uWorld and thoughts about step

[sonofababinski]

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Hi all, I am in need of some evaluation regarding my studying. I'm not sure if i'm using uworld to the best of its value.
I am 50% done with my first pass and have like 3 months (my school does step after second year) to take step 1.

When we were actually in the modules, I use to do:
Boards and Beyond
quickly see lecture notes for any extra info
then quickly go thru pathoma, stare at first aid trying to memorize as much as I could, and then do Anki
after a day of digesting the info, I would do uWorld (when things were obviously fresh in my head) and go over every question's explanation (right or wrong). I mainly used it as a way to fill in knowledge gaps as the module was going on.

However, now that i'm done with all the modules, I still have 50% of uWorld left. Now, I just use boards, pathoma (any topics i'm not clear on), & FA. But now that i'm 50% thru first pass, I am getting sick of passively reading/listening to resources and taking in info. So what I do now is, I quickly glance thru FA and close the book and do uWorld to see what I retained. I feel like when I get Q's wrong with this method, I am able to learn things I "innately" have problems grasping, in a much more active way that helps me remember long term.

Sorry for such a long narrative lol. But my main question is, is this an okay way to utilize the last half of my uWorld first pass, with 3 months left to take step? Once my first pass is done, I plan on doing uWorld timed/random mode along with the UWSA's/NBME's.

thanks for reading!

 

[Ho0v-man]

Hi all, I am in need of some evaluation regarding my studying. I'm not sure if i'm using uworld to the best of its value.
I am 50% done with my first pass and have like 3 months (my school does step after second year) to take step 1.

When we were actually in the modules, I use to do:
Boards and Beyond
quickly see lecture notes for any extra info
then quickly go thru pathoma, stare at first aid trying to memorize as much as I could, and then do Anki
after a day of digesting the info, I would do uWorld (when things were obviously fresh in my head) and go over every question's explanation (right or wrong). I mainly used it as a way to fill in knowledge gaps as the module was going on.

However, now that i'm done with all the modules, I still have 50% of uWorld left. Now, I just use boards, pathoma (any topics i'm not clear on), & FA. But now that i'm 50% thru first pass, I am getting sick of passively reading/listening to resources and taking in info. So what I do now is, I quickly glance thru FA and close the book and do uWorld to see what I retained. I feel like when I get Q's wrong with this method, I am able to learn things I "innately" have problems grasping, in a much more active way that helps me remember long term.

Sorry for such a long narrative lol. But my main question is, is this an okay way to utilize the last half of my uWorld first pass, with 3 months left to take step? Once my first pass is done, I plan on doing uWorld timed/random mode along with the UWSA's/NBME's.

thanks for reading!

If I did the bolded i wouldn’t learn as much bc I’d get questions right based on short term retention more than anything. You said your getting sick of passively watching pathoma, BnB, etc. If you have 3 months to go and you’re half way through uworld then just take a couple days off. You might just be a little burnt out and you’ve got lots of time.

Imo, a better test of your retention would be to start the day with a block of uworld instead of sort of prestudying for it like you are now.

 

[ScalpelStrike]

Most important aspect is see as many questions as you can. So complete the qbank asap, mark the qs you got wrong or aren't sure about. Near the end, go back and do blocks of the marked questions, it'll be a real ballbuster but good for you.

 

[sonofababinski]

If I did the bolded i wouldn’t learn as much bc I’d get questions right based on short term retention more than anything. You said your getting sick of passively watching pathoma, BnB, etc. If you have 3 months to go and you’re half way through uworld then just take a couple days off. You might just be a little burnt out and you’ve got lots of time.

Imo, a better test of your retention would be to start the day with a block of uworld instead of sort of prestudying for it like you are now.

yeah I don't doubt that this whole process of watching videos, etc.. is getting redundant and tiring! But I wanted to be done with my first pass and take a diagnostic NBME around the end of October (the halfway point of 3 months) to see where I am, which is why i'm kind of blazing through first pass of uWorld and my first complete pass through FA. I thought by doing that, I could focus my energy on my weak points and get more out of the second pass on uWorld and my last 6 ish weeks of studying. My approach was to do what @ScalpelStrike just said above. But, what you bolded is exactly why I came on SDN. I felt like I wasn't utilizing UW to its fullest potential, in the back of my mind lol. I like the pretest idea.

@ScalpelStrike I was basically thinking like you when doing this approach! I plan on doing that for my second pass on UW and then take NBMEs and UWSAs (the last 6 weeks of studying)

 

[FindersFee5]

There aren't 6 weeks worth of NBMEs and UWSAs. I'd say for now what you should do is start a supplementary qbank, get through it in like a month, and then finish second half of UWorld along with NBMEs to gauge your progress in a more standard 8 week dedicated span.

 

[Ho0v-man]

There aren't 6 weeks worth of NBMEs and UWSAs. I'd say for now what you should do is start a supplementary qbank, get through it in like a month, and then finish second half of UWorld along with NBMEs to gauge your progress in a more standard 8 week dedicated span.

That’s a good point. Once I finished uworld/uwsa/nbme my productivity tanked and it was ally could do to just try to maintain my knowledge base. I probably peaked a little too early finishing two weeks out tbh.