Thursday, August 30, 2012
Is First Aid Enough for USMLE Step 1?
By Dave Young
Medical students are some of the most passionate book collectors I've ever met. Take a look at any med student's bookcase and you will see numerous review books and textbooks and maybe sometimes several undergrad textbooks that they brought in "just in case" they must research something. This holds over into class as well as the library in which people see their classmates utilizing textbooks they don't have, which makes them sense that they really need it too.
Sound familiar?
I realize I've already been guilty of it personally, but hardly ever have I bought a book that I checked back again on a year or so later and felt ended up being really worth buying. Often it merely helped me feel better at the time just before it sat on the shelf collecting dust.
Book amassing disorder seems to rise around more nerve-racking exams, so it's no wonder that many people often buy every USMLE review book they can find. Regrettably you can find but Twenty-four hours in a day and most of these books will get a short skimming at best.
Please let me make a word of advice for many of us book collectors: order fewer books but fully understand them better.
When it comes to boards, what this means is buy First Aid and Understand It COLD. This doesn't imply browse through the pages and think you already know it, this means actually dive in and know it so well you could potentially reproduce the diagrams from memory and spit back any point in its pages. You actually won't get test questions which simply have you spit back facts; you'll need to incorporate them and you will only accomplish this should you really know the material very well.
First Aid contains 80-90% of the things you'll find on Step One. Don't wind up as a good number of students who panic about the last 10-20% and neglect the most critical information. These individuals will commit hours trying to remember obscure disorders that will MAYBE get them one point, but neglect to master vitamins or even the adrenal steroid pathway very well and blow 4-5 questions.
Was this a beneficial utilization of energy? Would this have been prevented if they had more books? Most likely not. Pick a book like First Aid and invest in learning it entirely. Bear in mind that most of that 10-20% of minutiae are going to be stuff you've learned in MS1 and MS2 so you might pick up a couple of points simply from associative recollection.
If you're doubting this, go on SDN and browse experiences from folks who have taken it. Does just about anyone ever say they believe the minutiae are what harmed them? Observe how lots of them appear to get exams which are coincidentally intense in their weakest fields? Undoubtedly they all claim that there were some questions which no quantity of study would have equipped them for, so don't throw away your time and effort. Master the stuff you can master.
Sound familiar?
I realize I've already been guilty of it personally, but hardly ever have I bought a book that I checked back again on a year or so later and felt ended up being really worth buying. Often it merely helped me feel better at the time just before it sat on the shelf collecting dust.
Book amassing disorder seems to rise around more nerve-racking exams, so it's no wonder that many people often buy every USMLE review book they can find. Regrettably you can find but Twenty-four hours in a day and most of these books will get a short skimming at best.
Please let me make a word of advice for many of us book collectors: order fewer books but fully understand them better.
When it comes to boards, what this means is buy First Aid and Understand It COLD. This doesn't imply browse through the pages and think you already know it, this means actually dive in and know it so well you could potentially reproduce the diagrams from memory and spit back any point in its pages. You actually won't get test questions which simply have you spit back facts; you'll need to incorporate them and you will only accomplish this should you really know the material very well.
First Aid contains 80-90% of the things you'll find on Step One. Don't wind up as a good number of students who panic about the last 10-20% and neglect the most critical information. These individuals will commit hours trying to remember obscure disorders that will MAYBE get them one point, but neglect to master vitamins or even the adrenal steroid pathway very well and blow 4-5 questions.
Was this a beneficial utilization of energy? Would this have been prevented if they had more books? Most likely not. Pick a book like First Aid and invest in learning it entirely. Bear in mind that most of that 10-20% of minutiae are going to be stuff you've learned in MS1 and MS2 so you might pick up a couple of points simply from associative recollection.
If you're doubting this, go on SDN and browse experiences from folks who have taken it. Does just about anyone ever say they believe the minutiae are what harmed them? Observe how lots of them appear to get exams which are coincidentally intense in their weakest fields? Undoubtedly they all claim that there were some questions which no quantity of study would have equipped them for, so don't throw away your time and effort. Master the stuff you can master.
About the Author:
If you want to read more tricks about how to crush the USMLE step 1 exam, look at this article that will help you avoid some of the dumbest mistakes students make in preparing for this most critical exam and get your highest step 1 score possible.
Posted by AppleFanatic at 1:11 AM
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
0 comments:
Post a Comment