“And that his striving shall soon be seen Then shall he be rewarded for it with the fullest reward”
I call this phase of my life “I am only human” … we all are…
I’ll be sharing more of a glimpse of my life in this experience for benefiting reasons and because of the many lessons I learned in this short period for anyone who is interested…
1.5 years ago I hadn’t started the USMLE journey yet but I made a goal that by this time I’ll be done with all of the 3 exams… I had shared my step 1 experience before “If interested I’ll send it” … I basically enclosed myself to get the score I wanted in a bit less than 10 months…
After that I didn’t get a break… I went for Step 2 CS for a month. I am now done with CS… But severely burnt out super stressed because of the CS result and can’t read any more words… I also had 2 months of rotations to do…
In Feb…I took only 1 week off and got UW and forced myself to start on it… it was wrong… I was very stressed and kept doing this for 2 weeks with barely finishing 10 questions a day until I stopped and took 2 weeks off…
During my second rotation, I started again and same thing happened… I was still burnt out with same or less amount of questions done per day… then I stopped… until I finished second rotation…
Now I am back home and it’s April… I thought I’ll be okay and have that same stamina I had in step 1 and CS, but no… I kept struggling and fighting with myself and only getting 10-15 qs a day… I stayed like this till 2nd-3rd week of April… I was hopeless… what I did in Step 1 isn’t working now… trying enclosing on myself and focusing and all that… I started talking with friends, calling them, having a bit more fun, going for walks… etc and not feeling guilty about it (I haven’t done that in like 11 months). and things started getting just a little better with 20s of questions per day… less stress but still not enough to finish CK on time… got really worried that I’ll never be able to go back to how I used to be… and all the drive I had before
This is where the magic came in…
So I had heard of people having study partners, I never understood how can two people solve UW together… then I learned there is an option in UW where you can create a test and send your test ID to your SP so that they create the same test with you…
I looked for SP to try this with them but I got advises of “Don’t get a Study partner… they’ll only bring you down and delay you”, “You can’t find someone with same circumstances and plan as yours” … etc.
I do agree that it’s important to have SP with almost the same level of studying and plan and who you can connect with … but you have to LOOK for them to get them… don’t just judge the whole SP thing on bad experience.
Anyways… I was very blessed and lucky to get not only one but TWO amazing, smart and kind study partners who are now my best friends.
Each one of them was only available during either half of the day so guess what I did…
I solved separate subjects with each… For example I did neurology with SP1 in morning til afternoon and Infectious disease with SP2 from afternoon til evening… We’d also look at Step 1 Frist Aid in any topic we felt we needed to…
I was going really fast that I did 60+ sometimes 70+ qs per day with enjoyment and not feeling the time. What we did is just read each question and solve it while on Skype call, then we alternate on reading the explanations…
For tables and charts, one of us makes the first read then we both have to say whole table/chart without looking…
I tried to do some qs in the hours where non of them was available and still couldn’t read a word by myself…
The only subject I had problems with was Obstetrics so I studied it from ElHusseiny’s lectures and books and then solved it with my SP and it was great… made it very easy…
After finishing first round I did NBME 7 and got 241.
I didn’t want to do wrongs or marked and I immediately started second round… This time was solving by myself but me and my study partners kept the Skype call on to keep each other motivated and supported.
UWorld had just had this new feature where each question that you have previously solved and saved Flash cards for shows only the flash cards specific to that question and it was super helpful… I tried to go fast with my second round reading tables and relevant flash cards…
First I did 40 qs blocks timed no tutor and then revised them, it was really boring and I kept wasting time… and did only 2~ blocks per day…
Then I did 20 question blocks with timed+tutor and timed myself to finish each 20 in an hour “mostly took 1 hr 15 min tbh”… but I tried… and started going fast with 3 blocks sometimes 3.5 per day.
After solving 90% I did UWSA1… I was burnt out severely … barely focused… barely pushing myself… so I did it with double the time and THAT WAS A BIG MISTAKE… I got 268 but not very rewarding…
During my second round… I had kept a document with all of the tables and topics that I always forget… I went through them few days before the test…
A mistake I did is that I knew I was weak in ECG… but I didn’t do anything about that… I asked for ECG resources but didn’t go through them…
I also did UW biostat review which wasn’t useful to me because I had already done it recently for step 1… I had advise of doing my wrongs and marked after 2nd round but unfortunately I didn’t follow it… It would’ve been better if I did. I was really tired and wanted to finish the exam.
