𝐇𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐨 𝐩𝐚𝐬𝐬 USMLE 𝐒𝐭𝐞𝐩 𝟏 𝐰𝐢𝐭𝐡 𝐥𝐢𝐦𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐬𝐭𝐮𝐝𝐲 𝐭𝐢𝐦𝐞:

After months of preparation, I am proud to announce that I have passed my USMLE Step 1! As someone who doesn’t have the energy or time to study 8 hours a day, I was particularly worried about the drop in IMG pass rates (72% in 2023) since Step 1 has changed to P/F. Here are the 3 most useful lessons I learnt to maximise the chance of passing:

𝟏. 𝐓𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐭 𝐢𝐭 𝐛𝐞𝐲𝐨𝐧𝐝 𝐣𝐮𝐬𝐭 𝐚𝐧 𝐞𝐱𝐚𝐦.

Having this mentality motivated me to properly understand and master the concepts instead of falling into pattern recognition. More importantly, it made the process a lot more enjoyable and meaningful. After all, we learn this content not just to pass an exam, but also to improve our ability to help patients. Also, keep in mind that learning Step 1 materials well will benefit you for Step 2CK as well. 

𝟐. 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐩𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐞𝐜𝐭 𝐚𝐥𝐥-𝐢𝐧-𝐨𝐧𝐞 𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐨𝐮𝐫𝐜𝐞 𝐝𝐨𝐞𝐬 𝐧𝐨𝐭 𝐞𝐱𝐢𝐬𝐭.

  There are tons of resources out there for step 1 - you can easily be overwhelmed before even studying if you keep trying to look for the perfect resource. Instead, focus on finding resources that fill each other’s gaps. As a person who fell into this trap and wasted a bunch of time in resource mining - the most important ones I stuck to in the end are Medschool Bootcamp, UWorld, Sketchy Micro, and Pathoma Ch.1-3.

𝟑. 𝐐𝐮𝐚𝐥𝐢𝐭𝐲 𝐨𝐯𝐞𝐫 𝐪𝐮𝐚𝐧𝐭𝐢𝐭𝐲.

  If you are an IMG in clinical years, you are likely rotating in hospitals , doing some research on weekends, and had very limited time to study each day. One day, I was calculating how many UW questions I had to do per day in order to finish the question bank - the number showed 60 (admittedly, the number would be lower if I hadn’t procrastinated previously.) I went into panic mode and started to finish question blocks rapidly, hoping to finish all questions in time. While my completion progress is steadily increasing, my score plateaued. 

So, what got me out of this plateau? SLOWING DOWN - I took my time to dissect questions I got wrong, and questions I got correct but wasn’t 100% confident (on both UW and NBMEs). I asked why the other options aren’t correct, what is the key concept behind this question, how my thought process led to the wrong answer, and how I can prevent similar mistakes. In the end, I only completed 50% of UWorld, but my score on NBMEs improved steadily. If you can do UWorld more consistenly, you would still be able to finish >75% of UWorld. 

I hope you find this post helpful! I would love to hear your thoughts and feedbacks. If you want a full breakdown of my journey from start to test day, including resources I tested and stuck to, my timeline, and mock test scores - click here. Wish everyone the best of luck on their USMLE journeys!