BOTH What to do prior to starting UWorld?

[DoReMiFaSo]

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I plan on using UWorld for the last 3 months of Step1 study (mid Feb-May 2017.) Seeking advice/suggestion for what I could be doing between now and Feb 2017.

My current thought is to dedicate 2hr/day to Board prep during Dec 2016, 3hr/day Jan-Feb 2017 outside of classes. Is this a smart thing to do? Feasible? If I commit, these will become ~250 untouchable hours total for Board study exclusively during Dec-Mid Feb 2017.

My target score: 600 COMLEX, 238 USMLE

Thanks in advance for your time and input.


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Board prep resources I currently own:

- Q Bank: Firecracker (~50% complete)
- Books: Pathoma (I love,) First Aid 2016 (I love, been annotating,) Rapid Path review (never used before, been contemplating, I do very much like the layout and the pathophys explanation)
- Others: Sketchy Micro (on the fence, trying to fit into my schedule,) Lange Pharm cards (I love)

 

[Dr.Jekyll75]

start on RX or Kaplan q bank . The more questions the better

 

[ortnakas]

You know me IRL but I'm posting here anyway in case it helps anyone else. Two hours per day is definitely both smart and feasible during December, but three hours per day might not be feasible in January (that's a neuro block for you in PBL).

Going through First Aid and Rapid Review Path are both good ideas. Getting a head start on questions is probably an even better idea.

If it were me, I'd just get started doing a limited number of questions a day on UWorld and ultimately aim for two passes, but a lot of people start with Kaplan and/or Rx too and that works well. I also recommend doing at least a few Combank questions a week. It's by far an inferior bank, but it gets you used to the question style which is very different from Uworld. I found that my approaches to questions were very different between the two exams.

And circling back to Rapid Review-- I personally only went through the book for topics I had trouble with due to time limitations, but I downloaded all the audio and listened to it pretty constantly during spring semester and found that helpful.

If you don't love Sketchy, don't spend tons of time on it, but it might be worth watching the videos of whatever bugs you pick for PBL (or are on your regular exams for you normal lecture curriculum types), just to get some extra micro studying in, and that way you'll double-dip school studying with boards studying. For those who aren't OP, I personally love SketchyMicro and wholeheartedly recommend it. Micro was my highest scoring section by far on both USMLE and COMLEX and Andrew Berg gets at least 75% of the credit for that. I feel less strongly about SketchyPharm, but still think watching the videos of things you want to study for boards and have to study for class is worthwhile.

 

[DoReMiFaSo]

Gonna take the liberty and page a few people whose posts I've found helpful in the past.

@NWwildcat2013 @FindMeOnTheLinks @*brobro* @mikil100