Passed. Useful tips and things to avoid
There are a lot of good posts on this sub regarding study methods and exam day tips and i’d like to just add on to it from my own personal experience. Hope this helps! (Step one journey/experience at the bottom for those who are interested.)
This goes without saying but the singlemost important thing I felt was to have a fresh mind on exam day. This doesn’t just mean coffee and energy drinks. The Step 1 exam is tiring and strenuous. It tests not just your knowledge but your perseverance too. Make sure you get at least 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep the night before your exam. This doesn’t just happen overnight. Build up a routine at least 2 weeks before your exam where your most mentally active hours are 8am-4pm.
Time management is essential to getting a decent score. We all study from the same materials, so at the end it all comes down to time management and question tackling strategies. And the only thing that can help you with this is Active learning- random mixed UWorld blocks. Towards the end of your revision, make sure you do at least one UWorld block per day (timed, review at the end) on top of whatever material you’re using (like FA, Anki, personal notes etc). The questions on the real deal were most similar to UWorld , just a bit more lengthy.
Most of the stems on the real deal were extremely lengthy. But don’t let that overwhelm you. Super long stems are DOABLE. The second you see a long stem, go to the last line of the question and glance through the options. This will help you stay focussed and save time when you go through the entire stem.
Do not leave a single question unanswered thinking you can come back to it towards the end. There is no negative marking, so even if you have no idea just select a random option, mark the question and move on. I say this because sometimes you may not have enough time towards the end, and when the block time ends you don’t want to risk leaving any question unanswered. At the end of the block you can review all the marked questions. Do not spend unnecessarily long on questions that you feel stuck on, if you don’t know, then you don’t know. Don’t lose time on 5 good questions trying to answer one difficult one. I know all of this seems pretty straightforward but the exam day anxiety will have you doing silly things.
Each block is a different story. Don’t let the experience of one block affect the next one. And PLEASE do not look up your mistakes during the exam breaks. That’ll further feed in to your anxiety. Utilize breaks well to drink water, pee, splash some water on your face, have some grapes or a protein bar. Nothing too sugary. Stay hydrated. You’ll have enough time to use the washroom.
The feeling of not knowing anything before your exam is quite normal. If you’re consistently performing good on your SAs then go for it!
Foot in mouth with this one but here goes- DO NOT WASTE TIME ON REDDIT the week before your exam. Just study and trust yourself. Don’t go around comparing your scores with others. As long as you know the material and keep revising, have faith in yourself to get that PASS.
My personal experience/ step1 journey
Resources: BnB videos UWorld First Aid Pathoma (1-3) Dirty Med
Boards and Beyond + Uworld: I did BnB videos system wise. My mistake was spending too much time on the video lectures and trying to learn from it. I’d suggest just skimming through the videos to get a general idea of each system before jumping in to UWorld. (People with a good foundation can avoid videos) I did one pass of the UWorld system wise. Untimed, tutored. I do not believe in doing timed or random during the first pass because UWorld is a learning tool. Doing system wise UWorld is essential for structured learning. It’ll help you eliminate options and understand the reasoning behind each choice better. You can do random, timed blocks during your Revision.
During my first pass of UWorld, i’d make UWorld notes simultaneously in the Notebook section. I’d club together explanations from one topic all under one note along with the tables and diagrams. For example, any time i’d encounter an anti-arrhythmic question i’d select the explanation and add it to a Note titled “Anti-Arrhytmic drugs”. I did this for every topic under the sun, and it helped me tremendously during revision. If you’re short on time then just use FIRST AID.
First Aid: FA for step one is great. But keep in mind that no matter how thorough you are in the material, answering questions is a whole different story. So always use it as an add on with UWorld.
Make sure you revise each system once (by going through your notes or FA) before moving on to the next, even during your first pass.
Pathoma: I had watched the video lectures for the first 1-3 chapters before starting UWorld. At the end of Uworld first pass i went through the first 3 chapters (text) before starting revision. Did that again 2 days before exam. Would definitely recommend doing it.
Dirty medicine videos: Dirty med videos on youtube are Godsend. I regret not doing it earlier. I only had time for few videos that I watched for topics i kept getting wrong or had difficulty understanding. If you have time then I’d suggest watching all of them. They are so well done and make it so easy to remember the high yield stuff!
Ninja Nerd: I used it for some biochem concepts and other weak areas. Nice explanations, you may use it for weak areas. Wouldn’t recommend watching all of them though as they are quite time consuming.
REVISION:
At the end of first pass my UWorld % correct was ~54%. I had some 1800 incorrects, and i ended up doing around 800 of those. For my second pass of UWorld i did 2-3 blocks of system wise incorrects, while simultaneously using my FA. I also went through my UWorld notes at the end of each System. This made sure that I covered every topic.
For my final revision i would do random mixed UWorld blocks + going over my notes again.
I was kind of crammed on time so didn’t take most of the nbmes.
UWSA2 : 200 (at the start of dedicated) UWSA1: 215 (midway through revision) NBME 29: 71% (99% chance of passing, took it 4 days before the exam)
I never did any of the Mehlman pdfs as i found out about them quite late in my revision and didn’t want to confuse myself with new material.
Old and New Free 120: Didn’t have time to go through these either unfortunately as I was short on time. Do make time for this though as I heard there are quite a few repeats from this on the main deal.
Disclaimer: Every student is different, what suits my study style might not be for you so take everything I said with a grain of salt. Good luck to everyone!