Step 1 studying with accelerated curriculum

[AlexMack12]

Hi all!

My school just switched to a 1.5 year accelerated curriculum (so my class is the first class in the school to be experiencing it); hence, I will be taking my Step 1 exam in February 2016.

From searching through previous threads, the prevailing wisdom is to take the summer "off" between M1 and M2 (unless maybe doing research, which I am doing), and I completely understand the reasoning behind that. Nonetheless, that seems to be geared more towards those with a traditional, 2-year curriculum.
I don't want to burn out, but I'm also not sure I shouldn't be doing *anything* this summer, since time-wise, my exam is 7-8 months away rather than a year. I also know that I'll have to do board review stuff during M2, but again, it's hard to compare the time I'd have during M2 with a traditional curriculum vs the accelerated one, so I don't know if it's even applicable to me to follow the exact same recommendations for studying for boards during M2.
(For whatever it's worth, I would like to do as well as I possibly can on Step 1, but while undecided about my exact future career, I'm not considering derm or plastics..).

Anyone have experience with Step 1 studying and an accelerated curriculum and be able to send some pointers my way? Many thanks to everyone reading this and for any and all advice!

PS I tried to search old threads and only came up with study plans for 2 year curricula, but pardon my mistake if I missed one relevant to my question.

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[eliteeli]

In this exact same scenario (except my school aims to take step 1 in March 2016, not Feb). I want to maybe try and learn the stuff I don't feel like I really mastered. Our school is pass/fail and basically have one big NBME exam that we take per unit. So I never really learned Embrology or Fundamentals of pathology (like necrosis, granulomas, inflammation, etc) even though we get a great grasp on clinical path. So I figure to go through that stuff and maybe review FA on the topics we covered so far. (everything except Cardio, Resp, Renal, Neuro, Pysch). I figure putting in an hour or so 4 times a week should be sufficient for this.
Any other advice?

 

[alpinism]

If you really *must* study then just pick a Q bank (USMLE Rx or Kaplan) and do 100 questions per week.

Save UWorld for your dedicated study period.

 

[Dave89]

With respect to alpinism, I would strongly advise against saving UWorld for the study period.

You will (or ought to) learn a lot from the answer explanations, and a time frame of six weeks or so (the typical dedicated study period length) is insufficient to absorb all of the material presented.

With that said, I think that doing Rx or Kaplan over the summer and saving UWorld for M2 would be a good idea.

 

[charmiedermie]

With respect to alpinism, I would strongly advise against saving UWorld for the study period.

You will (or ought to) learn a lot from the answer explanations, and a time frame of six weeks or so (the typical dedicated study period length) is insufficient to absorb all of the material presented.

With that said, I think that doing Rx or Kaplan over the summer and saving UWorld for M2 would be a good idea.

I think this is a good idea. There was a lot initially in USMLEWorld that caught me off guard that was never taught in textbooks or review books. It could be because it is supposed to be harder than the real thing, but when you're used to teachers going out of the book, it can throw you for a loop when you get a lot of questions wrong. 6 weeks is not enough to absorb all the new stuff there.