Step 1 exam experience
Score:- 254
Exam date: 6 June 2018
Result date:11 July 2018
Score:- 254
Exam date: 6 June 2018
Result date:11 July 2018
First of all, I am a final year medical student from Karachi, Pakistan. Took my exam in the 9th semester. I started my prep from the beginning of 3rd year of med school with Kaplan videos and lecture notes. I did the whole Kaplan except for Pathology, General Anatomy, Pharmacology (did only general portion of it) and Micro as well. For the aforementioned subjects which I didn't do from Kaplan, I did Fa and uworld only and for Anatomy, I supplemented it with shelf notes. It took me about whole year i.e whole 3rd yr to complete just Kaplan because I was managing ward rotations, university classes as well and also semester examination.
After finishing Kaplan I had about 3 months of break in which I went for electives. After a break, I started with FA directly and it took me about 4 months to complete 1st read of it. After that, I had the semester 7 examination which lasted for about a month. After getting done with semester 7 I decided to go for uworld and subscribed uworld online. Did first round of uworld in about 3 months with 78% aggregate. After doing uworld I revised Fa along with annotated notes from uworld for about one month and again I had one month break due to semester 8 exam. After exam revised Fa once more.
At this point, I took NBME 13 offline (18 mistakes), UWSA 1 online (258) and NBME 15 (27 mistakes).
After this revised Fa again and again and took 1st online NBME 35 days before the exam which was NBME 16 and scored 246 in it. 30 days before the exam took UWSA 2 and scored 249. After this did Uworld second pass along with a reading of FA in 20 days and finally took
NBME 18 online which was 261. (9 days before exam).
One day before the exam just read volatile stuff like general pharma, glycogen storage diseases etc and Rapid review section of Fa also. Stopped studying at around 5 p.m in evening and went out with my friend for a couple of hours because I wanted to be relaxed before exam day. Good night sleep is very crucial before an exam and the only day during my whole prep I slept for 9 hours was a night before my exam. I went to bed around 9 p.m and woke up at around 6 a.m.
EXAM DAY EXPERIENCE:
Reached the venue at 8.15 am and was checked in smoothly. The exam started at 9 a.m sharp. 1st till last block I was just answering the questions to best of my knowledge with lots of odd and weird questions in every block but around 30 to 32 questions in every block were doable from FA and Uworld and rest by educated guess and some with help of your previous basic knowledge and 3 to 4 questions by luck. I used to save around 5 to 10 minutes during assessments but in the exam, I was running out of time like only 10 to 20 seconds to spare in each block. So, I had no time to review flagged one. In 4th block, I had 5 questions remaining and 2 minutes left and I was able to do only 1 question rest four I just marked and moved on. So, please simulate the exam by doing 2 NBMEs back to back or 7 random blocks of uworld.
Reached the venue at 8.15 am and was checked in smoothly. The exam started at 9 a.m sharp. 1st till last block I was just answering the questions to best of my knowledge with lots of odd and weird questions in every block but around 30 to 32 questions in every block were doable from FA and Uworld and rest by educated guess and some with help of your previous basic knowledge and 3 to 4 questions by luck. I used to save around 5 to 10 minutes during assessments but in the exam, I was running out of time like only 10 to 20 seconds to spare in each block. So, I had no time to review flagged one. In 4th block, I had 5 questions remaining and 2 minutes left and I was able to do only 1 question rest four I just marked and moved on. So, please simulate the exam by doing 2 NBMEs back to back or 7 random blocks of uworld.
Question length was similar to Uworld and easy questions were written in a tricky way so read the whole scenario before hitting the answer. During the last block, I was as fresh as I was in 1st and all credits go to the power sleep I did before an exam.
After exam I was calm and composed but soon after I started having flashbacks of all the silly mistakes I made during exam and as the days passed by my number of mistakes went up and up and I counted around 35 mistakes 10 to 15 were of them were very silly and I started getting tensed and worried about my scores. I was in agony for 5 weeks until the results came out which relieved my all the sufferings. So, if you are going through this phase please try to be calm as much as possible and don't be hard on yourself.
Questions and Answers
Q:
uw and fa are enough for anatomy ??
A: I had approx 40 to 45 anatomy questions 30 to 35 were covered by Fa and Uworld rest were from the textbook that we did in our basic years.
Q: How many questions should be incorrect approximately to cross 250 in real board exam?
A: just revised Fa again and again after every break. That's how you keep information fresh in your mind.
Q: Did u use Kaplan for biostat and behavioral sciences as well?
A: yes and kaplan qbank only for biostats
Q: Recomendation for neuroscience and biostat ?
A: neuroscience dr. wilson kaplan videos and fa and uworld again n again. For biostats do fa, uworld and uworld biostat review.
Q: What do you thino happened on your respiratory/renal?
A: respiratory had some weird questions and also I made some silly mistakes in respiratory system. For renal I think it was okay.
Q: i have a question. is nbme 15 and 16 doable after uworld?
A: Yes, totally doable. My entire prep revolves around Fa and Uworld. And with these two I scored well so can you as well.
Q:How many hrs did you study in final yr and how did you manage it alongside final yr wards and studies?
A: It was very tough but I was determined to take step1 before semester 9th exam and worked really hard for it and I did it. I used to study around 8 hours in a final year.
Q: How was immunology what resource u used and what do u recommend ?
A: Immuno was tough and I used Fa n uworld. Also I did Kaplan initially. Do kaplan Immuno very well because some questions were directly from Kaplan not written anywhere else
Q: I'm a fresh final yr student but I'm just a beginner. so what would be ur suggestion for me as a beginner for USMLE? nd how much time should I take to sit for the exam with a good mark(around 260)?
A: It depends on how much efforts you put and how many hours you study per day. But generally you can get good scores with 1 year prep.
Q: Congrats bro.I'm a 2nd year student.U mentioned in the post that after finishing Kaplan, you went for electives in your 3 months break.So my question is what that electives kinda matter is? And how do you get 3 months of break?
A: I had 2 months off after 3 year in which I went for electives. And going for electives is personal choice it is not necessary.
Q: How about evidence based medicine ? How did you prepare for it ? About biostatistics and epidemiology besides uw review what other sources did you use ?
A: I didn't use anything special for evidence based medicine. For biostats and epidemiology I did kaplan qbank aslo that's all
Q: my exam is in 6 days- current NBME at 232.. what can i do to bump up my score??? please help
A: Revise the Fa along with your notes and try to get good sleep before exam. Try not to panic in exam as there will be questions out of context but don't worry about them.
Q; How many times did you go through Uworld?
A: 2 times
Thank you Akshay Kumar for answers
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