Hi everyone,
SAT 1580 (800 V, 780 M)
MCAT 36-38 (11 physical science, 12 bio, 13-15 verbal)
Q-bank : 70% but only 35% completed
150 Released questions : 74% (4 weeks before)
NBME 1 : 228 (5 days before)
NMBE 2: 236 (3 days before)
Step 1: 244/99
I was very pleasantly surprised by my score. I left the test feeling that I had my a** kicked by the test. There were sections where I was unsure about the answer on over 50% of the questions! I also knew that there were ~10 questions that I got wrong for sure. But I've always done pretty well on standardized tests in the past, so I guess things worked out in the end.
How I studied... I studied for 5 weeks, but took weekends off to go to weddings and such. I pretty much only used FA and Kaplan q bank (used BRS path a little). FA i went through very throughly and understood, *really* understood all of it. I also annotated it extensively with class notes, or looked at other resources when I didn't understand it. In terms of content, I didn't find Q bank that helpful. the questions were too nitpicky and didn't test the big concepts (which I would argue is the focus of the real test). However it was useful because I got used to taking timed tests on a computer.
How i structured my day.... i did almost all my studying with my roommate. We'd start in the morning at 9 and do questions on our own until 12. Then we'd go through FA together from 1 to 8 or 9pm. If we had enough energy, we'd finish off the day doing more questions on our own. Needless to say, we get along very well. I would not suggest doing this unless you know that you study well together! But if you do I would highly recommend it. we kept each other motivated, taught each other a ton, and paradoxically slowed each other down so that we actually *learned* what was in FA instead of just skimming over it.
Last Thoughts:
1) be sure to use the most current edition of First Aid. I started off using the 2004 version, but found that the 2005 version had a lot of changes and improvements. note: I was also a little nervous that it wouldn't be enough. a lot of people i know were using all sorts of different books and resources. I couldn't understand how they could learn that much stuff when just learning what was in FA was taking me so long! the only other book that I used somewhat regularly was BRS path.
2) take breaks - i would have gone crazy if i had studied for 5 weeks straight. the weekends were key to my sanity!
3) take your first 2 years of med school seriously. though i learned a lot during my 5 weeks of boards study, it was really just the icing on the cake. I'm sure it made my score go up, but i don't know how different my score would have been if i hadn't studied at all. I was always going back to things I had learned during class to answer a majority of the questions. It was only the rarer "fact" questions that my studying helped with.
4) the anatomy section in FA kinda sucks and definitely is not enough.
5) do the NBME tests. they were spot on in terms of concepts and question difficulty... and quite a few people I knew got the exact same questions on the real test! I took them timed, but wrote down a reminder about questions that I wanted to look up later. there is an option to do them in "study mode" which is not timed.
