Step 1 experience- European IMG Score 242

Step 1 experience- European IMG

Score 242

Duration of preparation: around 1 year

My main resources through the step 1 road were q banks. I have done a lot of questions, probably more than 12000. I wrote the most important notes (2-3 words per point) from all qbanks I used. The month before the exam: FA + my notes.

Q banks:

  1. UWorld - the most useful qbank. Start as soon as possible. I did it only one time online, but I wrote the notes, which I used before the exam and I remembered every single picture and table from UW.

  2. Amboss - very similar type of questions like UW. It is probably the second-best option after UW in my opinion. Some questions are CK oriented. I didn’t use their library, but I’ve heard that it is good.

  3. NBME forms - it is useful to get more experience and stamina. There are a lot of tricky questions, a great way to prepare for the exam mentally.

Good way to discover your weak areas.

  1. Rx - it is easier than previous qbanks, but it is also a good q bank. A lot of labs to distract you. There are some concepts that are not mentioned in FA. You can also use it to remember FA, because there are FA paragraphs related to the questions below the explanation.

  2. Kaplan - I have done some weak topics for me. Questions are good, harder than Rx…

  3. Medbullets - I really don’t know why people don’t talk about it…It has a long free trial…Questions are very good, some low yield, but it has around 3000 questions that are free and solid…I like open discussion below the questions…I have done around 400 questions because I didn’t have enough time and I discovered a month before the exam. Use It at least to cover your weak areas.

  4. Archer qbank - around 1000 questions for 19 dollars, I used it to improve my stamina.

Other resources:

-FA 10/10

-Pepper UWorld

-UW Statistics + BB statistics

-Anatomy- Shelf notes

-100 cases

-Pathoma - not necessary

-BB- renal, cardiovascular and respiratory physiology - most important.

-illustrations from Basic Immunology - Abbas

-pictures from Goljan

There were a lot of distractions around me during the last month, but I didn’t want to postpone my exam. Most of my NBME and UWSA forms overpredicted by 5-15 points