Passed step 1 first attempt with less than 2 weeks of dedicated study
As the title says I passed step 1 with minimal dedicated study. I think I started prepping about 10 days before my testing date (tested on 05/01 and received the report today) and wanted to share what I did in hopes of helping someone else. Why I wasn't able to is a long story, but essentially had 03/23-05/01 dedicated by my program to prep for step 1. However, I failed our last block and had to remediate on 4/03 (passed after this), took off from 4/03-4/13 for vacation and my family has been imploding for months and I was dealing with the fall out of that the entire month. That said, I think I started reviewing around the week prior to testing.
I want to clarify that I am not a gunner by any means, I want to do hospital medicine and have little interest in other specialties or where I apply for that matter. I am horribly inconsistent with anki so I basically don't use it. Also, we do receive numeric block scores in addition to Cr/NCr, so my calculated GPA is like a 3.2. I only completed 40% of Uworld and never did a second pass. And yes, I did fail a block but that was due to more important life stuff happening at the time, but that did mean extra study for that block after failing the initial final exam.
What I did during dedicated;
1.) 40 random uworld question block every day
2.) review every question, regardless if I was correct
3.) If I was unable to talk about why the answer was correct/incorrect, I reviewed the relevant first aid page and followed up with 3rd party reviews of the relevant topic. Some questions I spent 10-30 minutes reviewing, others no more than a quick ChatGPT explanation.
4.) 35% or less correct for a question? ignore it, low yield. UNLESS it's split between two choices (i.e. incorrect answer A had 40% but the correct answer D had 35%), tease out what the confusion is between the two answers-you'll likely see this in some fashion on the real exam.
5.) NBMEs form/score/dates taken: Form 26/70/3-23, Form 27/63/4-18, Form 33/71/4-23
Now I think the most important thing I did to get ready for step was that during our didactics (so year 1 and 2), I basically ignored the notes/presentations for each block. I would review what topics where being covered each week and only use 3rd party resources to study. This did impact my in-class exam scores (I frequently got 60-70%) because of niche details they wanted to test us on, but reviewing for our NBME block finals was a breeze. This also made the review process very efficient for step 1.
What resources I used;
1.) dirty medicine-gives a thousand foot view of what is high yield. Can't talk about something he covered? Review that area in depth.
2.) ninja nerd- great for the intricate details but also comes with a lot of low-yield information that you aren't likely to see on test day. If it's mentioned in Dirty Medicine and Ninja nerd? - hammer the shit out of that in. If it only pops up on Ninja nerd? -ignore it, low yield.
3.) Boards and Beyond- the goat, used this almost exclusively throughout didactics. Only high-yield information, no fluff.
4.) sketchy- if you aren't using sketchy to learn bugs and drugs, you're making your life difficult. Seriously. Use sketchy to learn pharm and infectious diseases, it makes life tolerable.
5.) Uworld- you know the drill
6.) ChatGPT- incredibly useful for explaining topics but make sure that you use it to TEACH yourself the topic. I also think that paying for the plus plan (20$ a month) is more than worth it, get it.
I tried to just give y'all the meat and potatoes of what I did, so if there's any confusion or questions shoot me a DM and I'll also do my best to respond to any comments. Best of luck to y'all.