Sunday, November 27, 2016

How I prepared for my Step 3 Exam

How I prepared for the Step 3 examination:


Total studying time: 1 year = 10 month lax with 2 month intense studying

Resources used:
   1)       Step up to medicine (read once through and then revised my notes from then on)
   2)      Mtb (read multiple times)
   3)      Secrets: only the biostats section
   4)      First aide step 1: only the biostats section
   5)      Uworld qbank: went through it once.
   6)      UW CCS cases (51): went through it once
   7)      Crash CCS: went through the first 120 cases as part of a study group.
   8)      Archer CCS: watched 2 videos- strategy video (3 hours) and the next video in line (10hrs). GREAT RESOURCE!!!!

Practice tests:
   1)      Uworld qbank: 59%
   2)      NBME (done before uwsa): 320
   3)      UWSA: 185

USMLE STEP 3 score: 206

Study schedule:
In the first 7 months, I eased my way into studying. The first book I tackled was Step Up to Medicine. I started by reading 5 pages a day so to build consistency. Then I moved to 10 pages, and finally 20 pages a day. I finally finished step up to medicine around May.
The next book I tackled was MTB. I read a chapter a day. If the chapters where less than 20 pages I would read about 2 chapters. I was done by the end of June.
In July, I added working with study groups to my routine. I had 3 study groups in total: CCS, statistics, uw qbank.
From July to my test date Sep 16, I studied from 4 am- 11pm. There were breaks in between of course but it was still intense. I did not want to look back on this exam thinking I could have done more. Pass or fail I would know I gave it my all.
In summary, I started slow and built up momentum. At the very beginning I mapped out the resources that I would use and how much time it would take to complete them. I followed my schedule as well as I could. It all worked out in the in the end because I passed!!!!

Things I would change:
   1)      I would start doing CCS a little earlier
   2)      I would read first aide along with MTB sections. Note, I am not saying the whole first aide book. I would just read the sections that correspond with the chapters in MTB. There were some tough step 1 questions on the exam.

Good luck!!!

Tuesday, November 22, 2016

My Step 3 experience: Day 2

Thoughts:
I gave myself a 100% chance of failure.

Does anyone look at scenarios and calculate the probability that a certain result will occur? Not sure what you do, but I definitely do that. And my outlook through the second half of the exam was yp… I am definitely failing this test.

The Exam
Today, I took my second and final part of the two day exam, the beast known as Step 3. I described the first day in another post so I won’t go into that here. Let’s start with the length of the exam. It was longggggg (notice the extra g’s.) It was 9 hours long! I used almost every minute of it.
The night before I tossed and turned because I was sick. I couldn’t stay asleep. The first thing on my mind was that I would have a problem with the stamina for the exam. But, surprisingly, that was not the case.

Rather, walking into the exam center, first thing I did was use the bathroom with ease. Lol. One must be free before battle. I then took a huge swig. Actually… multiple swigs of my monster energy drink. Then I took on my first block.

I ended up finishing almost two monsters for the entire exam. I pulled through stamina wise. I did not lose energy. I did not get tired. That was a good thing.

Now the content of the second day. The second day is divided into mcq and ccs. There are 6 blocks of mcq. For me each block was 30 q long and 45 min in length. Whilst doing the mcq I was holding on to the hope that I just might pass. I saw a glimmer of light. However, when I hit ccs blocks that light got dimmer. 

After each ccs block, I had a mini mental fight with my negative voices. You missed this. You missed that. By the end of the exam, the negative voices had me thoroughly convinced that failure was a 100% probability.

Why did I think I failed? In my first ccs case, while I treated the patient appropriately I did not do some of the routine counseling, like counseling on smoking cessation etc. Also, one of my patients actually seemed to get worse with the treatment that I instituted, and then when I advanced the clock and the case ended. In retrospect, after running through the cases in my mind, I believe that I treated the patient appropriately. But, and that’s a big but, I can’t be sure because the cases just seemed to end abruptly.

Now, hours after the exam, after speaking to friends, running ccs cases and mcq’s through my mind, and reading about others experiences online a sliver of hope rose again that I just might pass. 3 weeks of torture.

Pass or fail. It is something that I have to deal with.

Update:
My friend told whenever I feel like I failed an exam I usually do well. He was right! I passed!!!!


Friday, November 18, 2016

My Step 3 experience: Day 1

My Step 3 day 1 experience:

Time prior to exam:
Woke up on time. Had breakfast and left the house in time, at 615am. I got to the testing center around 7am even though my exam was at 8am. They called me earlier telling me to get there by 715 am latest. I signed in, used the bathroom, took a couple of swigs of my monster that I had prepared in a bottle. It was action time.

Prometric center Experience:
I have taken numerous prometric tests for more than 7 years. Today was the best experience I have had in a center. 

They were attentive and prompt. When I stepped out to use the bathroom, they made sure I got back to my exam quickly, making me skip others who weren’t as pressed for time- for example, those getting checked before commencing their exams. 

My experience in other prometric centers weren't good, ie. speaking leniently. For one of my exams, I went out to use the bathroom. I came back and stood waiting as the minutes went by. Finally, after they had finished having their conversation with no sense of urgency they signed me back in. To say i was fuming is an understatement. I had to control my emotions to make sure it didn't impact my exam. 
How did this bad experience affect me? I was afraid to step out for a break because a 2 min break becomes a 10 minute break, and this all has an impact on your timing. In addition to the difficult exam questions you have to deal with your anger and try to calm yourself down because of the complete lack of care they had for your remaining time.

In short, the staff present during the taking of my step 3 exam were professional, and friendly. Their attention to detail allowed me to focus all my energies on what I needed to, the exam... And boy did I need all my focus. 

The exam:
The whole exam was rough. It was one of the roughest exams I have taken to date. There was a lot of biostatistics and a lot of step 1 pharmacology questions.

When I first I looked at my first block, I compared the number of questions to the amount of time to solve them. The ratio was better than uworld qbank so I assumed I would have so much time left over, time I can use to look back at my uncertain answers. certainlyu!. Nope! I blinked and all that free time was gone.

I struggled with first block. The questions stems were long. My mind was not fully primed and firing on all cylinders. The stats questions were placed towards the end. Time was running out. I was rushing. I looked at the long question stem of the stats questions. I used my normal approach to stats questions. I was still off I guessed and moved on.

The thing that bothered me about this was that I am usually good at stats questions. I had a good method of approaching them. I was just not completely relaxed. At the end of the first block, there are a few second count down before you automatically get put on break, or before you have to select to continue to the next block. I used that time to take a breath, calm myself down tell myself your method works, just work a little faster a little loser.

The second block was a little better in terms of stats questions and from then on I felt a little better for the stats questions.

The rest of the exam was extremely hard for me. The questions were long. A lot of the questions seemed ambiguous. However, I did my best and pushed through.

How was my stamina during the exam:
I was worried I would be exhausted for this exam. That did not happen. The exam flew by. I was so shocked that I only had two blocks left and even calculated the time I was supposed to finish. How did I approach the exam. I slept at a good hour. Slept for as long as timing would allow. I drank –a few gulps- monster before I got tired, before I walked into the room to start the test, and I took a sip after every break.  Possibly constantly doing at least 3 uw 40 q blocks in a row might have helped a bit. Most importantly thank you lord.

Impression of the 1st day:
-        I really do not know. I felt it was excessively hard. I felt like I did not know enough, that I wasn’t ready for this exam. Now all I can do is wait for day 2.