Hi, Im a fourth-year MD/PhD student at the University of Queensland in Australia.

I sat the USMLE

Step1 on the 14th of December, 2012, and I would like to share my experience with those whom may
find it helpful.
My initial goal was 270+ for this exam. I write this review on behalf of students at the University of
Queensland, Australia.
I had not planned on nor had I ever considered sitting the USMLE until I had almost finished MS2, so my
focus became that of taking the exam at the end of my third-year (first PhD year). I thought the prep
would be relatively simple. It wasnt. The Australian curriculum places very little emphasis on the basic
sciences, and I had to learn the vast majority of the material from scratch. This is mostly with respect to
embryology, microbiology, immunology and pharmacology, as well as biostatistics. Biochemistry was
also not covered at UQ, but fortunately my undergrad major was in the subject, so it never became an
issue for me.
-----------------------------------------------For the sake of clarity, the Australian academic year is the same as the calendar year, so classes run
January-November, not August-June.
Pre-preparation phase:
During my MS2 (2011), I spent the first semester (Jan-May) reading big Robbins. This is practically all
that I did. I spent probably 4-6 hours per day going through this book. Once again, this is before I had
ever planned on sitting the exam, and truthfully, I wouldnt recommend going through this book either.
It contains a ton of information and is unquestionably one of the gold standard resources out there for
path, but its not presented in a way that is even remotely concise enough for effective USMLE prep.
That is let alone the fact that the majority of the text is low-yield. Use this tome as a mere reference.
In June of my MS2, I had come in contact with a student at my school whom had played a
transformational role in my learning. He began to mention some of the resources he had found to be
helpful. I purchased BRS Pathology, and after having read a chapter of it, immediately jettisoned the
Robbins method. BRS Path is super well-consolidated and presents the major ideas as high-yield bullet
points. I found this organization to be better catered to my learning-style because I was able to simply
memorize the chapters with alacrity as opposed to having to filter through much of the low-yield info in
Robbins. Per the same number of hours spent studying thereafter, my efficiency with regard to
learning high-yield information had been improved significantly.
During semester-two, I would review a chapter in BRS Pathology on the Sunday or Monday before that
corresponding topic was discussed in PBL on Tuesday. This way, I entered the week already having had
a pretty good summary of the major ideas as opposed to having merely seen them for the first time in
PBL. This helped me facilitate the class discussions. On Wednesdays, I would continue reading BRS Path
and memorizing it the best that I could. It took me a very long time to go through the chapters because
I generally made sure I could reproduce them by memory repeatedly before moving on.

On Thursdays, I had pathology prac at the hospital, so I would spend the preceding 1-1.5 hours in the
specimen lounge reading DejaReview USMLE Step1. This was a great top-up to BRS. This book has a
Q&A-type format. I would go through the corresponding topic that we were covering that week, so I
would enter prac already having read BRS and DejaReview. This once again helped me to participate.
The active involvement served as positive-reinforcement, so this BRS-DejaReview method during the
early-mid-week worked quite well for me.
The catch is that the pathologists lecturing the pracs almost always developed their Powerpoints directly
from Robbins. So the fact that I was no longer perusing big Robbins was beneficial because instead of
having to go through the text myself to extract the main ideas, I let the prac tutors do the dirty work for
me. In other words, their Powerpoints essentially became my Robbins summaries, thereby further
obviating the need for me to reference that text. So by late-Thursday, I had also covered Robbins.
I then spent Fridays and Saturdays going through topic-specific questions on University of Utah Webpath
and in Robbins Review of Pathology. Whichever questions I had not managed to complete at the end of
a given week I always made sure to finish before SoM exams. These questions, particularly the Webpath
ones, in combination with my change in resource-use, improved my grades dramatically. I even recall a
frenetic post-exam debate people had had on our SoM forum about an ambiguous question, but I had
seen an almost identical question on Webpath while studying just days earlier. I cannot advocate more
the value of Webpath. Use this resource.
Once Saturday passed and Sunday arrived, I did not touch material from the previous week. Sundays
always equated to getting a jump start on the next week. If I had felt at any point that I had needed to
continue looking at stuff from the previous week too late. Sundays were strictly for preparing for the
next week. Period. Staying one step ahead is extremely important during MS2. Its never harmful to
review previous weeks material from time to time, but going into each new week with foundation will
not only positively reinforce your comfort with and command over MS2 material, but it will also give you
the ability to be a more helpful, influential and impactful colleague.
During the neuro weeks of MS2, I had also gone through HY Neuroanatomy SECOND edition. I
emphasize that I used the second edition because, several months later, I had coincidentally looked at
the 5th edition that one of my friends had for comparison, and I found that although the latter was
much more presentable and overall more informing, it was also much less concise. My impression was
that the 5th edition would be great for someone in MS1 who wants to learn a broader foundation in
neuro, but that the 2nd edition was still better for USMLE prep. Resources may become more affable
with time, but that doesnt mean they always better serve their purpose.
When I approached the end of MS2, I decided that it wouldnt be unwise to keep my options open for
the future, so I began preparing for the USMLE.
Preparation phase:
In late-2011, although I had several friends whom had been preparing for the USMLE during MS1/2 and
were sitting it in a few weeks time, I was still yet to have seen First Aid. I knew I was in no position to

take the exam any time soon. I began by purchasing the Sanjiv Microcards and Underground Clinical
Vignettes Anatomy. I went through both of these resources haphazardly during December 2011 and
January 2012, but had finished both by the end of January 2012. I also started listening to the Goljan
audios. I only went through about two-thirds of them because I was impatient and only found them to
be moderately helpful (I should make note, however, that this was only because my pathology was
already pretty good by the time I finished MS2; had I started listening to Goljan a year earlier, I definitely
would have found him to be phenomenal. I highly recommend the Goljan audios during MS2.). In
addition, I bought the Lange pharm cards. I only went through about 20 or so of these at this point in
time, then put them aside.
Mid-January 2012, my sister had purchased for me a till you pass subscription to USMLE Rx QBank. I
did 100 questions in tutor-mode and got 67 correct. I noticed that alongside the explanations there
were also PrntScr images of pages from FA, and that the vast majority of the questions I was getting
wrong had answers straight from the text. I realized that I was better off first reading FA and then
tackling the QBank for reinforcement, as opposed to blindly doing questions first. So I purchased
FA2012. In retrospect, I believe I was probably sitting around a 190-200 had I sat the USMLE at this
point. Although 65% is about the average in Rx (which means one could arguably say a 220 was possible
for me), this figure is left-shifted figure because most people who utilize Rx do so early, rather than late,
in their prep (so this is an average among less prepared test-takers).
I spent three weeks during February at 8-12 hrs/day reading First Aid cover-to-cover. There was such a
large volume of info that I swore I was forgetting most of it, but I continued on. The day after I finished
FA (in late-February), I recommenced USMLE Rx. I noticed immediately a dramatic difference and was
averaging around 85-90% on blocks, in contrast to the 67% I had mustered before having touched FA. I
spent 8-10 hrs/day during March and April laboring through Rx at a mere 48 questions/day in random,
tutor-mode. I annotated everything I found important into FA. This snail pace was due to the fact that I
had not seen most of the material before. But on the other hand, I was inadvertently learning a lot.
By the time I finished Rx, I could tell that my grasp of the material had changed drastically. I believe at
this point I was probably sitting around a high-230, or just nicking 240, if I was lucky. I spent the month
of May going through BRS Behavioral Science at a chapter per day. I read each one in the morning
before starting my real studying. This method made the read very manageable. I had started this
book because behavioral was my worst subject in Rx, so I had had to remediate somehow. During the
day-time, I went through FA Q&A and Kaplan QBook. I did not annotate my FA from these resources,
and I read only the explanations from Kaplan QBook. This was mostly because FA Q&A was very easy,
but Kaplan QBook still assessed quite a few details I had not encountered before. I then took a solid ten
days toward the end of the month as a vacation roadtripping/backpacking up to Cairns and the Great
Barrier Reef for scubadiving (highly recommend this if you ever trek down under). Because I had been
traveling with my good friend, who is also a med student, he happened to have had a copy of
Underground Clinical Vignettes Behavioral Science lying on the floor of his car. So during down-time, I
blasted through this book.

