Wow....I can't believe it's over.....lol. Anyway, I'll try to do my best to give you an idea about my test (I could give you my life story and study methods but don't think anyone would care without a score
):
Anatomy I had a lot of CTs, MRIs, X-rays, gross sections, and diagrams. They would describe a pathologic state and ask you to diagnose the patient given the visual clue from imaging. I found it to be fairly reasonable. I'd estimate that a good 20-30% of the test had a visual clue where anatomy knowledge could help you answer the question.
Behavioral Science/Biostats I don't want to say this was fun, but I did enjoy getting to turn off my left brain for these few questions. For the most part, you could narrow them down to 2 possibilities and then you'd have to think and make your best guess. However, there were plenty of straightforward ones too. Biostats was not bad either. Know how to interpret a 2x2 table (duh) and what sensitivity, specificity, prevalence, incidence mean when applied to a situation. I did have 1 question where I had to think back to undergrad biology (evolution and phylogeny crap) to remember what an answer choice meant.
Biochemistry I'd say 70% of it was straightforward (meaning if you did the holy trinity of UW/FA/Goljan you heard about it being emphasized) and 30% was nitpicky specifics about enzyme deficiencies asking you to identify on a diagrammed pathway the step that was affected by the deficiency (maybe there are biochem lovers out there that find this stuff easy though). I got 2-3 glycogen storage disorders, lysosomal storage disorders, etc which I thought were fair (not easy, but fair).
Embryo I had maybe 5 with pictures of deformed babies and them asking what went wrong in development to cause it. Nothing too crazy here.
Genetics Know your genes and which diseases are associated with which chromosomes (FA covers this). I did have a few pedigrees where it helped to know if a disease was X-linked recessive, autosomal recessive/dominant, etc to figure out the chance that some kid would get the disease. I had a Hardy-Weinberg question too. Overall, most of the questions were fair and could be answered if you used the holy trinity.
Histology Like with anatomy, they give you a nice story and the pic to help you diagnose the patient. Nothing crazy here and I felt it was reasonable.
Immunology Know all of the IL-whatevers and the popular CDs. I was asked about a drug in the context of what CD marker it targeted. Again, most of this was sort of familiar based on having read the holy trinity so it was reasonable.
Micro I got some easy ones, medium difficulty (two step q's), and some tough ones. The tougher ones were clinically-oriented where you had to pick a drug likely to be effective based on them telling you which ones the patient was allergic too or the culture was resistant too (not sure how I could prep for this but take my best guess). KNOW ALL ABOUT HIV/AIDS opportunistic infections. I had a tough clinical question that required me to reason out the pathogen rather than just regurgitate based on the most common cause. I didn't get any helminths (yay) but did get plenty of fungi, and of course bacteria. Know about which drugs to use to kill gram +, gram -, etc so that you can culture certain bacteria types only and kill the ones you don't want.
Path/Pathophys/Phys Pathology was tied into the other areas so much that it is hard to distinguish it separately but for the most part it was nothing new. Physio was integrated into the other areas as well, but I got the arrow questions as well as the renal nephron diagram and acid/base stuff. Endocrine phys was also emphasized along with reproductive phys.
Pharm Plenty of cardiac/renal drugs, antibiotics, pain management, drug addicts needing antidotes, etc. Of course, there were some minor drugs (cancer drugs and herbals) that I never heard of and didn't care to memorize (f u nbme!). If you want to memorize all of those drugs, go ahead. More power to you. Know about where drugs work on the synapses (they'll show you a diagram of a synapse and ask where drug X acts). Of course, I got the common drug side effect questions as well but most were straightforward.
A/V question I just had one. Heart sound. Based on what I thought I heard, I had to pick the answer choice that corresponded to what pathological change in the heart corresponded to the sound.
Overall impression: I am so glad to be done with this. What a horrible way to waste a summer! If you did UW/FA/Goljan and took notes on things you didn't know and then read those notes again you should be good. Personally, I think UW helped improve my score/knowledge a good 10-15% per 50q block. UW also gave me the confidence to face the Step 1 questions because I knew I had seen much tougher questions on UW and didn't let my eyes glaze over looking at somewhat unfamiliar material. One important thing to note is that the actual test had considerably longer questions (I'm talking a big paragraph with lab data and then another mini paragraph below) than UW. If you can read fast and put it together then read it in order while highlighting the pertinent info and then skim back over the highlighted info once you know the question. If you kinda go nuts reading all of the comorbidities I might suggest reading the final line first. Other than that, UW was very good prep (I had one question that was almost exactly the same as a UW one...no joke) while FA helped to organize all of the material into sections. UW should be considered just as necessary as FA is considered for Step 1 prep. I felt well prepared just using these 2 sources with Goljan audio sprinkled in during down time.
I would also echo what overfiend said about study plans. I tried to follow ones I saw here but found out it wasn't working for me to have such a rigid plan. I had to change it up to doing more questions instead of reading so many review books. I learned much more from question banks than reading textbooks or review books. It was just too painful for me to read one specific book on one subject continuously (I felt like I was wasting my time studying these specifics when it would be more high yield to focus on general things from all areas). I found that the qbanks allowed me to actively study by forcing me to constantly apply what I knew (and thus strengthen my knowledge and give me more confidence in applying the material) and was much more tolerable for me. If you feel like someone else's study plan isn't working, then your intuition may be right and don't be afraid to change it up. Only you know what is best for you.
And with that, I am spent.
Good luck to all my fellow M2.9s on the boards and in the wards!
