Alright salam everyone,
So I finally got around to talking about my experience with the step 1.
Looking back at everything, I can say with confidence the most important factor that will determine your performance on the step 1 is your problem solving skills. It’s a very difficult exam, a lot of the questions are unfamiliar and require loads of thinking. Some of the questions would’ve required you to memorize textbooks to have been able to answer them. Now if you’re a normal person like me that’s pretty much impossible :P. So the key here is to master the basic principles of each subject and learn how to apply them to unfamiliar situations.
With that said the key resources to be able to do this are first aid and uworld. Now does first aid have enough information to solve all of the step 1 questions?? ABSOLUTELY NOT! The step 1 isn’t a first aid exam, there’s gonna be plenty of questions are completely alien and you most likely won’t be able to answer some of those questions correctly. But then again it really isn’t worth going through a whole textbook to increase your chances of answering 3 questions correctly, when you could be using that time to go through more important concepts are more likely to come up. That doesn’t mean you should restrict yourself to first aid alone, don’t shy away from using additional resources to strengthen your knowledge in subjects you feel weak at. For example I watched Doctors in Training videos for behaviour science, because first aid didn’t do a very good job at explaining it (and I recommend you watch them too cause you probably suck at behaviour science:P ) .
Mistakes I made while studying:
Studying discontinuously: I started studying during 4th year, but I wasn’t very consistent so I ended up forgetting most of what I studied. If you wanna study for step 1 do it right and dedicate yourself to it. 4 months of 8 hours daily is better than 8 months 4 hours daily.
Not incorporating questions into my studying earlier. If I could go back in I would’ve started solving questions the moment I finished my 1st chapter from first aid. Doing a chapter without solving questions for it is almost as bad as not reading it at all. They really help consolidate the information you learnt (and forgot). And they’ll give you an idea about how questions are asked which will make your studying more efficient. I recommend you don't study a new chapter till you've finished solving all of the questions for the previous chapter.
Not really a mistake, but I regret not doing more questions, if I could go back in time I would’ve solved USMLErx question bank as well.
Last but not least, don’t forget to make duaa, in the end everything’s in the hands of god. Study hard, pray to him, and inshallah he won’t let you down.
Well that’s all I have to say. If you have any questions feel free to ask.