I should also mention that for the first half of the year, whenever I had gone anywhere via public
transportation, I would randomly read either First Aid CASES or Step1 SECRETS. I finished CASES but
only read about one-tenth of SECRETS (see my reviews at the end of this post).
June and July were more turbulent and desultory study months because I was travelling a lot and had
had family obligations. I spent the first ten days or so of June initiating my second cover-to-cover pass
of FA. I then curtailed this effort and looked into Gunner Training because some people had raved
about it. I did not like the flashcard system (personal preference, although some people love it), so I
instead just did their QBank. I went through it at around 150-200 questions per day, annotating into my
FA here and there, but not religiously. By the first week of July, I had finished GT QBank. I then went
through HY Cell & Molecular Bio, and then recommenced my second cover-to-cover pass of FA from
where I had left off previously. I finished FA again by late-July. My second pass of FA took about the
same amount of time as my first pass had. The difference was that the second pass included the need
to review annotations, so I was probably covering ~20% more text in the same amount of time. Even
still, it was quite a slow pace. I also blasted through the Lange pharm cards and Brenner cards. In
January, it had taken me several hours to go through just 20-25 cards. However now, I went through all
of the Lange + Brenner cards in just two days. The Brenner had some lower-yield drugs, so I wrote the
ones I hadnt heard of before on post-it notes and put them on my desk. I would Wiki a random drug
every other day or so. By the time I sat the exam, I knew the drugs in FA + Lange cold + a handful of the
lower-yield ones in the Brenner stack.
I then sat NBME-3 online late-July (they retired this exam on July 30th, 2012) and scored 250. I spent
two days flipping through random questions from the behavioral and pharm Kaplan lecture notes and
then started Kaplan QBank the first day of August. I went through Kaplan QBank at 6-8 hrs / 100
questions / day in random timed-mode. The 150-question diagnostic + 2200 QBank + two full-length
exams = ~3000 questions. I got through everything in just one month. I annotated Kaplan into my FA in
orange ink. So at this point, blue/black annotations were mostly USMLE Rx and GT QBank, and orange
was Kaplan.
The first day of September I started UWorld. I thought because I had been able to go through Kaplan so
quickly that my UWorld pacing would be comparable. Wrong. I found UWorld to be incredibly infodense, and I progressed at a similar speed as I had with USMLE Rx: 6-8 hrs / 50 questions / day.
Whereas with Rx I had done one 48-question block per day, since UWorld only allowed a maximum of
46 questions per block, I did two 25-question blocks per day. I went through my first two blocks of
UWorld in tutor-mode to get accustomed to the interface, but then did the rest of the QBank in random
timed-mode. I finished UWorld by mid-October and had made all of my annotations into FA in green
ink.
I went on to do all of the offline NBME exams (1, 2, 4 [please dont ask me for these because I dont have
them; if you want them, make a thread asking where to find them and someone will PM you]) and some
other random question sources, such as Microcards QBank (~75 questions) and UWorld biostats PDF
(~75 questions). I then sat NBME-5 online late-October and scored 257. I was surprised that I had done
a significant amount of work since late-July and had only increased seven points on the NBME. I began

to realize that my progress, if graphed, likely resembled the Hb-O2 dissociation curve. I was aware that
prepping beyond this point wasnt necessarily going to buy me additional points as much as it was just
building my confidence and comfort in being able to achieve a [I]minimum[/I] score. In other words, I
knew putting in additional months of study ultimately wasnt going to guarantee me a super-high score
as much as it was merely safe-guarding me from a low outcome if the random allotment of questions on
my real USMLE turned out to be unfavorable. I would say once you realize youre entering your plateau
phase, youre building potential, rather than kinetic, energy. It will make you slightly dubious as to your
methods, but its completely normal. You just need to continue pushing onward.
After I sat that NBME in late-October, I went through the USMLE Rx for the second time. I did about 5600 questions before realizing that they were far too easy compared to the ones in UWorld. While they
were great during my early prep, this late in the game, I knew it was better to focus on other things
(however, if you are late in your prep and havent done Rx, I would still recommend it; one pass was
good, but not two. Regardless as to how easy the questions are, there was still some stuff that showed
up on my real USMLE that I had only encountered through Rxs explanations).
So after those 5-600 questions, I began my third cover-to-cover pass of FA. This time, I had needed to
read not only the text itself, but also all of my annotations from the past half-year. I had (with no
exaggeration) probably doubled the length of my FA. I [I]still [/I]went through at roughly the same pace
as I had the first two passes. But because the length of text had been augmented considerably, I was
actually reading pretty fast. In contrast to the first two passes, however, for the third one, anything that
was not already 100% engrained in my memory I wrote down in a separate notebook. I filled up about
half a small notebook with my tiny handwriting. I dated each days notes and, before beginning my
reading for that particular day, reviewed for about 30 minutes what I had written the previous day. This
was an incredibly fastidious and menacing process, but I just dealt with it.
I finished the third cover-to-cover pass by mid-late-November. I then began going through UWorld for
the second time at 322 questions per day. I did this in tutor-mode but, for the most part, breezed
through it and only superficially reviewed tidbits of info when needed. Anything I had gotten incorrect
or had marked this second time around I made sure I reinforced doubly. The benefit of having gone
through UWorld in its entirety for the second time was for helping to build rapid recall skills.
I finished the second pass of UWorld by the start of December (two weeks-out). I then flew from
Australia to New York. I was extremely jetlagged, but decided to sit NBMEs 6+7 anyway as an
experiment to see how I could manage testing conditions while tired. Well, all I have to say is: get your
sleep. It makes a huge difference.
NBME6: 252 (12 days-out)
NBME7: 254 (11 days-out)
I freaked out after these results. I didnt know why they were worse than my NBME5 result, and I
questioned whether I had been doing something critically wrong. Either way, I was too close to the
exam to ruminate over technicalities, so I just tried to maintain my composure the best that I could.

I spent the next day going through FA at random and looking through old NBME questions (I should
mention that I had made a Powerpoint file with PrntScr images of all of my incorrect NBME questions). I
then sat free-150 (10 days-out) and got 95%. MedFriends predicted this to be 270 +/- 11. I had said in a
previous post that I got 268 +/- 11 on Free-150, but it was actually the former that was correct (not that
this matters or is even remotely important, but I thought Id clarify for the sake of anyone who types
95 on the MedFriends website and notes the inconsistency).
I spent the 9th day-out reviewing just biochemistry from FA.
NBME13: 264 (8 days-out)
I spent the 7th day-out reviewing just embryology from FA (and other random things).
NBME12: 266 (6 days-out)
I spent the 5th day-out reviewing just microbiology from FA.
NBME11: 264 (4 days-out)
The third to last day was just pharmacology from FA (end of each chapter and the pharm chapter itself).
The last two days I did practically nothing. In actuality, I spent probably a total of two hours on the
second to last day looking at my Powerpoint of incorrect NBME questions, and the final day I quickly
touched up on neuroanatomy using the neuro only sections of the Kaplan anatomy lecture notes. I
didnt read them. I just looked at the images. I didnt do anything else those last two days. To that
effect, I believe I had spent more time during the final days watching Alex Honnold rockclimbing videos
and writing poetry than I had actually studying.
All of my study days during the final two weeks were at ~50% effort relative to those throughout the
year. I felt fairly prepared, and by having done the NBMEs, I knew that trying to get a score mid-260s+
was primarily bound to getting lucky with minutiae. What separated my NBME6+7 performances from
NBMEs11-13 in just a matter of days had absolutely nothing to do with reading FA and everything to do
with sleeping more (i.e. not making stupid errors) and getting minutiae questions that I coincidentally
knew. There was nothing else to it. That was it. If there had been some arcane secret to the successequation other than that, I would have assiduously appropriated 12-15 hours/day during those final two
weeks optimizing to ensure that 270. However, the best thing I could do was just to stay rested and not
feel beleaguered.
Backtracking, I did recognize, however, that my reduced study effort during the final weeks was largely
incongruous with my drive to do well on the exam. I had encountered some form of impasse. I felt
bemused, dissonant, burned out. That was it: I had burned out.
This started roughly 5-6 weeks from my test date at the beginning of November. In a panic, I had sent
several PMs to my friends on SDN asking for advice. They all told me to take a little time off. Take time

