MS3 and MS4: Recommended Books for MS1

[LaRa CRoFt]

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I've just completed my first week of classes. I've gotten lots of emails from those in 3rd and 4th years selling their used books. What do you think are the top 5 books to have for year 1 and 2 and for boards? Thanks. Right now I'm lost with the number of different books out there.

 

[lilycat]

Lara, there's a TON of threads from the recent months discussing this topic. Try doing a search in the Allopathic section, and open it up to the last 100 days or so -- the user "8675309" started most of the "What's the best _____ book and why" threads. That should give you an idea of what's good. I think most of these threads were from March/April (I just looked through them yesterday).

 

[turtleboard]

BRS Gross Anatomy (Chung)
BRS Pathology
Lippincott's Illustrated Review of Biochemistry
LANGE Micro and Immuno (Levinson)
Baby Katzung for Pharm

MS1 and MS2 years are OK. I suspect the euphoria of being a med student will carry through your first-year, but the drag of being a medical student will finally take hold in second. 🙂 Wait until third-year...

 

[po' boy]

Lilycat's right, do a search for "USMLE" or something like that and you'll pull up tons of info. Some used books i've accumulated so far based on others' recommendations are listed below.

Review books:

First Aid for the USMLE Step 1
BRS Pathology, Physiology
High-Yield Gross, Neuro, Embryo, Behavioral Science
Lippincott Biochem and Pharm
Lange Medical Micro and Immuno (Levinson)
Clinical Micro Made Ridiculously Simple
Little and Brown Pharm Cards

and a used 9-book Kaplan set (1999).

Review questions:

Underground Clinical Vignettes (9 books)
Board Simulator Series (get the CD instead of the books; it has all the same q's, and you can select q's by subject or organ system)
NMS Review for USMLE Step 1 (books and CD)
Kaplan Simulated USMLEs (on CD)
Retired NBME questions (150q, 1994, photocopied)

Not that i'll EVER use all that stuff!! 😀 But these were the materials that were unanimously recommended based on polling upperclass med students. I also hear that Goljan Physiology is good.

Piece of advice -- you can pick a lot of these up cheap from upperclass med students who're done with boards, as well as on Ebay. Now's a good time to look, since everyone just took them this past June/July. There are a few people out there who sell burned CDs (albeit illegally) with a lot of this **** on them for very cheap; one guy on Ebay practically makes his living peddling USMLE stuff ([email protected]). You might also try looking on the usmle.net step 1 forum, which has a LOT of stuff for sale, as well as looking on the listservs/discussion boards of various medical schools. Just do a Google search for "board review books sale" and you'll pull up several schools with online for-sale forums: NYU, UCSF, UNC-CH, Jefferson...selling everything from board review books to cars, cheaper than Ebay (but the secret's out now).

Good luck 😉

 

[LaRa CRoFt]

Thank you all for your precious advice. Some of these books I've heard time and again such as Lippincott's Pharm and BRS Pathology. Good luck to all of you also starting first year.

 

[BushBaby]

bumping this one up

 

[lotanna]

Nice nice BushBaby! Class of 2008!!!!

BTW, Did u see that thread on Pre-Allo that some chic named Bintu started, claiming to be a Nigerian hemaphrodite...about embarrassing problems?

 

[puffy1]

My top 5 for board prep:

BRS Physiology
Robbins review of pathology
High yield pharmacology
First Aid Step 1 USMLE
BRS Pathology

 

[bokermmk]

are the kaplan books good for the boards?