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My name is Mohammad Abualia. I finished medschool in the University of Jordan – Jordan in 2019. It is a 6-year program of 3 basic years followed by 3 clinical years. I finished top of my class (of around 600 students) with a GPA of 4.0. I am currently an intern and planning to apply to the match of 2020-2021. I scored 273 in Step 1.
Overall preparation:
I started my preparation around September 2019, but had to take several pauses, and resumed by around January 2020 after doing approximately 15% of my preparation. I was almost ready late April 2020 but due to COVID-19, my exam got postponed 8 times and finally sat for it in June 2020. The entire duration of my preparation was around 7 months.
Before preparing for the test:
I started reading First Aid during my first clinical year (4th year) as I planned initially to do Step 1 in the following year, but due to several personal issues, I postponed the plans to after graduation. By the time I started my actual preparation, I have had read around 85% of First Aid.
Score: I have scored 273 in my actual test. The target was 260+, after doing the assessments I felt that a 265+ or even 270+ was potentially possible.
Details:
1-Phase I: First Aid: The book was my initial guide to knowing what to study. I finished 85% of it during med-school. I read the chapters according to their order in the book. I had a very hard base from my basic years (during which I studied from: Robbins Basic Pathology, Lippincott’s Biochemistry, Katzung’s Pharmacology, Snell’s Clinical Anatomy, Junqueira’s Histology, Netter’s Atlas of Anatomy, BRS Physiology, and only my lecture notes for everything else (mainly microbiology and systems)). Don’t panic from the list of books, I was referring to them during my medschool years and way before I wanted to study for Step 1. I also didn’t finish any of them completely, but they were major references over the years.
While reading each chapter in First Aid, I was trying to make sense of every single word, if my own knowledge did not serve me, I referred to the books I mentioned, in addition to Goljan’s Rapid Review. I did not write notes on my FA, as I never do in general, I only try to hold the information in my memory and anything else would not be written as a note.
2-Phase 2.1: UWorld: I started doing UW in September 2019 after finishing 85% of FA. I solved questions only in timed mode to get used to time-trouble. I did the entire thing in blocks of 40 questions, all were timed and random (with a few blocks that covered only one subject). My purpose was to learn to deal with the test more than just piling up information in my head. It was more of practicing as many exam-like blocks as possible. At the same time, I took every single block as a real exam, although initially I had several subjects uncovered yet, I did not tolerate making too many mistakes. After solving around 400 questions, I managed to detect my gaps. I paused doing any more UW, and decided to fix all my defects one by one:
3-Phase 2.2: The defects: My defects as detected by doing UW:
– Behavioral sciences: my major defect, I was at around the 37th percentile after doing around 70 questions from UW. I read Conrad Fischer’s 100 Cases, followed by a few selected chapters from BRS Behavioral sciences. I tried to create my own rules in dealing with Ethics questions to know exactly how to eliminate answers. For Biostatistics, I did the UW Biostatistics extra material, as well as Amboss, and a few YouTube videos, I solved many questions until I got a hold of each concept.
– Anatomy: I was decent in basic anatomy from medschool, but I needed better clinical correlations. I used the very excellent Dorian’s Anki Deck: 100 Concepts in Anatomy. I coupled it with some of the tables and graphs in Snell’s Clinical anatomy, as it has always been my favorite.
– Cardiac auscultation: I basically listened to tens of audio files from YouTube of cardiac murmurs, I literally repeated them 10s of times to grasp what’s happening fully.
– My overall level in General Principles: ZANKI was a huge life saver. I discovered Zanki during my UW defect pause, and I stared doing general principles from it, it was gold. I did Metabolism first, took me 3 days, then moved to Pathology (which is based off Pathoma’s first three chapters), Immunology, and Pharmacology (took around 3 weeks). I did not review my cards yet; I only did a first pass and was taking my time to study the cards. I then proceeded to do the systems, and I finished around 20k Anki Cards overall.
4-Phase 2.3: Back to UW:
After filling my major defects, and doing Zanki, I had to take a 2-month pause to work. This was not the best move, but I had to.
