USMLE Step 1 – 256 Experience
I’ll try to make this guide as helpful as possible. Whatever I write here is based on my own
experience and the experiences of top scorers I observed during my preparation.
Resources:
This is the most important part of your preparation and probably most variable also bcoz It
depends on your previous knowledge and your way of studying so u have to find out what works
for you. Kaplan , highyield, roadmap brs etc etc the list goes on and on . important thing is to stick
with one book for one subject. If you have difficulty understanding anything google it. It will take
sometime but its goin to be worth it
Here is the list of stuff I used, whether or not I found them helpful and what was my previous
knowledge in these subjects(on a scale of 0 to 10.
- A) Physiology: 4/10 I never read guyton or ganong in my medical school. just glanced at a
review book to but still I never found this subject too hard. - Kaplan notes- read the notes and watched the videos . I didn’t like this book. Dragged myself
upto the renal system then decided to skip. And then started BRS - BRS physiology- hands down the best book for physiology. Probably somewhat difficult to
understand at first bcoz its written in a concise way but it’s GOLD my friends. Its questions
are important also specially the cvs and respiratory part. owe my star to this book for these
systems. - B) Anatomy: 3/10 this was my most dreaded dreaded subject. Reason #1 bcoz I had a very
weak background knowledge. No wonder I failed in this subject in my first year of med
school. Never read a single word of neuroanatomy . Reason #2 recent exam change had
focused on including more questions from anatomy . - Kaplan- read the notes including the neuroanatomy . but skipped the videos.
- BRS gross anatomy- skimmed through the clinical corelations, muscles chart and pelvic
anatomy etc - High yield neuroanatomy- decided to use this as well bcoz at that time this book had too
much fame and I had weak knowledge abt this subject . I realize now this was a mistake bcoz
I never got time again to revise this one. - Anatomy Shelf notes- a good resource but only use it if u have got extra time. I never finished
it. You can not read this without first knowing the basics written in Kaplan or any other
review book. - C) Biochemistry(including genetics and mol.bio) : 4/10 begin your study with this subject bcoz
this can turn out to be a solid base for other subjects like pharm. I had done well in this
subject(nutrition and metabolism) in my medical school but never studied genetics or
molecular biology . again! not even a single word! - Kaplan notes- read along with the videos. This is the only subject where Kaplan is at its best.
You don’t need anything else for this. - D) Pathology: 5/10 I never studied big robbins in my medical school or anything. Totally
depended on review books and I somehow did pretty well on this one always. - Goljan- I studied 3rd edition in the very beginning of my prep… like 7 months or even more
before the exam and I had forgotten everything in these 6 months and I never got time to
revise this one so I don’t really think I would call it as my resource for this subject. but it is
amazing book. Very important to do if you have time. - Pathoma – I watched the videos only. Its a really great resource. specially the way
histopathology is explained. It cant get any better than this. - E) Biostat and EPi- 0/10 this was like alien language . I never read anything about community
medicine in my medical school. By this time U might be wondering how the hell I made it
through the medical school grin emoticon but keep reading and you’ll wonder more.
1.Kaplan notes- okayyyy this was a good one. Read the notes and watched the videos. Found it
helpful but still I wasn’t ready for this one. - BRS- just about a month before my exam I borrowed this book from a friend and I got to say
this is a great book I did only the biostat and epidem portions and it was great. The questions
are gold . now I was feeling pretty good about this one . - UW biostat and epidem review- if BRS was gold then this was Diamond. After this I felt ready
to take down these questions - F) Microbiology – 3/10 i had never studied anything about virology and fungi . I only did
bacteriology and parasitology in my medical school and passed the exams. So I had to work a
bit extra for this one also.
1-Kaplan notes- did them with the videos. And OMG! what a load of horse shit this book was.
LoL!!! And the lady in the videos was so slow . after every sentence she takes a big deep breath
like she is goin to faint or sth. It made me feel so sleepy . this was total bullshit . only the
parasitology stuff is good. - G) Immunology- 1/10 again… not even a single word !! ever!!! So extra work was required.
1-Kaplan notes- did them with the videos. The notes are very good. The videos are absolute waste
of time.
BURN OUT !!! at this point I looked back and I realized I don’t remember anything at all. I had
wasted too much of my time on these big Kaplan books. And I still had Pharm and behavioural
science left. So I decided to review some subjects and start first aid asap. And you guys will feel
this way as well and its normal bcoz we all are human after all , not machines.
So instead of going any further I thought to revise what I had studies so far. I Reviewed phyiology
from brs with kaplans 700 qbank. Reviewed biochem, genetics, mol bio , biostat and imuuno. The
rest of the subjects I didn’t review. - H) Pharmacology- 2/10 I didn’t even know how aspirin works unsure emoticon
1- FA + only the basic stuff and ANS chapters from Kaplan. This subject is all about cramming and
a little bit about understanding stuff like the bioavailability, solubility , agonists anatagonists etc
etc. you can skip Kaplan on this one. I heard the videos are good and I did try watching some of
the lectures by Dr. Raymond and I enjoyed him being obsessed with ‘butt’ jokes but then I realized
this was taking lot of time so I stopped and focused on FA and UW only. - I) Behavioural science- 0/10 this was again alien language but I did know stuff like mania and
depression probably bcoz of personal experience of suffering this during my prep tongue
emoticon
1-kaplan notes except the dsm iv- good resource. did the notes really quickly with the videos. For
dsm iv/v I did FA only.
