Before I forget everything I did while studying for the exam, I figured I'd dump it all into this thread - and maybe encourage others to contribute as well.
Planning your study period is probably the first thing you need to do. On average, my classmates took their exam four months after completing their fifth semester. Depending on what your goals are, four months may be too long or too short. When you register for the exam, you register for a period of three months rather than for a specific day. You should register to give yourself the maximum leverage to reschedule your exam. For example, if you intend to take the exam in December, register for Dec-Jan-Feb. You can pay the ECFMG 50 bucks to extend your 3-month eligibility period by another 3 months.
Scheduling your time during that period is also very important. Grab a calendar and plan at least a week in advance. Here is an
example. You should be as flexible as possible and allow for plenty of breaks. Otherwise you'll get overwhelmed. You'll find that the things that you crammed at AUA in order to pass a test will be a lot harder to re-learn than the material that you understood the first time around.
Accountability is important too - you need some objective way of making sure that you actually know the material that you read. Kaplan's Qbank/Qbook comes in handy for that. Doing questions as you study will better inform you as to what material is testable and how it can be tested.
Example: You can spend an hour learning everything there is to know about Parkinson's Disease, but if the answer choices on your test are labels on a CT scan and you can't find the substantia nigra, then your knowledge is worthless.
You're absolutely going to need a quiet study space - be it your home or a library. Public universities and community colleges tend to allow the general public to study. They will have internet access so you can use your online resources and they'll probably be open till midnight. Barnes and Noble is a nice study spot too because they have medical books that you can use for free. You should also try your best to eliminate as many distractions as possible from your life - or at least from the time that you plan to study. Turn off your phone, your instant messaging program etc. while studying. (In retrospect, I probably should have banned myself from ValueMD during the study period.
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Review courses are a popular option among AUA students. The top three are Kaplan, Falcon and Pass. Kaplan and Falcon have retreat options, which include a hotel stay at the same location or very close to the lecture hall. That may be convenient for you if you need the isolation or there is no center close to home. Kaplan also has a live lecture option, where you attend their lectures and a center prep option, where you get to watch their videos. There are also web prep and home study courses. Most of my classmates who took Kaplan took either the live lecture course or the retreat. Both of these courses follow the same format – the material is divided by subject and there is a distinguished professor (like Goljan, Fadem, etc.) who lectures on their subject of expertise. You get lecture notes, but in most cases they are incomplete and you have to supplement them with what is discussed in class. I don’t know much about the Falcon Review program but there is an excellent review of it by a Saba student
here. Having viewed the Pass program videos and read the lecture notes, I don’t recommend the course. The guy who teaches the course simply doesn’t cover all the material that is tested. Maybe he covers just enough to “pass” – I have no idea. But, don’t waste your money. There’s a comparison thread of Kaplan vs. Falcon vs. Pass vs. Princeton
here, if you’re interested.
Choosing the right books and study resources can be difficult because there are so many out there. Here are my picks. Maybe they’ll be of use to you. Note that
Anatomy – High Yield is really good – covered every single question I saw on the exam, Kaplan is reasonably good but it’s missing a lot of stuff.
Histology – If you bother to review Histo at all, use your notes or Kaplan’s anatomy text. I had a grand total of one histo question on my exam, and I also had that same dumb question on my first histo test at AUA word for word - and I got it wrong on both tests because I'm a moron. So, don't study Histo; if you're bored, do more path or something.
Biochemistry/Genetics – Kaplan is really good, Lippincott is ok but is missing a lot of stuff and contains way too much extraneous information like enzymes in purine/pyramidine synthesis. I liked the AUA Genetics powerpoints because I got used to them but they’re unnecessarily detailed for the exam.
Neurology – High Yield covers pretty much everything. Kaplan is missing stuff – like CT scans which are very frequent on Step I now. Kaplan explains stuff better though.
Physiology – The newly revised blue Kaplan book is good. It has lots of graphs and charts to make you understand everything. A lot of people like BRS Physio but it doesn’t explain the concepts as well as Kaplan does, in my opinion. Rapid Review Physio was good too for Endocrine and Renal Physio. AUA Cardio Physio notes are very good as well for that subtopic.
Microbiology/Immunology – Lange Microbiology and Immunology covered absolutely everything in detail. The Kaplan book is in outline format which some people might like, but I prefer prose. Some people use just first aid for Microbiology. I think that’s crazy – I would not have been able to answer 30% of the Micro questions on my exam if I had done that.
Behavioral Science – BRS is good. The Kaplan book is just as good but easier to read. I’ve been told that High Yield is ok too. The three above mentioned books are by the same author – Fadem.
Pathology – Rapid Review or Goljan’s Lecture Notes are the best. I would not recommend using any other source. For images, I used Dr. K's lab powerpoints
Pharmacology – I used Lippincott which covers absolutely everything you need to know but later found out that it was too much information. The Kaplan book is a lighter read and much higher yield. A lot of people are recommending just First Aid these days, but it sounds dangerous to me since there is so much Pharm on the exam.
Questions – Kaplan ‘s Qbank and Qbook are excellent for assessing your understanding of material that you’ve just studied, but many people who have recently taken the test say that USMLE World is a far better simulator of the real exam. I agree fully. The questions I saw on the real thing were very much like the ones on UW. Both question banks have pretty good predictive value. You should probably be answering over 55% of the questions correctly in order to have a good chance of passing your exam. You can estimate your Step I score using your Kaplan Qbank score
here.
The NBME has practice exams available at
their website which allows you to purchase practice exams that will predict your score very, very accurately. It is absolutely essential that you take one of these 6 weeks to 1 month before your test date. After you take the exam, you will get a breakdown of your relative strengths in the various topics tested. You can significantly improve your score by focusing on these weaknesses. Also, the scaled score that you get after taking the exam is astonishingly predictive of your Step 1 score.
Things I wish I knew/wish I did before my exam
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The Goljan notes (sold as Rapid Review Pathology) are a really great resource for Step 1. Of all the books I used, that one predicted the most number of questions on my exam. I wish I had read that book one more time.
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The NBME is highly predictive of your Step I score. I wish I had worked on my weaknesses that it showed and pulled the score up another 10 points.
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USMLE World is way better than Kaplan's Qbank at simulating the real test. I wish I didn't realize that until 3 weeks before my test. But in those 3 weeks, I did like 80% of UW, so it's not a huge regret.
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Your performance on Step I is pretty closely linked to how you do at AUA and whether or not you passed your exams and courses on your own (before the curve).
So yeah, if you're at AUA, you should probably study hard because you have great teachers and you're fortunate not to go to one of those "self study" places. If you do that, you should be fine for Step 1.
Addendum 1
Biostatistics and Epidemiology is very very high yield. Know sensitivity, specificity, PPV, odds ratio inside out. Know that incidence and prevalence, know the bell curve and how it applies to IQ (had a question on that)