I’m writing this because reading these kinds of posts was literally the only thing that got me through studying. I read success stories every night when I felt hopeless and it helped me hold onto the hope that I, too, could be a success story. So here’s mine and just what I did to achieve it. And here’s me telling you that you can do it too.

I didn’t start studying for Step or COMLEX 1 until six weeks before my exam date, contrary to popular advice and what most other people did. This was a source of stress for me when the time came because I started to feel like I wouldn’t be able to achieve my goal with so much less prep time, especially when all my peers could talk about was what they were doing to study. On top of that, the score I got on the school-administered practice exam was just almost passing.. yikes. But I found that studying for this exam is about efficiency and studying smarter, not studying longer.

Keep in mind, this is what worked for me, and what works for one person may not be what works for you. I’m a pretty quick learner and I knew that I had learned the material well during my didactic years, so I didn’t feel like starting before dedicated would’ve been beneficial. If I could go back, I would probably have started studying 2-3 months in advance, but hindsight is 20/20.

I got off the train a bit in the beginning because I felt like I needed to read First Aid for all the facts before I could start questions, and it bit me in the behind! I went through FA extremely slow, sometimes taking an entire day to get through half a chapter, not having enough time to even touch/look at any other resource. I was trying to memorize every detail my first pass through, and that was the single greatest regret of my first two years of medical school. I ended up being 2 weeks out from my exam with only 27% of UW completed and way too far from my goal score.

Resources

1. UWorld

UWorld was my NUMBER ONE resource – actual gold! I increased my score by 35 points in a single week from simply doing 40 UW questions a day. The key to successful learning via UW is to have a thorough understanding of every explanation (both for the right answer and for all the wrong answers), and make sure you’re thorough with every question regardless of whether you got it right or wrong. I also made Anki flash cards for each question I missed, and though I didn’t have time to go through them, just making the flash cards helped AND I had notes I could search through when I forgot something later on. I HIGHLY RECOMMEND making Anki cards as soon as you start UW – I didn’t and I really regretted it. ONLY make cards for the questions you miss.

When I first started UW, it took me 8 hours or more to get through 40 questions. That was ridiculous, but I got faster. The trick is to make sure you understand the explanations for the right and wrong answer choices, but not to dwell too much on the tiny details (at first I tried to write down/memorize everything for every explanation for every question.. don’t do that). Understand the overarching concept (should be able to summarize in 1-2 sentences), why you got the answer right or wrong, and move on for the love of all that is good! After realizing I needed to do this, I used the app Activity Timer on my MacBook to time myself for each question (I gave myself 4-6 minutes per question, 4 min was in the last couple weeks). Towards the end of my studying, I was moving even faster and often did not use up the whole 4 minutes per question.

Make sure you stay DISCIPLINED and do at least 40 questions per day! Do NOT get behind like I did (see above) because doing 120 questions per day on your first and only pass through UW and knowing that you won’t even get through the entire Q Bank is NOT fun to say the least.

I did not finish UW. Yep, you read that right, sorry if it gives you a little anxiety (it gave me a ton). I had a little less than 200 questions left unfinished. I don’t recommend that, but if you find yourself in a similar situation, know that it’s possible to do well without finishing UW! Just make sure your practice exam scores are in a comfortable range.

Some people went through this Q Bank twice. I personally don’t think that would’ve benefited me, but I do wish I had enough time to at least go through it once and then go through my incorrect questions a second time, and ideally go through my marked questions once I finished going through my incorrects.

2. First Aid

Definitely get the newest version of this ultimate reference. Notice how I say REFERENCE. This book has all the highest yield facts condensed into a book of lists. If you’re hoping to learn from FA, you’re out of luck. The best way to utilize this resource is to make sure you learned the info well the first time or make sure you’re using an outside resource to learn the material, and then using FA to get the bare-bones high-yield facts. Simply memorizing FA isn’t enough, as Step asks you to SYNTHESIZE information rather than just spitting random facts. In order to synthesize info, you need to first UNDERSTAND the who, what, when, where, and why. So learn the material and use FA as a reference.

Do NOT make the mistake of spending hours trying to memorize every single word in the book like I did (see above). Spend 2-4 hours reading your assigned chapter(s) to refresh your memory, then move on to other resources for the day.

Get FA 3-hole punched and have the binding removed at any office supply store (Office Depot, FedEx, etc.) and put it in a D-ring binder with page dividers to mark each chapter. I used a 3” binder because I had some charts/notes I added in, but if you don’t plan on adding notes, a 2.5” binder should be fine!

I personally liked being able to search my notes, so I actually used Adobe Reader to underline, highlight, and make notes in my PDF file of FA. I typed the keyword “Kovu” (my dog’s name hehe) for pages that I wanted to revisit – concepts that were difficult to remember, really good tables, topics I had recurring trouble with, etc.

