3 months october till December: I was doing pg residency train | Usmle step 2 experinces

3 months october till December: I was doing pg residency training at my home country so i could not focus properly on my studies.

I knew that i had wasted 1 year so i got to get exceptional score if i am to have any chance of being matched(which still seems vague to me).

I finished UW CK, uptodate(online), step 3 UW, and MKSAP during this time and i kept writing anything i found interesting on my notes(those printed uw tables n charts).

Stats at this point: Strength= 7/10 i was tired, felt less confident. Defense= 4/10 i was too anxious that if i messed up on this everything will be ruined. you can not afford to get lower score on CK than step 1 score, you have to improve. Agility: 4/10 i had not worked on time management yet.

I came to know about CMS 12 forms and before i had even started those i came to know about another newly launched 12 forms of cms and I felt like i had wasted so much of my time on making notes and going for the extra stuff that is not even made for ck. I was overloaded with so much information and so many sources to study. and first read is never enough for me. It’s like a quick scan , i don’t remember much when i read anything for the first time (not like those genius masterminds with photographic memory) so doing step 3 uw and MKSAP once felt like a time waste as i didn’t remember anything . I had 2 options either to revise all this again or to go for ck UW and keep assessing myself with CMS forms.

TIP: Do cms forms from the begining of your preparation. there are 24 forms with 50 questions each. so 1200 questions. takes a lot of time to learn all of it.

TIP # 2 : If your exam is near and u haven’t done cms yet, dont be worried. find time to do cms of only those subjects that are your weak areas and skip others.

2 months jan and march 2016: i dindt study in month of Feb.

i chose to do ck uworld and cms forms and some portion of step 3 uw. i took nbme 3 i didnt calculate score as i was doing offline and offline score calculation is never reliable but i consider anything close to 90% as good.

Stats at this time = Strength:9/10, defense 9/10 and agility 8/10 (the key factor in my performance) .

now because i had done almost everything i knew nothing more could be done and i had to take exam. i could not go on anymore. but i missed the date in april and i took my exam date in may.

1.5 months from april till 10th may: i did ck uworld, step 3 uworld, some cms forms revised, uwsa, and nbme 6 and 7 .

Uworld step 2 ck : 1st pass 76%, 2nd pass 86%, 3rd pass 98%, 4th pass that was in april i didnt calculate.

MY ASSESSMENTS:

Assessment

fred step 3 : 85%

fred step 2 : 91%

nbme 4 : 254 long time back

nbme 7 : 85%

nbme 6 : 92%

nbme 3 : 87%

CMS: on average 6 to 8 questions wrong in each form

UWSA: i did it offline 14 mistakes

REAL DEAL : 271 !

Exam Day: I studied till the very last minute before leaving for prometric center. exam was unfortunately not similar to uworld. i was quite disappointed.

i had done all i could, i studied the things that aren’t even made for ck but a major portion of exam like 60% of it was the stuff that i didnt study before. some of it was new topics and some of it was very conceptual where you had to apply concepts (step 1 and doing different questions helped a lot with this because this forces your mind to think).

I had no time issues, i marked about 10 to 15 questions in each block and i had about 8 to 10 minutes left to review them.

WHAT YOU SHOULD DO?

If you are done with step 1 then jump to uworld and stepup to medicine book. if step 2 ck is your first exam then i think you should read goljan book or FA step 1 ( yes step 1 stuff, just skip the mechanisms of drugs, pathology basics and immunology basics)

MEDICINE: major portion of exam. stepup to medicine is a good book. i didnt study it but i went through it for some topics. i liked it but didn’t have time to do it. Master the Boards Step 3 & Master the Boards Step 2 CK is not good.