resetting USMLEWORLD vs. Kaplan/Rx

[zhangzj]

Hey guys,

Here's my situation: my exam is on May 15th, and at this point I'm entering the home stretch where I plan to read only Rapid Review once over and try to get through my annotated First Aid twice before my exam. Obviously, I want to do a ton of questions.

I've completed USMLEWORLD and redid the wrong answers, and have done a lot of the questions two or three times. At this point, do you think it would be higher yield for me to reset World and redo the entire thing in the next two weeks, or go with the Kaplan Qbank and/or Rx and do as many of those as possible? I'm aware that World is the highest quality Qbank and, honestly, I don't really like Kaplan at all (the questions are nitpicky, and the bank itself is fairly glitchy).

I guess what I'm really worried about is what might be in Qbank or Rx and not in World; Then again, I'm running out of time and I want to focus on the highest yield things as possible to maximize my score.

Also, what's the general opinion on the World self assessment exams? I bought a couple of NBME's and while they're fine, I hate that it doesn't let you review the questions after you complete them.

Thanks for reading, and I look forward to your responses. I need all the help I can get!

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[go lakers]

I vote Rx. At least you'll be maximizing and solidifying your FA knowledge.

 

[kryptik]

I vote Rx. At least you'll be maximizing and solidifying your FA knowledge.

i second this. since you plan to go through ur annotated FA, do rx questions after each system to test how well you can recall FA, good luck

 

[vicinihil]

I really enjoyed using the UWSA. They are harder than NBME's but they allow you to review all your answers in detail and it's a great learning tool. I would definitely get them if not just to assess where you are but also just to do more high quality UW questions.

In terms of which Qbank to get. I'm leaning towards Kaplan. I know some people on this forum have negative feelings toward Kaplan but I did >90% of Qbank and found that it was a great learning tool. I used a bit of First AID Q&A which is essentially 1000 questions pulled from USMLERx and found it to be relatively simplistic and not as creative as some Qbank questions though it is definitely more targeted toward FA than Qbank would be. However, Qbank comes with useful page references to FA which makes it easy to find where in the book the information can be found.

 

[match2011]

you mean the kaplan Qbank also has references to FA?

I really enjoyed using the UWSA. They are harder than NBME's but they allow you to review all your answers in detail and it's a great learning tool. I would definitely get them if not just to assess where you are but also just to do more high quality UW questions.

In terms of which Qbank to get. I'm leaning towards Kaplan. I know some people on this forum have negative feelings toward Kaplan but I did >90% of Qbank and found that it was a great learning tool. I used a bit of First AID Q&A which is essentially 1000 questions pulled from USMLERx and found it to be relatively simplistic and not as creative as some Qbank questions though it is definitely more targeted toward FA than Qbank would be. However, Qbank comes with useful page references to FA which makes it easy to find where in the book the information can be found.

 

[kryptik]

you mean the kaplan Qbank also has references to FA?

yes it does

 

[Langa]

Hi, best of luck in ur exams come may 15th.I''m a new member just trying to start my reading for my Step 1 by Dec.,pls tell me what u meant when u said u liked n went thru' some NBME n u liked dm except dt dy couldnt be reviewed. are dy NBME Qbank books or some Qbank online subscriptn like USMLE world or what?

 

[Elixir86]

Wow, this is quite a coincidence. I was going to post a thread about Kaplan QBank vs. USMLERx. Of course, I'm also using UWorld. I plan to finish UWorld once right before crunch month begins and then reset it so I can do it again during my dedicated study period. I was actually doing Kaplan since the beginning of 2nd year along with my courses but I only finished ~46% of it before my subscription ran out. I'm still debating as to whether to get Kaplan back for a month and finish out the remainder or get USMLERx to help me drill down FA. Also, does USMLERx have page references to FA2010?

 

[RapidReview]

Wow, this is quite a coincidence. I was going to post a thread about Kaplan QBank vs. USMLERx. Of course, I'm also using UWorld. I plan to finish UWorld once right before crunch month begins and then reset it so I can do it again during my dedicated study period. I was actually doing Kaplan since the beginning of 2nd year along with my courses but I only finished ~46% of it before my subscription ran out. I'm still debating as to whether to get Kaplan back for a month and finish out the remainder or get USMLERx to help me drill down FA. Also, does USMLERx have page references to FA2010?

I have both. Yes rx references 2010 FA and the images are right there
on the screen for you, so unless you need to annotate, u don't even need to open up FA which can save quite a bit of time in the long run.

