<p>what are the best resources for studying USMLE Step 1 ?? I’m still a 1st year medical student but I’m hoping to get a headstart !! thanks in advance :)</p>
<p>As a 1st year, your best resource is to focus on your coursework. All the review material is written for people who have been through the material at least twice before.</p>
<p>In general though, resources that are commonly used (although you don’t use all of these):
First aid
Usmle world
Brs path and brs physio
Goljan’s rapid review
Pathoma
Gunner training (which recently changed its name but I don’t remember what it is)
Kaplan
Doctors in training</p>
<p>Yeah, as a first year, Step I prep shouldn’t really even be on your radar (yes, there will be gunners who will study for it from day one, but that’s a good way to burn out/have a mental breakdown).
I didn’t start Step I-specific prep until after M2 finals and I was starting my 4 week countdown to the test (because really, all of second year you are ‘studying’ for Step 1 by preparing for your exams). All you need is First Aid and USMLE World Qbank. If you need structure, programs like DIT can give you lectures to watch (::cough:: read First Aid to you ::cough::)</p>
<p>Yeah, to be more specific than my earlier post. I didn’t do any step 1 specific studying until after classes ended 2nd year. I only used first aid, uworld, brs path/physio and the Robbins path q-book.</p>
<p>During the second semester of 2nd year I started doing USMLErx questions for the class I was taking as well as reading goljan’s path. I think it’s fair during 2nd year or if you’re on a systems block schedule to work step 1 materials into your studying but you shouldn’t be looking at any material outside of your current coursework.</p>
<p>It appears the test bank DS has been using is U World Qbank and he has worked through that test bank about two times. Is it enough as far as number of practice tests are concened? </p>
<p>Somehow he took more shorter ( 4 hrs Instead 8 hrs?) practice tests to find out his progress. It appears his scores have stayed 10-20 points above his target score for some time. But it may be the score of a shorter, not-as-real test.</p>
<p>I suspect he has never studied so many hours (now 10) each day in his whole life.</p>
<p>What do you bring to the test center for your lunch ?</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>Students only get 1 full length practice exam before the real thing. Just how the process is set up.</p>
<p>D1 took bananas, granola bars/trail mix, dried fruit, nuts, and bottled water with her. The same thing she takes for a full day of climbing/hiking/long distance cycling. She ate several small snacks between test sections instead of one bigger meal. She did this to maintain her energy level and because she didn’t want a something heavy sitting in her stomach because she was nervous.</p>
<p>Before the test, she took an hour-long yoga class (to calm and focus her because she hadn’t slept at all the night before) and ate a light, high protein breakfast.</p>
<p>Kaplan is the only one who offers 1 full length test but I didn’t use Kaplan.</p>
<p>I took the UWorld 4 hour practice tests back to back to try and simulate a full day (this actually is longer than full day since it’s 8 blocks of questions compared to 7 on the real thing).</p>
<p>I’m assuming mcat’s son is taking NBME exams? Depending on which ones they are more or less predictive. My scores steadily rose throughout studying (took 1 test per week), peaked with the full day although UWorld self assessments are considered to be overpredictive (i got higher scores than any NBME despite getting more questions wrong than usual). My final practice test, 1 week before test day, represented a 10 point drop from my highest NBME and my final score was 2 points lower than my highest NBME.</p>
<p>With regard to meals, I ate my normal breakfast/tea consumption on test day. I did not do a real lunch - just like I did on practice day. As WOWmom mentioned, I ate snack bars and such after every other block. I maybe regret not doing the prometric practice exam at my test site because while I had heard from friends taking it before me, I still didn’t appreciate how long taking a break would take. For me to eat something I had to get up from the computer, walk out, sign out (on a specific page in a big book so that all my sigs would be next to each other for easy comparison), get finger printed, get metal wanded with my pockets turned inside out, (all of which might require waiting on line), then open my locker, grab my food, walk out of the waiting room and into the bathroom where there were no cameras/signs saying “no food” eat/drink, then walk back in, put water bottle back into locker, go back to room before test room where I had to sign, finger print, metal wand with pockets out again (again, potentially waiting in line) then go to my computer and resume. This was at least 5-10mins each time+eating/bathroom/whatever, which when you have 1 hour of break time spread out across 6 inter break periods means that you have a block or two where you just sit in front of your computer with your eyes closed for a minute or two before starting the next section instead of going through that whole dog and pony show. For me it wouldn’t have been the heaviness I wanted to avoid but the potential long bathroom break a section or two after a big meal.</p>
<p>I actually slept amazingly well the night before - probably the best night of sleep I had the whole time. I think I owe that and the sort of zen like state I had that day to being a D1 athlete. Test day and game day were remarkably similar.</p>
<p>I thought I did pretty poorly on test day and was not happy. I had read some blog post by the First Aid people that this is a common feeling for people scoring anywhere in the 220-260 range. If you’re in the 260+ range, you’re doing so well that you know you did well. If you’re sub 220, you’re doing poorly enough that you can’t even pick up on the little things you may or may not have missed. The 220-260 range is where you know enough to be wary of the things you might miss and unfortunately you won’t know how you did until a month later.</p>
<p>^^ D1 mentioned the same things brown did about the check-in/out process. Long. Involved. Tedious. She said that between sections, you had time to either eat OR go to the bathroom, but not both.</p>
<p>D1 came out her exam…resigned and very tired. “It is what it is,” she said. She really couldn’t tell how well or badly she’d done. (Fortunately it was the former, not the latter.)</p>
<p>Thank you all for sharing your experience.</p>
