08-13-2005, 01:49 AM
Hey guys,
I was one of the readers of this forum for a long time (almost one year). Now, when I am trying to chill out before my Step2 CS (in 2 days), I thought I should post my exam experience from step2 CK (I took the exam 2 weeks ago).
Preparation (6 months “ 2h/day, every day):
I have studied Blueprints (Medicine, Pediatrics, Obgyn, Psychiatry and Surgery). They are good enough to get you a feeling about the specific subject without discouraging you. They are grossly incomplete. That™s why, I read them once and did lots of tests (personal preference “ I rather remember things that I encountered in tests than things that I read in books). If you don™t want to spend too much, you are in US and you have a Medical Library close by, these are the Test books I would recommend: Blueprints q&a for different subjects (best q books “ better that Qbook by Kaplan). I would highly recommend the surgery as well as the psychiatry book. Pretest surgery, pretest medicine (especially for the neurology section), pretest psychiatry. If you don™t have access to them free or you don™t want to buy them, for me the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT source of questions was UW. I haven™t done Kaplan qbank so I don™t know how it compares. UW “ biostatistics section covers the subject completely (100%). Qbook is a good source of q but if you have to buy it ($45-50) I would advise to buy UW ($90) for 1 month. About the UW, I end up buying it twice, and this is my advice for you to avoid that. Do the questions in tutor mode first and answer them wrong on purpose, writing down the explanations (right and wrong). The second time, you can choose timed sections from the wrong questions (initially all). It sounds complicated but it does help to go twice through all the questions.
The week before: I redone all 2093 q from UW (I had to spend more than 2h/day 
Day before the exam (July 29th): It is good to take a break if you can. I couldn™t: in the morning I did 2 tests from ECFMG CD.
Day of the exam: waked up at 6 AM (as usual) and did a test from ECFMG CD (I don™t know if it helped or not “ it didn™t hurt). Had breakfast and got there on time. Breaks “ block #1 - 5 min. break
#2, #3 “ 10 min
#4 “ 20 min
#5 “ 5 min
#6 #7 “ 10 min
#8 “ home sweet home
Scores before exam:
Qbook (1 month before): 75%
UW (2 weeks before, timed, all sections, 46q/block): 62% . Second time, tutor, section by section (>90%).
CD: 40, 41 (day before), 38 (day of the exam)
I don™t know how Qbank is, but UW is a must for the exam (only >5% of exam questions were completely new for me, after going through UW “ this doesn™t mean I answered correctly 95%)
I will post my score here in a couple of weeks (I hope).
I hope this helps! Good luck to all of us.
I was one of the readers of this forum for a long time (almost one year). Now, when I am trying to chill out before my Step2 CS (in 2 days), I thought I should post my exam experience from step2 CK (I took the exam 2 weeks ago).
Preparation (6 months “ 2h/day, every day):
I have studied Blueprints (Medicine, Pediatrics, Obgyn, Psychiatry and Surgery). They are good enough to get you a feeling about the specific subject without discouraging you. They are grossly incomplete. That™s why, I read them once and did lots of tests (personal preference “ I rather remember things that I encountered in tests than things that I read in books). If you don™t want to spend too much, you are in US and you have a Medical Library close by, these are the Test books I would recommend: Blueprints q&a for different subjects (best q books “ better that Qbook by Kaplan). I would highly recommend the surgery as well as the psychiatry book. Pretest surgery, pretest medicine (especially for the neurology section), pretest psychiatry. If you don™t have access to them free or you don™t want to buy them, for me the SINGLE MOST IMPORTANT source of questions was UW. I haven™t done Kaplan qbank so I don™t know how it compares. UW “ biostatistics section covers the subject completely (100%). Qbook is a good source of q but if you have to buy it ($45-50) I would advise to buy UW ($90) for 1 month. About the UW, I end up buying it twice, and this is my advice for you to avoid that. Do the questions in tutor mode first and answer them wrong on purpose, writing down the explanations (right and wrong). The second time, you can choose timed sections from the wrong questions (initially all). It sounds complicated but it does help to go twice through all the questions.
The week before: I redone all 2093 q from UW (I had to spend more than 2h/day
Day before the exam (July 29th): It is good to take a break if you can. I couldn™t: in the morning I did 2 tests from ECFMG CD.
Day of the exam: waked up at 6 AM (as usual) and did a test from ECFMG CD (I don™t know if it helped or not “ it didn™t hurt). Had breakfast and got there on time. Breaks “ block #1 - 5 min. break
#2, #3 “ 10 min
#4 “ 20 min
#5 “ 5 min
#6 #7 “ 10 min
#8 “ home sweet home
Scores before exam:
Qbook (1 month before): 75%
UW (2 weeks before, timed, all sections, 46q/block): 62% . Second time, tutor, section by section (>90%).
CD: 40, 41 (day before), 38 (day of the exam)
I don™t know how Qbank is, but UW is a must for the exam (only >5% of exam questions were completely new for me, after going through UW “ this doesn™t mean I answered correctly 95%)
I will post my score here in a couple of weeks (I hope).
I hope this helps! Good luck to all of us.
