virgola82
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Finally my score has been reported and the electronic score too and I got this nice surprise…241/99 So guys my first advice is: if I passed anyone can pass! Be confident you can really do it! Let me tell you all my story. I am a 25 yo Italian MD graduated on july 2006 in Italy. After my graduation I took some holidays and then studied for the Italian licensing exam that I gave in February, but because my actual desire was to move to the US for the residency I studied also step 1 that I did in May and than studied for step 2 ck. I didn’t have too much time for step 2ck ‘cos I finished with step 1 in the last week of May so basically I studied for step 2 ck two months full time. I strongly suggest you to plan at least 3 or 4 months ‘cos I really was about to get crazy to do that in such a short time. Also clinical experience is very important. If you have already done good clinical practice, rotations, subI or if you already are a licensed physician in your country anything is gonna be easier. Unfortunately my clinical experience was, and unluckily still is, close to zero. So that’s why I said if I passed anyone can pass…
Let me tell you something more about my prep subject by subject in the order I studied them
Pediatrics: This together with ob/gyn was one of my weakest topics. I did all Kaplan videos and then studied the corresponding chapters from lecture notes. I didn’t like the videos because the lecturer, Dr. Pino, simply reads the notes without explaining that much, but still I think it has been good to at least familiarize with the topic before actually studying it to listen to the tapes. I also found very useful to download the videos on the ipod and listen to them while driving, walking on the street etc. after finishing with the first review. Because they are basically the same as the notes it’s like an audio book you can listen to to remember what’s written in the notes. It took me one week to do this topic.
Surgery: Again I watched videos and studied corresponding chapters from Kaplan notes. I heard someone saying that these lectures are not great, I strongly disagree. I think they are really great and they do help you in making order among the various steps in management of patients. I think Dr Pestana is a very good lecturer even though someone (not me of course) could have been bothered by is not perfect accent… It took me one week to do this topic
Ob/Gyn: Same approach here: videos first and then chapters. Dr Sakalla I think is the best among all of these Kaplan lecturers and I strongly recommend to follow his lessons. Also very useful are his charts. I used to write them down and then review them periodically. Dr Penalver is not as good as Dr sakalla is but still it is worthwhile watching the videos. Unfortunately I had a set of videos for gyn older than the notes so they didn’t match and I had to make a lot of notes during the lectures. So my advice for Penalver’s lectures is to check if videos and notes match. It took me one week to do both these topic
Psychiatry: I didn’t spend too much time on that since I did psych LN and Dr Gonzalez-Mayo’s videos for step 1 so I just reviewed what I did then. I spent about 3-4 days on it.
Medicine: This is the big one… It’s about 60% of the exam so it’s really important to find a good way to study it. I started with the same approach I used for other topics but this time didn’t work for me. First of all I hated Dr Fischer’s way of lecturing: screaming all the time and never going to the point was really destroying for me. I found his lectures not only useless but also confusing. This doesn’t mean I suggest you not to go through his videos, because I heard people that liked him. So my advice is: give a try watching Fischer’s videos but if you find out that you can’t follow such a disorganized way of lecturing, stop it. I also didn’t like Kaplan LN for medicine. I know which are the main S/S of diseases or which are the test you could do for a certain disease but the purpose of this exam is to test next steps so we are required to know algorhythms that are almost never given in Kaplan notes. Also Dr Kornbluth didn’t impress me that much. The only chapters I found very good in Kaplan medicine are nephrology and of course neuro with the great lectures by Dr Levy. So considering my difficulties in following the standard way to prepare for this test I decided to switch to Habermann’s Internal Medicine Review 2006-2007. The book is almost useless without the video lectures associated with it that I had the fortune of being able to access to. So I used the same approach video + chapter but with this different source. The book is created to prepare to the ABIM so I could do most important topics only. Also each chapter has about a dozen of qs at the end that I did to see if I was ready to move to the next chapter. I think this really helped me a lot. It took me about 2 weeks to do this topic.
UW & other q banks: I think UW is not only important but vital. I used to do 46 qs timed unused blocks every day. I also made notes of every info in the explanation that I didn’t know in a couple of lines and then tried to copy these notes in Kaplan. Just by coping it from screen to my notes to Kaplan I could fix the concept but anyway I also reviewed the whole batch of UW notes the day before exam and I could answer a lot of qs just because I did so. I started UW after doing ped, surgery and ob and of course my percentage went much higher after doing medicine. I started around 62% and finished with a cumulative score of 70%. I couldn’t finish the whole q bank for time reasons (I did around 75%) but I strongly recommend you to finish it.
As other testing tools I used Kaplan qbook and qbank, too easy compared to exam, a good start but if you get less than 75% there you should really go back and study very carefully; pretest, I didn’t like these books because I found them too tough particularly for surgery; Haberman’s book qs at the end of every chapter, these qs were really useful as they allowed me to understand if I could go ahead or not to the next topic, Dr Fisher’s internal medicine book qs, really hard and twisted qs that drove me crazy but made me trained to twisted qs.
