Thought I'd share my experience (got my score this past Wednesday):
I did pretty average in 1st/2nd year of med school. My goal was 230+. I have no idea what specialty I want to do, but I'm not the best test taker (for instance, I blew it the day of my MCAT and got 28 (5 points less than my average)... it's a wonder how I got in):
6 weeks away: NBME 6 = 198 lol
4 weeks away: NBME 7 (offline version) = ~210
1.5 weeks away: UWorld SA1 = 232
1 week away: NBME 12 = 233
My overal UWorld avg% = 60s (I didn't finish half of the qbank...)
Real deal =
243 🙂 (was totally not expecting that!!!)
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What I did (if anyone cares):
During 2nd year: learned pathology primarily from Pathoma (cannot recommend this resource enough)! It was so much better than my school lectures. I utilized FA later in the year, it was a good summary to look at before tests.
During dedicated Step 1 time (~7 weeks):
I only used a few resources. I like the advice to use a few resources, but
know them well!
1. *Kaplan High Yield: the online shorter videos. It follows FA quite well actually and is a lot cheaper than DIT. I thought these videos were awesome for all the topics (except for Neuro, Biochem, and Behavioral Sci). I watched the whole course and annotated useful things into FA.
2. Kaplan (full-length videos): there's too many of these videos, I just watched select ones on topics that I had trouble grasping or where Kaplan HY was lacking (like Biochem).
3. *Pathoma: as I mentioned, I watched all the videos throughout 2nd year with my pathology class and annotated into pathoma. I would review the book as I was going through each section in FA.
4. *UWorld qbank: I only had time to do like half of it. I spent most of my time reviewing. I probably should've gotten through the whole thing.
5. *First Aid: annotated info from all the above resources directly into FA. Then reviewed the whole thing a few times.
6. Goljan: only got through half of the audio (just listened to it when I was driving or working out). But I must say, the audio was awesome and I'd recommend listening to the whole thing if you can. He does such a great job of integrating concepts and getting you in the mindset of Step 1 questions.
My piece of advice: I think it's not just good enough to memorize FA, but to try and
understand everything in FA. I asked myself "why?" when reading all the facts in FA and would look it up before moving on. It makes memorizing a lot easier and it helps you reason through things better on Step 1.
Good luck everyone!
I guess their hidden agenda is to stress people out further.
