pass through FA and hitting 1000 UW questions. I'm only doing random/timed 46q blocks and my average is in the high 50s. I tend to either get a 70% or a 50% on a block and I usually psych myself outta 2-3 easy questions per block (the ones that 80% of people get correct hehe) due to my inability to believe that UW would ask a straightforward question. Anyway, I recently took UWSA1 and got a 210. My weakest point is biochem.

My exam is about 2.5 weeks away and I'd love to hit the 220s--do you think it's possible?

I'm planning on finishing the rest of UW in the next ~8 days and then trying to go through FA again (1-2 times). Also, I totally despise metabolism and am thinking about forsaking it since it doesn't sound like the actual exams these days are pathway/enzyme heavy--and the section in FA sucks...is this a stupid idea? Is there a better quick/dirty source for biochem other than FA?

Does this plan sound reasonable? Would you do anything different?

Thanks in advance!

I personally believe you can hit 220's with 2.5 weeks left. Here's what I have to say:

1) try to do 2 more passes through FA; One can retain an amazing amount of material during that 3rd pass!

2) FA biochem is excellent! After I really learned it well from FA, I drastically improved my biochem percentage.

3) I completely understand when you say that you psych yourself out sometimes. I have done that plenty of time also. I really don't know what to tell you here, because I had the same problem. I just hope I didn't psyche myself out on the real thing...😳

Best of luck!

-Filla

P.S. I'm still waiting for my score, so please don't take what I say as the final word 🙂

 

[happylunchbox]

I personally believe you can hit 220's with 2.5 weeks left. Here's what I have to say:

1) try to do 2 more passes through FA; One can retain an amazing amount of material during that 3rd pass!

2) FA biochem is excellent! After I really learned it well from FA, I drastically improved my biochem percentage.

3) I completely understand when you say that you psych yourself out sometimes. I have done that plenty of time also. I really don't know what to tell you here, because I had the same problem. I just hope I didn't psyche myself out on the real thing...😳

Best of luck!

-Filla

P.S. I'm still waiting for my score, so please don't take what I say as the final word 🙂

Hey thanks so much for your advice! Out of curiosity, did you do anything special when going over the biochem chapter in FA to better retain it?

Congrats on being done with your exam--I'm sure you nailed it!

 

[Fillabuster]

Hey thanks so much for your advice! Out of curiosity, did you do anything special when going over the biochem chapter in FA to better retain it?

Congrats on being done with your exam--I'm sure you nailed it!

Thanks for the vote of confidence!

The only thing I did to retain it was repeat it over and over. Honestly, I retained very little even after 3 passes. Biochem was one section that I reviewed 5 times. After the fifth time, I felt like I knew that section fairly well. Hope this helps!

 

[icaruswalks]

Hey thanks so much for your advice! Out of curiosity, did you do anything special when going over the biochem chapter in FA to better retain it?

Congrats on being done with your exam--I'm sure you nailed it!

Take a bunch of scratch paper, some study tunes, and just draw it all out! That helped me a lot.

 

[tco]

Take a bunch of scratch paper, some study tunes, and just draw it all out! That helped me a lot.

This is the only way to go...My glass desk is going to get a lot of whiteboard work for the next three weeks.

The way I learned it during biochem was to draw the pathways, then tape them to my wall. I then walked through ALL of the pathways every morning when I first woke and every evening before bed until I didn't make any mistakes.

 

[medstar21]

Yea you definitely can't go wrong with drawing it out as many times as possible. Thats what I remember doing in undergrad biochem to get it down and it worked. I started last night with the process of drawing everything out again. I figure if you even redraw half of the darn pathways a day its good. 10 more days...

 

[Sheldor]

As a word of encouragement, I only had like 3 biochem questions on my entire test! Obviously not a reason to not learn the stuff but you may get lucky!

 

[ATrim7]

I made a flash card for every box - or every portion of a box - in FA. This forced me to carefully read everyword and understand it.

You may not have time to do this for every section in FA, but choose your weakest sections and flash card everything. Then you can quickly flip through your cards to cover an entire section when you are done.

This helped me get through FA 2x and I'm beginning my third pass just using my cards which have every single word from FA.

 

[tech2doc]

As a word of encouragement, I only had like 3 biochem questions on my entire test! Obviously not a reason to not learn the stuff but you may get lucky!

This was true of my test as well. Kind of ticked me off because I spent more hours on biochem than any other subject.

 

[happylunchbox]

Thanks so much to everybody for their replies--I have tried to do a bit of biochem everyday and it's getting a little better...but I still want to travel back in time and eliminate the creation of metabolism...I'm sure we'd all find a way to live without it. It's also good to know that biochem isn't pervasive on the current versions of the exam (I don't care how small the n is ).

I've been stuck with UW averages in the high 50s for the last week and, though I'm learning a lot from UW, I feel like I keep getting questions wrong because I haven't gone through FA enough times (I missed 4 easy Qs this AM from lack of recall). It's pretty frustrating and time consuming to review the UW blocks. I am considering dumping UW for a few days (still have 1000Q left) to focus on going over FA and Goljan again...any thoughts on this? Holy crap my exam is in 2 wks!

 

[quepatho]

Thanks so much to everybody for their replies--I have tried to do a bit of biochem everyday and it's getting a little better...but I still want to travel back in time and eliminate the creation of metabolism...I'm sure we'd all find a way to live without it. It's also good to know that biochem isn't pervasive on the current versions of the exam (I don't care how small the n is ).

I've been stuck with UW averages in the high 50s for the last week and, though I'm learning a lot from UW, I feel like I keep getting questions wrong because I haven't gone through FA enough times (I missed 4 easy Qs this AM from lack of recall). It's pretty frustrating and time consuming to review the UW blocks. I am considering dumping UW for a few days (still have 1000Q left) to focus on going over FA and Goljan again...any thoughts on this? Holy crap my exam is in 2 wks!

Yeah I was stuck at 53-56% for about two weeks and 63% for about two weeks...went through first aid one last time and I was getting >70%. Try to give yourself at least 6 days to go through it thoroughly. It improved my percentage the most in a short period of time. Good luck.

 

[happylunchbox]

Yeah I was stuck at 53-56% for about two weeks and 63% for about two weeks...went through first aid one last time and I was getting >70%. Try to give yourself at least 6 days to go through it thoroughly. It improved my percentage the most in a short period of time. Good luck.

Awesome. Thanks for this!

Best of luck to you, although since you're above 70% on UW I doubt you'll need it!