SDN USMLE Step I Superstars please give advice!

[Doctor4Life1769]

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My list looks like this:

Anatomy: HY/FA
Neuroanatomy: HY/FA/Boards and Wards Pathophys Diagnosis and Treatment
Embryo: FA/HY
Histo: FA/HY
Behavioral: HY/FA
Biochem: Kaplan (maybe go RR instead?)
CMB: 1999 HY
Physio: BRS
Immuno: Levinson's/Boards and Wards Pathophys Diagnosis and Treatment
Micro: Microcards/lecture notes/Kaplan
Pharm: Boards and Wards Pharmacology (anyone used this book? It seems REALLY GOOD and helps me understand -- but is it good for the Step I?)
Path: RR/Pathophysiology for the Boards and Wards Diagnosis and Treatment (Again, good for Step I?)

Integration: FA and Kaplan MedEssentials

Questions book: First Aid Q&A and Kaplan QBook

How does this book list look? Please give tips and provide any advice, thanks! I take Step I next spring, but I want to make sure I have a really good list prior to starting year 2. Also, when is a good time to start doing online Q-banks?

 

[fever106]

I used relatively unconventional methods, but they worked for me. Fact is, everyone uses different stuff, and there is no real magic recipe. You just have to figure out what sources fit your learning style. Here is what I did...

Anatomy/embryo: rapid review
Histo: rapid review
phys: BRS
biochem: First Aid (only thing I used it for)
Neuro: High yield
Behavior: BRS
Path: BRS
Micro:class notes
Pharm: class notes
I had really good notes from my micro and pharm courses, so even though most people say not to use course materials, I wanted to uses sources I was familiar with. Board review is not a time to pick up brand new texts and try to adjust to their style...you have to stick with what you are comfortable with. I answered 100% of Q bank as well....crucial. In fact, if nothing else I would say focus on doing hundreds and hundreds of questions. By looking up your wrong answers, you are cementing the knowledge in your head.

Mock NBME taken prior to studying: 205
Q-bank average: 70%
NBME 3 taken after 2 weeks of studying: 238
Took real test after 4 weeks of studying: 247/99

 

[Instatewaiter]

My list looks like this:

Anatomy: HY/FA
Neuroanatomy: HY/FA/Boards and Wards Pathophys Diagnosis and Treatment
Embryo: FA/HY
Histo: FA/HY
Behavioral: HY/FA
Biochem: Kaplan (maybe go RR instead?)
CMB: 1999 HY
Physio: BRS
Immuno: Levinson's/Boards and Wards Pathophys Diagnosis and Treatment
Micro: Microcards/lecture notes/Kaplan
Pharm: Boards and Wards Pharmacology (anyone used this book? It seems REALLY GOOD and helps me understand -- but is it good for the Step I?)
Path: RR/Pathophysiology for the Boards and Wards Diagnosis and Treatment (Again, good for Step I?)

Integration: FA and Kaplan MedEssentials

Questions book: Kaplan QBook

How does this book list look? Please give tips and provide any advice, thanks! I take Step I next spring, but I want to make sure I have a really good list prior to starting year 2. Also, when is a good time to start doing online Q-banks?

I would add BRS phys to the list.

For embryo and histo you may not need the HY books. Most schools spend a good amt of time on these subjects but they are low yield for the boards. It is probably not worth your time spending all that effort on separate books for embryo or histo when it could be used for pharm, path, phys. I used FA for those and I thought it was plenty. Histo is really low yeild and the embryo you need generally comes from FA.

Depending on who you talk to HY gross may or may not be worth it. I didnt think HY gross was all that good. One piece of advice I would give people is to be comfortable with radiographs and CTs of head, abdomen, lungs etc. Those almost always come up.

Immuno- Levinson is good for immuno
Micro- I thought Micro made ridiculously simple was a great book.
Path- RR should be plenty.


Cant speak to pathophys for the boards and wards. Maybe someone else can.

 

[Doctor4Life1769]

I would add BRS phys to the list.

For embryo and histo you may not need the HY books. Most schools spend a good amt of time on these subjects but they are low yield for the boards. It is probably not worth your time spending all that effort on separate books for embryo or histo when it could be used for pharm, path, phys. I used FA for those and I thought it was plenty. Histo is really low yeild and the embryo you need generally comes from FA.

Depending on who you talk to HY gross may or may not be worth it. I didnt think HY gross was all that good. One piece of advice I would give people is to be comfortable with radiographs and CTs of head, abdomen, lungs etc. Those almost always come up.

Immuno- Levinson is good for immuno
Micro- I thought Micro made ridiculously simple was a great book.
Path- RR should be plenty.


