For those who do not want to read all of this here is a TL;DR: What I did to Study
Pre-dedicated
- Finish Uworld
- Get through OnlineMedEd (OME) with Whiteboard book
- Review questions using FA Step 2 CK (Not that great tbh)
- Take practice shelf NBME after each rotation ended (except Fam med since it was right before dedicated)
Dedicated
- Go through Uworld Incorrects and get through as much as possible
- Write my incorrects on a small notebook
- Finish OME
- Divine Intervention High Yield Podcasts (went through his YT for shelf videos then did high yield ones based off Reddit post, way better than OME)
- Take all the NBMES (one per week)
- Take UW1 and UW2
- Take both free120s
- Amboss questions Ethics and Quality Intervention
Videos I watched
America Revere Step 2 Study: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpBqWZpF7iE
How to Review Questions Effectively: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmXP_fDOPmg
Divine Intervention Shelf Videos: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL9z85fstNFcHG0U3QQnTreAWO-ZjAPQxH
Reddit Posts That Helped
Divine Intervention: https://www.reddit.com/r/Step2/comments/11idsim/must_listen_divine_intervention_podcasts_all/
Amboss Ethics: https://www.reddit.com/r/Step2/comments/wnk5v6/free_ck_notes_rf_including_military_amboss_ethics/
Now for those who want the long version:
Alhamdudillah, I am truly so happy that I completed my last board exam of medical school!!!! 🎉🎉🎉 This post is not going to be super long like my step one post, but I will definitely detail what I did to pass, write out my practice exam scores, and tell y’all how I ended up doing (I might post my actual score after I match inshallah).
So for starters, if you know about what my step one experience was like, then you probably know that I was trying to not have that repeated again. It was TRAUMATIC. It was ultimately the reason why my third year and fourth year were delayed by 3 months. I knew that if I was going to pass Step 2 and graduate with my class, I would have to start early. I would have to fight tooth and nail.
One thing I regretted not doing for Step One was completing Uworld before dedicated. Therefore, when I started my psychiatry rotation in July 2022, I immediately bought Uworld Step 2 CK. There are 4,000+ questions and my goal was to finish it before I started dedicated. Most people in my class would start dedicated in April/May 2023, but because of my delay, I would have to start my study period in June/July 2023.
For context, the score needed to pass step 2 is 214 and the best score to get depends on the specialty that you are applying to 😊
3rd year: Pre-dedicated
I pretty much tried to study like Dr. America Revere. My goal was to finish all of the Uworld questions associated with a specific rotation. It was hard because my school does not have shelf exams and I had to study for their in-house exams on top of step studying. For example, for psych, there were around 300 questions to complete and 30 days of the rotation. Therefore, I would try to do around 10 questions a day. I bought the First Aid Step 2CK book and reviewed my questions using that. Then on top of those 10 questions daily, I would have to prepare for my school’s quizzes and do assignments related to that.
Another thing I regretted not doing for Step One was completing content review before dedicated. OnlineMedEd has hundreds of videos that go over content needed for shelf exams and Step 2. I bought the whiteboards book and for each rotation, I tried to divide up the videos and watch them everyday (2x speed, of course). OME used to be free, but now it costs money, unfortunately. However, there are some ppl who have it saved on a drive and I think it might be on medicalstudyzone.com so definitely check that out.
Finally, after the rotation ended, I would take a practice NBME related to that specific rotation and see how I would do. Our school does not have shelves which is a pro/con. Pro: Very doable to pass rotation without the stress of a final determining whether or not you pass, Con: The questions my school writes do not adequately reflect how Step 2 is like so if you try to study for these school exams and not for Step 2, you’re pretty much shooting yourself in the foot. I bought the shelf NBMEs from their website ($20 each), and it helped some.
So pretty much I used Uworld, First Aid, OME, and the NBMEs for pre-dedicated. It was rough, ngl. Some days I would not complete my questions or videos because I was exhausted. Some of the practice NBMEs I took were terrible.
The amount of Uworld questions for Internal Medicine was astronomical. I did not finish those for sure. There were times when I did not know if I would be able to finish Uworld before dedicated because there were A LOT of questions.