off? This close to the exam? Are you crazy? But I did. Reluctantly. I spent an entire day up at the
beach with some mates. It was exactly what I had needed.
Everyone who encounters a burnout manages and experiences it differently. You reach this point when
your rate of growth of learning, although always positive, has begun to decline to the point that studying
the material no longer produces identifiable gains. This is not to be confused with apathy or mere lack
of motivation. This is an honest realization. It means that youve genuinely learned the material
sufficiently such that theres no longer any drive to reinforce it. It means youve finished all of the
resources that you had been striving to grow from. Early in my prep, I had envisioned that I would be
sprinting toward the finish line doing 15-hr days in the weeks leading up to the exam. In contrast, I
surprisingly felt a temporary perturbation and lack of motivation starting about 5-6 weeks-out.
I sat back and thought hard about what was going on. This was no time to lose motivation, so I needed
to objectify the scenario and come to a solution. I realized that my motivation hadnt ebbed. It was
merely that my growth rate had declined and I was no longer stimulated. This was the defining moment
of my USMLE preparation. It meant that I had in fact been studying for intrinsic reasons all along. As
much as I may have felt inclined to abnegate my freedom on the basis that I wanted a strong score, I
knew that if the score itself had been the only impetus, then I wouldnt have experienced any
perturbation. I hadnt suddenly lost motivation. I had merely become subconsciously aware that I was
no longer able to reinforce the material more than I already had.
Therefore, ones false perception of a decline in self-motivation late in prep is reflective of having
mastered the material, and is in turn an integral and necessary stage of study-optimization.
One should always remain impassioned up until the actual exam, but if he or she is still driven and
ignited by the material itself through to the very last day, then he or she has not yet peaked, and
therefore has not yet reached his or her fullest potential. The very definition of peaking is manifested
by a loss of interest not one of premature apathy or as a form of repression, but instead one as a
byproduct of honest progress and sense of completion. Tapering your studies when approaching the
exam shouldnt be a conscious decision. It just should happen.
The real solution I developed to avert the burnout, apart from merely taking that beach day, was more
importantly through action, not just thought. I made it an obligation to have a mere physical presence
in the library for at least eight hours per day. During the month of November, I was nocturnal. I slept
from 2-10pm, went to the gym from 10:30-11:30pm and then went to the library from about midnight
till 8 or 9am. I would then skate to one of the local cafes, grab a quick breakfast and then head off to
bed. Had I not held myself to going to the library inveterately during this month, it would have been
extremely difficult for me to have finished that final pass of FA. It was grueling. But this is where it all
culminated.
The night before the exam, I stomached a meager dinner of two protein bars and a slice of pizza. I
watched Shawshank Redemption on DVD, drank two cups of chamomile tea with milk and honey, read a
little from a new novel I was starting, reflected on the past year and then went to bed. I got 8.5 hours of
sleep. And then I finally sat the US medical licensing exam on the 14th of December.

Exam experience:
I purposely scheduled my test for a 12:30 8:30pm timeslot. I am not a morning person nor have I ever
been. I was glad I had been able to sleep well the night before. I started the day with the normal
routine, and I had a bowl of SmartStart cereal with skim milk and three-quarters of a banana. To get my
mind functioning, I made sure to carry a conversation with my dad while he was driving me to the
testing centre. I would not recommend reviewing any material or doing warm-up questions the
morning of. It will only add to any latent anxiety. Youve prepared well for this exam, remember? Trust
what you know. Be confident in yourself.
I was the first to arrive at the testing centre. I recommend getting there a full hour early. There will be a
maelstrom of people waiting to check in, so the earlier you get there, the less you need to dither. I
made perfunctory chat with other students before the test, but once everything got underway, I entered
my own zone and didnt talk to nor look at anyone for the rest of the day.
Before you start the exam, the proctors will take your picture, fingerprint you, perform a signature test
alongside your passport, search your pockets and send you through a metal detector. Every time you
take a break and walk into or out of the testing room, these security procedures are repeated in front of
a camera. There was greater security at my exam than there was each time Ive vacationed to and from
Israel. You will also receive two laminated sheets of paper and two fine-tip markers. Crossing out is
allowed, but erasing is not. If you run out of space (you wont), they will give you additional materials.
Bring your own foam earplugs. Your testing centre should supply them, but bring them just in case. At
my computer console, there was a pair of those orange helicopter attendant-type noise-cancelling
earmuffs as well as a pair of black headphones that were plugged into the computer. During the exam, I
had my foam earplugs in and the orange earmuffs on. I had only encountered two heart sound
questions on my exam, so for these, I removed the foam earplugs and orange earmuffs, switched to the
black headphones momentarily, then upon finishing the questions, put the former back on. The
earplugs + black headphone combination didnt block out as much sound, which is why I cumbersomely
dealt with the switch mid-exam.
At the start of the test, they had assigned me a cubical location toward the front of the testing room. I
didnt like this spot because the computer screen was in everyones plain view, so I asked to be moved
to a more private space in the back. They acquiesced. This is yet another reason why I recommend
getting to the testing centre early. You never know what inconveniences might arise.
Upon registration, you will receive an examinee ID#. You must write this on each laminated sheet of
paper as well as enter it into the computer to commence each block. In other words, you will enter this
number into the computer seven times on test day. A picture of your face will appear on the monitor in
front of you, and youll enter the number in the space below the photo. I mention this because some
people have asked whether one could accidentally resume someone elses exam or if a timer magically
starts once you enter the testing room. The process is tightly regulated, so no accidents will happen.
Dont worry.

When I first sat down at the console to start the exam, the intensity of the moment was profound. The
first question loaded, and it was surreal that after all of those thousands of practice questions I had
done after all of those thousands of pages I had read after all of those long hours and sunrises
through the library windows I was now actually engaged in the real deal. My heart was pounding
vehemently in my chest for the first seven questions or so. My stroke volume was off the charts. I was
thankful that the exam started off easy because I was able to build momentum quickly. Had I needed to
deal with some recondite ethics or graphing question right off the bat, I may have gone into cardiac
arrest. But as the ball got rolling, I actually got excited. Never had I worked so hard for something
before. I was pumped.
I did the first two blocks back-to-back with no break (took 60 seconds sitting at my desk without leaving
the testing room). After the second and third blocks, I had half a protein bar and a few sips of water.
After the fourth and fifth blocks, I had a diet Redbull and half a PBJ sandwich. After the sixth block, I
chugged the third diet Redbull but consumed no calories. I also made sure to micturate each break.
I used almost all of my break time on exam day. Although I had finished each block with 10-25 minutes
to spare (this time is added onto your break time if you end a block early), I used every examination
minute I had to review both marked AND unmarked questions. I had had a habit of making careless
errors on the NBME exams, so I tried my hardest to minimize these. That being said, if you have any
extra time at the end of your breaks, I exhort double-checking your work. This doesnt mean you should
start psychoanalyzing or overthinking questions. If youve done lots of practice questions, youll know
how to use your time to your advantage. But regardless, definitely use it, and at the very least, just to
make sure you didnt accidentally click transformation on a question when you meant to click
transposition. This stuff happens, no matter how composed you think youll be on exam day.
For a bit more clarity, Ill give general breakdowns for each subject as far as what showed up on my
exam. But be aware that everyones form is different. Whereas some people might have lots of micro
and very little anatomy, for instance, others might have it the other way around. So the following isnt
what would necessarily appear on your exam. Its just an example of what is possible.
Anatomy (10-15 Qs): several questions on upper limb nerves; one question that relied on you knowing
the image of the brachial plexus very well; a question on the vagina; a question on urinary incontinence;
one abstruse abdominal X-ray with frontal and lateral views; one question involving a muscle insertion
point; a very strange question involving a thoracic stab wound, where they wanted to know which
structure was compressed, but the structure (as inferred from the patients presentation) wasnt
immediately in the region of the penetration; simple lymph drainage question; question on histology of
respiratory tract mucosa in a specific location.
Embryology (5): aortic arch derivative; some questions on pharyngeal clefts/arches/pouches.
Biochemistry (20-25): this is where some of the trickier questions were on my exam. They werent
necessarily difficult at the core of what they were asking, but they required that you knew your
metabolic pathways very well and then were able to manipulate them. Know anabolic/catabolic
enzymes and how they relate to cAMP and phosphate group shuttling. Know your terminology (e.g.

