MD/PhD student experience.. and score – Step 1
cdragon said:
Hi everyone,
i just wanted to share my story in this forum.. i am an MD/PhD student in top 10 medschool in US..
I received my PhD in February after 4 years in the lab.. I had finished first two years of medschool and decided that i would quit medschool after i receive my PhD degree.. As i was going through research i learned that my original plan was too naive and having a MD degree would definitely help my future career.
so after i finished PhD i realized that i had forgotten almost everything from the first two years..
When i first opened the first aid book everything was new to me… so i was scared shitless..
First two months of studying i was so depressed that no new information didn’t enter into my brain.. and i realized i was studying inefficiently..
Then i decided i didn’t learn anything from just reading the material so i broke down and registered for Qbank. As i started doing questions i started having concrete concepts and started developing some foundation of knowledge.. I went through this step by step starting with biochem, anatomy…etc…
I did the entire Qbank and re did all the questions i missed.. at this time i did very minimal outside reading.. After i finished Qbank i went back to the first aid and started filling in the details… In addition, i bought kaplan books and read through the stuff i didn’t understand.. basically i just did the kaplan Qbank, read Qbooks, and first aid.. But my basic knowledge base was built upon by doing Qbank questions…
I took the exam on June 12th and got my scores TODAY from the medschool office…
my score.
.
.
.
235
do i think i couldn’ve done better if i took it after my 2 years of medschool? probably
do i regret my decision? definitely no..
What lesson did i learn from this experience?
I was so scared when i first started studying.. I literally was panicking so bad that i thought wouldn’t pass the boards… However the key lesson is that it is extremely important to know what studying method works for you.. some people do well by reading endlessly.. some people, like me, learn more by doing questions… But the most important thing to do is to find a method that SUITS you and stick to it and have confidence that it’ll work for you… there are so many resources available, but in the end the core concepts are same across all the different resources..
Well that’s it for now
Related Tags : step 1, experience, MD/PhD
Related posts:
-another USMLE step 1 experience
-another USMLE step 1 experience
-step 1 experiences :by Chad
-step 1 experiences :by Chad
-step 1 experiences :by dr mav