I had to work part of the day, but reviewed ALL of the uWORLD CCS cases the evening after the test into the next day. I had one day off between day one and day 2 which I was really glad for. I finished feeling reasonably okay about that day. I wasn't sure how these questions really differed that much from day 2. In addition there was the usual amount of weird ethics questions and a fair smattering of general medicine. Honestly, it seemed like there was an equal amount of pharmacology for each biostat question, so really do make sure you prep for that. Most of it seemed pretty straightforward, and I actually felt I had over-prepared in my approach with it.
There were maybe 3-4 biostats questions per block, but none of it was too crazy. There were some two part questions where I got the first part wrong, and that does mess with your head some. I finished each block without the drug ad with 10 minutes to spare, and had plenty of time to review incorrects. There was one drug ad per block which I consistently saved until last. Essentially, Tom Brady doesn't walk into a football game thinking "We're gonna lose." He thinks "We're gonna crush em'," and that's the same attitude I applied towards this test.ĭay 1 didn't feel terrible to me. Mental preparation was really important!!! I realized the day before my test I had to go into this like how whatever superstar musician/athlete/scientist/whatever thinks going into a huge event. Still, I decided to push through and see what happened. I was still pretty freaked out and almost pushed my test date back three months to when I could take it again. There was quite a bit of pharm on day one of my test and just going through these pages twice netted me some great points. Over the next few days I reviewed pharmacology just using the pharmacology section from Step 1 with drug mechanisms (not interactions or pharmacokinetics) as well as the drug tables from each section. I had told myself that as long as I broke 200 I would take the test, but being that close to failing really freaked me out. One week prior to the actual test, I took the uWORLD self assessment and scored a 201.
#Usmle world step 1 practice test software#
I rented a copy of "Crush CCS, " but ultimately thought it was kind of useless because most of the cases are just the same as what are in the uWORLD software with a handful of additions. I made it through all the cases once prior to day 1. Generally, if a case seems really complex within the software, its probably more complex than what will show up on the test. For every three or four non-interactive cases, I would do one interactive case. I started with the non interactive cases, and would write out my orders in a separate word document and test myself to see how many orders I would get right. The four weeks prior to my test, I also scheduled the lightest rotation possible (3-4 day work week) and would spend 8-10 hours a day studying.Īt the four week mark, I also started going over the CCS cases slowly in the uWORLD software. I spent a long time on this because of how much people have stressed about biostats on day 1. I didn't do any statistics until 4 weeks prior when I purchased the uWORLD supplement and reviewed it and did the stat questions in uWORLD. I think I ended up with 64% on untimed tutor mode, random, but I tried to make it a point to finish each question within 90 seconds or so. Overall, I found that uWOLRD tended to focus some kind of esoteric details. There were some weeks when I definitely didn't get to anything.Ībout 4 weeks prior to my test, I finished uWORLD except for the statistics part and making notes on it in a google doc. I would just chip away at the material doing questions and reading whenever I could when it was quiet on the floors or for an hour or two after I got home. I personally just like the layout of the medbullets website, and I found they had more information than Master the Boards. I started going over material slowly by doing uWORLD and reading the Medbullets website in June. I had 12 weeks of floor medicine (65-70 hours), 4 weeks of ICU (80 hours) 2 weeks of nights, and 6 weeks of electives from July until December. Was pretty nervous about studying for Step 3 as I knew intern year would be busy, but I really wanted to get it done in December so that I could focus on beginning to study for my primary specialty and getting involved in some other research projects. A post for some of the low scorers out there!