Cant speak to pathophys for the boards and wards. Maybe someone else can.

I already have BRS Physio on the list. Thanks for the recommendation on not doing HY embryo/histo ... I may just use HY gross for the radiographs then since it's that common -- that and Netter's and Kaplan MedEssentials.

 

[jtre506]

246/99

If I could do it over again I would stick to gojan RR, First AID, high yeild behavioral science, USMLE WORLD <---------START THIS IMMEDIATLY

 

[dinonut]

You know, I have noticed that on here everyone posts an elaborate book list, but I took a completely different approach and it worked really well for me (250's). I did the questions only approach - I didn't read a single book, not even First Aid. I started off with USMLEWorld, and I did the questions by subject (biochem, micro, cardio, etc.) in tutor mode and with First Aid open in front of me. If the answer was in FirstAid, I looked over that little section and figured out how to use that information to answer the question, and if it wasn't, I added it to FirstAid. I went through all of USMLEWorld that way. Then I did all of the Kaplan Qbank in sets of 50 random questions with the book closed just for practice, around 100-150 a day. I would still go over the answers at the end but more quickly than I did with World, and added any missing information to FirstAid.
I also did all six NBME exams, the free practice exam, the Goljan 350 question set that you can access online if you buy his Rapid Review pathology book (lots of good pictures in this question set), and the two paper and pencil NBME exams that my school offered.
Between all of that, plus the 600 questions that I got from my school organized step prep and the DoctorsinTraining.com course that I took, I took over 7000 practice questions, and I had time to do it because I didn't do any reading. It's definitely not for everyone, but if you are one of those people who does better with lectures and practice questions than just reading a textbook, I definitely recommend it. You will remember something much better if you take a question over it and get it wrong (I will never forget that Cryptococcus is urease positive). Plus, doing questions forces you to apply the information to new situations, since the test is not about regurgitation of what you can read on a textbook page (at least most of it isn't).
I'd say the key to studying is to have a good understanding of your learning style, and design your study around that - I knew that I was so terrible about reading that I just don't buy textbooks anymore, but I still bought BRS phys and path, HY books and everything, and never even opened any of them.
Good luck! 🙂

 

[MoosePilot]

Too many resources. My advice is to study hard during the year for your classes. Use whatever resources you need to. Then pick a few and learn them really well during your actual 4-6 week Step I study.

My choices were FA, BRS Path, BRS Physio, HY Cell and Molecular. UW for Qs.

 

[tfom08]

A lot of people who have scored 250+ have used basically the same list you are using. It's a solid list. I would cut it down to one book per subject though. For instance, micro only needs one book--kaplan is plenty if that's what you use. For path, just use RR, it's a lot to get through anyway and if you can get through it multiple times even better. Pharm, only use FA please. Other books are not necessary at all. Unless you need extra help on pharmkinetics/dynamics--but for the drug info just don't waste your time with other books. Boards and wards pharm might be good (I've never looked at it) but I can tell you that you don't need the extra info. I recommend the Kaplan biochem book and it has some nice medical genetics and mol. bio info too. Looks like a great list, so get the books and stick to them. Just remember, how hard you work will end up being more important than the sources you use because for the most part the sources contain essentially the same information.

 

[lord_jeebus]

I would dump HY Gross Anatomy, Histo, and probably Embryo

I would also drop that pharm book unless it's really working for you

 

[Pewl]

OP, I'm not sure if a 247 qualifies me as an "SDN Superstar" considering some of the ridiculous scores being posted, but I thought my approach was a bit more realistic than some people who just had a laundry list of books for each subject.
I might have referenced specific chapters for a number of books, but I tried to keep my resources to a minimum. I find it better to be highly familiar with a few sources than to be somewhat familiar with a bunch of sources. (of course if you can do both, then kudos to you.) I feel like the workhorse of my studying has been doing practice problems. I had approximately a 6.5 week dedicated study time prior to my exam.

Primary Resources
First Aid - Know this book well. It should be your primary resource. Annotate stuff from UW and other sources into it.
First Aid Clinical Cases book - This is GREAT toilet reading. I didn't read all of it but the scenarios in it are pretty high quality
Goljan Audio and typed-out transcript - Goljan is fantastic, but I didn't feel like I needed to use every single one of his lectures. I paid particular attention to all of his Heme, Cardio, and Endocrine lectures. Someone sent me this 200+ page typed up transcript of all of Goljan's lectures which I had printed out and bound at office depot. I followed along it in it for the heme, cardio, and endocrine sections while i was listening to his audio. It helped me out a bit. Goljan's heme is pure gold! (Even though my heme score wasn't as high as I was expecting).

