1) It's better to review important things many times than to review everything one

time - especially as you begin studying, starting with a strong foundation helps you
to contextualize and better retain the smaller, more esoteric details.

2) The battle is won in the beginning, not the end - make a study schedule with
reasonable daily/weekly goals and stick to it throughout the year. Those two weeks
you're tryna push your test back by aren't gonna do nearly as much for you as the
time you spent up front in November, when you weren't learning under pressure.

3) Respect for your teachers, your school, and the standards of professionalism
expected of you - I had a lot of classmates this year skipping classes and mandatory
sessions to go to the library, a lot of classmates complaining about the relevance of
our curriculum to boards, and a lot of classmates doing flashcards during small
groups. I think that's a lazy attitude; planning around your obligations promotes
discipline and proactivity.

4) Anki is king - if it exists in anki form, do that instead of reading. It's a much more
active way of learning. Also remember that Anki is more than a flashcard tool, it is a
scheduling tool that gives you spaced repetition and drills your weak spots more and
more with each day you use it.

5) Your classes are important - If all you do is flashcards, FA, and sketchy, then
you're basically left with a bucket of lego bricks. Classes, regardless of how
"relevance to step" they seem, show you how to build something with those lego
bricks.

6) Use multiple Qbanks - UWorld is not enough, IMO. USMLE questions are
inherently formulaic, and once you see enough of them, you develop an intuitive
sense about how to approach them.
 1) The Plan:

 6:30 AM: Wake up + breakfast

 7-10 AM: Biochem, Immuno, Path, Pharm, Micro (first aid)
 10 AM-3/4 PM: Organ block (first aid) + relevant pathoma videos
 4 PM - 6PM: break
 6 PM - 10 PM: 100 U world questions specifically for the block that I studied. I did
these questions on tutor mode because I felt I got the timed practice with NBME and
U world SIM.

So there’s 10 organ blocks in first aid; Neuro and Repro are MONSTERS and took two
days for the first/second pass no matter how hard I worked and I was often able to
do psych with another block so my first THREE passes took ~ 33 days, about 11
days per pass.

---------------------------------------

Most important:

 Find things to make you happy during dedicated. Burnout is real.

 Towards the end of dedicated, confidence is more important than knowledge. Trust
what you know, and for the last week, focus on knowledge consolidation.
 Use what works for you. Everyone has access to the same resources. Trust in UW,
FA, and/or Pathoma. Figure out what helps things stick in your brain and understand
them.

Pre-dedicated:

 75% on CBSSA given by school. Was class average at top 10 school.

 1x Pathoma and 0.5x FA throughout the school year.
 Made my own Anki cards throughout the year. Maximum of 50 new cards per day, on
average 30 cards added per day. Tried to keep reviews under 200 per day, and if
above that, I would suspend cards. I'm a firm believer that fewer = better for Anki.
 Did questions from Robbins review, since these questions often showed up on our
school exams. Wouldn't recommend it for Step.
 Wish I had done USMLERx throughout the year. I've notice that lots of 260+ do
more than 1 qbank, and Rx is probably the best out there other than UW. However, I
would highly discourage UW during MS2 because you end up remembering the
questions and not the reasoning. I learned little to nothing on my second pass of UW
because I just remembered the questions.

Dedicated:

 3 months of study
 Used UWorld x1.5, USMLERx x0.5, FA x2, did not use Pathoma (I had done it during
the school year)
 UWorld 81% first pass, 98%+ second pass
 USMLERx predicted score 275+
 NBME 11 (pre-dedicated, 3 months before): 235
 NBME 12 (2 months before, 0.5x FA, 0.5x UW): 251
 NBME 13 (1 month before, 1x FA, 1x UW): 258
 UWSA1 and UWSA2 (~3 weeks before): 265 both
 NBME 15 (2 weeks before): 275
 NBME 16 (1 week before): 260 (most predictive)
 NBME 17 (3 days before): 266
 Free 150: 92%

Some points:

 If you already have a solid grasp of Pathology, skip Pathoma during dedicated. I
know this isn't typical advice. However, I've spoken with a few people who have
scored in 260 range, and a lot of them only used Pathoma in MS2 and not dedicated.
It's a great resource for building a foundation during preclinical studies, but not
necessarily for pushing you into that 260+ range.
 Avoid using other people's Anki decks. It will pollute your brain, decontextualizes
knowledge, and I don't think any deck is fully reliable. If you're going to use
Anki, learn to write your own cards. Be sure to understand that Anki is extremely
powerful only for memory, but memory does not always provide you context or
understanding that are necessary to put knowledge into clinical use and Step 1
concepts..
 Do NOT treat FA like the bible, or try to memorize FA straight up. I see this
recommended all the time and I think that's a terrible attitude to take. FA is highly
abbreviated, has errors, and is missing information in lots of places. It is the single
best resource, but the actual test requires abstraction and conceptual understanding
that pure memorization is not fully adequate for.
 If possible, try to understand things mechanistically as much as possible. Before
dedicated, I probably spent more time on Uptodate, Wikipedia, and Robbins trying to
understand pathophys and clinical context more than I did trying to memorize FA
word-for-word. If you're crunched for time however (e.g. 2 weeks left in your
dedicated), just focus on FA.
 Avoid resource overload. Focus on UW and FA. For everything else, there's Wikipedia
and Uptodate. I don't think BRS physio, HY neuroanatomy, Firecracker, DIT, or other
secondary sources are good uses of time.
 The test will feel shitty afterwards. That's normal.
 I think the optimal amount of time is 6-8wks to study. I plateaued at 8 weeks.
 I felt that NBME questions were not completely representative. The test had lots of
things that I had never seen or thought about before and I walked out of the test
thinking I had done a lot worse than I did. However, the score prediction from my
last NBMEs were indeed predictive. In other words, the NBMEs predict but do not
perfectly emulate the actual test