USMLE 2 - THREE Steps to Guaranteeing a Score Above 220 It is becoming tougher and more competitive as the years pass bye to get into a residency program you desire, let along any residency program. For this reason, it's important to approach each and every one of the USMLE exams as if it was the make-or-break exam in your career.
It isn't enough to just browse through a review book, do a couple hundred questions from a question bank, or try to squeak through from what you learned while working on the wards. Achieving a great score is done with precise planning and targeted preparation, targeting the high-yield information and learning every single nugget about it that you can. So how do we find out what is really the high-yield information? Here is how...
1. Select the right study/prep guide
As you know if you are a medical student, there are some review books that only cover the bare essentials and are very superficial in nature, and on the opposite spectrum there are those that are so long that they come in a series of books. It is ideal that you select a guide that is somewhere in between these two choices. An ideal study guide is one that covers every single high-yield and medium-yield topic, as these will be tested on your exam. From these clues, you can dig a bit deeper and properly learn the details about all the high-yield information, as the USMLE exams will never ask a simple straight-forward question, rather they'll ask you something that is secondary, tertiary, and even quaternary, all the while still being related to that high-yield topic. Ideally, if you can find a study guide that does this step for you, you are way ahead of the game.
2. Do at least ONE FULL question bank
Ideally, you would do a full question bank after having gone through your study guide and adding more in-depth information to it. From here, you should take good quality notes from the qbank information and insert them into the appropriate places in your study guide. Not only will this add to your knowledge of the highest yield topics, but it will give you a different twist on these topics. This altered method of thinking about topics is one of the greatest benefits of doing the question banks. Once you have been through the whole qbank, you will have a top-notch preparation guide.
3. Try to get through your study guide a minimum of TWO times
You've taken the time to go through and add more information to your study guide, you've worked hard to implement the extra information from your qbank, now is the time to fully commit all of the material to memory. Ideally, you would read through each chapter at least 2-3 times, followed by a full once-through of the whole book. These are the minimum steps you should take to ensure you will be able to tackle each question on the USMLE exam without hesitation.
It isn't enough to just browse through a review book, do a couple hundred questions from a question bank, or try to squeak through from what you learned while working on the wards. Achieving a great score is done with precise planning and targeted preparation, targeting the high-yield information and learning every single nugget about it that you can. So how do we find out what is really the high-yield information? Here is how...
1. Select the right study/prep guide
As you know if you are a medical student, there are some review books that only cover the bare essentials and are very superficial in nature, and on the opposite spectrum there are those that are so long that they come in a series of books. It is ideal that you select a guide that is somewhere in between these two choices. An ideal study guide is one that covers every single high-yield and medium-yield topic, as these will be tested on your exam. From these clues, you can dig a bit deeper and properly learn the details about all the high-yield information, as the USMLE exams will never ask a simple straight-forward question, rather they'll ask you something that is secondary, tertiary, and even quaternary, all the while still being related to that high-yield topic. Ideally, if you can find a study guide that does this step for you, you are way ahead of the game.
2. Do at least ONE FULL question bank
Ideally, you would do a full question bank after having gone through your study guide and adding more in-depth information to it. From here, you should take good quality notes from the qbank information and insert them into the appropriate places in your study guide. Not only will this add to your knowledge of the highest yield topics, but it will give you a different twist on these topics. This altered method of thinking about topics is one of the greatest benefits of doing the question banks. Once you have been through the whole qbank, you will have a top-notch preparation guide.
3. Try to get through your study guide a minimum of TWO times
You've taken the time to go through and add more information to your study guide, you've worked hard to implement the extra information from your qbank, now is the time to fully commit all of the material to memory. Ideally, you would read through each chapter at least 2-3 times, followed by a full once-through of the whole book. These are the minimum steps you should take to ensure you will be able to tackle each question on the USMLE exam without hesitation.
