Hi Everyone!
I got my score 3 days back. This forum has been very helpful for me, so thought now its my turn to share the experience. Hope it helps..
I am an IMG.
Total prep time: about 8 months.
Resources used:
Pathology: Pathoma
Neuroanatomy: High Yield Neuroanatomy
Ethics: 100 cases by Conrad Fisher
Rest of the subjects: Kaplan Lecture Notes with videos
And of course, First Aid.
Question bank: USMLE world (subject-wise, timed)
Here I am going to briefly narrate what this journey has been all about for me.
I started my preparation in march 2013. Although I knew this exam required dedication and hard work, I was very inconsistent with my studies. In fact, sitting down and studying religiously for months was never really my style of studying. But that's what was required now if I wanted a decent score, at least that's what I got from reading all the experiences here! And I tried to do that, too..but there were way too many distractions I couldn't avoid (got married, moved to US, moved to another state for 3 months of summer, which was virtually a vacation with very occasional studying). Because of all these wasting of time, I had to extend my eligibility period.
It took me 6 months to finish my first read (and I'm not slow!!). My extended eligibility period would end by November 30. By the end of September when I had finished only my 1st read, it scared the cr*p outta me!!! This was the wake up call and time for me to take some much required action. I booked exam for November 19 and stopped doing evertything else...studied 7/8 am to 12/1 am everyday until the exam date. Finished 2nd read of kaplan notes and 1st read of FA in October, along with 60% of uworld. Did uworld subject-wise, timed 'cause I felt it helps consolidate my knowledge, also takes less time to annotate.Then gave nbme 13 (though felt like I know nothing, forgot everything, I had to know where I was standing). Found this nbme form weird, nothing like uworld, I was making educated guesses in most of the questions! After this my panic state cooled a bit, I thought, at least I won't fail! The next 10 days I went through weak areas in nbme, ethics 100 cases, some of FA for the 2nd time, took uwsa 1 and was doing uworld 2 blocks everyday. Then I gave nbme 15. I was more comfortable with the type of questions it had. Took the free 150 right after nbme 15, making it a mock 8 hr test. At this point I would be happy with anything above 230
Uworld % : 78%
NBME 13, ( abt 2 weeks out) : 219
UWSA 1 ( 10 days out): 242
NBME 15 ( 1 week out): 233
USMLE step 1: 245
I wanted to keep the day before exam study-free, as everyone has suggested..but I had 25% uworld yet to be done, weak areas to go through, FA to revise and so on, all within 6 days..Went to visit the prometric center to confirm location etc the day before exam and ended up studying till 10 pm . At the end I couldn't finish around 200 uworld questions. Why am I telling you all these? I am writing these mainly because, now I feel it would be better if I had just believed in myself like I have so far and not panic reading what everyone else has done. It would be better for my mental health as well as for my preparation if I had realized earlier that, finishing everything months before the exam was never my style, I've never done that, I study and improvise till the last minute..that's who I always have been! Only you know what your style of studying is, what you need to do to remember or understand better; how many hours and how many times you need to study the material, what works for you and what has worked for you so far you know that already, otherwise you won't be here today.
Pathology: I used Pathoma, nothing else. Dr. Sattar is amazing! I think I put most time to it during the final days, reading it at least 3 times cover to cover, as the exam is 60% pathology stuff. In the actual exam, I was comfortable with path questions. There were tons of slides and pictures, but were doable. There were a few wtf questions, of course, but they were as I said, a few.
Anatomy: Kaplan LN and videos, except for neuroanatomy for which I used HY neuroanatomy. In my opinion, these along with FA ( for embyology only FA is enough) and UW are more than enough. In the exam, the questions were straight forward, even the CT/MRI/specimen weren't too bad. Nonetheless, this has always been my favourite and strong subject.
Physiology: I used kaplan LN and videos only, but didn't find it quite sufficient to answer questions confidently both in NBMEs and in actual exam. I didn't have time to go through anything else, so have no idea what else could be more useful. Ended up with a moderate curve, neither higher performance, nor borderline..in between.
Microbiology: Had gone through some of the kaplan LN (no videos) earlier in prep, which I had forgot entirely, and never touched again during 2nd read. Only FA is enough for micro. (I am saying 'enough' according to how comfortable I was answering questions on exam and my score report )
Immunology: Kaplan LN and videos do a great job building the concepts, FA helps it consolidate. In the exam, they try to test easy concepts making it seem like a difficult one. All those experimental mice questions..you read the whole question thinking wtf is this and at the end realize, oh that's what they're trying to ask..lol.
Biochemistry: Kaplan is great for Biochemistry. Both the LN and videos. I did very well in this, though thought I wasn't very strong in it and its gonna be a pain, may be 'cause it was so vast. But the exam questions didn't turn out to be very difficult. Few were straight recall questions! Know kaplan well and you're good.
