Hello friends! I tried to make the other pages as unbiased as possible in order to give you the basic facts of each study resource. This is the page where I'll dump all my advice and thoughts on the various study methods in medical school, and hopefully help you out along the way (although having just taken Step 1, it will also be cathartic for me, which is a plus).

There are MANY different ways to study in medical school, and none of them are necessarily right or wrong. There are, however, a few fundamental points and questions you must ask yourself to make your medical school experience enjoyable.

1. Studying in medical school is ALL about efficiency. This is point number one because it is so important. You can study the wrong way (for you) and spin your wheels OR study the right way (for you) and save hundreds of hours over the first two years.
2. Nobody can tell you the right or wrong way to study for you (if they say they can, they're trying to sell you something). I can only tell you what I did and generalized advice.
3. Decide on how you want to study and stick with it but always try small changes to your study methods to maximize efficiency. I was changing my study methods right up through Heme.
   1. As a subpoint to point 3, use and master only a few resources during the first year. Resource bloat is real and is a killer of efficiency.
   2. Additionally, ask your friends how they're studying and collaborate, but you must be confident in your own study methods.
4. Finally, decide what you want to get out of medical school. Do you want to get a rock solid foundational knowledge? Do you want to volunteer at EAC? Do you want to be involved with the executive board, MCC, or interest groups? Do you want to volunteer for the medical mission trips? Do you want the weekends free? Half a day free? 1 hour free? THESE THINGS ARE NOT MUTUALLY EXCLUSIVE, but YOU ultimately decide what is important.

My Study Methods

During the first month (genetics) is when you should start figuring out what study methods work for you. I started off going to class and outlining lectures. I quickly found that outlining didn't work for me; I could not pay attention in class and take high quality notes at the same time. Additionally, going through my own outlines bored me to tears. I continued to go to class because it was what I had done my entire life, and this turned out to be very inefficient for me. I eventually made the switch to online lectures a couple months into 1st year, where I could watch at 2x speed and, most importantly, rewind if I spaced out. You must decide whether going to nonrequired lectures are an efficient use of your study time. You are given every opportunity to succeed at a school that is pass/fail AND has most lectures non-required. There are many reasons for a pass/ fail curriculum: it decreases competition among your peers which allows for greater collaboration, it reduces the stress inherent to grading, and it increases your free time, which is up to you to decide what to do with it. Using this philosophy, the following is how I studied during the first two years of medical school, specifically organ systems.

Dr. Najeeb- The weekend before a new organ system block I would watch a couple (~half of Saturday and Sunday worth) of foundational Dr. Najeeb videos. Dr. Najeeb is a wizard with a whiteboard. Try not to be dissuaded by the amount of lectures he has; while there are MANY videos for any given subject, there is a snowball effect where you can skip parts of some videos if you have mastered the basics (and watch at >2x if you're really good). I returned to Dr. Najeeb throughout each course for particularly difficult concepts (thalamic structure and brain tracts). While not the most efficient resource, the foundation Dr. Najeeb gave me was worth more than the time spent learning from him during the semester.

Anki- I would start watching last year's lectures the Sunday before a block started. I have a dual monitor set up where the lecture slides were on one monitor and the lecture stream and Anki window was on the other. This allowed me to watch the lecture at 2x, pause the lecture, use the snipping tool on the lecture slides, and make Anki cards. Each lecture generally took an hour to go through completely. My friends and I also had a sign up sheet to make Anki on the lectures, which would save time. I am, however, a BIG proponent of making your own cards; the process of thinking how to make cards on material allows you to think about that material in a way that is generally not afforded by other study methods. For instance, every time you make a card you have to think about what to cloze or what question you want to ask, which gives you an insight into how professors or USMLE might ask a question.

Coming into medical school, I was really worried about learning all the material. As a physics major, I had weeks to spend on a difficult concept, with many visits to the professors office and countless hours with friends trying to do 2 homework problems. Anki is the solution to my problem. It is an evidence-based study tool that automatically shows cards in research-driven increments to be as efficient as possible. You also must actively think about the material being presented, unlike reading where I usually space out for paragraphs at a time. I shudder to think how my medical school experience would be without this resource.

Brosencephalon- I used the "free time" given by the pass/fail curriculum to do long term studying. It is not right or wrong to do long term studying; just a choice you must make. I personally hate spending time learning a concept to dump it when a new organ system started. Additionally, I knew that patients in my preceptorships would not care that I studied pulmonology months ago and that I would remember nothing about their COPD. Finally, Step 1 is the big test we must all suffer, and so I tried to ease the burden of dedicated by studying every day.

