Which Kaplan Notes Are Worth Doing and Which Are Not?

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Lemont

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Would like your advice on this. So far I've heard the Kaplan Notes for Pathology and Microbiology aren't worth doing. How about the others (with the accompanying audio lectures)?:

Anatomy
Behavioral Science
Biochemistry
Immunology
Pharmacology
Physiology

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Might be worth going through:
Biochem
Immunology--borders on overkill, though if you like to read, knock yourself out.
Behavioral Science--at the very least, do the questions and go through the ethics / legal chapters. Stats is decent, but the rest of the book was a little too detailed for my liking.
Physiology--tons of questions for practice, but this isn't one of those books you just open and read cover to cover. Just go through the sections you need work on.

Okay, but overkill:
Pharmacology--Read the ANS chapter thoroughly, but for the rest of the book, just focus on mechanisms, rare bolded facts, and facts in the margins. Anything else that isn't in FA should be skipped. That means do not waste your time learning all the various uses of drugs they give you. The questions--particularly the ANS ones--are pretty nice.
Anatomy--good questions, but overkill IMO. Focus on the upper & lower extremity but don't bust your balls learning the names/functions of everything--it's intuitive, for the most part. Also look over the brain stem cuts, skim the cell components chapter, and go through the basal ganglia, limbic system, & cerebrum chapters. Oh, and the online lecture guy is absolutely atrocious.

Bad--don't even bother looking at:
Pathology
Microbiology


I listened to a few lectures from the immuno, micro, pharm, path, and neuroanatomy lecturers. Personally, I just couldn't bear how ridiculously slowly they would talk; it's almost as if they were told to slow everything down for those students who aren't very fluent in English. Of that list, the only lecturer I could bear for more than 5 lectures was the pharm guy (Trevor), so if you're as impatient as I am, you might want to listen to him, too.
 
Boris, thanks so much for the input!

How did you find the audio lectures for Biochemistry (lecturer has what I would call a French accent). Are they worth listening to, or is reading the Kaplan Notes on their own enough?
 
Lemont said:
Boris, thanks so much for the input!

How did you find the audio lectures for Biochemistry (lecturer has what I would call a French accent). Are they worth listening to, or is reading the Kaplan Notes on their own enough?

I have to second Boris's recommendations, as I agree almost 100%. The only thing I would tend to emphasize is that Biochem is VERY good, especially if you were weak in Biochem the first time around like me. The online lectures for Biochem are also top notch in my opinion.

Behavioral and Immuno were the only other sections I bothered reading, and they were good overall, but biochem was the real gem.

HamOn
 
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I realy liked the pharm section, mainly because my school's new curriculum wasn't so good in this department. I like the lectures alot and listened to almost all of them twice (while working out on my mp3). I actually like how they talked slow, mainly because I'm slow at getting things.
 
For whatever it's worth, I used the Kaplan lecture notes and q bank exclusively for step 1 and scored a 99 two digit? All about what jives with ya.
 
Boris Badenov said:
Might be worth going through:
Biochem
Immunology--borders on overkill, though if you like to read, knock yourself out.
Behavioral Science--at the very least, do the questions and go through the ethics / legal chapters. Stats is decent, but the rest of the book was a little too detailed for my liking.
Physiology--tons of questions for practice, but this isn't one of those books you just open and read cover to cover. Just go through the sections you need work on.

Okay, but overkill:
Pharmacology--Read the ANS chapter thoroughly, but for the rest of the book, just focus on mechanisms, rare bolded facts, and facts in the margins. Anything else that isn't in FA should be skipped. That means do not waste your time learning all the various uses of drugs they give you. The questions--particularly the ANS ones--are pretty nice.
Anatomy--good questions, but overkill IMO. Focus on the upper & lower extremity but don't bust your balls learning the names/functions of everything--it's intuitive, for the most part. Also look over the brain stem cuts, skim the cell components chapter, and go through the basal ganglia, limbic system, & cerebrum chapters. Oh, and the online lecture guy is absolutely atrocious.

Bad--don't even bother looking at:
Pathology
Microbiology


I listened to a few lectures from the immuno, micro, pharm, path, and neuroanatomy lecturers. Personally, I just couldn't bear how ridiculously slowly they would talk; it's almost as if they were told to slow everything down for those students who aren't very fluent in English. Of that list, the only lecturer I could bear for more than 5 lectures was the pharm guy (Trevor), so if you're as impatient as I am, you might want to listen to him, too.


I don't know if we had the same micro lecture notes, because I thought they were among the best. I didn't even look at behavioral sci, I basically learned it all via qbank. I would reccomend going over the dr/pt relationship review chapter though.

The path notes were bad. I agree.

By the way, owner of a 99 two digit score if it matters.
 
I thought Biochem was the best
Pathology was a steaming pile of crap...throw it out, you will get dumber if you open it or even touch it to much.
Everything else was kinda inbetween
However, if nothing else do the questions kaplan provides for Pharm. They get you thinking and they present the stuff in exactly the same way as USMLE, its hard to find questions that really test knowledge of alpha/beta agonist/antagonists as well as the kaplan ones do.
 
Anatomy- okay, i guess... a little detailed. you should have studied this well first year. rely on that more than anything else.

Behavioral Science- this was okay.

Biochemistry- my sole review sources beyond FA. it was good.

Pharmacology- focus on the autonomic and cardiac drugs.

Physiology- wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy to overkilled. my lord, overkill. don't waste your time on it.

path- overkill and worthless. not detailed enough.

micro- overkill for sure, but check out the tables at the end of the section. pretty decent actually.
 
😀 Ok so you are saying that for behavioral, biochemistry and pharm Kaplan notes are a good resource
What about path physio, and micro? What other sources do you think should I use to have a complete review for the step 1? thanks for your cooperation
This is my book list please please please any advice will be appreciated,

Complete Kaplan Books (2004 edition)
BRS Physio Costanzo
BRS Behavioral Science Fadem
Lippincot Biochem
Lippincot Pharm
Rapid Review Micro & Inmuno Rosenthal
BRS Path (bought it 5 yrs ago)
NMS Anato
BRS Embryo
NMS Histo
The First Aid 2005 of course
and also I have
the Kplan Qbook
NMS USMLE Stpe 1 question book
 
hi! i've read here that kaplan patho is practically useless...will going over goljan patho be enough? thanks for ur feedback 🙂
 
am i the only person who liked kaplan path?? i thought it was an excellent supplement to brs, giving a lot more of the clinical picture than brs.
i thought kaplan physio was too much. i wasted way too many days on that thing and still didn't come away with any more knowledge than if i had just read brs physio. the questions in it are pretty good, but it takes way too long to go through the reading and the questions.
if you have access to the kaplan lectures, i thought the behavioral science lecture was the best of all the lectures we had in terms of taking away information that i used during step 1. over and over again i found myself remembering things she had told us and applying them during the test. i actually took the course rather than doing the online lectures, so i am not sure if they are exactly the same.
 
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