Genetics: Kaplan does a fairly good job making you understand the concepts. Other than this what helped most was FA with annotations from uworld. The questions were integrated with pathology, were all over the place, from easy to wtf every other question. I felt I knew it well by the end of prep, Uworld score was 85%, but in the exam not so comfortable.
Pharmacology: First did kaplan LN and videos. Videos are very good. At the end, read mainly FA with uworld annotations with few things from kaplan. This was a frustrating subject for me, kept forgetting everything. I don't remember struggling much with the pharma questions in the exam day though!
Behavioral Science: Did only kaplan notes and videos at first. Of the kaplan lectures liked these videos the most. I thought I'll skip going for any other resources for ethics and rely on common sense, 'cause there was just no time! After I gave nbme 13, it showed BS as one of my weak areas. Then I decided to go through Conrad Fisher's book. It was a good decision, as after this in all the assessments I took, also in the real exam, BS showed higher performance with a star. And the best part is it took only half a day to go through this entire book. For biostat, kaplan and uworld does the job.
After the exam, there was a 'suppression' mechanism going on, I didn't think about it at all..Even didn't remember questions I screwed up in, as most ppl say they do. But overall, I found the exam trickier, but doable. (Hey, if I can manage even with my messed up study routine, why can't you?) If it had any similarity with anything I had done, I'd say the questions were more like nbme 15. Long (some very long) questions, ..It took me almost the full hour to finish each and every block, whereas in uworld I finished blocks in 40/45 min max. Big difference was, not only was I answering, I was thinking hard abt the other stems as well making sure I had answered it right. Keep that in mind. Its hard to answer 'casually' in the real exam. There were questions I didn't have a clue abt, or confused between 2 options. I'd try making educated guesses and move on.
Lastly I would say,
Keep your resources limited. Fill your plate with only that much you can digest. In the final stages of prep you won't have the time to go through everything.
Read experiences, take advice, but in the end trust yourself for what's gonna work best for you.
Don't just memorize, build concepts and make sure you can correlate that concept with multiple subjects.
DON'T PANIC on the exam day. This helped me the most I think.
If I could do this all over again, I would start FA and UW a lot sooner 'cause ultimately these are the only resources you've to stick to, these are your bible.
And, I would like to thank Almighty and also my husband for..everything! My family for giving the mental support..
I've written a whole book I guess , but if you have any questions feel free to ask..
I got my score 3 days back. This forum has been very helpful for me, so thought now its my turn to share the experience. Hope it helps..
I am an IMG.
Total prep time: about 8 months.
Resources used:
Pathology: Pathoma
Neuroanatomy: High Yield Neuroanatomy
Ethics: 100 cases by Conrad Fisher
Rest of the subjects: Kaplan Lecture Notes with videos
And of course, First Aid.
Question bank: USMLE world (subject-wise, timed)
Here I am going to briefly narrate what this journey has been all about for me.
I started my preparation in march 2013. Although I knew this exam required dedication and hard work, I was very inconsistent with my studies. In fact, sitting down and studying religiously for months was never really my style of studying. But that's what was required now if I wanted a decent score, at least that's what I got from reading all the experiences here! And I tried to do that, too..but there were way too many distractions I couldn't avoid (got married, moved to US, moved to another state for 3 months of summer, which was virtually a vacation with very occasional studying). Because of all these wasting of time, I had to extend my eligibility period.
It took me 6 months to finish my first read (and I'm not slow!!). My extended eligibility period would end by November 30. By the end of September when I had finished only my 1st read, it scared the cr*p outta me!!! This was the wake up call and time for me to take some much required action. I booked exam for November 19 and stopped doing evertything else...studied 7/8 am to 12/1 am everyday until the exam date. Finished 2nd read of kaplan notes and 1st read of FA in October, along with 60% of uworld. Did uworld subject-wise, timed 'cause I felt it helps consolidate my knowledge, also takes less time to annotate.Then gave nbme 13 (though felt like I know nothing, forgot everything, I had to know where I was standing). Found this nbme form weird, nothing like uworld, I was making educated guesses in most of the questions! After this my panic state cooled a bit, I thought, at least I won't fail! The next 10 days I went through weak areas in nbme, ethics 100 cases, some of FA for the 2nd time, took uwsa 1 and was doing uworld 2 blocks everyday. Then I gave nbme 15. I was more comfortable with the type of questions it had. Took the free 150 right after nbme 15, making it a mock 8 hr test. At this point I would be happy with anything above 230
Uworld % : 78%
NBME 13, ( abt 2 weeks out) : 219
UWSA 1 ( 10 days out): 242
NBME 15 ( 1 week out): 233
USMLE step 1: 245
I wanted to keep the day before exam study-free, as everyone has suggested..but I had 25% uworld yet to be done, weak areas to go through, FA to revise and so on, all within 6 days..Went to visit the prometric center to confirm location etc the day before exam and ended up studying till 10 pm . At the end I couldn't finish around 200 uworld questions. Why am I telling you all these? I am writing these mainly because, now I feel it would be better if I had just believed in myself like I have so far and not panic reading what everyone else has done. It would be better for my mental health as well as for my preparation if I had realized earlier that, finishing everything months before the exam was never my style, I've never done that, I study and improvise till the last minute..that's who I always have been! Only you know what your style of studying is, what you need to do to remember or understand better; how many hours and how many times you need to study the material, what works for you and what has worked for you so far you know that already, otherwise you won't be here today.
