USMLE Please Help Rate/Fine Tune My Step 1 Study Plan

[detroit313]

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I am an old student who took alot of time off between my first two years of medical school due to personal and health issues. I had a few course failures (Anatomy, Path 1/2 few times due to leave of absences), withdrew from the US school i was attending, and went to the Caribbean to finish my 2nd year officially (Finished in April 2014). Since it has been 5-6 years since I took some of these courses at the US school, I planned to study from April 2014 to April 2015 so I can get a great score on Step 1 and try to put myself in a position to overcome my past failures / transcript red flags.

Here is what I have done so far:
- Spent the last 4.5 months listening to every single hour of Kaplan videos (minus path) and meticulously annotating and taking a great amount of notes for each section.
- In this time period, I have also completed the entire Pathoma course videos and taken great notes in the book.
- My knowledge base was very weak and this is why it took me 5 months of 13-15 hr days of listening to Kaplan to finish the videos.

Here is what I plan to do:
July 24 - August 24
Now I have started DIT 2014 (am taking very good notes) as my first initial pass thru First Aid 2014. I should be done with the 237 Part 2 DIT videos in roughly 20-22 days (8 videos a day)

August 24 - October 10
Memorize DIT study guide / First Aid (second pass) immediately after finishing the videos. I will be doing 60 questions per day from USMLE Rx QBank and memorizing roughly 20-30 pages of DIT Study Guide/First Aid. I should be able to finish in roughly 40-50 days.

October 10 - January 10
Memorize Kaplan Lecture Notes, Pathoma, and complete UWorld 2012 Qbank

January 10 - February 10
Memorize / Run thru DIT Study Guide and First Aid (3rd pass), UWorld 2013 (60 Q a day)

February 10 - March 10
3rd Pass of Kaplan Materials - UWorld 2015

I know this plan may seem a little excessive but I really need to do my best to even hope to get a residency spot in the future. If anyone has any experience similar to mine and would like to share their tips I would be every so grateful.

Even if you have had a completely different experience than mine I would really appreciate any ideas to improve my study plan.

 

[detroit313]

Anyone?

 

[Distant]

Although I still didn't take the Step 1 Exam yet, my opinion is as Follows:

First Off:
Why Will you do UW 2012, 2013 and 2015?
1-2 UW passes should be more than enough
And, Stick to The Latest UW Qbank.

If you Have more Energy, Go through Kaplan Q Bank or RR Path or Goljan Material.

Second Point:
From What I Hear About Students Taking the Exam, is that Pharma and Micro Will be 99% from First Aid, So I personally am not going trough the Kaplan Books in these Particular Subjects, and would Recommend the same.

-I think that you might be taking more notes than Needed. I used to do the same mistake in the beginning of my preparation, but now as I'm close to my Big Day, I feel that Most of these notes are low yeild and would rather devote my energy to higher yeild Facts. Note that when you take excessive Notes, You might not grasp what information is being delivered from the Vids, instead, you just write it down for a later time to review. Rest Assured, all the High Yeild Facts will be Repeated over and over again in UW Q banks and DIT's so just Understand them and move on.

Final Point:
-I think You should Start Getting Involved in Q banks since you already Finished your First Read, Only then You will Respect important Facts enough not to forget them; Im guessing you don't want to score low on the practice tests, that's why you saving them for later, but i would Advise against that.

Doing Rx Qbank Subject wise parallel to DIT would be a good Idea.

 

[Transposony]

The most efficient way to study for USMLE is to do Questions and then read/watch videos about the topics you don't fully understand.

"A block a day keeps your Step score healthy, ........., .............."

 

[detroit313]

Although I still didn't take the Step 1 Exam yet, my opinion is as Follows:

Final Point:
-I think You should Start Getting Involved in Q banks since you already Finished your First Read, Only then You will Respect important Facts enough not to forget them; Im guessing you don't want to score low on the practice tests, that's why you saving them for later, but i would Advise against that.

Doing Rx Qbank Subject wise parallel to DIT would be a good Idea.

I heard from my all my friends to do as many UWorld questions as possible. One of my friends said that the 2012/2013 UWorld Qbanks all contained different questions and was better to do two different banks than to do the same one twice to get exposed to different styles of asking about the same material. I have two Kaplan QBanks 2012 and 2013 but from what I read online I figured it would be better to go thru two UWorld than to **** with Kaplan, what do you think?

Also I tried doing USMLE Rx questions now during my first pass of DIT but after doing videos for 8 hours a day to try and finish the study guide / program i simply dont have the energy to properly devote time to questions that is why i plan on finishing one pass of DIT and then going back immediately after and memorizing 30 pages of the study guide/first aid while doing USMLE Rx questions before my bank expires.

Also have you had experience with the Kaplan bank would it be better to do one Kaplan and one UWorld bank from my older PDF style banks. I want to do two offline banks PLUS the USMLE Rx before i buy the newest UWorld 2015 after this upcoming January. I figure 4 banks should be enough to get most of the material in

Thanks for all of your advice I appreciate everyone who responded

 

[sjonies88]

If it were me, I would not do so many different Q banks and would focus my energy on doing the newest UW Q bank with time built in for repeating incorrect questions / going over marked questions. I would also build in some time for a couple NBMEs to check in on your progress, and instead of a third pass of Kaplan, do another pass of Pathoma - I think Pathoma is likely more helpful than Kaplan (didn't do Kaplan, but did Pathoma twice thoroughly and many of my exam questions I got correct just from Pathoma) and doing another run of Pathoma close to your exam will probably be useful!

 

[aspiringmd1015]

what is 237 part 2 dit?

 

[detroit313]

If it were me, I would not do so many different Q banks and would focus my energy on doing the newest UW Q bank with time built in for repeating incorrect questions / going over marked questions. I would also build in some time for a couple NBMEs to check in on your progress, and instead of a third pass of Kaplan, do another pass of Pathoma - I think Pathoma is likely more helpful than Kaplan (didn't do Kaplan, but did Pathoma twice thoroughly and many of my exam questions I got correct just from Pathoma) and doing another run of Pathoma close to your exam will probably be useful!

I do plan on buying the newest UWorld Qbank (2015) in the months leading up to my test, also plan on taking the newest two NBME as well

I am hoping that I can finish USMLE Rx and at least 1 UWorld Qbank (probably 2013 first since that is newer), and then if I have time UWorld 2012

In that third pass of Kaplan, since I never did Kaplan Path, I plan on doing Pathoma + FA Path + Path lectures from my really good path teacher hopefully that should solidify my path. I am also gonna try to do two Goljan audio lectures every night before I sleep as the exam nears

Thanks for the input

 

[detroit313]

what is 237 part 2 dit?

237 refers to the amount of videos in the second part of DIT (if you do 8 lectures a day --> 30 days to complete the program)

The first part of DIT is the primer and most students skip this even the ones that pay for the program and dont pirate it

The part two is the one that corresponds with the workbook and is broken down into 237, 20-25 minute videos. The work book is separated into sections. Each video has 3-4 pre lecture questions (from previous lectures to test recall) and 3-4 post lecture questions (to test that lecture's material).

The lectures themselves cover 5-6 topics in First Aid (page numbers provided for 2013/2014 in DIT 2014) and around 1-2 topics that are not found in FA which may require some annotation or these notes may be already part of the study guide itself.