

Subjects like biochemistry are covered early in M1 year so I essentially had to relearn it doing my dedicated period. If I could go back in time, I would get a copy of First Aid and start annotating it on the first day of lecture as a M1 student. About half way through M2 year, I began keeping my First Aid book open during lecture and annotating it with additional information or explanations that I thought would be useful.So my advice is to make sure that by the end of each school unit, you've read through all of first aid for that unit and have a decent understanding of the material within it. It's way easier to learn something like RTA when you're learning Everything else about renal than if you learn it a year later during dedicated study period. There are lots of topics that we never learn in class but that we have to know for boards (i.e., RTAs, amyloidosis). If I could do it all over again, I would make sure that I always had reviewed the material in first aid for a unit while we were studying that in class.Start a Question bank (either USMLERx or Kaplan) at the beginning of M2 year and do corresponding questions).I think that some of the value of the QBanks are lost when you do them more than once!

However, don't start Uworld so earlier that you reset and start over. I think Uworld is a wonderful learning tool and superior to Kaplan.

For me there were always certain subjects (like Nephritic & Nephrotic syndromes, biochemical pathways.) that I just struggled with. I would attempt to identify my weak spots early and drill them down.Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine students who scored more than one standard deviation above the national mean on the United States Medical Licensing Examination Step 1 were asked what they would do differently if they had the opportunity to take Step 1 again.
