Study Plan: Right Balance? Any Suggestions?

[mdeast]

---

Members do not see this ad.

Just started studying for Step 1 two days ago. These questions are hard (sooo much to learn and know, realizing I forget most of anatomy and embryology completely, didn't learn a lot of drugs we apparently need to know, and was only taught maybe 70% of the pathology, and only remember maybe 50% of it).

I'm doing things by organ systems/blocks. So, today did CV. Tomorrow will go onto Lung, etc. Want to finish going through one pass through of First Aid by the end of the 3rd week and then take a practice exam. 4.5 weeks after that until my exam.

Anyway...so far I've been doing the following.
1-2 hours of Pathoma review in the morning (with video/audio).
Then go through Pathoma, use it to annotate First Aid. (30 minutes).
Read First Aid block section (2-3 hours)
Untimed Tutor Questions on Kaplan. (2-3 hours).
Timed Tests in USMLEWorld (until I pass out).
For any of the questions I get wrong or don't understand: Keeping a Step 1 journal for all the factoids I don't know. Writing out the Kaplan and USMLE World explanations and annotating FA (and Wikipedia/Googling what isn't immediately clear).

I feel like I'm going through questions much faster than my advisors told me (I was initially instructed no more than 25/day because it will take me an hour to review them). I can definitely do 100-150 questions/day. Am I not looking things up enough? Should I slow things down and make sure I'm spending more time in the learning part of studying rather than the application part?

Wanna make sure I retain everything and learn more than just the questions in the QBanks (because, of course, Step I will have a lot more on it than is in those sources).

 

[iPodtosis]

Hi there,

I am kinda in the same boat here. When are you taking your test? I am planning to take mine around early June.

I have subscribed to USMLERx qbank. I do those in conjunction with my first pass through FA. This is kind of my "relearning everything again"....

Then after that, I plan to do UWorld to test my understanding of the materials, since I heard they are the most similar to STEP difficulty.

I usually do 50-80 questions a day. I go over both the right AND wrong answers, so they took awhile.

I don't have Pathoma though. Do you think they are good or necessary?

 

[shan564]

Looks like you're following a very similar study pattern to what I've been doing (almost identical, except for the timings). I also found that I'm getting through a lot more than 25 questions a day... I started out limiting myself to 25-50 because that's what's been recommended to me, but now I'm easily doing 75-100 every day. If I do a 25-question set in tutor mode, it usually takes me about 40-50 minutes to get through the whole thing while reading explanations for everything.

It's been working well so far - in about one month, I've gone from 192 on UWSA1 to 230 on UWSA2. So I think the whole "spend an hour going through the answers" suggestion is more of a guideline than a rule... everybody will be different.

 

[mtwop]

when are you guys taking your tests?

 

[mdeast]

Pathoma is really great. I feel completely that I will get almost all the path questions correct if I learn it well. Taking it at the end of May. Just started, so have about 7 weeks (+/- a day or two) to get up to speed. Hoping the last 3 weeks can just be ALL questions with review.

 

[shan564]

I'm taking it mid-May. My last 4 weeks will be the DIT course, lots of questions, and one more pass through FA in the last week (maybe with the help of the USMLERx Flash Facts, but I haven't decided whether to buy that yet).