I did not get through all of FA. LOL are you seeing a pattern here? I didn’t get to look at the chapters on Pathology, Pharmacology, Public Health Sciences, or Rapid Review.. oops. Don’t recommend doing that, but know that it’s possible to do well if you do get behind – just make sure your practice exam scores are in a comfortable range. If I could do it differently, I would’ve definitely spent a few hours on Pathology and Public Health Sciences, and I would’ve periodically quizzed myself with Rapid Review throughout the six weeks.

3. Pathoma

Single best resource to learn pathology – like actual goldmine! Get a subscription during the schoolyear; I got mine at the beginning of 2^nd year when we first started learning pathology. I personally only went through Pathoma once (during the school year). Awesome learning tool AND reference (vs. FA which is just a reference). Again, I wish I had been more disciplined with time to have had the time to go through Pathoma a couple more times during dedicated, but I didn’t. I did review the first two chapters, however, which were SUCH a huge help, so if nothing else, make sure to review those first few chapters.

4. Sketchy Pharm

Get a subscription here. Pharmacology started out as my weakest subject and ended up being my strongest, and it’s all thanks to the masterminds at Sketchy! The videos are super long and sometimes hard to follow, but just stick to it – the info will be reinforced by doing questions and you’ll eventually find yourself recalling the sketches in more detail than you thought was initially possible. I found it especially helpful to take notes on the sketches as I watched the videos (I would screenshot the sketch in the video, copy it into a Word doc, and take notes underneath it) – that way I could just refer back to my notes when I came across pharm in a question. Sketchy Pharm can take quite a while, so if you can, start earlier. I watched some of the videos during the school-year with my systems courses, so I had less to watch by the time I started dedicated.

5. Sketchy Micro

so freaking clutch. Make notes like the ones I described above under Sketchy Pharm. You should have already gone through these sketches once for school, so just make a second/third pass during dedicated and you should be golden on bugs (like aureus’s staff LOL nerd jokez). There are a few bugs not in Sketchy, so make sure to skim through the Microbiology section of FA and learn them.

6. Anki

for missed UW questions and Sketchy recall! Download it here. Easy to search and just making the cards helps you remember so much. I wish I had been more disciplined with time so that I could actually review the flashcards I made, but I didn’t, so learn from my mistakes! Spaced repetition is a tried and true method for learning and memorizing material, so this can be an extremely helpful resource.

7. Practice Exams

NBME

I did 3 NBME practice exams and scored TERRIBLY on them. The curve is pretty unforgiving, though, so don’t fret. I also took them at the beginning of my study period so that’s also probably why they were so terrible. These were great for me, though, because 1) my terrible scores helped motivate me to keep studying and 2) the actual exam questions were closer in style to the NBME practices than the UWSAs.

UW Self Assessments

I did the first self assessment 2 weeks into studying and did better than my NBME but still not great. I took UWSA2 towards the end of my study period (it was the last practice exam I took) and it ended up being the closest score prediction to my actual score. This was probably due to the fact that I was just further along in my studying, however. My UWSA2 did overinflate my score a bit – probably due to a combination of exam-day nerves and UW question styles being more familiar to me in general.

Make sure you’re allotting enough time to go over your UWSAs since each one is essentially a huge block of UW questions that you will have to spend time reviewing. Remember to understand why you got each question right/wrong, to thoroughly review each answer choice, and to know the overarching concept for each question!

8. Friends

Your friends are your best resources, in my opinion. Find yourself a good group that will support and lift each other up. This may be one of the most grueling, maniacal, and emotionally/mentally/physically disparaging times of your life, so make sure you surround yourself with people who will help you, care for you, and understand what you’re going through, and make sure you’re providing the same for them. My wonderful friends and I would ask each other questions and utilize each other’s strengths to help each other, motivate each other, and support/cry/w(h)ine with each other. Most importantly, we would keep the studying talk to a minimum when we got together, and we never shared/compared scores. I couldn’t have gotten through that time without them.

9. Supplements

Boards and Beyond

Get a subscription. I used this video resource for topics that I just wasn’t remembering/understanding as I went through FA. I wish I had discovered it earlier because it would’ve been an awesome resource for the first two years of medical school!

Goljan audio

I listened to this in the car but only got through 3 lectures because I started so late. He’s awesome, though – so funny and really good at helping you make connections.

CramFighter

I tried using CramFighter to plan out my study schedule but it didn’t end up working for me, so I created a Step 1 Study Plan on excel instead (feel free to download and change the dates to match your own schedule). CramFighter is awesome – it allows you to choose the resources that you want to get through by a certain date and it’ll generate a daily to-do list for you to check off tasks that you’ve done, and if you’re able to keep up, you’ll have finished everything you wanted to by the time you wanted to. In retrospect, I probably should’ve been more diligent in keeping up with CramFighter and allowing it to work for me, but again, hindsight is 20/20.

