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Medical students are among the most passionate book enthusiasts I've ever seen. Look at any medical student's bookshelf and you'll see a great number of review books and textbooks and possibly sometimes quite a few undergrad college textbooks that they brought "just in case" they will need to refer to some thing. This carries over right into class and the library where people see their classmates using guides they do not have, which makes them sense that they must have it too. Ring a bell? I do know I've ended up doing it personally, but rarely have I acquired a book that I looked back again on a year or so later and felt had been really worth buying. More often it just made me feel good at the time just before it sat on my shelf gathering dust. Book gathering disorder seems to expand around far more nerve-racking tests, so it's no surprise that many individuals manage to buy almost every step 1 review book they can find. Unfortunately you can find but Twenty four hours in a day and many of those books will receive a short going over at best. Permit me to come up with a suggestion for many of us book collectors: order far fewer books but know them a lot better. On the subject of boards, what this means is buy First Aid and KNOW IT COLD. This doesn't suggest browse through the pages and presume you fully understand it, it means actually dive in and understand it so well you could potentially recreate the diagrams from memory and spit back any fact within its pages. You won't get examination questions that simply have you spit back points; you'll really need to incorporate them and you may only accomplish this should you truly know the information very well. First Aid discusses 80-90% of what you'll find on Usmle. Don't be like a good number of students who panic about that very last 10-20% and neglect the most significant material. These individuals will commit hours learning obscure diseases that could MAYBE buy them one point, but fail to master vitamins or the adrenal steroid pathway very well and waste 4-5 questions. Was this a great usage of energy? Could this have been completely avoided if only they had far more books? Probably not. Pick a guide like First Aid and agree to learning it completely. Keep in mind that a portion of that 10-20% of minutiae are going to be items you've learned in MS1 and MS2 so you may grab a number of points simply from associative memory. If you're doubting this, go to SDN and browse experiences from people that took it. Does anybody ever say they think the minutiae are what killed them? Recognize how so many of them seemingly get exams which are coincidentally strong on their weakest fields? Undoubtedly most of them say that there were several questions that no amount of study might have prepared them for, so don't waste your time and effort. Master the things you can master. Finally, if you want to learn more now about First Aid for the USMLE and how USMLE Audio can help you master it, come check out my website at USMLE Audio where you can find loads of info on how to crush Step 1.
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