difference between phosphatase, phosphorylase, etc.). In turn, know how substrate concentrations will
change upstream or downstream depending on alterations in a metabolic pathway. Understand your Gprotein pathways and lac operon and be attuned to how mutations (whether inactivating or
constitutive) would produce a deviation; or conversely, be able to infer where a mutation would have
occurred based on any information they give you. I had a question late in my exam that involved two
different types of mutations in a single common pathway; pathways on their own are easily memorized,
but youve got to study them well enough so that youre able to flip things around, even when youre
tired. I also had a one-liner question asking something very specific about an intracellular protein;
another tricky question on glycogen enzyme regulation; an easy question on a glycogen storage disease;
another one-liner minutia question asking about ion channel regulation in a specific tissue; question on
gluconeogenesis where you needed to know what happens in the mitochondria vs cytosol; another
specific question on what would occur in a pathway based on a particular change in diet; two questions
on intracellular signaling molecules (know how proteins are shuttled around and modified); easy
question on insulin and C-peptide; ultra-specific question making sure you could identify and
differentiate between the familial dyslipidaemias; two questions on collagen; couple of pedigree
questions; some questions on CF and AIDS mechanisms; tough question on a vitamin in a patient with an
atypical presentation. I also had a ridiculous question on ELISA that was by far the most WTF question I
have ever seen. I encountered it in the 6th block, read it for 60 seconds, didnt click an answer, then
went back to it and spent an additional 7-8 minutes answering it. I had read on the scores thread from
2012 where a couple people had mentioned having encountered a WTF ELISA question. Well, Im not
sure if what comes around goes around, but this one did come for sure. The 6th block was the only one
that I didnt have enough time to double-check of all of my unmarked questions. And it was strictly
because of that one ELISA question.
Biostats (10): a few simple questions on sensitivity/specificity; a question about understanding what
alpha, beta and power mean; a question on population data interpretable from a graph. I also had a
WTF question that involved a simple graph. It should have been incredibly easy, but I had no idea what
they were asking because the grammar didnt make any sense. I spent a solid three minutes at the end
of the block just trying to figure out how the meaning of the graph changed based on where the
commas should have been in the question. This was in the first block too, so I was preter-awake. There
was no catch. It was just a poorly written question. I still have no idea whether I got it right.
Behavioral science (15): a couple of questions on developmental milestones. One asked about a reflex;
the other wanted you to interpret, based on the vignette, whether the motor, cognitive and social
milestones had been met by an infant. One question on sleep. Know what happens during each stage of
the sleep cycle. They tried to be tricky with this question, so also know how to differentiate between
the different sleep disorders. A question about mental retardation in a developmental disorder. Several
(probably 6 or 7) ethics questions. Two were tricky. One asked about a situation I never could have
prepared for. It involved working with the parents to develop a management plan for a child with a
particular disorder.
Microbiology (15-20): a couple questions asking the structural characteristics of viruses; a couple easy
ones giving classic presentations and then asking for the organism; a very difficult one on tropical

disease; three very hard image questions, two of which asked about organisms that arent even in FA,
and on top of that, one of these asked about the treatment, where the correct answer was a drug I had
never heard of before. Another very tricky question on bacterial toxins (know how these relate to
immunology); three questions on vaccines; question on pneumonia; question on meningitis. Overall,
micro was my best subject going into the exam, and I walked out having felt like it was the hardest topic
I had encountered.
Immunology (15): question on bacterial toxin and three on vaccines (same as those mentioned in micro
up above); at least 6 or 7 questions on immune responses in tissue reactions (know the cells involved for
all of the major immunological reactions and hypersensitivities) ; I even remember thinking during the
exam that if I had been shaky on which cells were involved when/where, I would have been screwed; a
question on viral propagation/proliferation; couple of questions on congenital disorders listed in FA;
question on immunoglobulins.
Pharmacology (15): about half were simple pharmacokinetics questions; hard one on drug toxicity; tricky
one on a low-yield side-effect of a drug; very difficult question regarding the identification of an ultralow-yield organism via an image and then knowing the Tx was the obscure drug listed (as mentioned in
micro above); a couple neuro-related; a couple on anti-psychotics and anti-depressants; one low-yield
anti-cancer agent MOA.
Pathology: tough to give a number here because path overlaps with pretty much everything, but it was
the majority of my test. I had many gross images, illustrations, several MRIs and X-rays, and even some
on organism identification. Overall, I had neuro-heavy exam and relatively little respiratory or repro.
The USMLE is primarily an examination of pathology. This requires an integrated understanding of a
broad scope of it in conjunction with patient presentations. You can be a rare guru at a subject like
anatomy or micro, for instance, and still only do okay on the USMLE. However, if you know your path
inside and out, youre going to do very well. Just think: Goljan would rock the USMLE and he wouldnt
even need to refresh his basic sciences.
Physiology (20): mostly arrow questions; two of them were extremely difficult, where one was with
regard to a disease that was low-yield and not even in FA. Basically, the first one took a rare disease and
then wanted to know very specific things about it in arrow-form. I couldnt believe they were so
pedantic about something so rare. Ive always been one to obsess over small details, but even I found
this question pedantic. For hypothetical purposes (i.e. this is NOT what actually showed up), it would be
like them asking about changes in biotin and succinyl-CoA utilization in hypokalaemic periodic paralysis.
Yes, it was that retarded. The other question wasnt about a too uncommon disease, but one of the
variables was just exceedingly odd. Once again, for hypothetical purposes, it would be like them
mentioning fructose intolerance (so far so good), but then, as the fifth arrow-variable, they want to
know about the change in cytidine concentration in the kidney. Just odd. These werent things I believe
any of us could prepare for. I also had one question on ion channel regulation; one very tricky question
on cardiac function represented in a strangely graphed form, where you had to infer, based on the
graph, the mechanism of the drug used; one renal calculation question; one tricky question on pressure
vs resistance in graph form, where they were comparing different vascular locations, and you had to

