My Step 1 Pathway!

[IsisI]

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[OveractiveBrain]

Greetings all!

I'm what one would call an "average" IMG. I did "reasonably" well during my four years of medical school and I'm starting my USMLE preparation after finishing school and while working full time as a junior medical officer at a semi-urban setting.

I hope I can use one thread here as a blog / diary to jot down my progress every day. One, it will be a motivation for me and two, it will let others like me know how they would score if they follow a similar study pattern and improve from this template.

I'm going to schedule the step 1 exam on May 16th. Complete prep time including breaks, revisions and doing questions would be six months. So, I will be officially starting in two days from now, that is, on November 16th and study till May 15th, 2012.

The only materials I would be using are Kaplan Lecture Notes, Kaplan Videos, and First Aid 2012. The goal is a score of 250+. I'm going to first concentrate on getting a rhythm going since I believe that is the secret to getting a good score without taxing yourself so much that you get burnt out before the exam date is due.

Wish me luck. 🙂

Make sure you have a qbank or two. Given your 6 months of trianing, I suggest Kaplan to go along with your studying (their questions are harder, explanations better, ReKaps awesome, and references to First Aid superb) and then UWorld to prepare for the actual examination after the studying is done (more like the real questions, interface closer to the real deal, explanations good, but the real power is in its similarity to the actual exam).

I generally only recommend one qbank, but since you have such a long time, you will have the opportunity for both. I would use Uworld 1month to 2 weeks leading up to actual exam, training yourself to take 7 blocks of 48 questions with timed breaks. Thats good prep AND it will give you a realistic idea of what your score will be.

Good luck!

 

[IsisI]

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[IsisI]

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[IsisI]

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[IsisI]

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