Hi all, decided to post my schedule, resources, and experience here. For the goal oriented, tl;dr - real score >260. If you have questions, will do my best to respond! Best of luck - and remember, this is still just a test and it does NOT determine your future
🙂
SCHEDULE:
January 1st/
2014-February 1st/
2015: Flag/complete Firecracker topics
February 2nd-March 7th: Finish 1st UWorld (86% [96th percentile], timed, all random)
March 8th- NBME #13 (258)
March 9th-16th: Read First Aid 1st time
March 17th- UWSA #1 (265)
[March 28th- school designated dedicated study time begins]
March 18th-April 1st: Finish Kaplan (90% [average = 61%], timed, all random)
April 2nd: NBME #17 (266)
April 2nd-5th: 2nd UWorld (flagged topics)
April 6th: UWSA #2 (265)
April 7th-8th: Finish 2nd UWorld (flagged topics)
April 9th: NBME #16 (277)
April 10th-11th: Read Pathoma book 1st time
April 12th: NBME #15 (262)
April 13th: Rest and brief review
April 14th: Take USMLE Step 1 (x>260)
SUMMARY OF RESOURCES USED:
-All Firecracker topics
-Pros: great tool for memorization, spaced repetition really does work if you are disciplined and get through your daily flagged questions, best for topics that aren’t strongly connected to any concepts
-Cons: questions are NOT qbank style questions, they do not test your reasoning ability or ability to apply concepts; this is a zoomed in view and you can miss the big picture, which is extremely important too; I stopped using Firecracker a month away from my exam in order to focus on getting into the mindset of NBME style questions and thinking
-Pathoma videos, book
-Pros: good clarity, videos are good for audio/visual learners; good for classic histologic presentations and pathologic descriptions
-Cons: material covered, in my opinion/experience, does not overlap with tested material as well as people say anymore; I watched all the videos once, but didn’t spend precious time in the months leading up to the exam on them - I used this more as an adjunct to my 2nd year coursework
-First Aid 2015
-Pros: material overlaps superbly with tested material, better than any other resource available (note, by this I mean simple recall AND applying concepts)
-Cons: outline format, very difficult to recall let alone apply to questions without stronger foundation; best used as a backbone and a guide for frequent referencing during studying
-Wayne State University CT modules: www.med.wayne.edu/diagRadiology/Anatomy_Modules/Page1.html
-Pros: best free online imaging study tool I was able to find, in my experience more than sufficient for imaging that shows up on Step 1 (which are usually simple)
-Cons: many images I still wasn’t able to be sure about/identify stand-alone, but when combined with question stem and presentation, was able to get most of them right
-UpToDate, Wikipedia, Google
-Pros/cons pretty straight-forward here; I used these resources when I needed additional information I couldn’t get in any of my other resources or when I just wanted fast info; I'm not a textbook kind of person but I suppose that these were effectively my substitution for textbooks
-Kaplan QBank
-Pros: good breadth of questions, good mix of simple and more complicated questions
-Cons: some questions focus too much on details and most explanations are weak
-UWorld QBank
-Pros: excellent explanations, good user interface, questions require deeper mechanistic thinking and understanding of concepts
-Cons: overly focuses on 2-3 step questions which make up only part of real Step 1 questions, with propensity to overthink simple questions that always show up on the real exam; also a relatively narrow breadth of topics covered albeit these are the highest yield topics
-UWorld Self Assessments #1, 2
-Pros/cons essentially the same as the QBank; essentially felt like additional UWorld QBank questions; would recommend doing them time permitting
-NBME Simulated Exams #13, 15, 16, 17
-Pros: Question stems, topics covered, and answer choices felt most like the real exam of all resources; most accurate gauge of performance on real exam (although still not that accurate)
-Cons: No answer explanations - please be aware that although sometimes online forum answers/explanations can be correct, a very significant amount of time they were wrong; can induce stress/anxiety
REAL EXAM EXPERIENCE:
I spent 1 minute/question on the first pass and used the remaining 14 minutes to look over flagged questions (and rapidly skim all other questions). I found that I was able to pace myself about the same as on the practice NBMEs, perhaps ever so slightly slower on the real exam. I found myself wishing I had ~5 minutes more to think about my flagged questions.
I ended up flagging an average of ~10 questions per section on the first pass (questions that I was <90% sure of, I would estimate) and then on the 2nd pass this dwindled to about ~4 flagged questions. Thus, I would say I missed an average of ~2-4 questions per section (sorry I can’t be more accurate and still confident). A very approximate breakdown of types of questions is as follows: 65% applying familiar concepts, 25% direct recall, 10% novel thinking.
I took 2-3 minute breaks between each section, and a 20 minute lunch break. I mainly used the breaks to use the bathroom and to stop myself from thinking about the previous section before moving on to the next.
