The resources I'm using look more like this:
Anatomy: Underground Clinical Vignettes - Anatomy, FA, HY Neuroanatomy, and anything from the QBanks and QBooks (these latter two apply to
every subject on this list)
Behavioural science: Kaplan notes, BRS Behavioral Science, HY Biostats, HY Behavioral Science (although I went through this one, I'm just about done with BRS Behavioral, and I would say do BRS but not HY Behavioral, as HY Behavioral is fairly vague with respect to answering actual questions), Underground Clinical Vignettes - Behavioral Science, FA
Biochemistry: Kaplan notes, FA
Cell biology: HY Cell and molecular biology
Microbiology:
MicroCards, FA
Immunology: FA
Pharmacology: FA, Lange pharmacology cards, Brenner pharmacology cards, DejaReview Pharmacology (do this after the former three)
Physiology: FA (my physio background has always been fairly good, so no additional resources here)
Some other really good ones that I've used are DejaReview USMLE Step1, BRS Path and CASES for the USMLE Step1.
I also own about 20 other books that I've flipped through, but the above info is more or less the heart of what you need. Consolidation is important, so although books like USMLE Secrets and HY Heart are really good, they're more just for reference.
Before I had started reading FA, I had finished the Microcards, BRS Pathology, Robbin's, Underground Clinical Vignettes - Anatomy, and HY Behavioral. I had also done many of the questions from Robbin's Rapid Review and University of Utah Webpath during my second year of med. I've also read various pieces of HY Cell & Molecular Bio.
After I finished FA, I went through USMLE Rx. I was amazed at how much pharm I had picked up through just FA and Rx alone. I went through all of the Lange and Brenner cards in about two days. There were probably only about 50 drugs between the two flashcard sets that I had not seen in Rx or FA, but I wrote them down for slower review later.
The Microcards are essential. Go through those before you touch FA. Their algorithms for remembering organisms are superior to FA's, although the FA chapter is necessary for toxins and more minutiae stuff. Finish these before you touch pharm because micro is the key to unlocking pharm. For instance, it doesn't mean much to hear that aminoglycosides are good against aerobic gram(-) rods if you don't already know which organisms are being referred to. So go through micro before pharm or FA.
My first read of FA was mainly just to see everything for the first time. When I finished, I wasn't entirely sure how much I had even remembered because I had been reading so much each day and just assumed that I had forgotten most everything, but I had noticed a ~20% score increase when going back to USMLE Rx to finish the remaining 2900 questions, relative to the 100 I had done before starting FA.
Going through Rx and understanding everything will require a second, desultory pass of FA, so you'll also learn a lot more then as well.
I'm going through FA cover-to-cover for the second time now (third pass, if including the desultory Rx-related pass). My focus now is pure memorization, mostly of stuff I had annotated in from Rx or hadn't fully remembered the first couple times. I'm also doing a chapter per day of BRS Behavioral at the moment. Sorry to confuse, but I've also annotated into FA stuff from University of Utah Webpath questions; there's a lot of good info to be found on that platform.
I'll start Kaplan QBank after I finish this pass of FA. When I finish BRS Behavioral, I'll also start doing HY Biostats at about a chapter per day. I'm also going to go back through Robbin's Rapid Review and try and do a block of those questions per day as well (even though I had gone through some during second-year med, I want to review).
After Kaplan QBank (or during; I'm open for improvisation at this point and am still working things out), I will do
another pass of FA before starting UWorld.
I plan on going through UWorld in tutor-mode and on paying close attention to everything this QBank has to offer. I'll probably also review HY Cell & Molecular Bio and HY Neuroanatomy as side-reading during this time, as well as some of the Utah questions again.
Then, in the second to last month-out, as I've mentioned before, the plan is to go back through Rx, Kaplan QBank and UWorld at ~300 Qs/day. I'll also revisit FA Q&A and Kaplan QBook for 4-6 days or so.
The final month will be a mix of intense FA-re-re-memorization (annotated copy from all QBanks/books), an analysis of NBME exam questions, a possible cursory pass on UWorld questions again for the sake of blitz recall, and I'll finish one-day-out with USMLE CD (Free-150).
Once again, that's just a
generalized summary (otherwise I'd type a 10-page report here). Plus, I'm always making small changes as I'm moving along in time, so that timeline is likely not to any degree exact.
There are quite a few pathways to nailing the USMLE. Some use GT. Some focus heavily on Kaplan notes, DIT, etc. My belief, however, is that FA + thousands and thousands of questions is best. Anyhow, we'll see.
I can thank Pollux for having given me an outline to originally work from.
Hope that helps,
