“Which, then, of your Lord’s blessings do you both deny?”
Alhamdulillah i’m done with step 1
I’m a graduate from Pakistan. I skipped HJ and started step 1 prep in March. At start i took a few breaks and from May onwards i was consistent.
I had April triad but due to COVID i couldn’t give exam. Allah had better plan.
Resources.
Kaplan: i would recommend don’t use it as it covers a lot of topics which are not needed plus it’s time taking. I you want to use any lectures Dr. Turco lectures can be used.
B&B: it’s a great resource. I used b&b for most of the portion of FA.
Sketchy: just love it. Sketchy made microbiology really easy and doable. I would recommend Sketchy only for those who have picture memory.
Dirty medicine: ECG’s were very helpful. Plus if you don’t understand anything it’s a great resource to use.
Pathoma: i 1st read whole pathoma with lectures and annotated the extra stuff on FA and before exam only 1st 4 chapters. It really helped.
Uworld: only one pass timed and random mode with 77%
FA: about 6-7 reads. Try to remember it in your prep as it’s quite lengthy. Plus it’s normal to forget it even after 6-7 reads i had very little confidence. Only long term memory matters mainly in paper .
Assessments.
NBME 21: 236
NBME 22:239
NBME 23: 251
NBME 24: 232
NBME 18:235
UWSA 1 : 258
UWSA 2: 251
Free 120:84
Actual score :248 Alhamdulillah
General Tips:
- It’s totally normal to forget FA and don’t gets depressed as long as you can solve a question of specific topic you’re good as exam is about MCQs not to write whole topic.
- Strat your assessments early and simulate by doing 4 blocks of NBME’s with 2 blocks of uworld. It really really helped me in exam as i had no headache during exam even though i just slept 2 hours exam night.
- Ethics questions were really weird so use other resources other than uworld, cornard 100 cases. My exam ethics questions wasn’t like Cornard they were very different.
- At start i was able to do only 30 questions of uworld a day even though i was studying about 9-10 hours. So it’s normal to have slow pace. Plus during my 1st cover to cover read of FA i used to do only 9-10 pages per day. So don’t be depressed by this that i’m going slowly. It happens to everyone
EXAM day Tip: - Take your own ear plugs it helps reduce nouse of mouse tik tim noise
- Notice in your assessments when your headache starts and take 2 panadol tablets atleast one block before that.