SUCCESS STRATEGY GUIDE
USMLE SUCCESS ACADEMY STRATEGY GUIDE The strategy that we’re going to give you is extremely powerful when it is used with 100% effort put into it. It is a simple sequence of steps that you should take on a daily basis that will allow you to learn the highest-‐ yield material that the Step 1 exam is most likely to test. Before you even begin studying, you should take an NBME exam. These exams comprise of real USMLE questions and will give you a detailed analysis of your strengths, weaknesses, and other areas that need improvement. Upon finishing the NBME, you will know exactly which areas are your weaker areas and should thus be paid more attention to during the preparation process. The sequence of events that you will follow daily are as follows: Step 1: Watch the day’s lecture material, taking notes in your coursebook. Step 2: Review the day’s material immediately after you are finished with the videos and perform the corresponding quiz if you have completed an entire lecture (includes several videos covering one topic) Step 3: Perform 2 blocks of 46 questions from UWorld each day (using the exact strategy we lay out for you in the ‘strategy’ video from day 1). Step 4: Review everything from the day all at once at the end of the workday…. And review everything once through at the beginning of each day.
Step 5: At the end of every lecture series, take the quiz and complete it in full. That is a look at the basics of the strategy, but there are some details that you must understand in order to make this strategy work perfectly… So lets get into the details of each step. Important: Prior to beginning each day’s videos, questions, and quiz, you should take 15-‐20 minutes to review everything from the previous day, including: Quizzes, QBank material, and coursebook material. STEP 1: Each day you have between 3-‐5 hours of video you are supposed to watch. Be sure to watch these videos and to pay very careful attention. Your coursebook is designed to be used alongside the videos, as many of the details from the videos have been left out of the coursebook. It is to your benefit to pay attention and fill in all of the blanks into this coursebook, as it allows you to learn. Note: You can re-‐watch all of the videos as many times as you like during your program. From day 1 of your program, you can watch the videos as many times as you like for up to 60 days. STEP 2: As soon as you finish going through the day’s videos, be sure to go through your notes 1-‐2 times, as this allows you to recall and reinforce some of the material that was covered. The key to remembering the wealth of information that comes with this exam is repetition, which is why we will do as much repetition throughout the
course as possible. Because repetition is so important to success on this exam, it is beneficial to get a set of cue cards (buy a pack of 500 or more) and write down anything that requires memorization that you don’t know yet. For example, if we are discussing a group of drugs, you can write their names and MOA’s on these cards and this will serve as another review source you can use for review whenever you want. STEP 3: Each lecture has a corresponding quiz for you to take. It is important that you go through and take each quiz because they are directly going to help you recall the important information from each day’s lecture. Be sure to review the quizzes after you take them and review the previous day’s quiz the following morning, all in order to continually reinforce the information. Finally, be sure to review the quizzes at the end of each week and during the days prior to your exam, as this will allow you to recall some of the important facts that you may be tested on. STEP 4: After performing your quiz once you complete each lecture, it is time for you to begin doing questions using USMLE World. The UWorld qbank is excellent and is what we recommend that students use in preparation for their exam. Now, the way you approach your question bank can make or break your score on the real exam, so please pay very close attention to the strategy we are about to discuss. First, you should know up-‐front that you will go through your question bank TWICE, but not in the way you probably think. Most students do
the qbank once, then go through it again in the same fashion. When you do this, not only are you not properly learning the material, but you are falsely elevating your qbank % and thus giving yourself a false sense of preparedness. This is why this strategy is a recipe for absolute disaster! Students simply memorize questions and then when the USMLE comes around, all it takes is a twist on a fact or concept and you are lost! We don’t want that to happen, thus we wont use the common approach. Now, using our unique method you are going to master the material to the point where no matter how the real USMLE throws a question at you, there wont be any hesitation or trouble answering it – you will have mastered the material. Ok, onto the strategy for using a qbank: First I will outline each step, then go into detail following it. # 1: You are going to do TWO blocks per day, each consisting of 46 questions. Each block will be performed in ‘timed’ mode, meaning there is a limited amount of time you have to get through the block. This serves the purpose of physically and mentally preparing you for the stress that comes with the timed aspect of the real USMLE. You absolutely must condition your brain to work faster and faster in order to do well on this exam. Thus, doing your block of 46 question in timed mode will best prepare your for the rigors of the real exam. Secondly, doing 46 questions mimics the number of questions asked on the real exam. The next thing to keep in mind is that going through the
questions the first time around, you will not mix the questions, you will perform all questions of the same discipline. Therefore, 46 questions of biochem, or physiology, or pathology, or whatever topic you are on. Once you have gone through a block, you will then go through the entire 46 questions and you will take notes. Sidenote: Get yourself a blank workbook with 300 pages and you will input the information from your blocks of questions into this book. So as you review each block, you need to take detailed notes to the point where all of the information you need to know regarding that question’s purpose is written down. Do this for each question in the block. Next, perform your second block of questions and simply repeat the note taking process after the timed block. YES, this takes lots of time, but you have to do as much work now as possible, so that come exam day you are 100% as prepared as can be. # 2: Once you’ve finished your 2 blocks of questions and taken all of the high-‐quality notes that you can for each block, now is the time to take it one step further and record these notes into either your computer (Mac users user garage band) or you can purchase a cheap hand-‐held recording device. Some of you may think this is taking it too far, but the reason why we do this is important. Lets say you’ve been studying really hard and things are starting to click, but you reach a point where your eyes are sore, your brain is fried, and you just can’t look at another word – yet you still feel like studying. What you do is pull out your audio notes and simply listen to the notes you’ve read into your device.
