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From:
Date: 12 Mar 2005
Time: 09:25:26 -0500
Remote Name: 192.30.202.11
Posted by perch from IP 66.66.9.36 on March 11, 2005 at 17:25:30: Dear all, I'm about to tell you something I wanted to tell you since long time ago. I LOVE YOU ALL!!! You are great, kind, strong, smart, brave, very helpful, incredibly amazing people. Communicating with you was one of the greatest experiences of my life. It still is. I thank you from the very bottom of my heart. I could not do it without you. Usmle. NET caught me more than a year ago. I have learned from this site literally everything. Now pay back is in order. I'm IMG from Russia, 33 yo, have kid and husband, no family and no help in the US. My preparation took year and a half. My pre-test scores: Qbank ?1 month before exam ?77%. Excllent source. I thought it's sort of superficial, but my exam turned out to be not that much in depth either (I wrote my exam experience a while ago). Q bank helped me to memorize some facts that I kept forgetting. NBME 1 ?2 weeks before exam ?640 NBME 2 ?2 month before exam ?590 USMLE CDs - 1 week before exam ?38, 44, 45 KAPLAN simulated CD ?1 week before exam ?78% BSS ?6-8 month before exam ?scored between 50 and 80 (score does not matter here). I loved BSS. One question can test your understanding of half of the subject, almost. Beautiful explanations. Questions much more difficult than on the real exam, or, say, what comprises 10% of the actual exam, comprises 100% of BSS tests. I think working with BSS made great impact on my score. However, it is not mandatory to solve them. I didn抰 finish Qbook. Books and approaches I used for my preparation, subject-wise: PATHOLOGY Goljan 500 pgs.?3 revisions Goljan 40 hrs lectures ?2 times Goljan HY notes (abt 60 pgs) ?went through them quickly 1 week before exam WebPath for pictures Qbank score - 79% Patho is the Big One. Mountain. The further you climb, the more you抮e able to see. More than one revision is important, preferably after you抳e finished all other subjects, so you can efficiently integrate information. I specialized in pathology, so it was a familiar land to me. PHYSIOLOGY BRS by L. Costanza ?3 revisions Kaplan section for endocrinology. Qbank score ?73% I hated this book. Linda Costanza didn抰 care about me when she wrote it. I told someone I called it BRaSs, which is true. Physio is all about understanding. Thanks to dear Linda, Jos, Armin, Confused and all others for helping me out with physiology. For all the rest I used Kaplan lecture notes. BIOCHEM -79% in Q bank?see the big picture. Know the flow of substances. Key enzymes, major pathways. GENETICS ?87%?know principles and modes of inheritance. They will try and confuse you with unusual scenarios. Of course, genetic diagnosis. MOL & CELL BIO ?56, 59%?know names and what they stand for. BIOSTAT - 72%?learn how to interpret graphs, how to construct the tables for odds ratios, etc. when presented with data. IMMUNO -90%?see the big picture. Know cells and substances in details, what they do and ORDER of appearance in response. Try your best to integrate with pathology. ANATOMY -61%?Neuroanatomy is your guy/girl. Love it, kiss it, and know it upside-down. Qbank does not represent actual exam in Anatomy. PHARMA ?61% - my worst nightmare. Most hated, most feared. Overdoses and toxicities is a hit. ANS. Must understand graphs. FA - did not use it. It has high yield information, but I hated amazingly boring and disorganized way of presentation of this information. I know people adore this book. I sincerely tried to read, but I simply couldn't. Let me take a break here. I'll come back and tell you more about strategies I've used (little trick. Just yearning for your congradulations :-)))))) To be continued...