I started Bros during the first semester but was quickly overwhelmed by doing 100 new cards each day, and I eventually stopped during the first preceptorship before Christmas (thus the first bump and subsequent fall in my Bros data below). I picked it back up in the spring of first year with the following changes:

1. I spent mornings doing all my reviews for Bros. It generally took one to two hours for 500 or so cards. The highest priority every day was finishing my Bros reviews (even higher than going over lecture material the day before tests)

2. I only did new cards after I finished reviews.

With these changes I was able to keep up with Bros. I tried to keep the cards I was doing specific to the information covered in lecture but that was not always possible before organ systems. I remember seeing Pseudomonas Aeruginosa months before microbiology and wondered if a human could pronounce such a name. These cards should be few or far between and you can either bury them (- key) or brute memorize them. Below are the data for the entire first 2 years of medical school for Bros. I finished 75% of Bros as I wanted to; I used the SketchyMedical deck for both Pharm and Micro.

NOTE- I did anki every single day for a year and a half EXCEPT for vacations. I would use the "review ahead" option set to a week and do 2500~ cards on the plane ride to wherever I was going. This accounts for the yellow cram sessions. Also note, I have heard great things about Zanki's Anki deck and would have probably done that one instead.

USMLERx (Qbank)- My goal for each course was to finish lectures one week before the end of an organ system block. This method guaranteed that I saw my Anki cards for the last lecture at least five times before the test. I would switch gears for this last week and finish any new Bros cards for that organ system AND do as many questions as possible. I chose USMLERx as my question bank of choice due to a variety of factors:

1. It's from the makers of First Aid

2. I heard that Kaplan was a little too nit picky, but this could be heresay

3. Most people save UWorld, unanimous best Qbank, for dedicated. HOWEVER, more and more people are using it during the first two years.

I made anki from the questions that I struggled with and added them to Bros, especially if the topic was not in Bros itself.

SketchyMedical- Do your best to like this resource. It is not for everybody but this singular resource is the reason the pharmacology and microbiology sections of the NBMEs and UWorld were my best subjects (see below). I HIGHLY RECOMMEND TO DO THE ACCOMPANYING ANKI DECK. Bros and the SketchyMedical Decks were the only two decks I kept up with throughout the first 2 years. SketchyPath came out during dedicated so I do not have an opinion on it.

Picmonic- I did not like 95% of these videos. The stories aren't as memorable as SketchyMedical and it relies more on words sounding alike. HOWEVER, the videos I did like were life savers. This resource helped me greatly on the Thalassemias, Glycogen Storage Disease, Enzymatic Diseases (Alkaptonuria, Maple Syrup Urine Disease, etc), and the Lysosomal Storage Diseases. I tried to brute force all of these through Bros, failed, and succeeded only when I watched these videos. The immunodeficiencies are good as well but I had them memorized by the time I found Picmonic. Try to use this resource more than I did and see what works for you!

Pathoma- EXCELLENT to know what pathologies are focused on step. This resource is a part of UFAP and is fairly ubiquitous in medical school.

First Aid- I bought FA 2016 and 2017 and only opened them a couple of times due to Bros. See my step 1 advice for more.

Firecracker- I tried Firecracker the first week of Pulmonary and found that it didn't work for me. I'm a fan of discrete fact flash cards as seen in Bros and Zanki as opposed to Firecracker (and yousmle) cards. Additionally, I was not a fan of pressing 1, 2, 3, 4, or 5 after seeing a card and not knowing when it would appear again. That being said, Firecracker was used by very successful classmates, so you should definitely check it out and see if it works for you.

Step 1

NOTE- The following is NOT meant to be copied as your own study schedule. Everyone starts dedicated with different knowledge sets. Ideally, you should pick and use what you think will work for you.

NOTE- The vast majority of students use UFAP (UWorld, First Aid, Pathoma) and/or do not study for step outside of dedicated, and thus most of the high scorers are people who did these things.

NOTE- I included my practice scores to let you know how I grew as a student during dedicated. I feel very strongly that more data is not a bad thing, especially when it comes to maximizing efficiency during dedicated. We are NOT defined by two or three digit scores and I have no attachment to them; I only hope that including these scores will help at least one reader with how they go about studying for step.

We took a school-mandated NBME before dedicated started. Below is my score and breakdown. I dedicate my Micro and Pharm scores to SketchyMedical.

The following are the resources I used during dedicated and how I used them.

General Schedule

Total Time: 6 weeks

First four weeks [minus Fridays, Saturdays]: 530 Wake up; 600-630 Eat and browse the internet; 630-1000 Anki [Bros, my UWorld deck, SketchyMedical]; 1000-1700 2xUWorld blocks with review [+30 minutes of Tennis]; 1700-2000 More Anki/ Pathoma/ First aid on difficult concepts; 2000-2100 Wind down and bed

First four Fridays: Start 7 blocks of UWorld at 730 [when my actual Step exam was scheduled]; finish that at around 1500. Rest of the day is spent going over as many exams as possible [1.5~] and all due anki reviews

First four Saturdays: Finish reviewing+ making cards on the rest of the UWorld blocks from the previous day [5.5~] and all due anki reviews.