Realize that you can make a schedule, but it is OKAY to stray from it sometimes. I think as long as you’re hitting your weekly goals, you’ll be okay. And if something isn’t working for you, CHANGE IT! Don’t feel like you need to stick to a schedule you preemptively made if it’s not helping you. The excel sheet I linked above looks super rigid, but I actually strayed from it quite a bit as my studying went on (less time reading and more time with questions). Be flexible and take breaks to allow maximum learning potential – whether that be choosing to take long breaks each day, or going hard with 1-2 hour breaks a day and taking a full off-day a week. Also give yourself a catch-up day. It’s important to have some time to yourself, to do things that lift your spirits and rejuvenate you to tackle the workload that you have planned. Not getting enough sleep and not doing things to maintain your sanity will actually decrease your brain’s capacity to function well and thus bite you in the behind. So make sure to eat healthy (Kevin was wonderful and bought me Snap Kitchen for the days he couldn’t cook for me), get outside at least once a day, and ALWAYS get enough sleep (no matter how behind you may feel).

Step 1 Exam Day

I forgot my lunch on my kitchen counter. So naturally, I freaked out, taking the fact that the day already starting off poorly was a sign that I was ill-prepared. I blacked out during my first section and cannot remember a single question from it, but I do remember being hit with incredibly complex biostatistics questions that I could not for the life of me figure out, especially with immense pressure and pounding in my head/heart and the butterflies in my stomach. Of course I figured out the biostats formulas and how to solve them literally 2 seconds after the section ended.. gr8.

I got in my own head. I was shaking and hyperventilating and some guy behind me kept coughing his actual lungs out. After that first section ended, I took a good 7 minutes to just sit there and breathe, gathered myself, and told myself “you’re a freaking BOSS, you’ve GOT this!” And though I didn’t quite believe it, being my own cheerleader helped calm me down and pump me up in that moment. After the second section, I stepped outside for a short break and found that Kevin and one of my dear friends had both stopped by to drop off huge lunches for me, both with little notes cheering me on *TEARS*. Needless to say, I had a feast for lunch.

The actual questions were similar to UW in length, but not quite as tricky as UW. I would say the level of difficulty was an even mix between NBME practices and UW questions, maybe even more difficult than either but I can’t tell if that was because they actually were more difficult or if I was just overall flustered.

I didn’t step out of the testing room again until lunch time, and after lunch, I didn’t leave the room until I was finished. It was just too much of a hassle and a time commitment to re-do the whole security check every time. Instead, I took a short 5 minute break at my seat between each section.

I left feeling like I had completely wrecked any chance I ever had of achieving my dream job. It was a terrible feeling, because despite giving every ounce of myself to preparing for this exam, it still felt like I hadn’t done enough. As if all of me was still not enough. Don’t fret, friends. Everyone feels that way, and a good number of us end up pleasantly surprised a month later.

COMLEX

I took the COMLEX 3 days after USMLE. The age-old advice is to study for Step 1 and then cram OMM with the green Savarese OMM book in the few days before you take COMLEX. I was so exhausted after Step 1, though, that I just could not muster up the energy to read another textbook cover-to-cover in 2 days. Instead, I watched two YouTube videos – one on viscerosomatics and another on Chapman’s points – drew them out on exam day, and hoped for the best, trusting that my OMM prep throughout my first two years was enough.

COMLEX was a beast of an exam, lasting two hours longer than USMLE, with longer question stems and frequent incredibly slow/long videos you have to watch, and requiring you to keep your own time (I frequently went over time on each block because it’s hard for me to move on when I feel like I can figure a question out – this bit me in the behind as I had to finish 40 questions in 20 minutes in my final block). I walked out of COMLEX feeling even worse than I did my USMLE, breaking out into tears and just sobbing my guts out. It hurt. Bad. But if you prepared well for Step 1, you will be fine on COMLEX as well.

Post-Exam

Make sure you plan something fun for yourself after your exam. It’s crucial to pick yourself up and to get your mind off of that heart-wrencher of a beast. I spent the weekend at an all-inclusive spa resort where I got to eat the best food, take photos of everything, have a massage, play with my puppers and spend time with Kevin (both whom I had neglected for too long a while), lounge about by and in the water, and participate in restorative yoga (aka glorified napping), which to me was the PERFECT getaway. I initially had wanted to go hiking or camping, but I’m so thankful that didn’t happen because of how physically drained I felt.

It will shock you how mentally, emotionally, and physically depleted you will be after that exam. Take my advice and do something just totally and utterly relaxing afterwards. You’ll have deserved it.

All in all, just do your best and give this exam your all.

I think it’s so silly that we med students correlate our self-worth to a single 3-digit number, but we all do it despite how hard we try not to. Know that there is life beyond the exam, and the programs that you want to be at are the ones that value you for what you bring to the table, not just for your test-taking skills. If you ever need anything, don’t hesitate to reach out. I’m here for you – to support you, to encourage you, and to lift you up so that you realize your own beautiful capacity to stand tall. Best of luck, my loves

xo, Mad

this post was not made in affiliation with any of the above companies – only my opinions and my tried and true study experience