Second review: After studying medicine I started to review each topic in inverted order starting from medicine and going back to ped. Eventually I gave an extra review of medicine and ob/gyn since I saw I was starting to forget something. While doing the second review I did all my marked qs in UW subjectwise in tutor mode but I kept them out if my cumulative score by pausing instead of finishing the block.
Exam day: I took my test in Milan, Italy. I got there by airplane the day before (my city is about 1000 Km from Milan) and stayed in an hotel close to test center. On test day I was so nervous that I arrived to Prometric about 90 mins in advance and had to wait there till the proctor arrived to open the center. Differently from what happened for step 1 this time the center was really crowded ‘cos there were a lot of people doing the GRE. Anyway I started with no delay but had to use earplugs to concentrate. The first block I was kinda paralized and had the feeling I was really doing poorly. Think that it took me about one minute to diagnose policytemia to a pt w Hct 66%! I made a break after each block as I finished some of them earlier and got some extra break time. I remember that I felt the exam overall doable as I wrote in my post soon after the test but I had the feeling I was not doing that well even though I realized qs were doable. I think it’s because I was really nervous. I had 2 blocks really hard I think I did poorly on and 2 that I think I answered almost all of them right and the other were around 75% correct answers I guess. I had 4 or 5 ekgs, a couple of CXR, one pathology slide that was understandable from q stem, and of course no audio/video since I took my test on july 23. A lot of matching qs, some of them with choices up to O or P; one in particular was about orthopaedic listing something like 15 different possible surgical operations and you were required to match them with the clinical picture presented. I think I got it wrong. I didn’t have many strange diseases, they were mostly things you are tested on doing UW. I think my test was overall easier than UW and a little tougher than NBME.
Overall the test is certainly a very hard one and you have to study very good to pass it, but it is doable, even though you clinical experience is not that good. So guys never give up. I have had my mood down a lot of times for I was feeling this test to be too hard for me, but if I did it you can do it as well so keep going and you will….
Good luck to anyone and see you on cs forum
Edited by virgola82 on 09/02/07 - 10:31 AM
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| Justice
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Posts: 1,969
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congratulation...
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Don't live in a town where there are no doctors
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| alexaE
Forum Elite
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many congrats virgola
good luck
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veni vidi...vincam
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| veroni14
Forum Senior
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Congratulations!!!
Thanks 4 sharing your preparation in detail, I was very interested in other people experiences with the kaplan dvds, so I have found yours very useful
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| rody
Forum Senior
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congratulation.....advise willl be apprecated........whats your recommendation in last 3 weeks.....revise or question or listenning to high yield mp3
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| cirus
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congratulation virgola, GL in the match
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| bax
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congratulation dr...
gl wid ur match...
thanx for ur descritive experience...
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| neuroblastoma
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congrattss!! thanks fr experienced post
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| smalley
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congratulations
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But they that wait upon the LORD shall renew their strength; they shall mount up with wings as eagles; they shall run, and not be weary; and they shall walk, and not faint-Isaiah 40:31
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| bhanusupriya
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congrats virgola for your score and thank you very much for detailed post.your input is really appreciated.
Overall the test is certainly a very hard one and you have to study very good to pass it, but it is doable, even though you clinical experience is not that good. So guys never give up. I have had my mood down a lot of times for I was feeling this test to be too hard for me, but if I did it you can do it as well so keep going and you will….
now,i'm preparing for CK,although i plan well ,at times my mood is going down and dim.
your post is really nice to regain the lost strength.god bless u,good luck
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papa kehte hain bada naam karegaa...
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| vanshita
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Congratulation GOOD LUCK for match
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| jazmil
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Congrats and good luck.
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| kochs
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Congrats virgiola. Your experience has helped us a lot.
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| mitty
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congratulation for the great score!!
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He will make it happen.
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| hgheith
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Congrats! Good luck with your match ! Do know where it's possible to get Habermann’s Internal Medicine Review 2006-2007? How many hours lecture is it? Thanks again
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| doc_clotaire
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Congrats buddy
be waiting for you in CS forum
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| yoga
usmlelogy professor
Topics: 73
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congrat
i remember u got 99 in step1 also isnt it?
GL
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| USMLEGladiator
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congrats
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scores are just up to how high we aim and of course the amount of effort and time we put into it
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| MRMAVERICK
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congrats and best of luck for cs
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| dr.roh
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Congrats and Good luck for CS
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| hanwin
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Congratulation. You are great.
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| ssrpk
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congratulations on your great success....all the best for the rest 
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life is guud
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| Ivonne
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Congratulations!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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If you beleive you can do it then you WILL DO IT!! (by Mymeghhi)
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| Drtweetie
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CONGRATS, VIRGOLA AND GOOD LUCK IN FUTURE!
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"Our greatest glory is not in never falling but in rising every time we fall." --Confucius
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