Rate / advice on my Step 1 Study plan

[Rogue42]

Current first year in last block of this academic year.

I am currently doing the Lightyear anki deck; I started in late February. I do 100 new cards a day along with the max number of reviews (mostly because I researched it, and it said "if you aren't doing all of the reviews that are due on a given day, then you are wasting your time). This timeline puts me done around late October-November if I do new cards every day. I have also lined it up so that I am doing sections that line up with my curriculum. Ergo, we just finished Neuro block, and I just finished all the cards related to Neuro in Lightyear. We are starting Cardio/pulm, and I am starting the cards on that. I am NOT watching the B/B videos that go with each section of cards (mostly cause I don't do well with videos).

During the summer, I plan on starting cards that were from the blocks that I didn't do Lightyear (the first blocks of medical school), and then continuing to do Lightyear cards related to curriculum till the end of cards. At the end of each block, I do random board questions (from board vitals) on that same topic to keep me occupied throughout the week off I get between blocks.

At the end of the Lightyear deck, sometime in December, I will start doing the USMLE-Rx questions in random, timed blocks of 40 questions, then reviewing missed cards. I will do this until I run out of unique questions. Following, I will do Kaplan q-bank and then the UWORLD q-bank in the same format that I did USMLE-RX. At the end, I will take a couple of the NMBE's.

Would love to hear feedback on what you guys think. Anything I should add or takeaway? Any other tips, tricks, or pointers?

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[Dr. Death]

Agree with doing Rx first followed by Kaplan and the UWorld. Can't comment on your cards strategy as I did b&b, sketchy videos and read FA

 

[Rogue42]

Agree with doing Rx first followed by Kaplan and the UWorld. Can't comment on your cards strategy as I did b&b, sketchy videos and read FA

Thank you, really appreciate the feedback!

 

[CyrusHabs7695]

honestly I think lightyear is not that great and Zanki is way better, but its better to do lightyear over nothing

 

[Rogue42]

honestly I think lightyear is not that great and Zanki is way better, but its better to do lightyear over nothing

Why?

 

[CyrusHabs7695]

Why?

I tried light year early first year & realized it was missing a lot of details that were in Zanki. but like I said, doing lightyear is def better than nothing

 

[Deecee2DO]

Rx-->Kaplan-->UW at the end. I am telling you use UW as a practice assessment bank after you already finish a bank like Rx or Kaplan. UW makes you think and teaches you how to answer USMLE style questions. They are the most like the real deal and will help you immensely imo. Zanki is good but it doesn't teach you to think so that is why I chose to do Rx/Kaplan before UW and glad I did. My scores started out higher than my classmates who were repping Zanki since M1 (we eventually evened out). Rx/Kaplan teaches you to apply the knowledge/facts you learn which is the most important thing for an exam like Step 1 which is no longer an exam of buzzwords that it once was a decade ago. These questions are based on principles that are twisted around into 10 plus different ways. One of the few things that correlated with higher board scores was number of novel questions completed before taking Step 1. Questions are king if you are reviewing them thoroughly. If you had a choice to do UW 2x or UW 1x and Kaplan 1x I would do the latter. Doing questions you have already seen is inferior to doing never before seen questions. When you are gearing up the morning to take your Step 1 you are going to walk in there and see questions you have never in your life seen before, thus you should be practicing simulating this exact experience as close as possible. Just my 2 cents