<p>D. is done. If you think that 10 hours every day is a lot, I ahve to kind of dissapoint, since D. said it was 14 hrs every day for her with schduled days off when she did not study at all. They share experiences at her school, so she used them to get the books, her sudy schedule, number of weeks…etc. She is happy with what she got, the score alone is sufficient for her goal, but there are other factors like number of research, publications, etc. Again, she will talk to her advisor at school. I believe that it is better to use resources at school, school programs are different , they are stronger is some aspects and weaker in others in comparison to each other. D. started thinking about her residency list, nothing concrete, looks like she is considering all programs in our state (3 out of 6 are actually at her location) and some surrounding area (about 6 hrs to drive) plus Nashville. Her approach has been alway the same (for UG, Med. School, residency). She got to feel comfy at location and she got to feel good about people there.</p>
<p>Well. I took step 1 today (well…technically yesterday). Some quick thoughts:</p>
<p>1) Prep:</p>
<p>-variety of basic science books (High Yield series, etc)
-Rapid Review Path (Gojan)
-BRS phys (Costanzo)
-First Aid
-some (30%–700 questions?) of Kaplan Qbank
-all of uworld qbank (1x thru, all incorrect questions a second time, a week-ish of 4x46 blocks) for a grand total of around 3800 practice questions
-2 uworld 4x46 practice tests (scores within 6pts of each other)
-probably more resources I’m forgetting about</p>
<p>2) Test day:</p>
<p>-breakfast: coffee, water, waffle with peanut butter
-snacks: mini M&Ms, pb crackers, pistachios, raspberries
-lunch: sandwich, pretzels, soda
-same check-in/out process previously described
-glad I brought a sweatshirt
-maybe I’m fast, but I typically ended a section with at least 20min to spare, so after mulling over the few I marked, I usually had 10min to spare. That extra 10min gets added to break time, so I never felt hurried during my breaks (which were usually 8-15min, after each section)</p>
<p>3) overall impressions:</p>
<p>-it was very close to what I was expecting; if anything, I was pessimistic and expecting it to be more complicated than it actually was.</p>
<p>D. did not have any time to spare, she used all 8 hours. She also said that she did not know answers to some questions. However, she is very happy with her score.</p>
<p>DS is taking the test today. We are concerned that he did not have a good sleep (only a few hours) last night and the test is such a long, grueling test. Hopefully he “survives” today. 
</p>
<p>In the past, it appears when he felt he was not fully prepared, it might interfere with his sleep the night before. But this rarely happens.</p>
<p>Maybe STEP-1 test is just a beast you could hardly feel you are very well prepared before the test unless you really pour in much more study time than the norm.</p>
<p>^Best to your S. The boys are less nervous in general, they tend to take this with less emotions and attachments, so hopefully he is doing just fine. He is “surviving”!!!
From D’s comments, I do not believe that anybody feels that they are fully prepared for this one. However, the practice tests have been goood predictors for my D.</p>
<p>For me personally, the week leading up to step 1 was one of the worst weeks of my life. I think no matter how many weeks you have to study the final week at least will be awful. Full of doubt, anxiety, excitement, exhaustion and other emotions.</p>
<p>Thanks!</p>
<p>Each person is different. On this aspect, DS is like me who tends to be on the nervous side. This is the reason why we rarely want to give him additional pressure (guidances/advices could become a source of the stress sometimes) since elementary school. He tends to put a pressure on himself. Our job is to help.him release some pressure that is not warranted.</p>
<p>My guess from thousands miles away is that he has studied reasonably enough in the past 2 months (otherwise, he would not have a practice test score of 259). A bigger issue is whether he has the stigma (physical and mental strength) to get through this.</p>
<p>He told us before that if the students from his med school apply to the residency program of the affiliated teaching hospital, except for a few competitive specialties, they will likely accept them - unless the student really screws up something (e.g., STEP-1). Hopefully he will not screw this up today.</p>
<p>^Was not the case with my D. who generally is very emotional and sensitive (she has an older Brother, so I can compare and attributed the difference to different hormones). She was pretty calm, I could hear it in her voice, was looking forward to be done with it, just like she was feeling before an MCAT. She stated in a very non-emotional manner that she did not know the answers to all questions, nobody does. this comment had no correlation to her score.</p>
<p>Well, hello everyone! I guess I am resurrecting this thread. Amazing how time flies, and how different our experiences have been. In my school, we take the test during the second semester of our third year. I took my exam on February 21st and received my score yesterday! I am thrilled with the results and also pretty excited about my upcoming clerkships. I’ve had a full year of clinicals already and from now on it will be mostly electives. I have no doubt my curriculum, schedule and extensive clinicals made possible for me to do well.</p>
<p>I was waiting for my score to make some decisions and now I am ready. I have always heard it was important to take electives at the potential programs one is interested on applying, but that it is not the advice my school is giving us. I guess the application strategy for residencies varies depending which school you are attending. I was planning to go to a few places, but I think I am staying locally except for a couple of rotations (much to my parents dismay!)</p>
<p>I will be checking the “norcal residency application thread” frequently- Great stuff over there! Good luck to all!</p>
Wow! This is the first time I check this. Thank you all for replying and sharing your experiences. I might take the USMLE Step 1 by the end of this year (2015) Also if someone in charge of this website happens to sift through and notice this thread, I would like to request that the website creates a topic for USMLE Prep as it will make things a lot easier,
As a fourth year S was part of student group that was set up for second year students to offer their strategies for Step 1. One of his main points was especially during second year, stay absolutely on top of material that deals with organ systems. He felt that by doing so he was in effect studying for Step 1.