keep a lot in your short-term memory to answer it correctly. Id say a few of the pure IQ questions
that appeared on my exam relied on you knowing your physical sciences really well and then being able
to visualize information in a recondite way. Physio was definitely one of the more challenging subject
areas I had encountered.
Molecular biology (6): had six pure mo bio questions that I can think of off the top of my head (i.e. not
integrated with biochem or path, just pure lab technique-type questions). Had two tied into bacterial
nucleic acid acquisition; question on modification of viral phenotype in vitro; question on gene transfer
techniques; two questions related to plasmid construction, where one was pretty hard and I narrowed it
down to two choices. I answered this one via trying to integrate my external knowledge, but I couldnt
have ever prepared for it. What made it difficult was that you needed to know very specific functions of
each individual plasmid component within the context of an experimental model. I believe Kaplan
QBank helped me most for the mo bio questions because they were fairly OCD about this subject.
During the 6th and 7th blocks (particularly the 7th) of the exam, my mentality and strategy had changed.
As rested as I had been going in, and despite having had three diet Redbulls, my sensorium began to feel
increasingly clouded. It felt like I had been awake two nights in a row and was still forcing myself to
operate at 110% capacity. Whereas at the beginning of the exam, I worked through each question
meticulously and judiciously, by the end of the exam, my subconscious mind had taken over and I pretty
much answered everything on rapid recall. Some of the questions would load, I would look at them for
4-5 seconds as though they were some sort of wordless collage, instantly click an answer, then go back
and spend another half-minute reading, only to keep the same answer. I had felt most tired on this
last block, but I had finished it faster than the previous six, with almost half an hour left. The whole
thing was a blur.
When I walked out of the testing centre, I was certain that I had done very well on the exam. I was
aware that I had broken 260, but I wasnt sure as to the exact margin. However, as the days rolled by, I
became cognizant of at least five absolutely careless errors I had made, and I had to come to terms with
the reality that a 270 was just no longer a possibility. Its like submitting a cover letter for a job you
really want, only to realize after the fact that you spelled something wrong. It was just too late. Based
on the NBME exams, a few questions translate into a dramatic difference in score once in the 260+
range. If you want that 270, being well-prepared isnt enough. You need to get lucky on the handful of
minutiae questions, you cant make errors and you need to be exceedingly brilliant. All three are
prerequisites. I was able to achieve a 262 on the USMLE Step1.
Im generally content with this outcome. Not ecstatic. Not disconsolate. Generally content.
If the exam had been a chess game, I feel it ended in a draw. I read all of the books. I knew all of the
openers. I had sufficient end-strategy. But the game still ended in a draw. Ill accept the handshake.
-----------------------------------------------Now let me just make something clear about the resources Ive mentioned above: those were the heart
of my prep. I am a book buff, and purchased pretty much every resource out there for USMLE Step1

prep, and I had looked at over 50 different texts throughout 2012, but most of them did not ultimately
help me in any way. If they didnt help me get additional questions correct in UWorld, the NBMEs or on
the real deal, I didnt list them above.

Resources I do NOT recommend:

Brenner pharmacology cards contain more drugs than even the Lange cards, but unlike the latter, they
are not vignette-style and extremely monotonous and boring to learn. More importantly though, the
information given on the description side of the cards is either too vague or specific for USMLE prep.
For the USMLE, you need to know key words/phrases (e.g. macrolides inhibit the translocation step;
chloramphenicol inhibits peptide bond formation); the Brenner cards dont make these differentiations,
so you could have gone through all of the cards, then get to a practice question but still not be entirely
sure which answer choices are referring to which drug. I would only recommend this resource if youve
already gone through FA, the Lange cards, and all of the QBank Qs out there but merely want to learn
more drug names out of curiosity. Just be aware that the remaining drugs in the Brenner cards (i.e. the
ones you had not encountered through other resources) are extremely unlikely to show up on the exam.
Dont waste your time with this resource.
BRS Physiology I purchased this because people raved about it and read the whole thing. It is a very
good text for MS1 to gain a broad foundation in the subject, but it simply didnt assist me answering
USMLE questions correctly. This is what Id like to call a fluff book. Many people like and/or love it for
learning physio, but what I found with this book was that it was either too general or too specific. It also
has lots of practice questions, but they, once again, werent USMLE-style and were overly pedantic,
particularly with regard to some of the calculations, which are the type that have never been known to
have been tested on the USMLE. The vast majority of the physio questions on the exam are going to be
arrow-questions that you can answer based on having done QBank questions alone.
HY Biostats overkill; like using LAH instead of NaBH4 on a simple ketone. Read a few chapters and did
some of the questions. Concepts remain important, but too specific for Step1. Deceitful book: Its very
short, but also takes a very long time to read because of the magnitude of the concepts involved. Stick
to practice questions for biostats. Thats it.
HY Behavioral too general for Step1; I wouldnt recommend this text to anyone. FA rates it as a top
resource. Bogus. Its a total flunk. Read BRS Behavioral.
HY Embryo too detailed for Step1; stick to FA and practice questions, which are more than sufficient.
HY USMLE Step1 nice cover, but pretty much a low-quality spin-off of FA that doesnt seem to go
anywhere; basically the author just took ~1/3 of FA, summarized it too generally to be worth anything,
and then published it to make money. This was likely the most worthless text I had purchased at any
point during my entire USMLE preparation.

HY Biochem, Histopathology, Kidney, GI tract, Heart, Lung: all unnecessary. The worst was probably the
histopathology. It was a malfeasance that they even advertised it as prep for the USMLE. Worthless.
The latter four organ system books were good for referencing at times. They also have some nice
radiographic images, but they are beyond overkill for USMLE prep. Dont purchase any of these.
DejaReview Neuro, Pharm, Biochem, Microbiology & Immunology, and various others: all unnecessary. I
flipped through these on occasion, but they didnt provide me with anything special; some of the info
was also incorrect at times or just too general. Learn to consolidate resources. I purchased all of these
because I was OCD, but within the final 6-8 months of my prep, they generally just collected dust on my
shelves.
Step1 SECRETS: SECRETS was a very good book, but its extremely long and is not to be used within three
months of the USMLE. This is a fantastic resource if you are in MS1 or early in MS2, but there are many
more important resources out there to check off on your list before you should even consider SECRETS a
priority. I knew a girl who was in love with SECRETS because she thought it was the greatest book ever,
and she was spending more time on it in the months leading up to the exam than she was on First Aid or
QBank questions. Although I agreed with its utility, be aware that its actually baneful to get pulled into
other attractive resources close to your exam. If youre within three months of the real USMLE, First Aid
and thousands of practice questions should be your upmost priority, not SECRETS.
CASES for USMLE Step1: a great book early in prep. If you are within three months of your exam, dont
buy this book, but if you are early in MS2, its worth your time when you dont feel like doing real
studying or are traveling by bus/train somewhere. Dont religiously read this text. Just quickly absorb
the vignettes, relate to the information in the subsequent questions then move on. Dont spend too
much time analyzing this book.
Lange USMLE question books: I have three Lange question books. The questions arent USMLE-style, but
instead similar to the one-liner ambiguous ones that Id frequently see on my SoM exams.
BoardBuster for the USMLE: another large-ish question book. Questions are either too specific or
unrelated to USMLE material. Some doc wanted to just make money.
Previous relevant review posts Ive made:
Uworld: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=958502
Kaplan QBank: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=943957
Kaplan QBook: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=917952
HY / BRS Behavioral Science: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=920502
GT QBank: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=929668
Lange + Brenner pharm cards: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=915419

FA Q&A: http://forums.studentdoctor.net/showthread.php?t=912135
------------------------------------------------

I've also received many post-exam PMs and questions that I'll post below:
Q: Good to hear you did well, hey phloston I know your exhausted and all but if you could just answer a
few questions I would be grateful... exam in a week
1.Having given the exam now what would you recommend is the best routine to follow in the final week
to do to get the most out the last few days?
2.How was the exam compared to NBME? Uworld? Uwolrd assessment exams?
3.Can 90% of it be done from FA as many have stated before?
4. Anatomy was it from FA or should we supplement another source and go through pictures/ diagrams
etc.?
any other avdice which is key to doing well would be appreciated
thanks
A: Hey, man, I am pretty beat right now. I only got 3 hours of sleep last night (the night after my exam)
because I had difficult questions flying into my head that I wasn't sure whether I had gotten wrong. I
even woke up with my heart beating to a renal calculation question that I thought I may have messed up
on. I'm hoping everything went okay.
As far as the final days are concerned, I had been asking people that question for a long time as well. I
pretty much spent the last couple weeks, believe it or not, at ~50% the workload / # of hours that I
normally put in throughout the year. The final week for me was literally alternating days of just doing an
NBME and then going through a chapter of FA. In the final week, don't study physio. You know that
stuff. Make sure you learn the biochem, micro, pharm and embryo that's in FA. I had one day where I
just did biochem. One day was just embryo. One was just micro. And the last was just going through the
drugs at the end of each chapter and in the pharm chapter itself. Know your side-effects. I had a lowyield side-effect show up in a very tricky question, where they wanted you to think it was a different
drug they were asking about.
I would rate the exam much closer to UWorld in terms of question-style and difficulty than the NBMEs. I
found the NBME questions to be either joke-easy or WTF-hard, no real in-between. The real deal was
mostly middle-ground difficulty, with a handful of gimmies and a handful of hard ones. I found the
UWSAs to be much much harder than the real deal. That being said, I had thought the UWSAs were
harder than UWorld QBank as well.

