Kaplan Usmle Step 1 Lecture Notes...

[jsauce]

today was my first day studying. there's 2900 pages over the course of the 8 books or so, and i'm wondering if i'm doing the right thing.
does anyone have any experience with these? loved it? flamed out from all the reading?
there's a little caveat in there that says studying by these books without the classes is not an effective way to study for the boards. does anyone agree with that or are they just trying to get me to take the class?
any and all help appreciated.

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[Row Jimmy]

It depends on how much time you have. Although they seem thick, they are not as time consuming as they seem however. I feel some of the books are worth using and some are not. The Path book is useless IMO and you can find other books for Micro and Path (First Aid, MBMRS) if you need to cut down on time. I think the note about only using the books with a class is a sales line.

Immuno is OK, Anatomy is good, Biochem/Mol Bio is excellent and BS is pretty good. Physio is a good book but you may want to use BRS if time is an issue. As for Path, just check this board for recommendations. I annotated FA with extra material from the Kaplan books as I was reviewing systems and am now just using FA for review and questions. It seems to be going well, but I have not taken the exam yet.

Try to leave enough time in your studies to do at least a couple thousand questions as well and to read the explanations to all of them. This may be more important than any of the books out there.

Good luck,

RJ

 

[jsauce]

It depends on how much time you have. Although they seem thick, they are not as time consuming as they seem however. I feel some of the books are worth using and some are not. The Path book is useless IMO and you can find other books for Micro and Path (First Aid, MBMRS) if you need to cut down on time. I think the note about only using the books with a class is a sales line.

Immuno is OK, Anatomy is good, Biochem/Mol Bio is excellent and BS is pretty good. Physio is a good book but you may want to use BRS if time is an issue. As for Path, just check this board for recommendations. I annotated FA with extra material from the Kaplan books as I was reviewing systems and am now just using FA for review and questions. It seems to be going well, but I have not taken the exam yet.

Try to leave enough time in your studies to do at least a couple thousand questions as well and to read the explanations to all of them. This may be more important than any of the books out there.

Good luck,

RJ

RJ
that is exactly what i wanted to hear. when you were studying with these materials, did you try to organize cardiac pharm together with cardiac path and cardiac physio, etc.? as i'm going through the pharm section, there's a lot of physio missing i would need to know to understand the drugs, so i guess i'm going to start with physio since that seems to be the basis of everything else. do you really feel that MBMRS is enough to do well? i have a nervous feeling and just want someone to tell that it seems the common way to go, as it were

 

[Row Jimmy]

The thing about cardio is that you will need to have a good understanding of ANS and second messengers, cardiac cycles and cardiac muscle physio in order incorporate cardiac pharm with physio and path. I would say the best place to start is with Physio.

I am just a 2nd year like yourself and have no idea about your backround or level of understanding of Micro so it is impossible for me to tell you that MBMRS is all you need. I just took information from MBMRS and Kaplan and annotated FA so I would have it all in one place and it seems to be working.

RJ