Nikitosina
Forum Newbie
Topics: 4
Posts: 23
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Colleagues,
Now when I am done with Step 1 I am ready to post my experience in hope that somebody may find it useful.
About myself. I am IMG with MD diploma from Medical school in St.Petersburg, Russia, and with PhD degree from University in Russia. Graduated from med school in 1996 and worked as a researcher since then. Research was successful with dozens of publications most in medium/upper tier journals (J. Neurosci, J. Neurochem etc.). About half a year ago I had become increasingly bored by the very basic research I was doing and decided to pursue the career of Physician/Researcher with an emphasis on the translational research.
Preparation: Trust me; I was scared in the beginning! 10 years passed since I graduated from med school and I forgot everything except very basics. I was studying for about 6 month part time (continued working as a postdoc to support my family) but used all free time available (that life was no fan at all).
Used:
(1). Kaplan video lectures and lecture notes. These are excellent except the pathology ones. Gone through lectures once and through lecture notes twice. Threw away the pathology ones and instead listened to (2) Goljan pathology lectures (highly recommended stuff! It is also so much fun to listen Goljan). (3) Microbiology book from BRS (mediocre) and (4) BRS Pathology (this one is good!). (5) High Yield Embryology (I liked it), (6) BRS Physiology (good one but if you can understand Physiology lecture notes from Kaplan – skip this book, they basically cover the same topics). I did not read anything specific for biochemistry, my PhD in Biochemistry really helped. Kaplan’s Biochemistry lectures/notes were sufficient to cover medical aspects of biochemistry and hard core molecular biology I likely know better than those who make questions for the exam. (7) FirstAid – good book to review your knowledge of facts before the exam. Use it as a reference while studying also. But do not start your preparation by reading FirstAid. Even if you will manage to remember the facts you will never understand the way of thinking the USMLE requires of you. The questions simply testing your knowledge of facts are nonexistent on the exam.
Lesson I learned: do not try to read many books; choose a few but know them really well.
Questions fro practicing:
Qbook (I did not do Qbank) – good source of questions, questions are somewhat easier than on the real exam.
UsmleWorld – best source of questions to my opinion! Challenging, pushing your thinking to the very end, format very similar to USMLE, excellent explanations. I did 100% of the questions in the tutor mode, almost fried my brain and scored 78% during the first pass.
UsmleRx – not recommended, inexpensive but questions are sub par. 1-2% of questions have mistakes. Same topics tested multiple time which is simply a waste of your time. For example I had at least 10 questions from this UsmleRx asking different ways what protein is mutated in Kartagener syndrome. I KNOW IT IS DYENIN STOP ASKING ME. AAAA!!!! I scored 82% + few percent of questions with mistakes.
Exam experience.
The computer system in Prometric center crashed that morning! The staff offered everybody to go home and reschedule for free. No way! I was preparing for this day for 180 days and I was not ready to go home virgin. Plus it was the last day of my eligibility period. Most other docs felt the same way, only one lady quit. Exam started around 10 am. Time was not an issue for most of the blocks. I had to rush little bit during the last 2 blocks. I suspect that the difficulty of questions is adjusted based on your performance during previous blocks. I had very difficult questions during my last two blocks (or I was just plain tired?). My biggest problem was doctor/patient relationship questions. Answers were not obvious and there are not clear rules to answer this type of questions. I scored worst in behavioral because of these questions. To my frustration biostatistics and epidemiology were not heavily tested. Lots of Pathology (as expected) with many MRIs CTs and Xrays. In contrast to what other people say it was important to understand what is going on on these pictures. Text was not enough. Lots of microbiology questions with pictures of bugs with insufficient magnification. Many pharmacology questions tested my knowledge of side effects but these were easy –well known side effects such as dry cough with ACEIs. There were weird questions asking for something that is not in the books. But I have found that it was usually possible to think through these questions using common sense. For example I had a question with patch clamp recordings from cardiac muscle. Have any idea how patch clamp works? I did not. But when I spent some time thinking, I realized that the principle of patch clamp was irrelevant, even the knowledge of ion currents in cardiac muscle was irrelevant. The only thing that was important is to notice a specific pattern of changes in the curves on the figure and match it with the answers. So that question did not test my knowledge of the patch clamp, it did not test my knowledge of cardiac muscle physiology either. It tested my IQ. My advice – do not be desperate even with the questions that look impossibly difficult. Try to think some logic!
My score is 262/99.
I am in Atlanta, GA area and if somebody is in trouble and want to talk in person, I might be able to help.
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| Aashi
Forum Moderator
Topics: 113
Posts: 1,058
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Congrats! That is an awesome score! Thanks for sharing your experience..
GL with all your future endeavors
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"Obstacles are those frightful things you see when you take your EYES off your goal."
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| bhanusupriya
Forum Elite
Topics: 6
Posts: 438
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hi ,congrats for your wonderful score.your words r really inspiring man...
offering help in person...marvelous
one more q.which book did u follow for anatomy?is kaplan anat ok or shall i go for high
yield?just started prep and need advice.
thank you very much for your input.
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papa kehte hain bada naam karegaa...
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| Mcqueen
Forum Junior
Topics: 11
Posts: 45
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I think that was a great exam experience! Congrats such a brilliant score
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| AAzad
Forum Guru
Topics: 55
Posts: 457
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Dear Dr Great achivment , i shake your hand and congradulate you
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AAzad
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| Nikitosina
Forum Newbie
Topics: 4
Posts: 23
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Thanks to everybody for kind words and good luck with your studies.
To bhanusupriya: I forgot to mention that for Anatomy I used Rapid Review Gross Anatomy. I think that book gives too much detail that you do not need on the exam. Unless you have a perfect memory ( I do not), my advise is to focus on Kaplan notes first + explanations to UW Anatomy questions.
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| milee99
Forum Guru
Topics: 46
Posts: 1,021
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thanks a lot
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Do not pray for easy lives,Pray to be stronger men; Do not pray for tasks equal to your powers, Pray for powers equal to your tasks; Then the doing of your work shall be no miracle, but you shall be the miracle.
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| bhanusupriya
Forum Elite
Topics: 6
Posts: 438
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thanks nikit..
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