I use Rx now just to do subject tests on my weak areas in kaplan.

 

[MilkmanAl]

I defer to those of you who have taken Step 1 and undoubtedly crushed it, but I don't think I can go back to Rx after having started UWorld. The UWorld questions are just so much better in every way. They're harder (read: make you think more), explain the questions better, don't have the ******ed typos that plague Rx, don't have the ******ed answer choices that plague Rx ("This answer is correct but not what we wanted." Seriously?), and might actually teach you something that's only marginally related to the question at hand via the explanations instead of saying "This has nothing to do with condition x." The difference is staggering. I can't speak to Kaplan's questions, but man, Rx is crap compared to UWorld, in my opinion. I'd even go as far as saying that UWorld will teach you FA better than Rx and will toss in a bunch of good info on top of it.

 

[illixir]

Completely agree with the above on how awesome uworld is. No page references could be a small minus compared to kaplan but it helps you find stuff better in FA i guess. I thought kaplan's question quality was close to Uworld but not as much integration and too detailed at times. I've talked to people that score a similar percentage on both banks and don't really find too much of a difference though. I think if you're looking for stuff that's not in Uworld, kaplan has tons but I don't think its necessarily high yield. I might have been judging kaplan as unnecessarily detailed since I did it earlier in my study plan before I knew as much though.

If your exam is in 2 and a half weeks, I'm wondering how you'll even have much time for another qbank if you plan on going through FA twice more and RR once. Even if you go at a pace of say 125ish pages of FA a day that would take 8 days to get through FA twice and itd prob take several days for RR too since its longer. I think the UWSA's should be done as well and thats probably a good day or two doing them and going over it.

 

[zhangzj]

thanks for the responses everyone. i guess nobody thinks just resetting world would be a good idea?

in that case, i might as well do kaplan since i haven't gotten any stellar reviews of rx and i already have kaplan anyway. what do you think about just trying to do maybe 3-4 blocks a day (200 questionsish) vs. organ based to correspond with my first aid studying?

illixir, you're right in that i'm kind of running out of time. luckily, i do questions extremely quickly (it rarely takes me more than 30 minutes a block, although i may end up with one or two errors due to misreading). the plan right now is to finish kaplan's neuro (in their anatomy lecture notes) tomorrow, and then try to go through RR by sunday (i've gone through it once already so this time will be focused more on margin notes/quickly skimming to consolidate information), followed by first aid starting monday. i'll try to fit in the UWSA on the weekends, the first one sometime this weekend since it'll be the first assessment after finally covering all the material once, and the other whenever i finish the first pass through FA (hopefully next weekend).

last question, what did you guys think about the biochem section in first aid? started reading the kaplan biochem book and while it was good, i decided to focus only on first aid since i felt kaplan was a bit too detailed and first aid seemed to cover all the essential topics covered in world. i did the same with the embryo, supplemented by sections in the kaplan embryo; do you guys think that's enough?

again, thanks a ton for the support and responses.

 

[MilkmanAl]

If you already have Kaplan, the Kaplan vs. Rx case is closed. As far as I can tell, both are roughly equal with Rx maybe having a bit of an edge by virtue of its link to FA, but they're way behind UWorld. If you own one, use it.

I'd agree with illixir that while Kaplan does have stuff that (apparently) is not in UWorld, whether or not that's a useful quality is debatable. My experience with Kaplan questions is all of ~50 questions deep, but reviews I've read here and heard from friends indicate that they tend to be overly detailed in many cases. From what I know, I think I'd pound through UWorld again instead of doing Kaplan. Even if you aren't really learning a whole lot due to remembering questions, you're still cementing concepts, and I imagine memorizing UWorld questions isn't exactly the worst use of your study time.

I liked the biochem section. It seemed like it covered everything pretty well, including molecular genetics, despite Taus's study plan claiming otherwise. Maybe my opinion will change when I start doing UWorld biochem instead of Rx biochem, but it seems like plenty of info to me.

 

[strongboy2005]

So my current plan is 6 months of USMLErx + 1 month of UWORLD (right before the test). Is 1 month enough time, or should I spend more time (3 months?) on UWORLD and less time on USMLErx?

 

[go lakers]

spend more time (3 months?) on UWORLD and less time on USMLErx?

i vote this

 

[Psychotropic]

I took Step 1, did well and from my experience USMLE World is the way to go. Reset that and go from there. Best of luck!