I would say that FA alone is not nearly enough. I think about 60% +/- 10% of my exam was straight from
FA. The rest was literally all QBank material. When you get to the real deal, you'll know what I'm talking
about. You can read FA, but if you haven't done a lot of practice questions, you're toast. Do a ****load
of questions. I've read posts in the past where people say FA was >90% of the exam. Those people either
got very easy exams or are just oblivious.
Love that you ask about anatomy. I was worried most about this going in, but I may have gotten lucky I
think. I didn't have too much, but the ones I had were WTF questions, and for some ridiculous reason, I
knew them. There was one obscure anatomy identification question (go figure) that literally popped up
like the 3rd to last question of the whole exam. It kind of sank my mood ever so slightly, but I tried not
to let it bother me. But yeah, I had no idea wtf it was asking. Abdominal x-ray, both frontal and lateral
views, pointing to different things. Hopefully I got it right.
If I were you (and listen to me square), know your neuroanatomy. This was exceedingly high-yield on my
exam. I had pretty much everything you could have imagined, and would have been royally ****ed had I
been weak in this area. I would say I'm above average, not excellent, with neuro, and I was still able to
get by for the most part.
Q: Could you also comment on pathology, if FA + pathoma is good coverage? I own Goljan but it seems
low yield.
A: I didn't use Pathoma. I listened to about 2/3 of the Goljan audios but didn't use the rest of them
because I was impatient. I think the audios are great if you're learning that material for the first time,
but if you're approaching crunch-time, there's other things that are higher priority. The FA% on my exam
I mentioned above.
Q: By "QBank material", do you mean just UWorld?
Because as far as I can gather from the forum posts about the other two banks, USMLERx is basically just
FA and 95% of Kaplan QBank is FA including reference to the page numbers in FA.
The other argument which I hope someone can answer is, if FA authors have been clever enough to put
all the facts needed to solve all the 10x322+150 NBME questions in their book, how do the NBMEs still
correlate so well with the score from the actual test that has only 50% of necessary facts from FA?
A: Each QBank contributed something unique. USMLE Rx seemed to draw heavily from FA with its actual
questions, but the explanations sometimes provided a lot of low-yield factual info. A few drug names
popped up on my exam that I had only seen because USMLE Rx had mentioned them. They weren't the
answers to the actual questions, but I at least knew they weren't right.
USMLE Rx's questions are much more simple than the real exam's. When I had gone through the QBank
in March/April, I thought the difficulty was normal, but I had gone back through ~5-600 questions within
3 weeks of the real deal (7 months later, so no, I didn't remember any questions), and they were so easy
that I felt it wasn't the best use of time to tackle the QBank a second time. Once was fantastic. Twice
was a no no.

In short, if I am as objective as I can possibly be, I think FA alone can get you most of the straightforward
questions, just as reading that text would help you with Rx, but the harder questions require that you
know a mechanism really well and then be able to manipulate it. FA alone can't give you practice with
that, and Rx is only the first step in developing your thought processes.
Kaplan QBank is definitely not 95% FA. KQB was the hardest of any resource I had used while prepping
for this exam, and it had a ton of low-yield info. It definitely helped with my molecular biology, which
interestingly was very high-yield on my exam.
As far as the NBMEs are concerned, as I've said before, 90% of the questions on those exams are cakeeasy, so it's not a surprise that FA can be generally adequate. But the curves are extremely extremely
steep. When you do those exams, it will become apparent to you how much bearing the low-yield info
has on your score.
Q: No what I meant to say about the NBMEs is that the FA authors certainly would have seen every
single one of those questions and they would have incorporated the factoids into FA somehow. I haven't
taken a single NBME yet but I can bet every question in them would have the factoids needed to solve
mentioned in FA. [B]If 50% of the questions on the actual test needed minutiae outside of FA[/B] to
even solve, I am not sure how NBME tests still correlate that well with the actual scores, steep curves or
not.
If you are saying Kaplan QBank is not 95% FA, I think I should really try it, though I have no freakin' idea
where I would find the time for it! However, I have read at least ten posts on this very forum by ten
different people saying that 95% of the questions in Kaplan QBank can be solved using factoids from FA
and those 95% even give the page numbers in FA where the answer may be found. That is the confusing
point.
A: The bold is not what I've said. FA may have covered ~60% +/- 10% of my exam, but that doesn't mean
the remainder was minutiae. There are quite a few questions that require your external knowledge
integrated with strong problem-solving skills.
FA does not build your pathology. You need BRS Path, Webpath and many QBank Qs to cover this area.
FA's coverage of path is mere cursory.
I say I had a lot of minutiae on my exam. Probably about 20 questions fell into this category. They either
required you know some small factoid, or you had to know what you were looking at without the help of
the vignette. I'd say two of the hardest questions on my entire exam included images. Other difficult
questions had patients with presentations I had never seen before. In fact, one of the most challenging
questions on my exam had to do with a vitamin.
If I mention anything related to difficulty and this exam, it's completely objective, not subjective.
When I said that, for me, "the real deal was mostly middle-ground difficulty, with a handful of gimmies
and a handful of hard ones," that is how I see it in relation to what I think the % of people answering
each question correctly was.

Some QBank questions you do literally have 85+% answering correctly (e.g. here's a drug causing orange
tears/sweat, which one is it?); I just don't feel these were a humongous portion of my test. I'd say the
bulk of the questions fell into what felt like the "50-65% answered correctly" category.
I probably encountered ~25 questions that were thoughtlessly easy (>80% answering correctly), but
there were also ~25 that were in the <25-30% answering correctly category. I think I may have seen ~5
that were for sure <20%-type questions.
Q: Phloston, in retrospect, would you still say UsmleRx over Kaplan Qbank?
For all recent test takers, assuming you have tried both because I don't know how you can know
otherwise (unless you do with a reason .. then that's fair), UsmleRx or Kaplan Qbank?
Also - I'm doing GT, not sure if that changes anything but perhaps GT is similar enough to UsmleRx....
A: As I've said before, each QBank has different strengths. Rx was better for reinforcing FA. Kaplan is
good for building your micro and molecular biology. Here's a post I made about Kaplan a while ago. I
mention a bit about it in comparison to Rx as well:
http://forums.studentdoctor.net/show...php?p=12986874
Q: I was going to ask how BRS path compares to patjoma and if one is more dense or better. I'm trying
to avoid goljan.
I never touched Pathoma. I thought BRS was perfect for learning stuff during MS2. It's basically the FA of
path. It's a skeleton to get you started and isn't too overwhelming (like big Robbins).
A: I own Goljan RR, but had only used it to look at p.57 (I think that's the p.#) on occasion, which has
really good volume vs osmolarity boxes. None of this stuff ended up showing up on my exam, but the
topic was high-yield in the QBanks.
I had spent no more than 10 minutes at different times flipping through random sections of the Goljan
RR, but I could tell that it would have been a great text during MS2, not something to use approaching
the exam. I would recommend BRS Path + Webpath + tons of QBank Qs as top priority.
Q: Phloston ), if you had only a few days to spare for Kaplan, which sections would do from the QBank
given you have already completed UWorld?
A: I recommend the whole QBank, but if you absolutely need to crunch, get through the biostats and
molecular bio. I would also suggest doing neuro if you can. Neuroanatomy was one of the highest-yield
topics on my exam.
Q: would you say that uworld covers most >85% of the pathology on the exam not seen in FA, since
everyone claims it to be hi-yield
A: UWorld asks questions well within the context of the topics that it does cover, but overall, it does not
nearly cover the breadth of path that could show up on your exam. Path is one of the most extensive

