Plateau Prevention Methods

[MossPoh]

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I will start off with the question first and then any backstory underneath for those who are interested (probably not many).

What methods are you guys/gals using to fight off plateauing or just peaking out early? Have you done or heard of anything that works well? Hopefully there will be some good ideas shared that others may want to use.

My story:

Got uworld last September for my "birthday present". What can I say, I know how to party. Worked through probably 20ish percent with mostly immuno, cardio and pulm. Consistently listen to Goljan for every unit at least once.

Around the start of spring semester, I began working through first aid slowly with the help of DIT and friends while also consistently doing uworld questions. Started out around 25 random a day in addition to the ones for what block I was on, as well as webpath, robbins review and even an internal medicine boards review qbook.

Once I had about 15% of uworld left ( a few months ago), I ordered the pretest vignette book, got the free kaplan qbook, and NMS step 1 book. Finished out the pretest, did 6 blocks of NMS and probably about 6-8 blocks of kaplan qbooks. I then splurged and got the Kaplan qbank, which I have about 45% left now.

With 7 weeks left till test date, my basic goals are to finish out the kaplan qbank, get through uworld again (or close to it), lightening round through first aid/goljan for my comprehensives (basically a practice step 1) and then spend the mornings doing questions and evenings doing systems based subject review.

Obviously I've been doing a fair amount, especially since I tend to understate what I do.

Basically, I'm really worried I'm going to be flying a holding pattern for 2 or 3 weeks without some kind of innovative way to approach the material. I started off in the 55% range on Kaplan but now my cumulative average is 70% (almost all random, timed) and the last week has been in the 75% range. What I noticed is that the higher my percentages, the more educated guesses I get right, but they are still guesses. I seem to miss a lot of the rote memorization type stuff, which is something I will probably have locked down.

Tangent done...and now you know why I put the important part at the very beginning.

 

[amakhosidlo]

I'm in the exact same spot. I'm on my second pass through UW, and I'm worried b/c my averages are going down: Three 93's in a row, followed by three 89's, and today an 86. Mind you, I've seen many of these questions before, but still I feel like things are falling out at this point faster than they're going in. Trying not to psych myself out, but it's definitely hard. I still have 3 wks till test day, and I feel like 90% of my effort is going into maintaining what I have...

Maybe a day off is in order? Think I might try that tomorrow.

I will start off with the question first and then any backstory underneath for those who are interested (probably not many).

What methods are you guys/gals using to fight off plateauing or just peaking out early? Have you done or heard of anything that works well? Hopefully there will be some good ideas shared that others may want to use.

My story:

Got uworld last September for my "birthday present". What can I say, I know how to party. Worked through probably 20ish percent with mostly immuno, cardio and pulm. Consistently listen to Goljan for every unit at least once.

Around the start of spring semester, I began working through first aid slowly with the help of DIT and friends while also consistently doing uworld questions. Started out around 25 random a day in addition to the ones for what block I was on, as well as webpath, robbins review and even an internal medicine boards review qbook.

Once I had about 15% of uworld left ( a few months ago), I ordered the pretest vignette book, got the free kaplan qbook, and NMS step 1 book. Finished out the pretest, did 6 blocks of NMS and probably about 6-8 blocks of kaplan qbooks. I then splurged and got the Kaplan qbank, which I have about 45% left now.

With 7 weeks left till test date, my basic goals are to finish out the kaplan qbank, get through uworld again (or close to it), lightening round through first aid/goljan for my comprehensives (basically a practice step 1) and then spend the mornings doing questions and evenings doing systems based subject review.

Obviously I've been doing a fair amount, especially since I tend to understate what I do.

Basically, I'm really worried I'm going to be flying a holding pattern for 2 or 3 weeks without some kind of innovative way to approach the material. I started off in the 55% range on Kaplan but now my cumulative average is 70% (almost all random, timed) and the last week has been in the 75% range. What I noticed is that the higher my percentages, the more educated guesses I get right, but they are still guesses. I seem to miss a lot of the rote memorization type stuff, which is something I will probably have locked down.

Tangent done...and now you know why I put the important part at the very beginning.