Thabet Qabaja – USMLE Step 1 – 273

USMLE Step 1 – 273 – Experience

I would like to thank everyone in this group as your experiences helped me a lot during my preparation.

Exam date : Sept/11/2017

Score date : Oct/4/2017

SCORE :

273

DURATION :

14 months, I had a lot of interruptions during my preparation.

MATERIALS :

First Aid USMLE Step 1 2018 (5-6) times

Uworld (2 times)

Kaplan USMLE Step 1 Lecture Notes & Videos

Fundamentals of Pathology – Hussein Sattar (Pathoma)

Uworld biostat

BRS Physiology

100 cases of Kaplan USMLE Medical ethics

SELF ASSESSMENTS

NBME 12 – 12 mistakes (2 months before exam)

NBME 13 – 12 mistakes ( 2 months before exam)

NBME 19 online – 271 (2 months before exam)

UWSA 1 – 279 (1.5 months before exam)

UWSA 2 – 273 (1 week after UWSA 1)

NBME 18 online – 267 ( 2.5 weeks before exam)

NBME 17 online – 271 ( 1 week before exam)

NBME 16 online – 263 ( 3 days before exam)

Free 120 – 93%

INTRODUCTION:

I am a 6th year medical student at the university of Jordan. I started my preparation in July, 2016. I started with kaplan and pathoma along with reading first aid. It took me 4 months to do Kaplan USMLE Step 1 lecture notes and Fundamentals of Pathology – Hussein Sattar (Pathoma). As I said, I had a lot of interruptions during my preparation, sometimes lasting more than 2 months. I started uworld in December, 2016. It took me 6 months to finish uworld (because of interruptions, it should have taken less time). I used to do 60-70 questions a day. I think doing uworld was the most important part of my preparation. I read the explanations very well and took notes. I did uworld for the second time in July-August, 2017 ( 1.5 months).

EXAM :

I only slept for 2 hours on the night of exam. I saw everyone posting about how long the exam questions were , but I didn’t find them long at all. Some of the questions were as long as NBME questions, others were as long as uworld questions. Anatomy questions were hard in my exam.

I did 2 blocks – break – 2 blocks – break – 1 block – break – 1 block – break – last block. I had to take a red bull and a lot of coffee to the exam to keep me awake. I also brought chocolate and a sandwich (you will need them)

ADVICE (in my opinion):

1- Do not waste a lot of time on Kaplan Lecture Notes for USMLE Step 1 books trying to memorize everything in them. I thought they were useful because they made it easier to read and understand things in First Aid USMLE.

2-Start uworld early in your preparation. Uworld helped me a lot in knowing what is important for step 1 (high yield subjects get a lot of questions on uworld compared to low yield subjects), so eventually you will be familiar with these subjects. You should master these subject because they can guarantee you a passing score on step 1.

3- NBMEs are very important as a learning and as an assessment tool. Make good use of them.

In the end, everyone has his/her own way of studying, so don’t be taking other people’s experiences as a strict guideline for your preparation and do what is best for you.

Good luck to all of you.

If this experience helped you, we recommend you check out the following experiences:

USMLE Step 1 – 242 Experience – US Medical Student

US MS2 – USMLE Step 1 Experience – 250

USMLE Step 1 Experience – 259 – American Medical Student