Kaplan or USMLERx?

[missmedschool]

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So my plan was to go through UWorld twice & Kaplan QBank twice, then use USMLERx for course exams.

However, is it better to go through UWorld twice & then Kaplan QBank & USMLERx once? I'm wondering if it's better to have a full pass of USMLERx, since that would give me a glimpse at more questions. Or is Kaplan QBank so much better than USMLERx that I should just stick with going through Kaplan twice? Any advice would be greatly appreciated..

 

[AndyRSC]

I'd say go through the qbanks and on your second pass only go over missed/marked questions. You will inevitably be very familiar with some concepts and be weak in others. This will save you time on things that needn't be reviewed, to be put towards things that do. Plus you'll likely get to cover all three qbanks to maximize exposure to different questions.

 

[missmedschool]

I'd say go through the qbanks and on your second pass only go over missed/marked questions. You will inevitably be very familiar with some concepts and be weak in others. This will save you time on things that needn't be reviewed, to be put towards things that do. Plus you'll likely get to cover all three qbanks to maximize exposure to different questions.

Thanks for the advice, however I plan on going through all the questions again because there's a lot of questions that I correctly guess on..

 

[MrBeauregard]

So my plan was to go through UWorld twice & Kaplan QBank twice, then use USMLERx for course exams.

However, is it better to go through UWorld twice & then Kaplan QBank & USMLERx once? I'm wondering if it's better to have a full pass of USMLERx, since that would give me a glimpse at more questions. Or is Kaplan QBank so much better than USMLERx that I should just stick with going through Kaplan twice? Any advice would be greatly appreciated..

Are you doing any questions from a bank right now? I'm doing ~40/day on untimed tutor mode with completely random blocks. It's taking me like 3 hours to read all the explanations and annotate in First Aid. I'm not sure that I could double that in order to complete two banks before UWorld. We also have a full schedule right now so maybe that's why.

I'm doing Kaplan Qbank now and adding each question that I miss to the 'My Questions' list and once I finish the entire bank I'll start doing blocks from just 'My Questions' until I've finished all of those. Then I'll switch to UWorld and definitely get through it twice. I wanted to do USMLERx right now as well but I just don't know if I would have enough time to get through it. I basically divided the amount of questions in Qbank by the number of days I had to complete it (I want to be done by March 31). That gave me ~30 questions/day to complete in order to finish the bank in 75 days, but I'm doing a few more so that I'll leave myself a little room to go over my incorrects. I'm not sure that I could get through 60 questions/day and get the most out of it while still doing school.

I can't answer your question as to whether or not Kaplan is that much better than USMLERx, but I know that it has information in it that is nowhere to be found in First Aid. I like that. They definitely pile on the information in the explanations. I did a trial of USMLERx and it their explanations didn't seem as thorough, in my opinion. But that was only a trial. Maybe the majority of the questions in the bank have better explanations. I mainly went with Kaplan because I asked people on SDN, whom I trust, what they did and would do over again if they had to. A good bit of them told me to do Kaplan simply because it gives you extra info not in FA. That sold me right there.

I want to hear how you're doing the questions banks.

 

[missmedschool]

Are you doing any questions from a bank right now? I'm doing ~40/day on untimed tutor mode with completely random blocks. It's taking me like 3 hours to read all the explanations and annotate in First Aid. I'm not sure that I could double that in order to complete two banks before UWorld. We also have a full schedule right now so maybe that's why.

I'm doing Kaplan Qbank now and adding each question that I miss to the 'My Questions' list and once I finish the entire bank I'll start doing blocks from just 'My Questions' until I've finished all of those. Then I'll switch to UWorld and definitely get through it twice. I wanted to do USMLERx right now as well but I just don't know if I would have enough time to get through it. I basically divided the amount of questions in Qbank by the number of days I had to complete it (I want to be done by March 31). That gave me ~30 questions/day to complete in order to finish the bank in 75 days, but I'm doing a few more so that I'll leave myself a little room to go over my incorrects. I'm not sure that I could get through 60 questions/day and get the most out of it while still doing school.

I can't answer your question as to whether or not Kaplan is that much better than USMLERx, but I know that it has information in it that is nowhere to be found in First Aid. I like that. They definitely pile on the information in the explanations. I did a trial of USMLERx and it their explanations didn't seem as thorough, in my opinion. But that was only a trial. Maybe the majority of the questions in the bank have better explanations. I mainly went with Kaplan because I asked people on SDN, whom I trust, what they did and would do over again if they had to. A good bit of them told me to do Kaplan simply because it gives you extra info not in FA. That sold me right there.