Side References
BRS physiology I pretty much just did the practice problems
RR Pathology - I just skimmed the pictures and the blue notes in the margins
Kaplan Biochemistry - I just reviewed the DNA synthesis and fat metabolism chapters
HY Molecular Bio - I just reviewed some of the lab techniques and gene splicing stuff

Practice Problems
Kaplan Qbank (~70%) - I didn't really like this qbank. It was too detail oriented. But I guess it might be useful for some people. I made some "high yield" notes on Microsoft Word and reviewed them the week before my test.
UW (~70%) - If I were to go back and do it again (thankfully i will NEVER have to) I would just focus on UW. I felt the quality of the questions were great and were more reflective of the real thing. On top of that, the UW assessment test was a good predictor of my score whereas the NBME practice exams were a very poor predictor of my score. I also made some "high yield" notes on Microsoft Word and reviewed them the week before my test.

During the final week before the test I did some quick run throughs of those "high yield notes" i typed up and redid a bunch of questions on UW that I got wrong. I spent 1 day on bugs/drugs, 1 day on cardio/respiratory, and 1 day on heme/onc.

Best of luck

 

[Mixtli]

I think some materials people overlook are Leppincott's pharm cards, Robbin's Pathology Review, and Levinson's immuno, bacteria, viriology questions. In my opinion, those are pure gold. I'm not too sure what to use for physio, but those books give you broad base coverage for most of everything.

 

[JeffLebowski]

No offense, but this really seems like an inefficient and silly way to go about figuring out what you want to know. There's an entire, pretty comprehensive thread of people's thoughts, experiences, scores, and study resources. I don't think I've seen any comments on this thread yet that haven't been stated there (many times over, in some cases), but with scores and more info/perspective attached.

It's probably better to just design a preliminary list based on that (which it looks like you have), then glance through them at the bookstore to see (A) which ones you for sure want and (B) which ones you're on the fence about, then come back here to read up more on opinions of the "fence" books ask friends/upperclassmen, then go buy the ones you want.

 

[thedrjojo]

No love for BRS Path it seems... I love BRS so i stuck with all of them (even Neuroanatomy, Gross Anatomy, Embryo, and Pharm) but I wouldn't recommend that to everyone out there... I was a big fan of Lippencotts Illustrated Review for pharm, but again, not a highly recommended (i hated pharm so spent the extra time and effort with 2 books, but spent like 2-3 days on physio since I loved the subject, was a TA for physio in undergrad and a tutor for it in med school)... I also loved the premade flashcards, mostly the BRS ones (the molecular and genetic ones are a great way to learn the obscure genetic diseases).

 

[goremachine]

For what it's worth, I feel like I used too many books and not enough questions.

I wish I would have used only:
FA
Goljan Path
HY Neuroanatomy

everything else was a huge waste of time.

For questions, I did every question in:
FA Q&A
UsmleWorld
150 free questions
NBMEs 3,4,5,6
UW assessment
Kaplan Qbook

The biggest mistake I made was doing usmleworld questions in any order but unused, timed, random. The idea is, do a chapter in FA, then do the questions pertaining to that chapter in the FA Q&A book. If you do questions by disciple in usmleworld, then you exhaust those questions, and when you're unused/random, those questions won't come up, so you'll get a skewed mix where some disciplines will be underrepresented. So, only use UW for unused/random question blocks, and use other sources for discipline-specific questions.

 

[Doctor4Life1769]

Thank you all for your words of wisdom. Gore, thank you for explaining how to use UW. Knowing me, I'd screw it all up and ruin such an invaluable learning tool.

I have some more questions now that the book part is squared away. I began glancing through RR Path, FA 2008, Kaplan MedEssentials and of course the B&W Pharm/Pathophys. My question is (now bear with me, my study habits took a huge 180 when I hit med school, in college I had 0 study habits, so I've been polishing up on all that) -- what did you guys do with the book sources (for those who used books anyway) to dissect the material and learn it really well -- and I don't mean memorization or anything, but reinforce what you learned in class really well. Yes, I studied hard in the 1st year and tried to learn as much as possible; however, when I began going through some of the neuropath and MSK path, I noticed a fair small amount that wasn't touched in my systems classes that were mentioned in some of these book and then there were things that I remembered learning but was still hazy on. I can't be hazy on those parts anymore if I want to do well. So, how did you guys approach these books as learning tools to do well for Step I?

Also, when did you all start using online Q-banks? When is it recommended to start them up? Thanks!