Some days I hated studying. But then I would remember what Step One dedicated was like. And that would motivate me to continue on. It’s definitely not good to do things based on fear but I did not want to repeat any mistakes.
Finally, it was April, the end of third year. We had bootcamp, kind of like the one that I mentioned in the Step One post, and I was doing my studying on top of that.
During bootcamp, I tried really hard to not compare myself to others. Because even though third year was over, I still had to make up 8 weeks of rotations, while mostly everyone else got to move into Step Two dedicated. I made an Excel spreadsheet of what I needed to do during that time. I still had at least 30% of Uworld to complete in about 2 months. I also had about 100 videos of OME to complete as well. I decided that I would do about 20 questions a day and watch 3 videos a day.
My school made us take a practice exam before we headed up our own way. They had made us take one in September 2022 (way too early and for no reason at all) and my score was terrible: 179. This time around my score was better: 193. Not passing, but at least I improved. I would have to put in a lot of work before dedicated rolled around.
4th year: Pre-dedicated
For the next couple of weeks, I worked through Uworld. I was making up Internal Medical clinic and then Family Medicine. I had no assignments to do for IM clinic so getting through my questions and OME was not too bad. For FM, it was terrible! 😭 As I mentioned in that post, I was struggling with the load of assignments they gave us. There were some days I missed questions. But I just had to power through.
I also took NMBE 9 a couple weeks before dedicated. 10/10 do not recommend that exam because it was super hard for no reason. I ended up getting a 189 on it and I was crushed.
Slowly but surely, I was getting through the qbank. I had done them mixed-timed and was completing my reviews quickly. During my last week of FM, I had about 240 questions left. I decided to power through and do 40 a day. On Saturday about 1 am in the morning before dedicated, I was done with Uworld! 🥳🥳🥳
Dedicated:
I decided to give myself 6 weeks of time for dedicated. I had finished Uworld and so I was going to go through my incorrects. Some people would say go through it twice but honestly, I knew I did not have the time. Plus Uworld is a learning experience, there was no point in trying to do all those questions again. I gave myself the weekend off and started Monday.
I did 80 questions a day, 40 subject-based and 40 mixed. Instead of reviewing them with my FA book, I decided to buy a notebook and draw out everything in there. In the beginning, it was so rough because I had forgotten some things but it got better. I also had some OME videos I did not finish so when I came home from the library, I would watch 5/day.
I also took a practice exam every week. I would spend the next day reviewing it as well. I tried to treat exam days as half-day breaks because I would chill after I was done with them. I would then see which subjects I was weaker on after I took the NBMEs and would do practice questions based on that for the following days.
After I finished OME, I decided to listen to Divine Intervention. Guys, this is a MUST! Homeboy really knows his stuff. I went to his Youtube channel and watched all of his shelf videos which was about 15-20 hours total and then I listened to his other high-yield podcasts. He truly truly truly knows so much and I wish I listened to him earlier during rotations and get through all of his other amazing podcasts than watching OME tbh. Here’s the link to the high-yield podcasts and also his website:
https://divineinterventionpodcasts.com/
Step 2 had a lot of Ethic questions so I decided to do more practice questions with Amboss. I did the 100 high-yield Ethics questions and did some quality intervention questions. Here’s the Reddit link to that:
Toward the end of dedicated, I started doing 120 questions a day and reviewing each set of problems in less than an hour and 30 minutes. I was listening to at least 2 hours of DI everyday. Y’all I was burnt out! 😩😩😩
On top of that, I was going through family issues which made dedicated 100x harder. I am definitely grateful that I had my local library to go to to kind of avoid it but it was probably the worst time to be going through this while studying for 9-12 hours each day.
Thankfully, the issues did not impact my exam scores too much (at least I hope it did not). Here are my practice exam scores. I decided not to take NBME 12 scored because I heard it was bad but all of the other exams were fair.
NBME 10: 204
NBME 11: 220
NBME 13: 225
I wanted a high score, so I tried to buckle down and work more on getting through as many questions as possible.
During the last two weeks of my exam, I wanted to get through UW 1 and UW2. Uworld One was hard and I ended up getting a 212 on it.
