Hi friends,

I gave my exam on March 30th & got my result today. Thanks to God, its 245/99. I have been silent observer of this website but i have benefited a lot from people's discussion & their exam experiences here on the website. I would like to share my experience caz i now know how helpfull it was to read other ppls experiences during my preparation.

About my preparation : I read for about 5.5 months. I used Kaplan notes for all subjects except for Pathology i used Goljen notes with audio(its GOLD). I found kaplan books absolutly enough for everything except for Path. I believe key for me was revisons. After finishing my first reading, i went through all subjects seriously for 2 more times & then in the last week i went through all subjects(1 subject in 1 day). I didnt use First Aid during my last week caz for me photogenic memory is very important for recall during exam & i didnt want to see everything in new format during my last week. But i did went through FA for some subjects during my 2nd & 3rd reading, & found it usefull. So if it suits your style of reading, u can use it for last week reading.

Question sources i used : I mostly used Q-bank as my primary source of questions. After finishing my 2nd reading i started doing ONLINE Q-bank, 2 blocks every day. I did some blocks in Q-bank CD during my 2nd reading also. I must say that latest online Q-bank is much improved than Q-bank CD. Also in MY experience online Q-bank was tougher than real exam. I know other ppl can have different experience but that is my experience. I finished my online Q-bank with cumulative of 79%., before 20 days of my exam. Also before exactly 1 month of my exam i took NBME exam(part 1) & i got 590. Because of time constrient i could not take part-2. One week before exam i did full length simulated exam at Kaplan center & got 85%. During my last week i did one block of Kaplan simulated CD that i got with Kaplan books & found it a bit tougher. But still i got 81% in it. Yes, there are 2 different Kaplan simulated tests. One they offer at center & one is on the CD(which seems latest & is bit tough). Two days before the exam, i also did USMLE CD & my scores were 45,43 & 44.

My Exam : I got the standard exam with most of Patho/Pathophysio. I think second highest was Pharma & then rest of the subjects. I would say in each subjects, i had many straight questions & few really tough question which i had no idea about. Just clicked "C" for "Correct" & went ahead! I had tough 1st block & felt very bad after completing the block. In fact i didnt even got a chace to review my marked questions as i almost finshed the block in last 30 seconds. So after completing my 1st block i took a break & told my self that i still have 6 blocks to cover up. Luckly, during later blockes i felt more comfortable & everything went ok for me. At the end of my exam, my filling was "it was not bad, but not sure how good it was till i get my results".

Somethings i will like to say :

As everyone here is been saying, exam is DOABLE. In fact, i have myself been very ordinary student during my med school, but luckly when i started my preparation for step-1 i read some nice exam experiences on this website & reallised that if i can work hard, i can do it also. That was my biggest motivation & it worked!!
Also if possible, try to stay away from this (or any other discussion forums) website during the last week of your exam. Its for your own good. Everyone visiting this website have different background & different expectations. Last thing u want during your final week, is read some unlucky person's exam experience who had bad day with exam(believe me, i did that mistake & lost one whole day thinking about it).
Take suffiecient sleep before exam. If i have to change one thing in my exam preparation, it was this thing. I didnt got as much of sleep as i would have liked, & may be that was the reason i didnt do good in my 1st block. But anyways, if u can sleep the night before your exam, make best use of it.
The biggest difference i noticed between doing practice questions & real exam was feedback that we get. During practice questions (Q-bank in my case) we get the feedback immediately after submitting the block & we get so used to it. But in real exam we dont have any idea how good we did until 7 blocks are over & i realised this thing when i was doing my simulated exam. So it is important to do one full length test & get used to that filling.

So, in all this is my exam experience & i hope it is usefull to someone, just like it was for me when it all started for me 5.5 months ago!


Regards..