Firstly let me
describe my background in brief.I graduated from medical college in 2013 and I
took step 1 in 2015 December. At that time I had fogotten most of my basic
sciences which was taught during initial years of the medical school, and the
content of USMLE was diffrent from what we were tought and studied. so I had to
start from the begining. And I was an average student at the medical school, just
passed the finals with no classes or honours. But for the usmle I had a real
passion.
I spend 6 month of
preparation, initial 2 months 4 to 6 hours per day. then 10 to 12 hours per
day. I ate well, slept 8hours , evening used to go for a bicycle ride for 1
hour, and do my studies. I enjoyed my studies with my girlfriend, over the
phone most of the time. we took a cheap couple package to discuss things. Two
people studing together was slow but kept us in the track for long hours.
My main study source
was U World Step 1. It helped me to develop a problem based approach to studies
which kept me awake, unboared most of the time. since I couldn’t focus on a
book for a long period continuosly, I reffered to First Aid book along with
mcqs in the u world. I watched kaplan videos in between, to make a difference
to the routine. Kaplan videos were useful in the areas of
Physiology,Biochemistry,Microbiology. Pathoma book and the videos were
very good to develop an understanding in Pathology. And they were quite interesting
to watch.
Every day I did one to
two mcq blocks from UWorld and studied the answers with the book. It was really
hard to do two blocks at the first round because they cover a huge area, and
time flows faster when we start to review mcqs.
I did 3 rounds of
Uworld. second round 3 to 4 blocks per day, last round in last 2 weeks I
did 6 blocks per day to develop the tolerence, and the practise for the real
exam. We were very busy at that time.
in my next post i will
write about the last few weeks of my preparation in detail.
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