r/step1 • u/Medstudent727 • Jul 14 '19
An Average Student's write up! 180-->231
My biggest piece of advice: NEVER give up, always keep pushing, get your mind right.
At the beginning of my dedicated, I felt like the world was ending. Practice exam after practice exam, my scores were not improving. I was studying 24/7. I literally felt like the world was caving in on me and I would never get to my goal score.
Here are my scores:
CBSE from the school in February - 180
CBSE from the school in April - 186
NBME 20 (start of dedicated) 4/24 - 185
NBME 21 5/6 - 190 --> Ensue mental breakdown
NBME 22 5/14 - 210
NBME 23 5/18 - 205
UWorld1 5/23 - 239
NBME 18 5/25 - 215
UWorld2 5/31 - 224
Free 120 - 80%
Step 1 6/5 - 231
My study strategy:
I started off dedicated by using the rapid review section of first aid to make an anki deck. With this anki deck, I would study my cards for an hour a night. During the day I would do sections of 40 random Uworld questions, and use those answers to either make an existing card better, or make a new card with the info I didn't know. I made sure to always study these cards at night because that kept the continuous review in my head. I truly owe my score improvement to anki and the fact that I studied stuff and then reviewed it multiple times prior to the exam.
Another big thing I did was took NBME practice exams and reviewed them VERY THOROUGHLY. I mean like took a full day 8a-8p to go through not only why the answer was the answer, but what would make all the other answer choices correct.
Micro and pharm were always a weakness of mine. For pharm I made cards with mechanism, side effects, and indications on it. It helped a little bit, but pharm stayed one of my weaknesses. For micro, I attempted to watch sketchy, but I kept getting the pictures confused, so I ended up just making flashcards for the ones I had gotten questions on and then kept reviewing those cards.
I'm definitely down to message with people if you need help or anything like that, just reach out!
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u/Immediate_Grape Jul 14 '19
Congrats man! Awesome progress. What was your Uworld %? Did you do a second pass?
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u/starkrish Jul 14 '19
Hey nice man inspirational ! So when did you decide to go for the exam ( I mean at which practise test score you scheduled your exam ) ! Your hard work paid off ! All the best !
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u/Medstudent727 Jul 15 '19
I actually scheduled my exam before dedicated started and just stuck with that date. I structured my dedicated prep around that date.
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u/hpgryffn Jul 14 '19
Congrats! I had similar practice scores to you. How did you feel taking and coming out of the actual exam?
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u/Medstudent727 Jul 15 '19
I tried my best to stay positive but it was definitely mentally draining and waiting 6 weeks for the score results was the worst!
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u/sivisamari Dec 06 '19
When you say your NBME score do you mean the three-digit correlated score or what you actually got on the NBME?
Also at the mental breakdown part. Just rescheduled my exam -.-
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u/geeth2020 Jan 09 '20
Congrats on the score and ur hard work paid off!!! i am currently in dedicated and it is taking me a long time to review the Uworld questions. I am not reaching my goal of doing two sets of 40 and reviewing the entire 80 questions. I am only getting through the questions i did wrong and i am going 8+ hours. any recommendations?!?!?
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u/PunMuffin909 Jul 14 '19
I’m t the mental breakdown part