Dr. Rahmi Khawaja
BACKGROUND:
I was an average student in medical college and hence my background is irrelevant to USMLE
score. I started preparing steps 2 years after medical college was over. Hence whatever little I had
studied in medical college was wiped clean and i had to start afresh. I took 1.5 years to prepare
for this exam which is much more than most people but i wanted to score high on my exam and
hence was willing to put in the extra effort.
PREPARATION METHODOLOGY:
I started my preparation with DIT and First Aid USMLE Step 1 and Fundamentals of Pathology – Dr.
Hussain Sattar. You might wonder why I started out with these 2 books… The reason was that they
give a fast past review of the entire curriculum. I like to have a bird’s eye view of the course before
i start preparing. So i did DIT and FA first. Believe me the course is very nice and if you try to
memorize the FA well by doing with DIT and googling simultaneously then i am sure you will learn
a lot of stuff. I also did Kaplan Lecture Notes for USMLE Step 1 sporadically and not continuously
Never seen the
caught Fish no
freshtohome.c
50 Most Popula
Family Minded
Now at Madam
Have You Droo
Forbes India
Hearing Aid Tri
Nadu for Over
India Hearinga
because I did not find the books to be very helpful. I found Biochem and Immunology Kaplan
books to be helpful but not all of the books were helpful. Once I was done with these… I started
doing UW questions. I did them tutor subjectwise the first time round and got 84% correct. I did
them subjectwise because i felt that it would be more beneficial to me to do the questions
subjectwise while also simultaneously doing the texts.
Once i was done with this, I went on to the following:
Kaplan Medical Ethics 100 cases by Conrad Fischer
BRS Gross Anatomy
BRS Physiology
I then started to do NBME retired forms as i wanted to see where i stand. I did these NBME forms
at a pace of 1 form per week… I would do the NBME tests (aka forms) one per week and then do
the answers and explanations in the rest of the week. This was very helpful as I was getting a lot of
practice and these questions are actually very helpful in the test too as there are repeats.
Subsequently, I started doing UW for a second time… I got 97% correct because i already knew
most of the stuff.
I then started doing the rest of the NBME tests. I made sure that i do them in a perfect testing
environment to simulate the real deal.
NBME scores were between mid 250s to mid 260s. I never got a 270 on my NBME forms and
never in my wildest imagination did i think i will score that much.
Real Deal:
Exam was tough but do-able. The questions were from the topics i had studied albeit presented in
a difficult manner. Work hard and you will score well. Journey is tough but not impossible.