Last two weeks: Switched gears to NBME (15, 16, 17, 18, 19)/ UWorld Self Assessments (UWSA) every other day with all free time spent going over UWSAs, ALL of pathoma at x2 speed, making Anki cards from FA via skimming for topics not discussed in UWorld [total of about 250~500 cards], reading Goljan's notes, and doing all Anki reviews every day

Last three days: Groovernaculum's Rapid Review First Aid Anki Deck+ yousmle anki Deck + all anki reviews[1500~2000 cards]

UWorld- This is the single best resource for dedicated and it dominated my time. Each test generally takes 2~3 hours to review; do NOT get discouraged or anxious about spending this amount of time on one resource. Do not think of UWorld as a means to test you or see where you are at; rather, it is an excellent resource to learn concepts and to improve your test taking skills. Aim for at least 1x through; many go 1x + wrongs. I attempted to do my wrongs and realized it was really inefficient for me because I made anki cards on difficult concepts and all my wrong questions on UWorld. Subsequently, I got 100% on my first two "wrong" tests, so I ended up going through UWorld once. I also used the 2 UWSA for an additional 460 questions.

Anki- I continued to do my Bros and SketchyMedical reviews during dedicated. I also make custom study decks from Bros of concepts that were difficult for me (nephritic and nephrotic syndromes). Additionally, I made an average of 1.5~ cards per question on UWorld (Total of ~5000 cards)

Goljan- Think of Step 1 is a game that simultaneously has the easiest and hardest rule set ever created. The easy part of the rules is to get as many questions right as possible; the hard part of the rule set is how to get those questions right. Do all athletes use steroids? No, but 99% of the time on the boards you can associate athletes with steroids. I've only found these associations in Goljan's audio lectures. Note that the written lecture notes are good but are missing many of these associations.

Pathoma- Not much more needs to be said. I watched each lecture at 2x speed while simultaneously outlining and marking points that I did not know. I then went back after I finished all 19 chapters and made anki on all the marks. I probably could have just skipped outlining and made anki the first time around for maximum efficiency.

First Aid- Barely opened my physical copy. As I said earlier, I skimmed First Aid four weeks in only after going through UWorld to get the pathologies and drugs that it missed. I never annotated in First Aid or Pathoma as I knew I would only go through them once and I would never see my annotations again (ie, I wouldn't read through FA twice during dedicated).

Boards and Beyond- You will have to relearn statistics for Step 1. I used B&B stats section and loved it. Targeted B&B videos were also used (rule of 4s for neuro lesions).

NBMEs- According to the data at the bottom of the CU SOM wikispace (now defunct, so you'll have to trust me), the only parameter that is strongly correlated with Step 1 score is number of questions completed. Thus, I placed a high priority on doing as many questions are possible during dedicated. The Comprehensive Basic Science NBMEs, bought here, are 200 questions from past Step 1 exams. I used 17, 16, 18, 19, and 15, in that order, + 2 UWSAs during the last two weeks of dedicated. The NBMEs are less helpful for review because there are no explanations (however they WILL be giving you the right answers in 2018, so you won't have to google to find them like we did). I found the questions on the actual exam to be a good mix of UWorld and NBME style questions, with the later NBMEs being more indicative of actual questions than 15. Yes, it is expensive and you must decide if it is worth it. I bought the $60 expanded feedback in order to see my wrong answers (very useful) and track how I was doing (not useful at all).

My scores on the NBMEs were 620 [17], 660 [16], 680 [18], 600 [19], 680 [15], which results in a predicted Step 1 range of 250-270.

Step 1 Score: 260

Afterthoughts

Taking into account the practice NBMEs and UWSA, I expected to get a 265 +/- 5, which turned out to be right! I found UWSAs were way too generous in their scoring while the NBMEs were more predictive. As for the questions, it is a good mix of NBME and UWorld questions. Do not sweat over the difference in question styles as it wouldn't change how you study anyways. That's all I can remember. I actually walked out of the exam and thought that I forgot to do an entire section. As for my final advice:

Highest priority: SketchyMedical PLUS SketchyMedical Anki deck BEFORE DEDICATED. Long term review (Firecracker, Brosence, Zanki), preferably before dedicated but also VERY useful during. AS MANY NBMEs AS POSSIBLE DURING DEDICATED.

The rest: Goljan/ Pathoma are great. FirstAid is not needed except for glancing over if you do long term review. Do as many questions as possible during the school year (You can use UWorld during the school year, but why would you? There are many other quality question banks which will allow you to save it for dedicated).

Finally: DO NOT 100% COPY MY STUDY SCHEDULE! We all start dedicated at different knowledge bases. Do NOT think you need to do what I did to score well; instead, use what you think will work for you and crush the test!