Throughout much of my designated study time, I was quite stressed out and was constantly worrying that I was not studying correctly and was not as prepared as classmates. ItВ never hurts to start studying earlyВ or at least startВ thinking about Step 1. Subjects like biochemistry are covered early in M1 year so I essentially had to relearn it doing my dedicated period. If I could go back in time,В I would get a copy of First Aid and start annotating it on the first day of lecture as a M1 student. About half way through M2 year,В I began keeping my First Aid book open during lecture andВ annotating it with additional information or explanations that I thought would be useful.So my advice is to make sure that by the end of each school unit, you've read through all of first aid for that unit and have a decent understanding of the material within it. It's way easier to learn something like RTA when you're learning Everything else about renal than if you learn it a year later during dedicated study period. There are lots of topics that we never learn in class but that we have to know for boards (i.e., RTAs, amyloidosis). If I could do it all over again, I would make sure that I always had reviewed the material in first aid for a unit while we were studying that in class.Start a Question bank (either USMLERx or Kaplan) at the beginning of M2 year and do corresponding questions).

I think that some of the value of the QBanks are lost when you do them more than once! However, don't start Uworld so earlier that you reset and start over. I think Uworld is a wonderful learning tool and superior to Kaplan.

I would stop Kaplan and begin Uworld earlier.

I had run out of UWorld questions by the last few weeks of study time, and I wished that I had done some kaplan earlier so that I still had UWorld left (or I had just picked up kaplan for a few weeks, but that's expensive).

I think it would have been nice to do another question bank, at least partially.

It's repeated advice but once you are in it you will need to hear it over and over: do what's best for you. Try to just gauge your own progress and not listen to others and what they are doing.

Many people will talk about pushing back the exam quite a bit.

This worked for me, but I would caution that is stressful and potentially too much for a relationship to handle (please keep this answer especially anonymous!)

Be careful about studying with significant others.

This would not have worked for me because I was simultaneously completing my research at the same time as pre-dedicated studying. Kaplan), depending on how stressed I was/how much time I had.

I would consider doing a QBank before I started UWorld (e.g.

In general, wind down on all existing responsibilities BEFORE February of pre-dedicated studying.

I went to a research conference during dedicated to present my research.

This way, I would have read FA twice before dedicated

Read FA regularly as you go through the Feinberg curriculum.

I started in dedicated, but I would have started to chip away starting in March

Start UWorld a little before dedicated so as to not have to study as many hours each day as I did.If you see yourself continually getting questions wrong, or not knowing why they're right, take extra time to utilize a different resource for those subjects. For me there were always certain subjects (like Nephritic & Nephrotic syndromes, biochemical pathways.) that I just struggled with. I would attempt to identify my weak spots early and drill them down.Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine students who scored more than one standard deviation above the national mean on the United States Medical Licensing Examination Step 1 were asked what they would do differently if they had the opportunity to take Step 1 again.

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