Step 1: Question banks

Every medical student who has taken the USMLE Step 1 exam has most likely signed up for a question bank to practice doing USMLE-style questions. There are many question banks out there, but the main ones are:

1. USMLE World (2000+ questions)
2. USMLE Rx (3000+ questions)
3. Kaplan (2000+ questions)

I think that there's a general consensus that USMLE World is the best question bank of the three because its questions are drawn from a pool of "retired" questions from old USMLE exams and are therefore closest to the real thing. USMLE Rx has the advantage of being linked to First Aid such that the explanations for each question references relevant page numbers and even includes snap shots of relevant pages. Kaplan is generally regarded as being slightly more difficult than the actual exam, with the drawback being you might get frustrated or discouraged with Kaplan, especially early on in your studying.

I used both USMLE World and USMLE Rx but not Kaplan, so I will only discuss those two question banks.

I bought a year subscription to USMLE World near the end of Year 1 Semester 2 during the Renal block. I used USMLE World to study for all of my remaining courses by doing practice questions focused on a given topic. This usually happened during the day or two leading up to an exam. I found that this approach worked very well by helping me to think along the lines of what types of questions could be asked. Plus, I felt like I was being doubly productive by also studying for Step 1.

I worked on the USMLE World question bank over Summer break and Year 1 Winter break, mostly doing questions after studying a particular topic. You have the option of doing questions timed or untimed and setting how many questions are in each practice set. Over the Summer, I did all of my questions untimed with no more than 20 questions in each practice set. I spent a lot of time researching each question that I got wrong and some more time reading through the explanation for each question that I got right.

For most subjects, I also created question sets of all questions in that particular topic that I got wrong (this was only during Summer break and Year 2 Winter break). In that way, I re-did questions over and over again until I got all questions right within that topic. Looking back, I'm not sure exactly how useful that was to me. It certainly helped to drill some information into my head, but the reality is that there are some questions that are simply bad. I think my time could have been better spent doing more research into those questions that I got wrong.

When Year 2 Semester 1 began, I decided to ratchet it up by also doing 5-10 timed questions per day, still limited to the subject matter at hand. I was inconsistent in doing this and wish that I had actually stuck to that plan. When Year 2 Semester 2 began, I ratcheted it up again by doing 5-10 questions per day that were both timed and completely random (i.e. drawn from all subjects). I was more consistent doing those during Semester 2 than I was during Semester 1, and I'm glad for it.

I finished going through all 2000+ questions in USMLE World by the middle of Year 2 Semester 2, having gone through a substantial number of those questions multiple times.

I bought a month-long subscription to USMLE Rx at the beginning of my dedicated study period and used it almost exclusively for completing timed sets of 48 questions drawn from all subject areas. This graph summarizes how many practice questions I did per day during my dedicated study period:


I completed 52 sets at 48 questions each for a total of 2496 questions from USMLE Rx.

During the dedicated study period, I also went back to USMLE World occasionally when I wanted to do some subject-specific questions.

If I could do it over again, I would:
1) Buy a year subscription of USMLE Rx instead of USMLE World, then use USMLE World during the dedicated study period.
2) Buy USMLE Rx at the beginning of Cardiovascular block instead of during the Renal block.
3) Be more consistent about completing 5-10 practice questions per day during Year 2.