I am an Old IMG graduated 10 years ago. Currently, about to earn my Ph.D. in the US. I came to US to pursue a research career which I hav been very passionate about, however, my wife persuaded me to not to give up on my medical career. Given the current research funding scenario, I started thinking about USMLE and convinced myself to become a physician-scientist. Took me 3 years to self-motivate to confront this beast.

Let me confess upfront, I HATE studying.

With this brief background, let's move on to my Step 1 experience. I started studying for Step 1 from May 2012. Read Kaplan notes (no videos). Finished first reading in October 2012. Now thats a very long time I took to read those books, partly because I was busy with my research project and I did not study consistently as well. Very hard for me to study for more than 5 hrs a day. Reading through Kaplan notes after such a long time off from medicine books was very boring and tiring for me that I did not touch those books again ever. And then one of my friends suggested to subscribe for UWORLD in Oct 2012. I must thank UWORLD for making this journey so enjoyable that I went through each and every block very slowly and carefully over next 5 months. Thanks to UWORLD for rejuvenating the physician mind which has already been within me!

I did UWORLD in timed, unused, random mode from the beginning. Initially started off with around 55% in each block and improved to 70% at the end. One thing I did which helped me immensely at the end was I annotated my First Aid heavily while going through UWORLD. While annotating, I read of the First Aid once. After one pass of UWORLD took UWSA 1 and got 234. I was flying in the sky. At this point I had one month left for my real deal. Then due to an important school assignment, I could not study at all for about 3 weeks and had to postpone my exam date by one month.

After that I decided to go through UWORLD one more time but could finish only 40%. During second pass I was scoring about 80% in each block. The same time I also read through the First Aid second time

5 days to the real deal took UWSA 2--scored 257. I couldn't believe myself and totally celebrated the whole day. Then somebody told me you need to take NBME to see where you actually stand. The next day took NBME 12 and BUMMER-- got 212. I was shattered and could not believe my score. That really pushed me to the ground and blown away all the grandiose dreams I had about my Step 1 score. Could not study for a minute the next day.

But then I had no choice left than to dive into this abyss. Somehow gathered my courage and determined to read all First Aid cover to cover in the remaining few days come what may. Surprisingly, under these demanding conditions, I finished entire book until the night before my exam by 8 PM.

The BEST thing I did was I went to bed immediately with a careless thought that I did whatever I could in my capacity now let's face it. This thought helped me to relax and I woke up at 6 in the morning after a good sleep.

Let me emphasize it one more time A GOOD SLEEP is a MUST to deal with this exam sanely.

My exam form, in my opinion, was harder than UWORLD and both the UWSA forms. Lot of research based and biostat questions of course wrapped nicely with knowledge testing smart clinical scenarios.

At the end of my exam, I had a mixed feeling where I knew probably I missed some easy give aways and had no idea about my performance on the hard ones. Question stems were very lengthy, I never had enough time to go back to any of the marked questions; and in the last block I was crushed so much that I had only 5 min left to solve final 10 questions. That's why I had enough reasons to worry about the exam outcome.

Guess what... I got 231!!! The moral is..NEVER EVER GIVE UP!!

If I can do this, damn sure you can too.

ALL THE BEST to you ALL.

Step 2 here I come.....


edited by sksk45914599 on 6/12/2013

Congratulations!! That's a really good score. When did you take the test?

I took the test on 26th April; received score on Wednesday the 15th May...

Congratulations on your great success,Your PhD is definitely a plus point,say thanks to ur wife who encouraged u to dream big.Gud luck for step2!!

Congratulations on your great success,Your PhD is definitely a plus point,say thanks to ur wife who encouraged u to dream big.Gud luck for step2!!

Hey Congrats really inspiring story to hear from an old IMG

Good job!! Cheers!

congratulation ..hey i just want to know that have u done kaplan q bank or any other resources..except those lecture notes ,U world and FA?

@naimu: thank you for reminding me to mention one very very important resource: Goljan Audios! I used to listen to his audios while doing my experiments in the lab. So for Pathology I just did Goljan; did not read Kaplan Patho. That said, my resources were-- 1) Kaplan Lecture Notes (did not watch any video): one reading 2) UWORLD Question Bank- One pass complete, second pass 40% of the bank. 3) 2012 FA-- 3 times 4) Goljan Audios-- listened all lectures two times

Hope this helps. Good luck!

@sksk45914599..thanks very much ...and good luck for step 2..

Thanks for sharing your journey. Very inspiring Good luck with your next steps, you deserve it!

Thank you very much for sharing! I am an IMG taking step 1 in 1 month...I am terrified and not scoring great at this point. hope to make the best of the time i have left...