Pathology: I used Pathoma, nothing else. Dr. Sattar is amazing! I think I put most time to it during the final days, reading it at least 3 times cover to cover, as the exam is 60% pathology stuff. In the actual exam, I was comfortable with path questions. There were tons of slides and pictures, but were doable. There were a few wtf questions, of course, but they were as I said, a few.
Anatomy: Kaplan LN and videos, except for neuroanatomy for which I used HY neuroanatomy. In my opinion, these along with FA ( for embyology only FA is enough) and UW are more than enough. In the exam, the questions were straight forward, even the CT/MRI/specimen weren't too bad. Nonetheless, this has always been my favourite and strong subject.
Physiology: I used kaplan LN and videos only, but didn't find it quite sufficient to answer questions confidently both in NBMEs and in actual exam. I didn't have time to go through anything else, so have no idea what else could be more useful. Ended up with a moderate curve, neither higher performance, nor borderline..in between.
Microbiology: Had gone through some of the kaplan LN (no videos) earlier in prep, which I had forgot entirely, and never touched again during 2nd read. Only FA is enough for micro. (I am saying 'enough' according to how comfortable I was answering questions on exam and my score report )
Immunology: Kaplan LN and videos do a great job building the concepts, FA helps it consolidate. In the exam, they try to test easy concepts making it seem like a difficult one. All those experimental mice questions..you read the whole question thinking wtf is this and at the end realize, oh that's what they're trying to ask..lol.
Biochemistry: Kaplan is great for Biochemistry. Both the LN and videos. I did very well in this, though thought I wasn't very strong in it and its gonna be a pain, may be 'cause it was so vast. But the exam questions didn't turn out to be very difficult. Few were straight recall questions! Know kaplan well and you're good.
Genetics: Kaplan does a fairly good job making you understand the concepts. Other than this what helped most was FA with annotations from uworld. The questions were integrated with pathology, were all over the place, from easy to wtf every other question. I felt I knew it well by the end of prep, Uworld score was 85%, but in the exam not so comfortable.
Pharmacology: First did kaplan LN and videos. Videos are very good. At the end, read mainly FA with uworld annotations with few things from kaplan. This was a frustrating subject for me, kept forgetting everything. I don't remember struggling much with the pharma questions in the exam day though!
Behavioral Science: Did only kaplan notes and videos at first. Of the kaplan lectures liked these videos the most. I thought I'll skip going for any other resources for ethics and rely on common sense, 'cause there was just no time! After I gave nbme 13, it showed BS as one of my weak areas. Then I decided to go through Conrad Fisher's book. It was a good decision, as after this in all the assessments I took, also in the real exam, BS showed higher performance with a star. And the best part is it took only half a day to go through this entire book. For biostat, kaplan and uworld does the job.
After the exam, there was a 'suppression' mechanism going on, I didn't think about it at all..Even didn't remember questions I screwed up in, as most ppl say they do. But overall, I found the exam trickier, but doable. (Hey, if I can manage even with my messed up study routine, why can't you?) If it had any similarity with anything I had done, I'd say the questions were more like nbme 15. Long (some very long) questions, ..It took me almost the full hour to finish each and every block, whereas in uworld I finished blocks in 40/45 min max. Big difference was, not only was I answering, I was thinking hard abt the other stems as well making sure I had answered it right. Keep that in mind. Its hard to answer 'casually' in the real exam. There were questions I didn't have a clue abt, or confused between 2 options. I'd try making educated guesses and move on.
Lastly I would say,
Keep your resources limited. Fill your plate with only that much you can digest. In the final stages of prep you won't have the time to go through everything.
Read experiences, take advice, but in the end trust yourself for what's gonna work best for you.
Don't just memorize, build concepts and make sure you can correlate that concept with multiple subjects.
DON'T PANIC on the exam day. This helped me the most I think.
If I could do this all over again, I would start FA and UW a lot sooner 'cause ultimately these are the only resources you've to stick to, these are your bible.
And, I would like to thank Almighty and also my husband for..everything! My family for giving the mental support..
I've written a whole book I guess , but if you have any questions feel free to ask..