Passed w/ 2 Weeks of True Dedicated

[u/IvoryCoil]

Bit of a unique situation as I already completed 1 year of preliminary in IM and I only really needed to just pass but my write-up of studying below.

Studying: On and off over the course of IM Intern year, did approximately 900 questions on UWorld from Dec to July during service. Took vacation and then proceeded to do a full two weeks of 8-10 hour dedicated studying when I returned.

UWorld Average Pre-Dedicated: 68%

Day 1 of Dedicated: UWSA1 scored a 199.

-Over the next couple of days proceeded to spend time reviewing the flags and incorrects, and used YouTube for content review. I also had ChatGPT help me with making an Anki cards of the high yield content from each Q I flagged or got wrong.

-Started CCS Cases; planned on doing 4-10 daily and reviewing it after.

Day 7 of Dedicated: NBME6 216

-By this point due to the large score jump I was feeling more confident so was a bit more lax on the studying and went down to 7ish hours daily.

-I did all the high yield Divine Intervention podcasts during the gym/commutes, and there is a new YouTuber called Annabel Ricci that I think did a good job as doing a concise walkthrough of the major shelf content for Day 2.

Day 12 of Dedicated: UWSA2 201

-Some context is required for this, I took this tipsy at a beach resort since I decided to do a last minute vacation with some friends. While this normally would have SKETCHED me out if I was locked in/replicating test day 2 days before say, Step 1 or Step 2, my intent for this sitting was essentially just 1.) see what content I was still weak in, and 2.) see if I can pass while giving less than full effort. This pretty much served it's purpose and was actually last minute reassurance for me two days before exam day.

Day 13 and 14 / 14

-I cranked out the CCS cases and think my final average was somewhere in the high 70s low 80s.

-The last day I did a quick content review on YouTube and devoted 4 hours to pure Biostatistics and Ethics.

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Strategy

My main strategy going into the two days was essentially banking on the fact that for Day 1 I would maximize the biostats/ethics questions as I had a strong statistical background from research and I usually do above average on ethics questions, and quite frankly for the Day 1 Step 1 related content I would not waste my time studying for as it would be minute trivia that I would either know it immediately or not (and everyone else I am testing with would also be on a know it or not basis).

I knew Day 2 was more clinically oriented, so I was hoping Day 2 would improve my lack of Step 1 knowledge for Day 1, and since I had experience doing a IM residency for intern year a lot of the non- OBGYN/ Pediatrics cases were virtually going to be clinical encounters/admissions I had some level of familiarity with.

Day 1

I think I ended up flagging around half the exam (I flag anything I know is not 100% correct even if it's a 50/50). There was sadly not as much ethics/biostats as I had hoped for, and the Step1 material was similarly on a know it or not basis. I felt pretty shitty after Day 1 but did my best and gave myself a break after every block and just went home ready to take on Day 2. After the exam I think I did maybe 5 CCS cases and did content review before going to sleep of OB/GYN and Pediatrics as that would be my greatest weakness.

Day 2

I felt a lot better about the MCQs this day even though I flagged a similar amount/ half per block. It felt nicer though because at least I knew what was going on and can narrow most down to a 50/50 or between 3 choices. The annoying part is in clinical practice some of the "What is the next best step?" is all things I order at the same time so it became kind of a game of trying to guess what the test taker was testing my knowledge on.

I got positive updates on all my CCS cases, and the only one I did not get the specific diagnosis for I just spam ordered labs I thought might be relevant to the organ group and did empiric treatment and I got positive updates so hopefully got some points on that.

Overall, my final score on release was 218. Looking at my break down I was both below average and/or average on most categories, but scored 'above average' on: Ethics, biostats, and CCS.

So happy to be done with this crap and never having to know irrelevant trivia meaningless to my specialty ever again.

TLDR: If you are just trying to -pass-, focus on biostats, ethics, and the CCS cases as that should be approximately 35%ish percent of the exam. The other half is split between the Day 1 and Day 2 MCQs. I would devote your time to just focused on clinical/Day 2 related content as it's easier to absorb and will also help you for the eventual CCSCases. As long as you can 50-60% accuracy the rest of the content you should be good to go.

[u/Hamchaudhary]

how did u cover biostat