This post is specifically for people who are looking for advice on how to study for the USMLE Step One exam. I’ve been getting tons of questions about how to study, what resources to use, and how long to expect to spend studying. My short answer is always this: “It depends on you!!” Most aspects of your study plan should be catered to how you learn as an individual. Everyone learns differently and has different needs. Part of the battle is figuring out how to take the breadth of information we need to know and break it down in a way that you are going to understand and retain it. I will, however, break down roughly what I did and please feel free to use the information that is helpful and forget anything that isn’t! There's a quick summary at the bottom of the page for anyone who doesn't want to read my jibber-jabber!
Just to catch everyone up to speed if you aren’t familiar with my blog, I attended basic sciences (16 months) in anguilla, graduated from the island in December, and then did my introduction to clinical sciences semester in Chicago from February until May.
January - May
I started AICM in February but moved to Chicago at the beginning of January. As many other students from Caribbean medical schools can probably relate, I began my step one preparation and quickly realized that my knowledge base was not where it should be. There was so much lacking in my basic foundation and I realized I really didn’t have an accurate grasp of the scope of the exam. I spent this time while I was doing my intro to clinical medicine semester trying to build a solid foundation on which to start my more intense study when the semester was over.
In order to do this, I watched the Kaplan review series from front to back. I tried to complete one four hour video each day, take notes, add notes to my First Aid book, and I tried to do one block of qbank questions related to what I was learning.
June - October
Once I was finished AICM, I was also completely through the Kaplan video and had done around 6000 qbank questions (I will discuss qbanks later). Now my more focused study began.
I tried to keep my days pretty consistent with the same routine.
Each day I would do at least two blocks of qbank questions. I did them timed and then went through them carefully. My goal was to always make sure that if I were asked another question on that same concept, I’d be able to answer it no problem. For some questions this just took reading the explanation thoroughly, and for others it involved looking things up online, watching youtube videos, or whatever it took me to understand it well. Lastly, ANYTHING I didn’t already know cold, I wrote down in a notebook. When I was finished the entire block, I would take everything that was written in my notebook and turn them into question/answer flashcards. You could make flashcards manually or use any of the apps/flashcard programs that are out there. I used ANKI specifically - I like it because it automatically populates flashcards for you to review based on how hard you ranked them the last time you saw them. I always started my day with reviewing whatever flashcards were due for that day. One big mistake I made earlier on, and a mistake I think a lot of people make is not reviewing information enough times or in a systematic way. Anki was a way for me to know what needed to be reviewed when in order to keep everything as fresh as possible.
I also started sketchy micro and Pathoma during these days. I would typically only spend about a half hour a day on each of them because I found it was easiest to retain that way. I would take notes from these as well and make them into flashcards when I was done.
Lastly, each day I would get through a chunk of my first aid book. I typically spent an hour and a half to two hours on this. I literally started at the front of the book and worked through it, paragraph at a time and made sure I knew and understood everything. Anything I didn’t became a flash card as well. Once I made it through the whole book, I started over and did it again.
The further I got along in this process, the less stuff I would have to write down and the less flashcards I would need to make. By the last month before I took the exam, most things were just a review.
NBME exams: make sure to do NBME exams regularly. These are really the best way to know where you stand and what you strong and weak areas are. At first I was doing NBMEs every 2 months and by the end I did one every couple of weeks - it helps keep you focused and kicks your butt into gear if you aren’t improving!
Self Care: Make sure you take care of yourself during this process. Eat well, sleep well, and exercise! These things are so important and I can’t stress them enough. Trying to maintain a study schedule like this for so many months can feel near impossible if you are burning yourself out. You really need to be in the game with as few distractions as possible, but do make time for the things you enjoy and the things that are important to you.
Qbanks : I STRONGLY believe that seeing as many questions as possible is one of the best ways to get good at them. It really shows you what concepts come back over and over, and you get asked the same thing multiple ways which reinforces the information. By the time I took the exam, I was able to tell myself, "Chill out, you are just going to sit down for seven blocks of questions just like the tens of thousands you have done over the past year!". I did USMLErx, Kaplan twice, Uworld twice, and most of USMLE Easy. Uworld was certainly the closest to the actual exam, but I still think as many practice questions as you can do the better. USMLE Easy was the worst of the bunch in my opinion, but our school gave us free access to it and there's no such thing as bad practice.
Above all, everyone, just have patience! At some point you need to sit back and accept that it is just a huge amount of information that you have to pick apart and come to love and completely understand. It's not easy, and if it were - everyone would do it. It's really hard and it should be hard. We are going to be responsible for people's lives. I know they expect us to know damn near everything, but I think we should. Just be persistent, learn as much as you can each day, and it will come!
Here's a quick summary for those of you who don't want to read all of this detail I posted!
Jan-May
- Kaplan Review Videos
- 1 block of questions daily
June-Oct
- ANKI flashcards first thing in AM
- 2 Blocks of questions
- Pathoma
- Sketchy Micro
- First Aid
Hope this helps!! Study hard, follow your dreams and never give up!
XOXO
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