I resumed in around January 2020. I did UWorld as follows:
My method was that each piece of info must be fully understood and memorized, no second pass or review of UW was in mind, each explanation was only read once and comprehended fully. I managed to do around 40 questions a day: I solved the block (timed, random), and started reading the explanations. I did NOT transfer notes to FA, nor did I review the subject from it. I used the flash card tool in UW to store my notes instead, which was much easier, and I reviewed these flash cards (around 4k) near the end of my preparation. I referred to one of 4 references while doing UW: Microbiology Made Ridiculously Simple for any microbiology question, Katzung’s Pharmacology Review for the Boards for any pharma question, FA if needed (but not for all questions as I mentioned), and finally the internet. I looked up diseases from Wikipedia, watched YouTube videos, and looked up images whenever necessary.
I finished UWorld in around 3.5 months with this method.
5-Phase 3: Review, assessments and COVID-19:
I had plans to do the test in April 2020. But Prometric closures gave me 2 extra months of completely free time (previously I only had 4-5 hours a day maximum). I finished up my UW (had around 250 questions remaining) and re-read around half of FA. I had so many pauses as I did not expect to do the test this year, I even purchased UW for Step 2 CK and did a few blocks.
As a review, in addition to re-reading some of FA, I did the Rapid Review at the end of the book and referred to all the relevant pages, did some Zanki reviews, read all of the Biostats material in Amboss, and reviewed my UW flash cards.
As for my assessments:
I did UWSA1 after finishing around 70% of UW. I did Amboss self-assessment when in late February. UWSA2 was 2 weeks before my test. And NBME Free 120 5 days before. Scores:
UWSA1: 279
Amboss self-assessment 2020: 274 (compare to my Amboss self-assessment 2019 that I did as a baseline: 254)
UWSA2: 279
Free 120: 96%
Skills that I worked on to get 270+:
Fund of Knowledge: obviously, you need to know many things, and by knowing, I mean both understanding and memorizing. You need to understand the difference between pressure overload and volume overload on the heart, and you need to memorize all the types of second messengers for the different receptors. For understanding concepts, I am heavily an analytical student; meaning I try to figure out any correlation or reasoning behind a fact before I consult a book or a video, with time you start developing the ability to understand any new concept with ease and with little time, this is extremely important as you can actually see completely new concepts in the test, and with only good understanding of the given facts in the question stem, you can figure out a reasonable answer. For memorization, four tools: one: you will remember what you understand, two: mnemonics and mind maps, three: repetition, and four: studying the same concepts from different places at different times.
Question solving: you need to master MCQs, you need to know what the question is about, rule out answers, analyze figures, and give several reasons behind your answer. This is only achieved with solving as many questions as possible, with the goal of getting the correct answer, and not only learning the concept. I have never tolerated getting an answer wrong even for a new concept. I did the 3100 UW questions, around 1000 free questions from medbullets, 700 Amboss questions, and an extra 500 questions from assessments. It’s not only about how many questions you do, it’s about getting the correct answers.
Time management: you must get faster and faster. Anyone can know the answer to any test question if given enough time, it’s all about doing 280 questions in less than 7 hours. Thus, I did all my questions timed, with the target of getting faster and faster, my average speed in UW was 72 seconds per question.
Summary of sources in order of importance and contribution to my score:
A+: UWorld: by far the most important tool. It teaches you all the 3 fundamental skills needed to ace the test. Does it cover every single question you will get in the test? Of course not. Does it prepare you for them? Yes. I only did a single pass (92% correct, 98th percentile) as UWorld is heavily time consuming. I felt that several questions were redundant, but it could be seen as a spaced repetition. Should you do UW? Yes. Should you do 100% of it? Not important but try to do it.
A: Anki: I did Zanki, Dorian’s Anatomy, and some lolnotacop microbiology. It made my life 2x easier, especially that I did my cards during commute, before bed, and at any given interval. It is a very excellent learning method that I personally found convenient. I finished from 50-700 cards a day, and I did not dedicate my entire day for it except when I did anatomy. Is it a must? No. Is it worth a try? For sure.
