I am choosing to tackle the step 1 on my own, without Kaplan or Falcon. I am in the process of setting up a schedule and byeing all my references. My plan of action was to use First Aid kind of as a scaffold and make sure I know it cold, and supplement it everyday with a few other high yield books like RR path Goljan, BRS physio...etc. For those of you that took a similar strategy and did well, did you find that you had ample time really read some other sources in a bit more depth than you would read First Aid, and still have time to bang out 50-100 USMLE world Q's everyday? Rather than following the traditional "do physio for x amt. of days, then path. then anatomy...." I'm going to try and take a systems based approach (hit up all areas of eg. neuro in a few days - anatomy, histo, physio, path...) If there is anyone out there who took a similar approach, lemme know how it turned out. One last Q, how exactly did you all go about allotting time to every subject? Is it typically done based on your personal strenghts, or is standard to give a subject like Neuro or Cardio almost a full week to hit up its anatomy to its path...thanks for the feedback...very much appreciated...

I didn't use your kind of study plan but thought I could give you some advice anyway about allotting time for subjects. I made the mistake of spending too much time studying subjects that weren't heavily emphasized on the Step I but then ran out of time for higher yield topics that I was weak on. I revised my plan for Step II and did 10 pts better.

So my advice is this:

Prioritize your schedule so that you start with and spend the most time on subjects that you are weakest in and that will be most highly tested. It seems obvious but it is difficult to do because everybody wants to start with their favorite/best subjects and "master" them. Wrong wrong wrong. Don't spend a ton of time re-studying things you basically already know. Those things can be quickly reviewed by doing questions.

Mind you, I am not advocating obsessing about your weakest subjects. They have to be high yield as well as weak for you to spend time on them.

Good luck!

Thanks....sounds like good advice....I was teetering on that whole thing about whether I should start up with something like body systems which I'm much stronger in than something like biochem.....looks like i'll be trying to pound out micro and biochem first since they are my weakest

When I took the test in 2004 I found that physiology was the highest yield. There wasn't much biochem at all, and of the biochem, the majority of stuff was molecular biology rather than metabolic pathways. But I think you should do a little research, talk to people taking Kaplan etc to find out what the word on the street is for the highest yield material. Obviously things may have changed since 2004.

Maybe others can chime in here...those who have taken Step I recently?

Good luck. Its a LOT harder to do it without a course than most people think, and it certainly takes a similar amount (or more) of preparation. Schedule more time than you think you will need. Read every topic from multiple sources, because First Aid is chock full of errors. I know a LOT of very smart people who failed trying to study on their own, and I saw some very marginal students do very well who took a course. If its money you are concerned about, a Kaplan course is a drop in the bucket when compared to your final amount of student aid.

That being said, I know two people who got 99's studying on their own(one not from SGU at all), but they were two of the more hard working and hard studying people I've met. Most people i know who did it on their own either failed and re-took the test, or did slightly below the rumored SGU average (208-210, depending on who you talk to).

i didnt take any course. tho i set 8 weeks to study, i think i really only did about 6 wks of real studying.

i did as much qs as i can, from kaplan qbook, nbmes, finished UW, and whatever qs i can get my hands on, in about 4 weeks i did about 5000 qs.

books used were mainly FA, BRS path, physio, goljan path, kaplan anatomy and biochem. tho the only books i actually reveiwed from cover to cover was FA, BRS path and goljan path. the rest were just for reference

keep in mind, that i mainly used FA bc i felt i had a very good foundation knowledge, basic sci gpa was over 3.5

result was 230/96

COngragts on the 230/96....awesome score....Jaywalk, just out of curiosity, how did you go about studying biochem without reading a book on it from "cover to cover", not having studied it in depth since first term? Also, did you find anatomy and histo questions to be abundant, or were they kind of scattered within path. questions? I'm trying to figure out how much time to put into subjects like anatomy and histo, if any significant time at all. Do you think it's going overboard to attempt to get through eg. BRS behavioral, RR micro and immuno., etc..or is it pretty safe to use FA as the main source for less heavily tested subjects such as those just mentioned (meaning those aside from Path, Pharm, and Physio)?

FA is good if you start using it the first day of anatomy and biochem class. which is what i've been doing. you should see my already tattered FA book, sticky, kinda gross too. i look at it all day in my room.

__________________

Very nice. Congrat !!!!
I better go get my FA book tattered now.