UW - random or not?

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Atomic1000

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What are the pros and cons of doing USMLE WORLD questions randomly vs. subject-wise?

If you do them subject-wise, you generally do them following a review of whatever subject, and then it's a reinforcement of the concepts and tests your knowledge on that subject to see how well you understand it.

However, on test day your questions will obviously not be arranged by subject, so doing them randomly will help get your brain used to jumping from topic to topic and grabbing information from everywhere. It will also force you to remember topics that you went over weeks ago. I'm doing random, but that's just my preference...
 
If you do them subject-wise, you generally do them following a review of whatever subject, and then it's a reinforcement of the concepts and tests your knowledge on that subject to see how well you understand it.

However, on test day your questions will obviously not be arranged by subject, so doing them randomly will help get your brain used to jumping from topic to topic and grabbing information from everywhere. It will also force you to remember topics that you went over weeks ago. I'm doing random, but that's just my preference...

This sums it up. In fact, asking what the pros & cons are is the wrong question. If I were you, I'd make a poll (or one probably already exists, I'm guessing) with 6 categories:
"How did you (mostly) do UW blocks?"
1) Scored >240: random
2) Scored >240: subjects
3) Scored 220-239: random
4) Scored 220-239: subjects
5) Scored <220: random
6) Scored <220: subjects

That said, my advice is to do random. I only did random blocks, and that's the only way to do them in my opinion. Others may disagree.
 
Here is the method I used and found most beneficial. Rather than just doing subject or random, I did semi-random. Any subject I had previously reviewed got checked and added to my daily questions. This way I was able to continually review subjects I had seen over the previous weeks to keep them fresh, as well as test my knowledge of the subject I had reviewed that day. I find that repetition is the key of retention and to see the material on a daily basis helped quite a bit.
 
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