I would read new material in the morning (around 6-8am), new material in the afternoon (1-3pm) and review the material from the day at night (7-9pm). Those hours might go a little longer on some days. Month 1-2. Monday to Friday I would read a new section in First Aid USMLE and the corresponding section in Goljan’s book. If this is not your style, then this strategy is probably not a good fit for you. Also, I learn best from practice questions. As you can probably tell, I study more on my own. These are the only resources that I used for my Step 1 prep. It gives great explanations about pathophysiology and this material is stressed heavily on Step 1.
However, it has more information about the “why” of diseases than First Aid. This book is similar to First Aid in that the material is condensed into bullet points. I spent a lot of time on this and saw very few questions on the test.
#Kaplan qbank step 2 ck simulation score guide full#
what does lead poisoning or B12 deficiency affect), but don’t try to memorize full pathways that don’t have specific clinical relevance. Understand the key steps that have to do with certain diseases (e.g. One tip I have is to not spend a ton of time on the biochemistry section of First Aid. If you use this book during your curriculum, you’ll be able to have a summary of the things you’ve learned, as well as seeing what might not have been covered by your school that is covered on Step 1. The more familiar you are with First Aid, the better off you will be when you start using it for your formal USMLE prep. I don’t say this for very many things, but First Aid for the USMLE Step 1 is a must-have.įirst Aid is essentially a very condensed version of most of the things you’ll learn in your first and second year of medical school (at least the material that will be covered on the USMLE exam). My overall was about 60%, but my percentages were getting much higher on each question block the more questions I did. I was scoring in the high 70s on my question blocks before I went into the test and ended up with at 257. Obviously, however, the more you do, the better prepared you will be for the exam.Īs far as how your QBank score correlates with your final score, UWorld questions tend to be a little harder than the actual test. In my opinion, if you really study the answer explanations provided by USMLE world, you’ll be able to master the concepts covered by the USMLE exam without having to do all of the questions. I spent a lot of time answering questions and reviewing them closer to my test, but only got through about half of the QBank. I also purchased two practice tests, but only ended up doing one of them. So, I would recommend buying the QBank for the amount of time you have committed solely to your USMLE review (probably 2-3 months). I thought that I would have time to start doing questions before classes ended, but I didn’t. In retrospect, I would have purchased a shorter subscription. I purchased a 6 month subscription to the USMLE World QBank. This made the QBank a very efficient study tool. I learned five or six important concepts tested on Step 1 from one question and its explanation. They give detailed explanations of why the right answer is right and why the wrong answers are wrong.
When I came to the test, I felt as though I was just taking another set of questions from USMLE World.Īlso, the explanations of questions are great. The thing that impressed me most about USMLE World was how similar the questions on the QBank were to those on the actual exam. There’s always the debate about whether Kaplan or USMLE World is the better question bank. I needed to spend plenty of time studying, especially since my first practice test was a 208. That way I wouldn’t be kept out of any specialty based on my score. I wasn’t too sure going into the test, so I set a goal of 245. If you’re not sure what you want to do, you’ll want to score as high as possible. If you know what specialty you want, you’ll have a good target for your score. Probably the best resource for what you need to do to match into particular specialties can be found here, the NRMP’s report on “ Charting Outcomes in the Match.” It goes into volunteer, research, and other activities as well as Step 1 scores for matched applicants in different specialties. The most competitive specialties have average scores of around 240. So, before you start studying, set your goal. You might be scared by this score, but that’s good encouragement to study. To determine where you are, you need to take a practice test. In my opinion, before you start really preparing for Step 1, you should have two things clearly in mind: where you are with your score and where you want to be.
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