After reading the thread, I made a study plan. I'll post with results in what sounds like 10 weeks or so. I have about 5+ weeks of dedicated time.
Uworld x 2-3 (about 200 qs left on first pass)
Uworld Biostats x 1 (need help w/ biostats)
DIT Step 2 x 1 (didn't feel like I learned a lot in third year, my shelfs were all around the national average)
Step up to Step 2 x 1 (I'll go through it once on my own and DIT I think covers it a 1-2 times in the course)
Secrets x 1 (if time permits)
I will supplement with MTB, wikipedia, uptodate on sections that aren't covered well with the above. I don't want to overwhelm myself with sources considering it seems that the money is in Uworld. Anything else I should add/subtract?
Took the test today. Figured I would post my experiences from all the help I've gotten on this board from various users. This is gonna be long. I hope it helps some people.
Resources:
I think I was little ambitious in my prep compared to what my original above plan was. But, I did get through my main resources: DIT/Uworld/SUS2.
Uworld x 2. First pass was at
62-63% during 3rd year. It was essentially my only method of studying for board exams. Second pass was around
75%. I was surprised at how many answers I didn't remember. Most questions seemed completely new to me. As others have said, it is the best method of prep for the exam. While my exam had completely different scenarios, I still had many questions that were virtually identical to uworld.
Uworld Biostats Qbank: So Uworld has this biostats separate qbank, Apparently, they've had it for awhile. I really should have done it last year for Step 1 because I was terrible at biostats like so bad I would just pick C and go onto the next question because I didn't want to struggle with them. Anyway, this qbank/learning module thing is great for a biostats idiot like me. It was a really good resource going into the exam feeling confident. I'd highly recommend it. It'll take you 1.5 days to complete though.
DIT: I used the
2013 DIT for Step 2 and loved it. I was skeptical based on opinions from this board but glad I purchased it. I know a lot of people like to crap on DIT and maybe it was bad in the past but this year I felt most of the added info was very helpful. However, please realize the course is about 68 hrs without the pausing for the the active learning questions which are essential. So, figure on spending 80hrs + on truly completing the program. As far as resources go, if you wanted to follow the KISS method, I think DIT/SUS2/Uworld is a good bet. The DIT Study Guide is incredible and added a lot to my knowledge base. You basically rewrite all the pertinent info in SUS2 and they give you a lot of added content. I didn't really do a lot third year other than show up so DIT gave me structure and added knowledge. I'd say about 15-20% of their content though can be thrown out and is WAAYYY to specific for the exam (drug dosages, 3rd-5th line therapies, etc). I think if you probably studied hard and did well on your boards third year (not this guy), then you can probably do the more HY stuff mentioned on here: FA/MTB 2 and 3. But for someone like me, it was good. Also, if you can make yourself read or do questions for 9hrs or so a day without the added help of lectures then you probably don't need DIT.
2013 SUS2: Read it basically twice with DIT. The 2013 version has a lot of the errata corrected compared to the 2007; however, DIT 2013 still corrects the few that are still within the book. Overall, the book without DIT is seriously not that great imo. I don't understand how you would prep with this book alone. It's 1/3 the size of FA and contains probably less than that amount of information. And it rarely tells you next step in management it just lists ALL managements. How is that helpful lol?
Secrets: Read about 60%. Great book for a quick review but it too has some errors and is a little outdated compared for guidelines compared to MTB/FA/SUS2.
FA: Read the OB/GYN and some random sections. Decent book not my favorite. No FA Step 1 that's for sure.
MTB2: Didn't really like the skeleton format but read a decent amoun (OB, Infx, Derm, Optho) t of this book too. It was pretty good. Also read some sections in MTB3 (think just OB) don't really remember.. I really wish you could just combine MTB2/3 with DIT. That might be the best way to go but really time consuming and probably not worth it.
Practice Test
UWSA: High 250s 3 days before exam.
Exam Experience
I had what seemed to be a lot of Peds and OB/Gyn. I'm really bad at OB even after reading SUS2/FA/Secrets/MTB OB/Gyn sections I still suck. Anyway, I had a lot on my test but it wasn't TOO bad. I also had a lot of Peds but nothing too bad some rashes I had never seen. However, there were many questions about next step in mgmt that I had never even thought about. I answered many of these questions based on what I thought the test takers were looking for and maybe not necessarily what I would do (if that makes sense). I don't know if that was the right way to go about it but oh well.
The test seemed pretty fair. A lot of bias questions on Biostats for me too. As others have said, the prompts are typically slightly longer than Uworld prompts like 3-7 lines longer on most questions.However, I was still able to finish all blocks but didn't have much time to spare (same as my experience on UWSA).
I had two drug ad questions that were reading comprehension based. I had one study to analyze and it didn't seem that bad.
I feel "okay" about the exam. But, it was tough.I know I got 2 questions wrong in a row b/c of they were grouped (that sucks). There were a lot of gimme questions that I remembered from UWorld/DIT but there were also a lot of "dude, I would order all these friggin tests at once." I had a lot EKGs, CXRs, and derm pics by that I mean 15-20 or so total between all three.
I hope I did well. We will see. Feels great to be done. PM with questions. Good luck studying and thanks to the SDN crowd again for all the help.
