Recommendation studying Step 2

[jbrec123]

Hi, I was wondering for USMLE step 2 do you guys recommend doing a bunch of question banks (Kaplan, uworld, usmle rx, test weapon etc.) and reading a review book (first aid, master the boards etc.) or doing one question bank (uworld) + a review book but watching an online prep course like kaplan or DIT. I won't have time (or money) to do both so I don't know whether I should buy more question banks or pay for a video online prep course. Thanks!

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[Oreoomar]

Most people like to stick to one Q bank and a review book or two - best one is unanimously UWorld. Instead of doing a whole other Q bank, just do your incorrects and marked a second time. Master the boards and Step up to Medicine (not Step up to step 2ck) are also highly recommended. Most review courses take too much time/money. Good luck!

 

[Phloston]

USMLE Rx, UWorld and UpToDate are all I would recommend for 2CK.

 

[faisal 2000]

USMLE Rx, UWorld and UpToDate are all I would recommend for 2CK.

how can we use uptodate or just by topics which i want to understand them ?

 

[Phloston]

As you do QBank questions, you'll find gaps/conditions that you'll want some elaboration. Then just go to UpToDate for those. My studying is basically just blocks of questions and then referencing UpToDate as I go through the explanations. You don't have to get bogged down in the long articles, but the summaries/recommendations sections at the ends of the UpToDate articles are usually gold.

I had read FA 2CK, MTB2 and MTB3 within the past year, and they have actually caused me to get some questions wrong because they're not updated. I wouldn't recommend those books to anyone. The reason is because, unlike Step 1, where disease mechanisms aren't going to change year after year, management does change, especially screening guidelines, etc.

 

[rahulmbbs]

Did u like Qmax for ck @Phloston , is it as good as step1 qmax..
i remember u mentioned qmax step1 as first aid extension (or combined should be considered single source)

 

[Phloston]

Did u like Qmax for ck @Phloston , is it as good as step1 qmax..
i remember u mentioned qmax step1 as first aid extension (or combined should be considered single source)

I just posted on the bottom here.

http://forums.studentdoctor.net/threads/uworld-high-yield-question-ids-step-2-ck.1111828/

 

[rahulmbbs]

Good Luck for the test, hope u rock it ..

 

[au3s]

Phloson, I've few questions would like to ask you about, plz give some suggestions if possible thanks.
1. You said before you have 50% chance of doing step 3 UW MCQ qbank, are you doing that yes/no and why?
2. UW has internal medicine board exam Qbank, you think doing those questions will solidify some concepts for
internal med section?
3. I recall somewhere (maybe I'm wrong) you said the NBME is not a good predictor for step 2. So are you going to do
them? what about the UWSA then ?
4. On the NBME self-assessment website, there's the exams called clinical mastery series, mostly for shelf exams. You think doing those questions can also help with step 2 ck?

Thanks

 

[Phloston]

Phloson, I've few questions would like to ask you about, plz give some suggestions if possible thanks.
1. You said before you have 50% chance of doing step 3 UW MCQ qbank, are you doing that yes/no and why?
2. UW has internal medicine board exam Qbank, you think doing those questions will solidify some concepts for
internal med section?
3. I recall somewhere (maybe I'm wrong) you said the NBME is not a good predictor for step 2. So are you going to do
them? what about the UWSA then ?
4. On the NBME self-assessment website, there's the exams called clinical mastery series, mostly for shelf exams. You think doing those questions can also help with step 2 ck?

Thanks

1) No. Don't have time. But more importantly, unlike the person I was when I was studying for Step 1, I actually do value having a life outside of medicine now. (In all seriousness though, my scores are fine so far. If I felt I were really suffering or something, I may have buckled down a bit more and assiduously adhered to additional resources, such as UW3).

2) Same as UW3, I doubt additional questions would ever hurt someone, but most of the questions we get wrong on the real deal are because of mishaps in thought process, not because we didn't know the information. I wouldn't recommend venturing to UW IM unless you're notably weak in IM and have a lot of time. I'd spend any additional time after having finished UW2 really reviewing incorrect NBME questions and hardcore understanding why you got those wrong.

3) I never said that. I'll be sitting the Step 2 NBMEs in about a week or so and will be ****ting my pants if I don't do well because they are known to be solid predictors.

4) I've done all of the clinical mastery series exams except for the two neuro ones (because my neuro isn't bad and since when is Step 2 neuro-focused?). But I'll be going into the 2CK not having done a peds or obgyn rotation, which is why I really needed to step up and learn those subjects, so those clinical mastery exams were important for me. I've PrntScrned all incorrect Qs into a PPT presentation with alternating questions then answers (after I researched them). I'll review these alongside my incorrect NBME Qs probably the two days before my exam.

 

[au3s]

So Phloston, how you like the questions in Clinical mastery series? lets say comparing to UW?

 

[Phloston]

So Phloston, how you like the questions in Clinical mastery series? lets say comparing to UW?

I find the questions really hard for some reason. And quite a few of the presentations are dissimilar to anything I've seen before. For instance there's a question that specifically says "brown granular casts" in the list of lab report data following a somewhat equivocal vignette, and acute tubular necrosis is an answer, but it's not correct. And I remember thinking "never in the history of any USMLE resource/question have I ever seen brown granular casts as anything but acute tubular necrosis, but yet that's wrong here. And I had seen another question where it specifically told you the patient did not have blood in the diarrhea, but the answer was E. histolytica. In everything I've seen up to this point, E. histolytica always presents with bloody diarrhea. The equivalent would be like them telling you explicitly that there's no steatorrhea and then the answer is Giardia. Catch my drift? I'm not sure why the questions are a bit effed up but they are. I had one of my buddies in the States who rocked the obgyn shelf exam take a look at the obgyn questions I got wrong from the clinical mastery series; for one question that had like A-N answer choices, he and I both got it wrong and chose different answers, but someone in his class who supposedly got that question right chose an answer that basically makes no sense. If anything, it just goes to show this is why no one ever gets a perfect score on the USMLEs, because there's always questions we think we get right but are wrong about (e.g., the acute tubular necrosis question).

The only thing I do like about the clinical mastery series is that they don't overtly lead you down the wrong direction like UWorld does much of the time. Getting a question wrong in the mastery series is usually because of a really strange vignette, not because they intentionally try to trick you into choosing one answer. I know UWorld is the gold standard for USMLE prep, but now that I've just today finished the QBank for 2CK, I can say that I've been annoyed quite frequently about a lot of the tricks they pull. For Step 1, I initially thought these tricks were beneficial because they taught us to learn. But after having taken Step 1 itself, most of the questions I got wrong were because I over-thought things. UWorld is a platform that trains us in the art of over-thinking. So I've found that for ~1/3 of the questions I get wrong, I basically just shake my head and roll my eyes.