I want to hear how you're doing the questions banks.

Right now I'm doing an average of 5 46 question UW sets on random timed mode each week. I do it in the morning, and if I'm efficient it takes me a maximum of 3 hours when I add in the annotating into FA. I do my coursework in the afternoon/evening. However, my school has everything on powerpoints, so I don't go to class & I don't listen to the audio unless I have a question on something on the powerpoints, which is rare.

So basically if I average ~5 question sets a week, I should be able to get through the amount of questions I want to. Of course, there will be some weeks where I'll do more and some weeks when I'll do less, but more or less right now it's averaging 5 sets a week.

 

[MrBigglesworth]

I completed Kaplan and doing UsmleRx now. I prefer Kaplan because I liked the layout/explanations betters. In Rx, the explanations are TOO long in my opinion. And I thought the questions were harder in Kaplan.

Saving Uworld for later btw..

 

[missmedschool]

So my plan was to go through UWorld twice & Kaplan QBank twice, then use USMLERx for course exams.

However, is it better to go through UWorld twice & then Kaplan QBank & USMLERx once? I'm wondering if it's better to have a full pass of USMLERx, since that would give me a glimpse at more questions. Or is Kaplan QBank so much better than USMLERx that I should just stick with going through Kaplan twice? Any advice would be greatly appreciated..

Does anyone else have any other advice for me? Pretty please?😕

 

[missmedschool]

i feel uw and kaplan both are good but usmlerx is not less...all 3 are good but first preference is uw and kaplan..do both with kaplan first and uw later to get good foundation...i think the information i saw here over usmleforums4u website may be useful to you

thanks! 😀

 

[usmlejourney]

Do up to 5000qs and revise the important concepts in that 5k qs again and again. Doing 5000qs yields better results than doing 7000mcqs for most of the students ..sorry if am wrong and correct me...i read this info somewhere and believes to be correct in most of the cases..make sure these 5000 qs are from quality question banks like kaplan...Thank you

 

[lakerfan38]

This is really weird advice

 

[usmlejourney]

This is really weird advice

This is not my own advice..this was mentioned in kaplan site with some survey conducted showing graphical statsitics

 

[mtwop]

This is not my own advice..this was mentioned in kaplan site with some survey conducted showing graphical statsitics

I think you may be mixing this up from somewhere else. The Kaplan "step 1 survival guide" that came with the step 1 high yield course has statistical analysis showing the proportions of people who scored >235 and the amount of questions done........The more questions people did, the higher the odds of getting >235

 

[usmlejourney]

I think you may be mixing this up from somewhere else. The Kaplan "step 1 survival guide" that came with the step 1 high yield course has statistical analysis showing the proportions of people who scored >235 and the amount of questions done........The more questions people did, the higher the odds of getting >235

"The more questions people did, the higher the odds of getting >235" This works for most of the people who do up to 5000qs but after 5000 above the performance deceases ( for most students not all)...i could not get that kaplan link...can you paste that link so that everyone can know actual thing...thanks for that info..i was searching for real source actually..kaplan conducted that survey on 700 students...sorry guys if i was wrong somewhere..plz correct me.

 

[mtwop]

It's a handout that I have sitting in front of me. No link available. Mute point either way

 

[lakerfan38]

just seems really counterintuitive.

 

[zebalong]

just seems really counterintuitive.

I think overall point is that ppl who try and force doing a huge bulk questions have a higher rate of burnout and might not spend the time to actually learn from their mistakes (quantity over quality). If you start early though and have time then doing over 5k is probably beneificial.

 

[usmlejourney]

I think overall point is that ppl who try and force doing a huge bulk questions have a higher rate of burnout and might not spend the time to actually learn from their mistakes (quantity over quality). If you start early though and have time then doing over 5k is probably beneificial.

I agree with this exactly.Ultimate thing is we should take care of all these things while studying..i will try to post link once i get it ...It was quiet interesting graphical analysis...all the best to everyone

 

[human being]

I think overall point is that ppl who try and force doing a huge bulk questions have a higher rate of burnout and might not spend the time to actually learn from their mistakes (quantity over quality). If you start early though and have time then doing over 5k is probably beneificial.

You are right.
My plan is Kaplan once. Usmle world twice then the last month b4 I will do usmle rx just for straight recall.