My question is how long in between should you schedule Day 1 and Day 2 of the exam? Subjectively I wanted to get the test out of the way and I took it two days in a row and I felt it was doable. Colleagues of mine have done it similarly while otherwise took a day or two in between because of logistics.
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Enter your email address to subscribe to this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. Katz on September 30, at 8: Format of the test Day one is the prototypical USMLE step exam consisting of 6 blocks of items plus 45 minutes of break time leaving you with a 7 hour test on day 1. Interactive cases- practice, practice, practice Half of doing well on the 13 interactive cases on day 2 is knowing how to use the interface.
Still have some burning questions about how to study for step 3?
Leave a question in the comments section below! September 2, at 8: September 2, at 9: Thanks for your insight Marc and the lightning fast reply! September 2, at Leave a Reply Cancel reply. Subscribe Enter your e-mail address to receive notifications when new posts go up! Follow me on Twitter My Tweets.
So why did I ignore this advice?
How to Study for the USMLE Step 1
And what did I do to eventually boost my score to ? Here I deconstruct several of the most common beliefs surrounding the UWorld Question Bank, and see whether they withstand rational scrutiny. I considered sifting through any of the number of anonymous USMLE forums to find examples of this advice, but to be honest, I still get pangs of anxiety whenever I look through those forums, with all of their distress and breathless dogma. This is perhaps the most common advice I heard as a medical student, and one that I ignored.
What is the basis for this common medical student belief? This is one of the most common misconceptions I see among students preparing for Step 1: This sounds reasonable until you consider that it ignores the opportunity cost of spending weeks repeating UWorld over and over. In other words, every single time you repeat a UWorld question, you are losing the opportunity to study a question from a different question bank, one that might help you grow your knowledge in other ways that UWorld will not.
UWorld: Is Your Strategy Wrong? (I Scored 270 By Ignoring The Dogma)
UWorld is fantastic, but is by no means infallible. There are definite strengths and weaknesses to UWorld, and to ignore other valuable resources is to set yourself up for potential disappointment. For example, it is excellent at making difficult two-step reasoning questions, although tends to be weaker on more recall-type questions that are also seen on USMLE Step 1. Fiction, although to get the most out of any question bank, make sure to use Anki to make sure you never make the same mistake again.
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One of the most difficult things about the USMLE Step 1 is that you will see questions that you have never seen before, or even thought about. My real secret to scoring on Step 1 is this: Doing well on the USMLEs and Step 1 in particular involves having as much integrated, applied knowledge of the human body as possible, and knowing how to apply it to clinical scenarios.
While I agree that introducing a QBank into your studies early in your second year or even late in your first year is useful, this definitely does NOT have to be UWorld I would even argue that this is a waste of the UWorld questions. By constantly practicing my ability to apply knowledge to novel clinical scenarios, I vastly improved my Step 1 score.
UWorld: Is Your Strategy Wrong? (I Scored By Ignoring The Dogma)
The two times I had repeated wrong questions once by accident, and once by curiosity , I found that since I was using Anki, I could remember not only what the right answer was, but also what the flaw in my reasoning had been when I first saw the question. And while I may have improved my knowledge slightly by repeating the question, I found that I learned much less in 30 minutes of work than if I had simply done 30 minutes of the Kaplan QBank.
Fiction, although if you plan on only completing a single QBank once, then I would recommend using UWorld.