USMLE Step 1

[Roan]

I'm about to start studying for step 1.
Anyone have any advice?
How did you study?
What would you do differently/the same?

[renodoc]

you cant study for it. just hope you've learned stuff along the way.

99th %ile NBME Parts I,II,III

[Skipbidder]

You absolutely CAN study for Step 1.

I took the Kaplan review class. I think it was worth it, perhaps because I'm a procrastinator and this class forced me to work. The quality of the teaching varies from site to site, I understand. The pharmacology and micro were particularly useful at my site. The path wasn't so good.

First Aid was okay, but has too much in it. Not as high yield as it is frequently claimed to be.
The Board Review Series Pathology book is gold. I say this despite intensely disliking one of the authors personally. /images/graemlins/smile.gif If you can get a hold of the BRS Pathology flash cards, I would highly recommend them. This combination was also very useful for the pathology shelf exam, which we took as a final exam. I brought the flashcards with me to the Step 1 exam and flipped through them while on break between sections. (I am a very fast test taker, so had much extra time.) I believe that I got two extra questions right because of this between-section review.

Do plenty of practice questions. Kaplan's Q-bank questions for Step 1 are good. (They are not so good for Step 2.)

How you spend your studying time also depends on how much of it you have. You have considerably more options if you have 2 months compared to if you have 2 weeks.

If you are a regular 2nd year student with finals coming up, I would actually recommend against doing any studying specific for Step 1 until you are done with those finals. Study for your finals instead...you will be studying for Step 1 at the same time.

During the last week I had before the test, I would end each day by flipping through some biochem and physio flashcards that I made for myself. (I picked out the top 10 or 12 high yield biochem pathways as recommended by the Kaplan instructor and just studied them. This worked out okay.) I also redrew some micro charts each day. (Once again from recommendations from Kaplan class.) Gram - vs. +, virulence factors, antibiotics of choice, etc. Helpful for the boards, but I of course forgot it all by the time I got on the wards. I then relearned a bunch of it during an infectious disease rotation...then forgot it again.

Good luck.

[fimbulwinter]

all secondhand:

"if you did well on the mcat, you'll be fine here. just do what you did then."

fim