Studying for Step I Using Just First AID?
Started by ItchyPlacenta
Most people agree this is a bad idea.
Path is the biggest weakness of FA, besides Cell and Molecular Bio.
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When is your exam? If it is in mid to late June, I'd take a week to burn through RR, HY, and BRS type review books to give yourself a fresh base to work with when hitting the problems while doing FA. Some suggestions,
RR Biochem
RR Micro/Immuno
BRS Cell/Histo
THESE ALL HIT THAT MOLECULAR COMPONENT MENTIONED, IMO. 👍 This has been a concern of mine, making sure that I have a fresh base on the molecular stuff. I've heard that Path is key. But I didn't want to make the potential mistake of under estimating the test writers.
For Path, RR Goljan (if you weren't using it already).
A friend of mine used First Aid and nothing else and pulled a 190. He was just aiming to pass, so he was relieved, but that's a little too close for me. I haven't actually taken the test yet, but what I decided to do was use First Aid as more of a study guide and annotate it with info from other texts....it really isn't THAT bad, considering that a lot of the diagrams in First Aid don't make a lot of sense unless you know the info already. Well, I should qualify that by saying I've only done biochem, and had very little recollection of all the pathways, etc, so I had to supplement. Perhaps other sections are different.
Maybe if you hate the idea of using other books, you could try first aid and doing tons of qbank and other questions? Some people claim they studied almost solely by doing questions so maybe questions+FA=230?
Maybe if you hate the idea of using other books, you could try first aid and doing tons of qbank and other questions? Some people claim they studied almost solely by doing questions so maybe questions+FA=230?
I think the problem with only using FA is that it is purely high yield and can't help you that much with the many integrated questions on the exam. Doing questions could definitely help, but besides a few subjects that FA covers pretty well (behavioral sciences, maybe pharm/immuno/anatomy/embryology/micro) you really need to look at some other sources to make those integrations and get a higher score than passing.
it really all depends on what people mean when they say "only use FA". If they mean study first aid about as thoroughly as you would supplemental text, of course it's a bad idea.
But if they actually understand the diagrams and have done ALL of first aid, you can score very well. I've never met anyone who actually could explain/recite most of the stuff in FA who has failed.
all this talk about how you *need* to get a supplemental text for something like cell bio(which is a very small part of the test) or you *need* to get a supplemental text for biochem or micro is a little off in my opinion. It's a good idea to use them when you can't explain a diagram or quick blurb in first aid, but for someone who wants to score 215 or so and just leave the test knowing that they don't have to worry about taking it again, it's not a good idea to spend bunches of time memorizing individual review texts for the lower yield subject areas.
One thing I would do is do BRS physio because FA leaves out a lot of physio. The physio that leave out probably won't be tested explicitly, but it might help you get a path or pathophys question right. And also I'd reference whatever path book you used in class when going over the path in FA. If you just memorize the path word for word out of FA without really understanding the concepts, you'll lose some points you could have gotten had you used a supplemental path text.
But for all the other subjects, I wouldn't study from a supplemental text unless a really really high score is important to you. And if you do, make sure you have at least covered the basic high yield stuff first at a sufficient level.
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