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Thabet Qabaja : My step 1 experience Score : 273



I would like to thank everyone in this group as your experiences helped me a lot during my preparation.
Exam date : Sept/11/2017
Score date : Oct/4/2017
Score : 273
-Duration of preparation : 14 months, I had a lot of interruptions during my preparation.
-Materials : first aid (5-6) times, uworld (2 times), kaplan videos and books, pathoma, BRS physiology, Uworld biostat, 100 cases medical ethics
-Self assessments:
NBME 12 - 12 mistakes (2 months before exam)
NBME 13 - 12 mistakes ( 2 months before exam)
NBME 19 online - 271 (2 months before exam)
UWSA 1 - 279 (1.5 months before exam)
UWSA 2 - 273 (1 week after UWSA 1)
NBME 18 online - 267 ( 2.5 weeks before exam)
NBME 17 online - 271 ( 1 week before exam)
NBME 16 online - 263 ( 3 days before exam)
Free 120 - 93%
I am a 6th year medical student at the university of Jordan. I started my preparation in July, 2016. I started with kaplan and pathoma along with reading first aid. It took me 4 months to do kaplan and pathoma. As I said, I had a lot of interruptions during my preparation, sometimes lasting more than 2 months. I started uworld in December, 2016. It took me 6 months to finish uworld (because of interruptions, it should have taken less time). I used to do 60-70 questions a day. I think doing uworld was the most important part of my preparation. I read the explanations very well and took notes. I did uworld for the second time in July-August, 2017 ( 1.5 months).
-Exam : I only slept for 2 hours on the night of exam. I saw everyone posting about how long the exam questions were , but I didn’t find them long at all. Some of the questions were as long as NBME questions, others were as long as uworld questions. Anatomy questions were hard in my exam.
I did 2 blocks - break - 2 blocks - break - 1 block - break - 1 block - break - last block. I had to take a red bull and a lot of coffee to the exam to keep me awake. I also brought chocolate and a sandwich (you will need them)
-Advice (in my opinion):
1- do not waste a lot of time on kaplan books trying to memorize everything in them. I thought they were useful because they made it easier to read and understand things in first aid.
2-Start uworld early in your preparation. Uworld helped me a lot in knowing what is important for step 1 (high yield subjects get a lot of questions on uworld compared to low yield subjects), so eventually you will be familiar with these subjects. You should master these subject because they can guarantee you a passing score on step 1.
3- NBMEs are very important as a learning and as an assessment tool. Make good use of them.
In the end, everyone has his/her own way of studying, so don’t be taking other people’s experiences as a strict guideline for your preparation and do what is best for you.
Good luck to all of you


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