Evening guys , out of paying back to this group that helped me a lot and other fellow doctors who want to pursue the USMLE journey , I want to share my experience regarding the preparation period and the whole thing , first of all I graduated in 2019 from faculty of medicine Cairo University . couple of days ago I received my score report for Step2ck (No step1) .
I started studying while on my final year of med school, without doing step 1 so maybe that’s why it took me longer than usual .
Prep time :
2 years : (very long I know)
first year : was my first encounter with either internal medicine or surgery so I started from the scratch I watched all Kaplan revision videos and took notes
I did renal and electrolytes from Davidson’s (highly recommended)
I did endocrine and GIT from Johns Hopkins text book
I did pediatrics , OB/GYN and blood from Online meded (perfect)
I did pathoma before every branch I study .
second year : I started to be more dedicated and did Uworld first round with an average of 60% in the 3000Qs
after the first round I thought I’d do well on UWSA1 but I got 197 , it was my first ever Assessment I was so disappointed but then I was advised to try doing CMS , I did all the forms almost 2000 Qs they were kinda easier than Uworld but I didn’t find them that helpful . then I did offline NBME8 with 40 mistakes out of 183 , I was disappointed again .
Then my friends advised me to give it a second round of uworld, So I did with an avg of 75% . then I also thought this would do the trick , I scored 210 on NBME6 online ( I don’t trust NBMEs btw)
then I did another round of studying of the material from all UW notes with the notes I took and was ready to take the exam on march but corona happened and my exam got cancelled 6 times till I finally took it on July the 7th
ANKI was good but I discovered it late .
Amboss is overrated . (my opinion)
I took UWSA2 : 12 days before the exam with a score of 215 " I was shocked and made my peace with the low score or even failure of exam that I might experience . and then decided to take the exam anyways because I felt like I did all I can . so I started the final revision stress free ,
took (free 120( 2 days before the exam with a score of 79% …
UWSA 2 : 215
Real deal : 229
Exam day :
it was a very long day with 8 hours of concentration with the mask on !! but trust your adrenaline rush. the questions are easier than Uworld . you must practice to solve at least 2 blocks back to back to raise your stamina before the exam , of course there were alot of unsolvable Questions but they’re not calculated , I guess.
it took me 2 protein bars a Redbull and a small bottle of water to go through this day .
finally : doing step2 before step1 was a mistake I admit it but I wasn’t willing to bail on the last moment because it was too late to reconsider even though I know my score would’ve been higher if I did step 1 first .
the bottom line is , it’s doable , really mentally physically and psychologically draining , but doable . and the moment you see your score report , you’ll forget all that.
special thanks to the best study partners anyone could have :
Omer Khaled
Komal Gangar
to me you were more friends than study partners 