This is obviously excessive, but possible?

[username456789]

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So I was looking at the reviews for First Aid on Amazon and as I'm sure plenty of people have seen, there's this:

By Tom Swift (Houston, TX United States) - See all my reviews My strategy with First Aid - I figured out which books were used to make First Aid (I listed them below) and then I read those books to get the explanations that First Aid is lacking. I took notes in First Aid from these books. At the end of my studying, I had one comprehensive source with all my notes. I was able to review this once in the last few weeks before the exam.

**Use the shortest edition of these you can find (there just isn't enough time for anything longer)**

Lange Micro and Immuno
Lange Pharmacology
Costanzo's Physiology (NOT the BRS book)
Lippincott's Biochemistry
High Yield Gross Anatomy (older version because it was shorter)
High Yield Neuroanatomy
BRS Behavioral Sciences
HY Biostats
HY Embrology (old version, shorter only 50 pages)

I memorized First Aid (and my notes) word for word. I opened up First Aid and wrote the first page on a piece of paper. Then I closed the book and tried to write the page from memory. Then I repeated this over and over until I could do the page from memory. It took maybe half and hour per page. Then I periodically reviewed what I had memorized (the next day, a week later, etc). This was very painful, but I think memorization is necessary. You will forget some things before the exam, but you have to try to memorize First Aid in my opinion to do really well.

I decided on USMLE Rx as my Qbank because it contains all the First Aid facts and I wanted reinforcement on those. Maybe this worked I don't know. As far as a quality I thought it was pretty good but I have heard the others are good also.

It really helped me to pick a system - say Cardio - and do all of the studying from that area. So I did Cardio Anatomy, Phys, Path, etc. etc. and the USMLE Rx questions from that area all at once. It really helped me get a "critical understanding" so to speak of the subject.

I scored above a 260/99 with this (I also used Goljan quite a bit in addition to First Aid). I am sure anyone else can as long as they are motivated enough.

Now for my first year (and so far in 2nd year) I've found that rewriting by hand the notes professors give us (along with incorporating things from the book/powerpoint slides) has been very effective (even though probably not very efficient). Seeing things in my own handwriting, written out my way and structured my way seems to work a lot better than just reading from a book and maybe jotting down a few facts here or there.

Would something like this be feasible? Particularly if I did a little of it as I went along 2nd year? Like wrote out relevant pages of First Aid when we discussed that subject/topic in class? And then saved them as I went for board studying in the summer?

I realize this is super gunnerish, I'm just wondering if anyone else has tried something like it. I'd REALLLLLY like to smash Step I and am willing to work hard for it.

 

[rahulb]

its ez to plan; its hard to actually sit and study that much

there's nothing wrong with setting goals high but you have to push yourself quite a bit. past 245ish you're competing against the top ~5-7% and it's filled with a lot of nerds who study 24/7

 

[username456789]

Bump.

I'm definitely motivated/driven, I just want to see if anyone has a similar experience to this, and what they thought about it afterwards.

 

[sebsvenmdc]

Bump.

I'm definitely motivated/driven, I just want to see if anyone has a similar experience to this, and what they thought about it afterwards.

I don't think it matters that much whether you write stuff out per se. Everyone has a different approach. Personally, I would go absolutely insane if I had to write out FA like the OP described. I just read stuff again and again and again without making any flash cards or taking many notes...I tried to take notes in my neurons. Anyhow, just wanted to put that out there. Find a way to study hard that you can tolerate. If it's not writing out pages like this, don't worry, a different approach has worked for others. Of course, I didn't get over a 260 though.