Study gameplan

[oceanillusion42]

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Hey all,

I just wanted to run an outline of my Step I study plans by some of you and I'd greatly appreciate any feedback... I'm currently freaking out by my lack of freaking out. Everyone seems to be in a tizzy and already putting in 5 hour days even tho the exam isn't until June... am I missing something? I guess I have a much more conservative plan compared to others so I just want to know if I'm on the right track.

I'm a DO student planning to take the USMLE the first week of June. I want to go into emergency medicine (preferably at a NJ hospital) and my goal score is around a 230.

My resources are: Pathoma, First Aid, Clinical Micro Made Ridic Simple (found this to be very helpful for classes), BRS physio, DIT, U-World, and COMBANK.

My general plan is to do a general overview of all of first aid and pathoma between now and mid march. By this I mean not get into every single nitpicky detail at this time but just do a big once-over. I plan on also tackling U-world/COMBANK questions during this time and beginning to annotate. At the end of this phase I plan to take a NBME exam to see what type of score I'm looking at,

The next phase is basically just a sprint to the finish line... hardcore Q-bank, go thru first aid and pathoma again (paying attention to detail), and DIT leading right up to the exam... monitoring progress with another 2 NBME exams.

I'm hoping this is a decent enough outline... or should I be going crazy with the study hours already? I still have classes to worry about so I still want to devote my time to school at this point since the exam is still 5 months away.

Thanks for your help.

 

[gasdocDO]

Your plan sounds good to me. Pretty much the exact same thing that I am doing with the exception of COMQUEST over COMBANK. Is there any reason that you are doing COMBANK instead? Also, you might want to supplement with some pharmacology flashcards (I am using Kaplan by Fischer).

 

[oceanillusion42]

Your plan sounds good to me. Pretty much the exact same thing that I am doing with the exception of COMQUEST over COMBANK. Is there any reason that you are doing COMBANK instead? Also, you might want to supplement with some pharmacology flashcards (I am using Kaplan by Fischer).

I had a decent discount code for COMBANK but thats about it... I want to focus more on U-world and just do enough of the COMBANK questions to get a feel for COMLEX styling and OMM questions. And yea I was debating getting some pharm and micro cards.... any thoughts on good micro cards? (I'm gonna look into the pharm cards you mentioned)

 

[cage92]

Heyyy guys is there a huge differene between qus of com bank and usmle bank?

 

[FIREitUP]

I had a decent discount code for COMBANK but thats about it... I want to focus more on U-world and just do enough of the COMBANK questions to get a feel for COMLEX styling and OMM questions. And yea I was debating getting some pharm and micro cards.... any thoughts on good micro cards? (I'm gonna look into the pharm cards you mentioned)

don't spread yourself too thin. personally I would junk the DIT and possibly COMBANK (unless you start using it after you take the USMLE, for COMLEX).

 

[oceanillusion42]

don't spread yourself too thin. personally I would junk the DIT and possibly COMBANK (unless you start using it after you take the USMLE, for COMLEX).

True, I wasn't planning on going so hardcore with DIT (as many people that I've spoken to seem to be doing for some reason... all of a sudden there's a mad dash to spend hours a day doing DIT), I was just going to use it as a once-over the 15 days before my exam, I guess I'll see where I'm at by that point in time tho, maybe I wont need to.

And to the poster above..... YES there is a huge difference between U-world and COMBANK/COMQUEST. USMLE questions are significantly more difficult and are generally higher order questions whereas COMLEX questions are more straightforward/direct. There are differences in overall content as well.