This helps us learn because we’re now tapping into another learning strategy, which is simply ‘listening’. We’ve taken notes, done questions, taken more notes, now you can simply listen. And on top of this, because we’re listening to the UWorld notes we’ve taken, we are once again reinforcing the material. If you are doing questions daily, you should finish this strategy within approximately 3 weeks, at which point it is time to move onto our next QBank strategy… # 3: At this point, you should be through UWorld once, you should have a wealth of notes taken from your questions, and you should be nicely conditioned to withstand the grueling 46 questions in 60 minutes that you will go through on the exam. You should also have the majority of the material from the question bank mastered. The next step is to go through the questions again, this time you should do them mixed, and you should be answering them NOT in multiple-‐choice fashion, but in what I like to call ‘Verbalization’. Here’s how this is done: First – Read the question Second – Instead of answering the MCQ and moving on, you should look at the answer options, and speaking out loud, you should state the correct answer and then discuss for 45-‐60 seconds as much as you can pertaining to the concept/topic of the correct answer. You should also be able to discuss the incorrect answers and describe why each one is
incorrect as it relates to the information described in the question. Thus, each question you will speak about each of the answers, specifically stating the information that makes it the ‘correct’ answer and the ‘incorrect’ answer. Ex. A vignette describes a patient who is sluggish, unable to answer questions, and has pinpoint pupils. This patient has track marks on the antecubital space of the arm. Which is the likely cause? A. Cocaine B. Crystal Methamphetamine C. Lorazepam D. Heroin E. Ephedrine What you do now is speak aloud… ‘the correct answer is heroin because of fact A, fact B, etc. Cocaine isn’t the answer because the presentation of cocaine intoxication would be A, B, C, D, and it cant be crystal meth because of facts A, B, C, D, etc, etc.’ When you speak out loud, you really reinforce the material and you are also in a way ‘teaching’ because when you can teach something to someone, you can be sure that you really do understand the material. Now, if you come across a question you cannot adequately answer, review the information and then come back to it the following day.
At this point you can do as many questions per day as necessary in order to move through the qbank the second time. If you find you aren’t able to answer a majority of the questions aloud without referring to your notes, then simply go back and study the notes more thoroughly. STEP 5: Now that you know how to get through the course work and the qbank the proper way, once you finish each day, all that is left to do is go through everything thoroughly and even verbalizing as much of it as you can. While you are probably tired by this point, do not take the daily review lightly! It should take at least 1 hour to get through everything thoroughly (course notes, quiz answers, qbank notes). This information that you are finishing off your study day reviewing is the EXACT same material that you MUST re-‐review first thing the following day. Remember, our goal is to reinforce the concepts and facts as many times as possible, ensuring you are prepared for the exam. Take this one step further by listening to your UWorld notes once again before bed. STEP 6: This step involves a review of absolutely everything that you covered during the week. If you are on top of everything, then this can be done on Saturdays and Sundays. As each week passes, you should also review the material from all previous weeks. As you move forward through the program, you will notice a significant increase in the volume of material you will need to review, but the more often you review as you go along, the easier it will be for you to review everything
in the weeks leading up to your exam. It will feel like there is much less material because you wont have information overload. STEP 7: This step should not be attempted until you have finished the course and been through the UWorld qbank twice as described earlier. Step 7 requires you to take an NBME exam three times (all different versions). The goal of each NBME is to achieve a score equivalent to the national average of all USMLE takers, which is approximately 215-‐220. This equals an NBME score of a minimum of 500. Now, you might be thinking how high this score is, and yes you’re right, it is high. The thing to keep in mind is that these days you are going to need a solid USMLE score if you hope to get into a US-‐based medical residency program. There are now many more applicants than there are spots, so you have to be better than a good majority of them if you want to even get an offer to interview. Trust me when I say, just getting a ‘pass’ is not going to get you anywhere. For this reason, I do not want you to consider yourself ‘ready’, until you’ve achieved three NBME’s of a minimum of 500 each. If you are not getting these scores, then go back and study more, drill more, and do another qbank if necessary, but don’t consider writing until you’re at this marker. Now you may wonder why you should do three NBME’s and not just one… I have a rule that has served my students very well in the past. First solid score could be a fluke, a second solid score could be a coincidence, but if you get three solid scores, then we’ve seen a pattern of excellence and you are ready.
There are particulars that you need to know about your NBME results, but it would be too difficult to explain here, so please watch the video in day 1 so you know exact how to interpret the results.