damn. fantastic post. Did you do very well in MS1 and MS2 classes?
I did do well in MS1 and MS2. I was top 20 percent or something close. We don't have an official class rank at our school, just quartiles, upper quartile divided into 5% brackets. That being said, I was forced to relearn literally everything except path, since our school believes in the "teach for the best, not the test," mentality. They get the "teach not for the test" part really well. Teach for the best... well not so much.
Though, I do feel that spending that short of a time to study for Step 1 only really works for people who've done really well in their classes and can naturally retain a lot. What do you think?
8 weeks is NOT a short amount of time. I took two months dedicated to nothing but step studying, 12 hours a day, 6 days a week. I meant to emphasize how LONG i studied for, to no avail. I probably peaked somewhere around 6 weeks, but just kept going suffering some burnout.
Another dude I know studied for one month (with little other than class-work studying throughout the year) got a 246.
4 weeks is about the average. Though I suspect that people who study for one month have been training/preparing during their ms2 year with questions or first aid reviews, and use the 4 weeks dedicated to first aid review and questions. This guy claims no, but can I really trust every detail he says? This was part of a panel we have for second year students, and, as a third year talking to second years, there is still some degree of posturing (trying to look better than he really was, but I can only presume).
Just wanted a little blue box to shift the flow from the response quotes to a new topic, below
Again, I do not want to push the OP towards any one method. Finding the style that fits the learner is critical (if the learner can only handle 8 hours a day 5 days a week, then thats what the learner should do). I will say however that for step 1,
First Aid and
Questions are aboslutely 100% essential and non-negotiable.
Keep in mind "
doing first aid" does not mean coasting through it. It is written so that every word is meaningful and has value for the test. This is why questions are so important, and, as part of doing questions, notes are taken in first aid (it forces you to write down information you didnt know, look at the information in first aid again, and link the two mentally).
I wish the OP an everyone else taking Step 1 this season the best of luck. It was literally
the worst period of medical school BY FAR. Once you are on the other side of the hump you can start doing what you wanted to do in the first place: take care of patients. Even though you will spend 12 hours a day following around some one who probably doesn't want you following them, the satisfaction of being out of a classroom and not in a Prometric testing center is so huge, it really doesn't matter. Things are about to get SO much better.
