Great score! Congrats.. Couldn't find your Step 2 CK experience post. Please forward me if you have one.
Thanks
I didn't write one I don't think, so here goes:
Background: Year 5 medical student in the UK (IMG) Sat Step 1 in Sept 2011 after studying during my holidays between 4th and 5th year. Sat CK early March 2012. Done very well in med school to date.
Materials: Step up to Step 2 (SUS2)
USMLE Step 2CK Secrets
USMLE World
USPSTF A&B Recommendations
All of these materials were highly recommended on this forum, for which I am grateful.
Just before christmas, I read the first 100 pages of SUS2 casually, just to get to grips with the format of the book. Also updated it with the DIT errata.
So in my two week christmas break, did USMLE World full time, in timed unused random mode. Did about three blocks per day, annotating into SUS2. Found this very useful and was much more 'enjoyable' than Step 1, I felt I was actually learning something. The difficulty and question length were spot on for me, very much like the actual test.
After this period, I read SUS2 every night after hospital and all day on the weekends (was doing surgery and then EM
) and went over it carefully. Gave myself 2 weeks to read through this.
After this I started straight onto Secrets, which was an excellent book I thought. Not enough to use as a core study textbook, but nice to fill in the blanks. 2 weeks as above.
Sat the the test on the Monday. Was a long, boring slog to be honest. 9 hours is just inhumane! Thought I had finished the test and one more block popped up, could have wept. The questions were not super easy I thought, there were loads of gimme questions that I felt a third year here could have answered but also lots of difficult or challenging questions that were not in any of my prep materials. I thought there were more per test block as the blocks advanced, but that could just be fatigue talking. Maybe like 10 questions per block I was flagging.
I think the key to doing this is exam reasonably well is having a good core understanding of medicine. This exam tests the whole package and you need to almost be instinctively clicking things. So do well in your in course shelfs, study hard doing your rotations and when it comes to test time you will just be polishing things up, rather than having to learn them first hand. As an IMG, I think my main problems were learning the different workup protocols e.g.
NG tube first line for upper GI bleed?
CT head protocols after head injury
Vaccination schedules
Different drug treatment recs
and of course, everything being in the wrong units
laugh
meant I spent a lot of time on that damned normal values page in the exam.
Best of luck