subjects. They can show you any picture in a patient with any type of presentation. UWorld covers the
highest-yield topics well (e.g. Marfan's, phakomatoses), but the lower-yield stuff can come out of
nowhere. Make sure you know BRS Path, and try to do Rx and Kaplan QBank in addition to just UWorld;
if you don't have time, just try and fly through BRS Path so you at least know everything in there.
Q: Phloston, would you say that understanding and knowing ALL the info in the UW explanations w a
good thorough understanding of FA would be enough for 220?
A: If you spend the time to learn all of UWorld, you'll do very well. FA is your foundation, then from
there, your score is somewhat directly tied into the # of practice questions you do. This begins to
plateau around 6-7000 questions, but from there, you are more so just developing rapid recall skills and
the ability to manipulate experimental models than actual raw score augmentation.
Q: Phloston, congrats homie on taking the exam. Was Neuroanatomy really that high yield? How many
questions would you say were on your exam?
A: I had a ventral brainstem pic (identify the nerve based on the vignette), gross haematoma pic, several
MRIs, brainstem transverse cross-section, spinal cord cross-section, and at least 30 vignettes (without
images) that relied on you making a diagnosis or being able to identify the location of a lesion based on
the information given. I'd say ~40 questions on my exam were neuro.
Two of the hardest questions on my exam were neuro. And a third question was of the pure factoid,
esoteria-type; you either knew it or you didn't, and FA didn't cover it.
One of them had a very abstruse image with a relatively simple vignette. I had never seen an image like
that before. Of the conclusion that I was able to draw, the vignette just didn't seem to relate whatsoever
to the image. I believe they were trying to pull some sort of trick. Based on what I've encountered
through practice questions in this type of situation, it's important to go with your conclusion of the
image more so than getting pulled into the vignette. So in the end, I answered this question based on
the image alone. I have no idea whether I got it right.
Q: Phloston, why do you recommend BRS path? I don't think I've heard of anyone recommending it.
A: During MS2, I would read the chapter in BRS Path over the weekend [I]before [/I]that corresponding
topic was covered in PBL. That way, I went into class with a good foundation, versus just seeing the
material for the first time. This helped me lead the class discussions. I thought BRS Path was absolutely
platinum for building my path. It's mainly bullet points and is super well-consolidated.
Q: many suggest BRS Physiology. Goljian audio is great too but only if you do it earlier in the year.
A: I read BRS Physio about 5-months-out. I only purchased it because everyone raved about it, but it was
way overkill for Step1. This text earned me zero questions correct on both the NBMEs and on my real
deal. I would recommend this text for someone in MS1 who wants to build his or her foundation in
physiology. However if you're within 6 months of the exam, this book should be essentially nill on the

priority list. Practice questions and reading the explanations is pretty much all you have to do for physio.
And don't touch physio in the last two weeks. Just focus on biochem, micro, embryo and pharm.
Q: Now that you are done with the test, what do you think is the highest value for time in last two
weeks? Do you still think FA, UW and NBME or would you include anything else as well?
A: The highest valued thing you can do during the last two weeks is to sleep as much as you can at night.
If that means getting 9.5 hrs every single night leading up to the exam, do that. I wore ear plugs and a
blindfold and didn't let anyone wake me. You'll need all of your energy when you enter the real deal. But
don't nap during the day. Just push through your study days and sleep long at night. You need max REM
for your memory.
In terms of resources, the last two weeks should be making sure you've finished UWorld, doing all of the
NBMEs and touching up on the HY subjects in FA. That's it. I finished my second pass of UWorld right
around the two-week-mark from my exam, then spent the final days on the NBMEs and FA at 50%
effort.
Q: What do you suggest for images CT , MRI
Q: Phloston, you say neuroanatomy was heavy on the exam. What is on your opinion the best resource
to study neuroanatomy from for someone with not the best background? Thanks
A: To both of you: practice questions. That's it.
I had been most worried about anatomy going in because it's not my strong area and it has been known
to be highly variable on people's exams, but practice questions turned out to be sufficient for me.
Interestingly, as much as I hate Kaplan's question-style, the QBank developed my ability to read CTs
really well. By the time I sat the real deal, I felt very comfortable with CTs of the thorax and abdomen.
This comfort came strictly through practice questions.
I also recommend the [B]neuro sections only[/B] of the Kaplan anatomy lecture notes. These saved me
on the exam. I wasn't a fan of the lecture notes overall because I feel they're generally too long and
overkill, but the neuroanatomy section of the anatomy book is spot-on. I didn't read the notes in this
section; I just looked at the images. This helped big-time.
Q: I heard you say micro cards were good and I did go through them once. Do you think they are useful
to keep using in the final few months of prep or did you just use FA?
A: Going into the exam, I made sure I had the images of the tree-diagram cards in my head. I had several
questions that required you knew the structural characteristics of the organisms. The Microcards were
ultra-clutch and pretty much got me all of my Micro points on the exam.
Surprisingly, I only had one question on bacterial toxins on the exam, despite these being very highyield. It also happened to be one of the trickiest questions on my form because the vignette was nothing
I had ever encountered before. I almost got it wrong, but when I went back to think more about it, I was

very impressed that they had managed to make such a twisted question out of otherwise very
straightforward material. Know your toxins and how they relate to immunology. They know people can
memorize toxins, but be sure you understand how the cytokines and receptor pathways factor in.
Q: how much biochemistry/molecular biology should I study?
I have been reading conflicting reports. FA is really short on pathways, with little to no coverage outside
krebs, glycolysis, urea and even those were short. I plan on doing FA, Kaplan QBank, USMLE World,
Lippincott q&a. Is that good enough? Or should I go to the big lippincott review book and go over all of
the pathways?
A: FA covers the metabolic cycles sufficiently. However, the QBanks will clue you in on how they can be
tested.
This means good and "bad" news:
Good news: the only text you need for biochem is FA (and just in case you are curious, I own DejaReview
Biochem and HY Biochem; both were preter-unnecessary. I also spent about an hour one day flying
through a copy of Underground Clinical Vignettes - Biochem that I had seen laying around in my SoM's
bookstore. This was actually pretty good, but not necessary.).
"Bad" news: you have to do a lot of practice questions to see how biochem's tested. The USMLE likes to
mesh the biochemical pathways in with enzymatic phosphorylation/dephosphorylation, cAMP and
pathoendocrinology (e.g. hormones, congenital disorders). Biochem is also a prime target for minutiae
questions. The QBanks will fill you in on the details you need to know.
Kaplan QBank is the best QBank for building your molecular bio.
Q: Similar question for anatomy. FA is very, very short on anatomy. Again is FA + Kaplan QBank + USMLE
World good enough for the score I am aiming?
FA + the QBanks + neuro-only sections of KLN + Underground Clinical Vignettes (anatomy) is sufficient.
The latter isn't necessary, but is only a 10-15-hr read, so I still recommend it.
A: Now let me just make a point clear: anatomy stands as the one subject where your external
knowledge is most critical. You can't get this through USMLE resources. This comes only with having
been an anatomy tutor or a lab aficionado during the first two years of med school. When I say that
those above resources are all you need for anatomy, they're in actuality just all you should be using
during your study period.
I own BRS Anatomy, HY Anatomy, USMLE RoadMap Anatomy and KLN anatomy - all were a waste of
time. QBank Qs will make you aware as to how anatomy is tested. These latter texts are consonant with
lab-based anatomy-learning during MS1/2, but they are too generalized for helping you answer USMLE
questions. Just do tons of practice questions and quickly review the [B]neuro sections[/B] of the
anatomy book of the KLNs.

