I am a Non-US IMG since I have a green card, here is my story
I went to medical school in europe and did rotations in chicago
It took me approximately 9months-1year in total time to prepare for step 1 with some setbacks (ex: dad in hospital 3 times, funeral in india, stuff everyone deals with but it kept making me "restart" my studying process and it was mentally taxing.
I'm an average student and I want to give hope to anyone who has a dream of doing well on this exam. It's not easy, there are no shortcuts but if it truly is your dream you have to be motivated, work very hard and sacrifice a lot.
Everyone says to do uworld and do it throughly, obviously it works for the masses and thats great but I want to share how I did it for those of us who dont find it effective or enjoy that method. Do not get me wrong questions are extremely important, but doesn't mean you have to spend 4 hours reviewing a block.
I did all of the kaplan videos in: Physio, pharm, biochem, behavoiral, micro...at this time I did half of kaplan qbank
I did pathoma and barone path videos
I did sketchy micro
I did uworld-I finished about 65-70%, first pass i got around a 63% percent. I started at 35% and week before exam I was at 75-85%. all i did was make sure it was timed and random and looked at correct answer after and sometimes read main concept.
I did 70% usmlerx
I did DIT 2015 and DIT 2016-found this to be a great way to read through FA for the first time
I did all the NBME's: I started at a 142 and ended with a 215 on NBME 18 a week before exam
***Please do NBME's online and get feedback, invest a little money on the biggest exam.
1) make sure they are timed with 5-10 min breaks max between blocks, don't lie to yourself or look up answers
2)feel the stress as if its the real deal
3)these are things that will help you be realistic- I would take my nbmes after studying all day and then take them from like 1am-6am-i gave my self harsh conditions and a lot of stress, knowing if I could perform like that before the exam, test day could never be worse. This strategy worked to perfection.
4)review your NBME's and find the right answers for yourself-I think this is HUGE
I got 80% on free120 (after being awake over 24hours) 2 days before exam
anki cards i bought by yousmle- i didnt finish but they definitely helped with weak areas
I did thousands of questions overall but I didnt review them thoroughly, that could have helped me break 240-but maybe not, I know people who did it 3 times and didnt do so well. I refused to step 1 until my nbme was 215 or higher so I would have a cushion from failing, I figured if I went through all the material within a week via FA I could do okay.
during the last week I read FA 2016 along with 2017 PDF changes, I worked on weaknesses from NBME 18 first and also focused on question from uworld on that organ system.
study in a way thats effective for you, I did the videos i mentioned at least twice, most of them I did 3-4 times each. I figured I enjoyed and learnt a lot more by doing lecture videos than reading uworld explanations, at the end your going over the material one way or another. I rather understand it properly as a whole.
I might have missed stuff but feel free to ask anything or PM me if you like.
230+ was a dream of mine and I went hard to see if I could get close
the reddit survey had my NBME 18 215 approximating a score of 232 on step 1, the free 120 was around a 235 i believe
REAL SCORE 232!
(first time pass) if i can do it, anyone can