B+: First Aid: the book covers 95% of the concepts, and around 60% of details. The figures and tables are very well done. But it was too rigid for my taste, and I can’t just memorize things mindlessly. I did my second read only in fear that I forgot things after the prolonged preparation and pauses. It is a must in my opinion, as it is an excellent outline to the subjects. I gave it a B+ because it did not heavily contribute to my score (the end point of this whole thing) it guided me, yes, but UW and Anki were the champs.
B: Microbiology Made Ridiculously Simple (read around 60%), Katzung Pharmacology Review for the Boards (50%), Conrad Fisher’s 100 Cases (100%), BRS Behavioral sciences (60%): I did these as the previous sources did not completely cover my personal defects in them. I recommend you carefully tailor any extra source to your own weaknesses and style.
B-: Amboss, Medbullets, Snell’s Anatomy, and Goljan’s Rapid Review: I used these, and they helped, but if I do this whole thing again in a parallel universe, I would not do them again as the time-benefit ratio was too high for me. Amboss make very tricky questions that are dissimilar to the real test, so you must be careful, Amboss’ content teaches you the minute tricks and pitfalls, but the test is not like that. Medbullets was a nice addition as a Q bank but was not significant. I enjoyed both Goljan and Snell and would refer to them in all my future studies but were not very influential to my score.
Sources I did NOT use:
You are probably looking for Pathoma, Sketchy, and Boards & Beyond. I simply did not use them, they might have saved me a lot of time, hell they might have raised my score, but I did not use them. I really do not enjoy learning via videos and prefer reading and making my own conclusions. Pathoma and BnB are great at saving your energy from thinking and looking things up, but this has not been my style since school. For Sketchy, it’s a very intelligent learning tool, I watched a couple of videos, but I am an extremely visual learner (with images, not videos) and I already had a mental image for all the microbes and drugs, Sketchy would only have ruined my already existent knowledge. These three sources, are, however, highly recommended if you don’t have my issues with them.
The test:
I walked into the test fully confident with my preparation, skills, and ability. However, I was in a state of hyper-arousal and extreme excitement. I tried to be calm as this is how I usually am during tests. I could only sleep for 4 hours, but I highly recommend 7 hours of good sleep. Make little work in the last 2 days before the test to avoid this hyper-arousal. Do not do anything very different from the daily routine. I woke up at 5 am (had to be at Prometric at 8) without an alarm. I had a single cup of coffee (my daily dose), no more, no less. I ate protein bars during the breaks, visited the restroom twice, and drank lots of milk and had a bar of chocolate. I do not have breakfast generally and so I did not need lots of food, but I recommend avoiding any heavy meals or anything full in carbohydrates. I watched the tutorial at home and gained 15 minutes to my breaks. I did all the blocks in 55-60 minutes, this included 40 minutes of question solving, 10 minutes of checking flagged questions (I flagged 4 per block in average) and reviewed the rest of the questions over 5-10 minutes. This is exactly how I did over 70 blocks of UW/other at home, 40+10+10 with around 4 flags. Nothing felt odd or different from an assessment I did at home. The test felt very comprehensive and satisfying after all this work. I used only 37 minutes of my break hour, as I feared getting sleepy by the end of it. I took 4 breaks (after blocks 1, 3, 5 and 6).
Summary:
Duration of preparation: 7 months (5 months of 4-5 hours a day, and 2 months of dedicated 8 hours a day during the pandemic)
Main material: UWorld (1x, 92% correct, did flash cards), FA 2019 (1.5x, no notes), and Anki (Zanki, Dorian’s and lolnotacop micro over 1 month, 20k cards). Amboss (700 questions, 87% correct), Medbullets (1000 questions, 93% correct). And a handful of other sources (see above).
Did NOT do Pathoma, BnB or Sketchy (see above)
Assessments: UWSA1 (279, 3 months before test), Amboss 2020 (274, 4 months before), UWSA2 (279, 2 weeks), Free 120 (96%, 5 days before).
Thank you 