Q: Phloston, Is it worth getting kaplan Qbank only for the mole bio section if I'll also be doing Rx and
UWorld?
A: It's worth getting Kaplan QBank not just for the molecular bio, but for everything is has to offer. There
are quite a few lab techniques as well as analyses of plasmid construction / gene transfer that are
assessed in KQB that are simply just not covered to the same extent in Rx or UWorld.
This also refers to testing you on conjugation, transduction, homologous recombination, site-specific
recombination, phenotype masking/mixing, complementation and antibiotic resistance mechanisms.
This is not to say that you would necessarily be lost on these types of questions on your actual exam if
you didn't do KQB, but what I can say, in relation to my exam, is that I had 4-5 questions with regard to
the mechanisms above, where I tackled them based off of my external knowledge for the most part.
One or two were basically rapid recall. But another two were questions I had marked on my form (i.e. I
wasn't 100% sure). For these, the background knowledge that I used to narrow down the answers likely
came from KQB more than any other resource.
When I went through UWorld after KQB, I noticed that they very briefly touched upon some of the
molecular bio topics, but not nearly as comprehensively as Kaplan. That's also for a reason. Molecular
bio isn't the highest-yield topic ever, but Kaplan for some reason likes it.
On my exam, I feel 4-5 questions is actually a lot to ask on pure molecular bio (i.e. mo bio not integrated
with pathology or biochem; just pure mo bio). I think I may have expected perhaps one or two questions
on plasmid construction or gene transfer, but I had double that number.
The question I had on transfer of genetic material was quite nebulous. It fell into the category of one of
those reasoning questions that you just can't prepare for, but if you understand how the process works,
you're in a better position to think your way through what would or would not be reasonable.
Q: What about the Neuroanatomy section of Webpath?
Some folks who had taken the test had recommended it. For those of you who have done it, can
someone point out what precisely needs to done.
There are whole set of Anatomy Images and some quizzes, so it seems a bit overwhelming.
A: Just do the examination questions. Don't worry about the slides or tutorials.
Do the questions in topic-specific blocks as you move through MS2. These are great to end your week or
to prepare for exams.
I never looked at the pathology slides/tutorials. I just did the questions.
For anatomy, on a few occasions when it would be late at night and I couldn't do any form of reading
because I was too tired, I would listen to music and run through their head-to-toe cross-sections. These
aren't necessary, but once again, they're good if you're too tired to read but still want to study.

But in short, when I recommend Webpath, I'm referring to all of the examination questions. In terms of
slides/tutorials, use those at your leisure, but they are not a must.
Q: What do you think about doing a radiology elective during this month off versus trying to blow
through a Q-bank potentially? am I overdoing it by taking a radiology elective with the sole purpose of
nailing every radiograph/CT on my test?
A: Absolutely do not opt out of doing a QBank in order to do a radiology elective. QBank questions are
your best friends. Always.
The imaging that shows up on the exam will be completely random. You will not be able to directly
prepare for it in a reasonable amount of time. It would be like studying all of the insertions/origins of
the muscles hoping that one could possibly show up on the exam, when meanwhile having spent all of
that time doing more questions or reading FA would have been 20x as beneficial.
So yeah, know your basic radiology well. Kaplan QBank has some good CTs in it. Just be able to read CTs
of the thorax and abdomen, and be familiar with MRIs of the knee. Those three things are the highest
yield.
Q: when do you think is a good time to start doing uworld? I've been preparing for the test for about 4
weeks now, haven't done Uworld b/c I haven't gone over everything in FA yet. Should I just get it now
before going over all of FA or wait until I've at least finished it once?
Thank you so much!
A: BRS Path, Webpath (examination questions only) and QBank questions are top priority for path. Don't
worry about Goljan RR or Robbin's.
Start your first pass of UWorld ~2.5-3 months-out. Be sure to give yourself a solid 6 weeks to get
through it because it will take a lot of time.
The first thing you should do with regard to USMLE prep is to read FA and go through USMLE Rx QBank.
Those two are collectively one resource because they're both by the FA authors. Once you get through
your first pass of FA + Rx, you'll already be at the high-230 or low-240 range. Do UWorld last.
Q: I know you highly recommended physio and molecular bio section from the Kaplan qbank... Any other
subject?
A: I would also recommend going through the biostats. Biostats is one of those subjects that you can
never get enough practice, so be sure at least to go through those questions too.
Q: pholston some stuff just seems so lowyield. we cant possibly need to know stuff like ependymomas
having their rod shaped blepharoplasts.
A: I will just point out that that detail is mentioned in FA. Anything in FA, regardless as to how pedantic
it may seem, is fair game.

Q: When you and others who have taken the test say the exam is different from NBMEs and UWorld in
that the questions there put you in places where you have not gone before and makes you think
hypothetical situations, what exactly do you mean?
Could you give me examples of such questions? Is it something like this is this pathway, what will
happen if this gene is missing or if we add this miraculous drug that only blocks this enzyme, etc? If so,
that's alright for biochem where most stuff is pathways and already follows a logical progression but
how can that work for other subjects like micro, systems, etc?
A: I'm not entirely sure what you mean, but it seems like you're already aware that you need to know
various mechanisms well enough to be able to manipulate or extrapolate from them. I would say this
applies best to your cell signaling pathways (e.g. G-protein, MAP kinase) and the lac operon.
Q: Yeah I meant about just that. I remember you posting something about the questions on the real
thing are a lot harder than the NBME because it required a lot of manipulation. I was just wondering
where all this applies, apart from the biochem pathways.
A: The harder questions will integrate many concepts, particularly endocrine. For instance, they might
ask you about a gene knockout that affects calcium-sensing on bone but not on enterocytes, and then
they might also tell you that the patient has a long Hx of uncontrolled diabetes (so you'd need to infer
secondary hyperparathyroidism); then they'd possibly show you some table asking you, with arrows,
about how calcidiol, cholecalciferol, (24R)-hydroxycalcidiol, phosphate, and ALP would all be expected
to change based on the mutation. Now it's not that this question would necessarily be exceedingly
difficult as much as it is that you just need to know vitamin-D and Ca-PO4-PTH mechanisms really really
well, and then be able to understand how the arrows would change based on the knockout they give.
Most often, you'll actually get a much more simple question than the above one, where they'll merely
just ask you for Ca, PO4 and ALP levels (with arrows) in secondary hyperparathyroidism (which you'd
have to infer based on the pt's presentation), but the caveat is that they'd then throw in an additional
variable that most people likely haven't heard of before (e.g. osteocalcin, osteoahderin, DMP-1), and it
will come down to you literally having to know that variable, and there's no way out. You either know it
or you don't, and it's not in FA. This is an example of where low-yield info can come rushing up out of
nowhere.
Q: Pardon my manners, happy new years. What do you recommend for sleeping the night before? How
was workout schedule like?
A: Two cups of chamomile tea with milk and honey, one hour apart, but not within one hour of bed (if
you take them too close to bed, you'll have to wake up in the middle of the night to micturate). Don't
use any medications, etc. I averaged probably ~4 days/wk at the gym during my final two weeks.
Definitely work out if you can.
Q: Did you go over the all of NBME wrong answers a day before the real exam?

A: I made a Powerpoint with all of all incorrect questions (or ones I had answered correctly but thought
were strange). I went through most of them a few days before the exam. The day before, I actually did
very little studying. I went through the remaining incorrects from the Powerpoint, but there weren't
many at all.
Q: Should I keep the online NBME towards the end of my dedicated study period?
A: Yeah. Take one or two online ones outside of the 6-week mark. But take the remaining online ones
within the last ten days.
Q: In one of your posts you mentioned that you used offline nbmes after taking the real/bought ones to
learn from. Do you know how I can get them? Also, do you know where we can find the answers?
I tried searching and asking around but had no luck. If you can point me in the right direction I'd really
appreciate it. (I plan on buying them too but I like the idea of being able to look through the questions
and answers afterwards)
Thanks a lot!!!
A: I had made a thread about where I could find the offline NBMEs a while ago, and someone PMed me,
granting me access to his/her Google account, where I was able to temporarily access them. I suggest
you just make a thread asking where you can find them. You'll likely get PMed.
Q: Also, did you memorize all the cards or just the cards pertaining to the microbes in first aid?
A: Know all of the organisms. I've seen each and every one show up some way some how during my
prep / on the exam.
Q: Does it matter what edition of microcards you use? I ordered 3rd edition but instead they sent the
2nd edition and I'm wondering if it's worth the S+H back to get the 3rd edition. thank you!
A: I used the 2nd edition. They were more than amazing.
Q: Hey phloston did you start first with firsaid then reading som books?And at wich stage you become
able to know all information before doing quest? Thanks
A: Do a pass of FA before you start any questions. This way, you're reinforcing, not just blindly learning
for the first time through questions.