people that scored >240 on step 1?

[Auvelity]

Hello there!
First off congrats for the great score.
I am an IMG and I've been trying to rise my NBMEs grades up for months. and no matter what I do I am still around the 220s.
so I want to ask what did you guys use?
yes I hear all the time that pathoma, First Aid, goljan audios and thats it.
but people here that scored 250 had to review something else right? could you please tell me more the resources I should cover in order to rise my score. thanks!

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[PaxRoma]

To break 240+, Uworld, FirstAid,Pathoma are really all the materials you need. The key is to use them efficiently. For example, I use Uworld as a study tool, not an assessment tool, so I do them in untimed all random mode. I indexed all the wrong questions and review them weekly. I use FirstAid as a reference and listen to Pathoma for a relaxing evening because I enjoy Dr.Sattar's jokes

 

[PhillyMed777]

random question- for some reason im finding it really hard to memorize all the medications associated with any certain thing (whether its a disease or a reaction, specially if the meds seem random)
Any good way to go about it?

 

[PaxRoma]

random question- for some reason im finding it really hard to memorize all the medications associated with any certain thing (whether its a disease or a reaction, specially if the meds seem random)
Any good way to go about it?

FirstAid is a great tool to memorize drugs, especially for visual learner. For example, the ChemoTox man: if you learn the drawing, you will understand most of the chemo drugs!

 

[DoctorLacrosse]

FirstAid is a great tool to memorize drugs, especially for visual learner. For example, the ChemoTox man: if you learn the drawing, you will understand most of the chemo drugs!

is there an efficient way to "memorize" first aid? do most people just read it a bunch of times and do questions, or flash card it all or something?

 

[yanks26dmb]

random question- for some reason im finding it really hard to memorize all the medications associated with any certain thing (whether its a disease or a reaction, specially if the meds seem random)
Any good way to go about it?

not studying for boards, but for my classes, I will draw pictures to associate a drug with toxicities, for example. even better if you can associate this with something/someone in your life. For instance, take protease inhibitors (PI). I draw a picture of a big fat Pi Phi sorority girl, which I can instantly picture from undergrad...and I associate this with lipodystrophy. Things like this really helps my recall ability.

That said, if anyone in my class got a hold of my notebook, there'd be a lot of shock and likely anger considering a fair number of classmates are used in my drawings.

 

[IslandStyle808]

not studying for boards, but for my classes, I will draw pictures to associate a drug with toxicities, for example. even better if you can associate this with something/someone in your life. For instance, take protease inhibitors (PI). I draw a picture of a big fat Pi Phi sorority girl, which I can instantly picture from undergrad...and I associate this with lipodystrophy. Things like this really helps my recall ability.

That said, if anyone in my class got a hold of my notebook, there'd be a lot of shock and likely anger considering a fair number of classmates are used in my drawings.

I have actually done this for my graduate and undergraduate courses more recently. I can't remember some words for the life of me. However, once I draw that goofy picture, it comes like lightning.

 

[PaxRoma]

is there an efficient way to "memorize" first aid? do most people just read it a bunch of times and do questions, or flash card it all or something?

Best way to memorize First Aid is to actually do UW question and look up what you don't know in First Aid. That way, the materials in First Aid will come alive and you will gain a better understanding of it. Reading FA from page to page is a bad idea if you don't have a knowledge foundation yet.

 

[OnePunchBiopsy]

random question- for some reason im finding it really hard to memorize all the medications associated with any certain thing (whether its a disease or a reaction, specially if the meds seem random)
Any good way to go about it?

I used Lange Pharmcards to nail down the associations of drugs and organ systems. Each card has a clinical vignette and the back of the card has the proper drug (and the rest of the drugs in the class).

 

[OnePunchBiopsy]

Hello there!
First off congrats for the great score.
I am an IMG and I've been trying to rise my NBMEs grades up for months. and no matter what I do I am still around the 220s.
so I want to ask what did you guys use?
yes I hear all the time that pathoma, First Aid, goljan audios and thats it.
but people here that scored 250 had to review something else right? could you please tell me more the resources I should cover in order to rise my score. thanks!

First Aid, Pathoma, UWORLD worked for me, along with a few other things (see below).

The main thing is to do a ton of questions. I used Kaplan Qbank before UWORLD, and all together ended up doing ~4,500 questions and 4 practice NBME's before taking STEP. Doing questions gives you context to all the facts found in FA, and also helps you find out your weaknesses.


Take UWORLD for example:
The proper way to do questions is to select all subjects, and set 46 (44 now!?!?!) questions, and do them all untimed and random. However, keep track of how much time you are spending on a section! If you are spending ~2 hours on a set, you may have to work on pacing. I always tried to finish a section in under 1 hour (the usual Step 1 time allotment).

When you finish a set of questions, REVIEW THEM ASAP. It would take me an additional 4-5 hours to review all the questions in one section. If you have to delay your question review, I would make it my goal to review them all in less than 24 hours.
If I got a question right, I would read the explanation and summary, and only put it into first aid if there was no mention of the topic. If I got a question wrong, I would highlight or add the topic to First Aid, add a sticky red flag strip to the page in FA, and at the end of the week review all the red-flagged pages of my FA book. This way I would review my missed topics twice, once immediately and again at the end of the week.

If I was weak in a subject (very weak, usually only getting 30-40% of questions right in the topic), I looked to other teaching materials to review IN ADDITION to FA, Pathoma, UWORLD. My 3 major weaknesses were Biochem, Micro, and Pharm, so I bought Lippincott Microcards, Lange Pharmcards, and reviewed the Kaplan High-Yield lectures in Biochem. Doing this brought my percentages up in UWORLD and also brought my NBME scores up.

In summary, the trick do doing well on Step 1 is doing lots of questions, and honing in on your weaknesses. FA is a REVIEW resource, not a teaching resource. If you are weak in a subject, you have to teach yourself everything about it before you can review the content in FA.

Best of luck!


***EDIT: Do not outline/add anything into FA except for UWORLD. Do not put content from Kaplan or other sources into it, or else your FA book will become an endless tome of despair.

 

[DoctorLacrosse]

Best way to memorize First Aid is to actually do UW question and look up what you don't know in First Aid. That way, the materials in First Aid will come alive and you will gain a better understanding of it. Reading FA from page to page is a bad idea if you don't have a knowledge foundation yet.

thanks. great info in here. I'm no where near worrying about step 1 (first year), just figured I'd ask for future reference.

 

[worldbeater]

All material out there in terms of content is up to you, you can pick whatever works best for you. It's really about just getting the hang of going through rounds of UWorld, and getting your correct % to rise. The closer you can get to 100% correct on UWorld, the higher your actual exam score will be.