A week before the exam I did New Free 120 at the prometric it was very tough and got 77%
Some days later I did UWSA2 I did first 2 blocks with extra time and got 273…
For the day before the exam… I can’t reiterate enough how important this video is https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zJgjMZk8_To … so I followed it I still had problems with sleeping TBH but I tried not to freak out and calmed myself so that I don’t lose the bit amount of sleep that was starting… I believe I still slept around 6-7 hrs
Exam day:
My exam was at 7:30 am but I arrived at 6:45 am and they let me start immediately… I brought my own super powerful noise cancelling ear plugs to wear beneath their noise cancelling headphones… I followed the instructions in the video above regarding breaks and food (which states to eat protein bars) but I also got food pieces of protein like meat and chicken… However I cheated with some carbs (bread) as I felt I really needed a real sandwich after 4th block lol and that may have caused me to be drowsy during the next 2 blocks but then I gained back my focus… hopefully that hasn’t caused me to mess up much.
The first block was basically a mess for me… and this was another mistake reaction. I saw it had an Abstract and it had those 2 sticking questions. It also had 3 calculations and so I freaked out … I was tachycardic and not focused…
Also, checking the time remaining on the block was a double edged sword. when I saw that I had enough time left in the block I just took my time in the subsequent questions instead of aiming to finish all of the questions and going back to marked… so I basically never had time in any block to re-do the marked…
As I said earlier, I knew I had problems with ECG and didn’t do anything about it… so whenever I saw ECGs on the test (there were many) I just was random at approaching them and tried to spot anything … that wasn’t cool lol…
I talked about my mistakes mostly so that you can avoid them and do better… in the end, have confidence, follow what your gut tells you and have faith…
UW First pass 75.5% 2nd pass 89.5%
Some of the take home points and very important tips:
1- It’s okay to be tired. It’s definitely okay to have some fun and time for yourself, you just have to weigh it and not overdo it.
2- If you need to have fun, do something that you REALLY enjoy. Don’t just spend hours on social media and call it having a break. You can spend time with family, talk to a good friend, walk, go to a new place… etc
3- Listen to others’ advice but still try yourself first… whatever suits you or suits them may not work the other way around.
4- If you really want something and have a good intention for it… you’ll find a way to it… there is always a way… you just have to find it.
5- If you’re weak in an area don’t ignore it, work on it.
6- The exam is very close to UW and it had many questions from step 1 that weren’t mentioned in UW CK. It’s 100% better to start your prep with step 1.
7- It’s important to take free 120 at the prometric.
8- Some stations may have some technical problems that you should pay attention to. Those that I noticed happen with my station are:
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When 2 subsequent questions have the button “Proceed to the next item” placed at the same location it may be clicked twice and cause you to skip the second question. So always pay attention to the dots beside the questions before finishing your block to make sure that all of the questions are answered.
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Clicking numbers on the calculator was a mess, one click caused the number to appear 2-3 times. Using the keyboard numbers solved that problem for me.
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If you pick an answer in a question that has lab values and then open the lab panel to double check, if you search for a lab value that includes either letter included in the answers then the answer will switch. Example: If you choose answer B and then you search for lab values for “Cortisol” which has letter C. The chosen answer will probably switch to C. As it’s a keyboard shortcut.
9- The vast majority of the people posting their experiences are those with 260s and 270s… this was a major part of my stress as it made me feel like these are the scores EVERYONE is getting and I felt like if I did less than that I won’t be good enough… which I am sure is also the reason why others with less scores and average scores wouldn’t post their experiences even though they have worked hard and they’re good enough. Set your own goal for your own self depending on your own circumstances and the specialty you want to major in. Definitely aim for the highest but still be realistic and don’t be hard on yourself.
10- You can do whatever you set your mind to if that’s what’s best for you… If you’re pushed away from it then it’s not the best thing for you.
11- The pride that you feel in the end is priceless. Also pride your loved ones feel because of your accomplishment. The hardships end… this is a tough phase that becomes just a memory but the outcome stays forever…
Because I know I’ll be asked about my step 1 score… it’s 250.
EDIT: Since so many asked for step 1 experience I uploaded it to this group’s files under name step 1_exp_MA.pdf
Also posted link in comments
I’ve been blessed to be able to finish this journey in this somewhat short time and I’ll be happy to answer any of your questions regarding any of the steps… Ofcourse, posting the questions in comments will help your colleagues who may have the same questions but I understand that many of you will not be able to do that so you can message me if you can’t post in comments.
Sorry for the long post but I needed to post as much of the whole picture as possible. I’ll add to this post with italic font whenever I remember things to say.
Best of luck everyone and Eid Adha Mubarak to all Muslims