I decided to make an Excel sheet and review each incorrect thoroughly. Why was I choosing this answer? What makes this one correct and this one incorrect? Here’s an example of what I did:
After reviewing that heavily, I did more practice questions and took Uworld 2, a week before my exam. I was so scared taking it because this exam was the most predictive of how I would do on the real thing. But, my fear turned to excitement when I saw my score: 240!
Y’all I about cried when I saw that. Never would I have ever imagined I would get a score like that on an exam alhamdudillah. I prayed that I would get something like that or better on the real exam.
The week leading up to my exam was not easy. My grandfather had passed away (may Allah (swt) forgive him) and I was stressed about other things going on in my life. But I just powered through the week which is not healthy but I do not cope with life stressors well. 😪
I took the newest free 120 the Wednesday before my exam at the library (no in-person sessions for the day I wanted) and got a 68%. I was not happy about it because I wanted above a 70% but through Reddit, I realized that the newest edition was harder. I ended up also doing the version before this one (tutor-mode-like) and got a 75%! Omg, I am ready to take this exam!
The day before my exam, I did not study at all! I bought Chipotle, slept a lot, and watched Youtube. I was so anxious, but so ready to be done. I literally prayed so much. Even though I prepared, I ultimately knew that I would only pass by Allah (swt) will. 🤲🏾🤲🏾🤲🏾
Exam Day!!!
Y’all I barely slept throughout the night. I was sooo exhausted. 😣 I prayed, made breakfast, grabbed everything I needed, and headed out.
When I made it to the exam room, I sat down and tried to mentally calm myself. It was nice because actually saw one of my classmates! This was it, I am ready for this nightmare to end!
Anyways, the exam process was similar to step one. I got in, registered myself, and sat down to take the exam. Because of the stamina I built during dedicated, I was able to do 2 blocks, take a break, another 2 blocks, and take a break until pretty much the end of the exam.
I thought the first four sections were fine even with the exhaustion. I finished them each with about 10 minutes to spare. It honestly felt like the free120: very straightforward and not too challenging at all.
The last 4 sections were ROUGH. By this point, I was fully awake and was ready to conquer the last 4 sections. But those sections beat me up forreal. 😪 I was second-guessing every question and confused about what to choose. That’s when I started freaking out. 😣 I had to take more breaks just to calm myself down. You got this, I kept telling myself. You got this!
Finally, Alhamdudillah, the exam was over! 🥳 I was one of the last people in the building just like how I was for step one but I was soo happy to be done! I could not believe I spent 9 hours taking that exam. Alhamdudillah it’s over! 🙌🏾🙌🏾🙌🏾
Post-Exam and Results
Waiting for the exam results was not as bad as it was for step one. For one, I only had to wait 2 and 1/2 weeks for my score instead of 6 weeks. And for another, I just felt like I passed. I put in a lot of effort and my exam scores were above the passing range for the most part. Also, I was allowed to start off my rotations immediately instead of waiting like I did for step one for that took my mind off of it some.
However, I will still scared sometimes. What if I did all of this for nothing? What if I had to go through dedicated all over again? Btw, if you are reading this and waiting for scores, stay off Reddit because it can be toxic, iykyk.
Finally, on Wednesday around 10 a.m. I received an email. Your score will be released at 11 am EST. Oh my God, I pray that I passed! 🤲🏾🤲🏾🤲🏾
After hospital rounds, I immediately rushed into an empty room to check my score. My heart was pounding immensely. This time I had my laptop up because last time when checking results for Step One, it took a while for the results to be seen on my phone.
I immediately clicked the file and it showed up in the next tab.
ALHAMDUDILLAH, I PASSED!!!!!!!!!! 🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳🎉🎉🎉🎉🎉
I was so relieved to see the pass. 😭😭😭 Update since I graduated, I got a 238! Very similar to my Uworld 2 score alhamdudillah!
But I am too grateful to be done! Now I am just completing rotations and ending off 4th year! I am also applying rn which sucks ngl but at least I know that I have a passing score to do so! Alhamdulillah x1000!!!!!!!
That’s it, everyone! If you are still reading, I am praying that everything is working well in your favor! Thank you all for being on this journey with me thus far. It’s been real and I am grateful for your presence!!!!
Oumou Fofana
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