Took step 1 in June, thought I would briefly share my study plan for all those studying right now.
Step 1 score was 267.
Study plan was to start studying around Feb for my exam in June. Started by trying to memorize the three things, pharm, micro, path, I think are mostly rote memorization since I wanted to spend time closer to the exam doing questions not memorizing stuff, but more critical thinking stuff. Used mostly first aid and pathoma for this task. Finished about April, and I started doing random questions sets, tutor mode, going over answers. I did usmlerx qbank, probably got through about 70% of the qbank before my account expired. Pretty good qbank to start, helps you memorize first aid, careful of some mistakes. Then I did kaplan qbank, actually finished this one, pretty good qbank, underrated I think. Then I did UWorld, I guess I started too late because I also only got to about 75% then ran out of time, good qbank, but maybe overrated. I didn't necessarily feel it was any better than Kaplan, hard to say, although the software and phone app are better for Uworld for sure. Also, did some old NBME pdfs to really get used to the NBME type questions, prob about 3. I felt the NBME question sets were a bit different than the qbanks. I actually feel like they are more straight forward, or maybe more easy/med type questions, less of those really tricky hard questions. I had learn to hold myself back, and check myself when I started thinking it was a 3 step type of question or some kind of trick question, because usually for the NBME it means your going off track and are going to get the question wrong. This is where Uworld can screw you by putting you into that, there are always a few trick questions per set mindset, because for the NBME usually this is not true.
So my basic principles, use first aid/pathoma mostly, start to memorize pharm/micro/path early, do lots of questions, min 2 qbanks. Also I never really actually read first aid cover-cover or anything, I just read it when doing questions, and/or reviewing pharm, micro, or path. Also I used minimal annotation in FA, its too time consuming, and I did not want to dilute the most important knowledge until I had whats written in it down cold first, then maybe annotate. Anyways hope this helps, cheers.
