Step I Taking IM rotation before step 1 helpful?

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bollywoodlover

Full Member
10+ Year Member
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How helpful would it be to take your internal medicine 3rd yr rotation before step? My preclinical courses end at the end of February and an option is to take IM rotation in March and April and take the Step 1 in June. Or would it just be distracting. Should I just use the extra time to study End of Feb to May and take it in June.
 
I think people generally learn very little textbook knowledge on rotations -- it's pretty much all procedural knowledge and applying textbook stuff. You'll forget far more than you learn, and anything you do learn wouldn't be too useful for Step 1.
 
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I'd say IM would probably be the perfect rotation to have before Step 1. I'm not sure why there are such antagonistic viewpoints above, but I took my Step 1 immediately before IM and found that everything during that rotation was just Step 1 material, so I beasted it. You'll definitely have to pick up some 2CK-type information while on your IM rotation, but I could only imagine that would help you for Step 1. A couple of the hard questions for me on my Step 1 were 2CK-type stuff.