2- BRS- I glanced through this one on some topics like health care system in US the pay and the
insurance stuff etc
3-ethics book by C.Fischer
- J) Miscellaneous stuff : these have their importance but are very vast so I’m goin to try to be
specific here.
1.Webpath- amazing source but I couldn’t finish it. Not too important.
2.Google images- this is pretty random but very important. Any buzz word you see google it e.g
pick bodies, clouded cornea, soap bubble appearance, birefrigent crystals , saber shin ,coffin lid
stone etc etc you wont get these buzz words. You get the description of these things in a weird
way or a picture of it so think outside the box here.
3.Wikipedia-this is again random and huge but this is important for topics that you don’t
understand or stuff that’s ignored by review books like kaplan (check step 1 content outline and
you will have the idea of what I’m talking bout here)
And FINALLY now it was time to bring the big guns sunglasses emoticon. Uworld and FA.
FA- the first read took me about 3 weeks. I also made some notes from Kaplan on FA which was
totally worthless. After my first read of FA I started Uworld.
Uworld- this is like bazooka. This is the best thing to prepare from. I did this with FA , annotating
along the way. If I didn’t understand anything I would google it and find out the explanation . This
is important . i didn’t go through books as much as I did through the Wikipedia , Medscape and
any thing on internet I could get my hands on. An u know what I had questions on exam that are
not written in these review books. So thank you Wikipedia. I never looked back on Kaplan or any
other book. FA+UW was the my focus now.
But Before going for UW, I took nbme 7 and I didn’t do well.
After UW, I did nbme 3 and was able to get a good score but it didn’t matter since this form was
way too old.
So I reviewed FA again quickly and started UW 2nd time. This time I tried something different and
crazy I would say. I would do at least 7 blocks continuously and timed mode on one day and
review it on next day. sometimes I would do as many blocks as I can, back to back everyday. This
way I finished UW 2nd run in 10 days.
BURN OUT!!! Seems like doing UW in this crazy way wasn’t such a good idea unsure emoticon I
was very very tired. I took nbme 11 and got a very decent score. I was happy but I knew that 11 is
also old form and the exam is not going to be so easy.
After all this I didn’t have any energy to do FA anymore and that’s when I started DIT. I used DIT as
a study companion . like a study partner. It kept me focused and I finished it with reviewing FA,
with all the annotations and notes I made.
It was Time to assess myself again and I took nbme 13 and my score droped from 11 by 7 points. I
wasn’t happy obviously. I was stressed but I cudn’t go on any further . took rest for few days , got
my courage back from watching avengers new movie tongue emoticonand I decided to sum it all
up for one last time. I did UW 3rd time only for practice. I didn’t read explanations this time. It
wasn’t really helpful now but anyway I finished it in few days along with FA. Did nbme 15 and
score dropped again. I seriously started doubting myself now I couldn’t understand what was
wrong. May be I was just tired or may be I wasn’t focusing while reading question. I found 15 to be
somewhat difficult in understanding the way its questions were phrased. Anyways I had a 2 weeks
left for my exam now and I didn’t want to postpone I reviewed FA along with Kaplan qbank for
some subjects. I took 16 and score jumped a little but still it wasn’t where I thought I was.
Last 4 days before exam, I didn’t study anything . it was Diwali and I was just relaxing and making
myself ready for the exam mentally. One day before the exam I reviewed biochem pathways and
biostats and all the formulas.
EXAM DAY
Monster was here and the big guns were ready . in the very first block I faced some weird ck type
questions and I thought to myself well may be the weird block is over and now the rest of the
exam would be somewhat a smooth ride. But I was wrong. In every block I had ck type questions
and the wtf anatomy questions that were out of Kaplan , out of uworld and out of any world Who
gives u weird MRIs of limb and asks to identify the muscles. This was unfair. I was like WTF is
happening here. I calmed down myself and I tried to do as best as I could. overall The questions
were very long with ton of labs and pictures. I could only spare myself 5 minutes to review the
questions I had marked which ranged from 12 to 20 in every block. Naturally I couldn’t review all
of my marked questions in 5 minutes.
MISTAKES
In the retrospect if I had known I would face this kind of exam
#1 I would not have spent my time on any Kaplan book except its biochemistry.
#2 I would have done all of webpath
#3 I would have saved time to do goljan
#4 I’d have solved more questions
#5 I’d have seen more Pictures including gross patho, derma patho, ct scans and MRI of muscles
Know that the journey is long and nobody has smooth sail. you will make mistakes. you will make
sacrifices . you will face challenges. people may doubt you but never doubt yourself. Keep their
criticism in the head not in the heart. Sublimate those emotions and focus on your journey
For my sindhi friends ‘edo na thi jazbati chaati na pawaee phaati’ grin emoticon
Take it easy people and Goodluck