Should we do USMLE World Once or Twice?

[Dulbee]

I just had an argument with one of the members about doing USMLE World once or twice. So I thought instead of continuing the argument with him which am sure he'll stick to his opinion and I will stick to my opinion, let's see what you guys think about this.

Let's start a poll and see what you think. Doing UW once is enough or should we be doing it twice.

My opinion:
I think we should never do any qbank (UW and others) more than once. Because the idea of the qbank is be presented with new challenging questions every time and of course learning concepts along the way. It's not a reference so that we should memorize it bit by bit.

[kalpana]

Although you have a point right there but from the experience of people who took the exam, they are saying that if you digest the concepts and facts in UW you'll ace the exam, so doing it twice or even more is a good idea.

[laithbv]

USMLE World is like a great book for the USMLE exam. If you know how to extract the concepts from it (not just memorizing questions) it would be a great asset for you. So why not? do it twice

[JJtheMD]

haha how fun! wait, were in an argument??

Now i agree with Dulbee in terms of trying new questions.. theres no argument there.

But its with World.. worlds a learning qbank... Not a qbank to assess what your going to get on step 1.. even the usmle world website suggests to do the qbank twice... Now i maybe wrong but every student is different. For me, I felt it was important to do the usmle world twice as it let me read the explanations 2-3 times after each block i did! I learned so much which let me get great scores in the end in nbme/usmle rx/usmle world assessement exams which are the exams that are specifically made to test you!

But i agree, Doing new questions is always the best way to see where you stand.

[13monument]

The second time you do UW should not be solving questions. It should be just reading the explanations and those questions you got wrong and those questions you marked.

Even better is to make some notes while you do it the first time and then the second round should be targeting those notes, not the questions themselves, because it's illogical to be faced with the same question twice, definitely you'll get it right on the second time!

[rahul]

What i'm doing is...

I'm doing USMLEWorld question by question with my FA 2010 open. For each question, I look it up in FA and if there's not enough information on that question, I make notes on a piece of paper. I've heard that the explanations are very high-yield for both the wrong answers and the right answers. Kaplan qbank plus is alright but since i'm taking my exam in March end, i'm just focusing on FA, Uworld, and gotta go over goljan high yield notes, and maybe read the RR book.

[Dulbee]

Oh my God! My vote is losing

[ashishkabir]

Yeah - I think people think it's a book more than an evaluating tool. I agree about trying timed random blocks too, but even if you get no questions right it doesn't mean that you don't know anything. It just means you don't know the trick at the end and once you've done the question, you learn the trick and thats that.

So yeah - more than 2X if you can find the time. thats my vote.

[Raj2011]

Originally Posted by ashishkabir

Yeah - I think people think it's a book more than an evaluating tool. I agree about trying timed random blocks too, but even if you get no questions right it doesn't mean that you don't know anything. It just means you don't know the trick at the end and once you've done the question, you learn the trick and thats that.

So yeah - more than 2X if you can find the time. thats my vote.

So as you said, if we learned the trick then there's no point in doing the question again!

[heights]

Originally Posted by Raj2011

So as you said, if we learned the trick then there's no point in doing the question again!

Yeah but at the end of 2000+ questions are you really going to remember every single trick after the first pass? Plus as others have pointed out it's not just about the trick to answering the question, it's about the concept that the question tests. When I do questions I mark many questions, even ones that I got right, for review because even though I may have gotten it correct my understanding of the concept may not have been as clear. So if I am short and time and can't do the whole bank twice, I will at least go back and redo questions I got wrong + marked questions.

[Haisook]

I just can't go over the same questions more than once. It's boring and above all it's almost cheating. It's meaningless going again over questions you got wrong. You'll answer them right this time, and that's it! But if your intention is to re-read the explanations and the educational objectives, then I think that's very useful.

What I do is that I write down new points and those tricks I fell for, and then go over them every now and then, many times. I used to write down notes on my Palm device, but found it tedious, so now (for Step 2 CK) I just tap on the "Windows Start Icon" button on the keyboard, where I can open up Notepad, and simply type in the notes.

[SeattleG3]

Doing UW twice is not even an option for US medical students. We barely have the time to finish it once and most of us even don't have the time to finish it all!!

[mmtj]

seatle u r right
i have no time to finish the questions i bought them for 2month and i finished them after the first month and i am trying now to answer the incorrect ones cuz they really were hard questions and i want to read them more plus i have to take 2 or 3 days to review the marked question then i think i am gona answer the kaplan qbank to add more questions and more ideas hope this work for me