Originally published September 22, 2021
We recognize that many students use UWorld to help prepare for their Step 1 exams. But where do they go wrong? What are potential pitfalls that second year med students should make sure to avoid in their own prep?
We’ve identified the five biggest mistakes that med students make with UWorld for Step 1 prep.
The top mistakes to avoid with UWorld Step 1 prep:
1. Not starting early enough in your Step 1 study period
Many students come to us concerned about starting Qbank questions too early in their Step 1 study period. They say they’re not ready to tackle a difficult Qbank and would prefer to start with an easier Qbank or focus more on reading. This is a mistake!
Step 1 is a question-based exam. Therefore, the best approach to studying for Step 1 is to incorporate Qbank questions like UWorld and others, hitting them early and often. Even if you have not finished all of the material five months before your exam, there will certainly be some content you’ve covered.
For example, if you’ve already had your immunology course, do some immunology questions! If you’ve learned biochemistry, create a few short biochemistry question bank sets from UWorld. During your heme block in second year, do some heme questions.
Attempting difficult questions is a great way to focus your studying and highlight areas of deficiency. Additionally, you might want to do Qbank questions on the topics you’re learning in coursework.
Remember that you can customize your question sets based on discipline. You can focus on heme pathology or heme pharmacology, if that is what your course is covering. No need to deal with biostats or biochem during a heme pathophys block. The earlier you expose yourself to difficult case vignettes, the more efficient your question-based studying will be later on.
So, when should I start UWorld?
If you are in your second year of med school, buy UWorld now and start building your basic sciences foundation by working through questions.
2. Not spending enough time reading explanations
Glossing over UWorld question explanations is one of the biggest and most damaging mistakes med students make when utilizing Qbanks. Students who pass Step 1 know that the true value of UWorld lies in its high-quality explanations.
UWorld questions are prompts. They are vehicles for practicing the pattern recognition, clinical reasoning, and test-taking skills that we need to score high on the USMLE.
However, doing UWorld question banks alone and skimming the explanations is not enough to achieve mastery of the material.
Top scorers understand that UWorld is best used as a learning tool, and most of the learning happens when reviewing explanations—especially on questions you got wrong.
If there are five answer choices and only one correct answer, 80% of the content will focus on the incorrect answers. We must read all of the explanations—every word—to get the most out of the question.
Does this take time? Absolutely! Students come to us and say, “I’m spending too much time on UWorld sets. It’s taking me forever to review my blocks.” We say, “No, you’re not. That’s how we learn.”
Blueprint has found that students should spend 2-3x as long reviewing explanations as completing sets. This review includes looking up content in high-yield resources and making flashcards. Don’t skimp on question review!
3. Not linking Qbank explanation review to First Aid
First Aid is the key book to use for Step 1 prep. What many students do not know, however, is how to effectively integrate First Aid study with UWorld question bank review for Step 1 prep.
We think about the UWorld Qbank as a tool for illuminating or animating the content in First Aid. Anyone who has opened up First Aid to a random chapter and tried to read it through as a narrative knows how difficult this is to do.
What we’ve found from our own study experiences and through our extensive work with students is that linking UWorld to First Aid is an incredibly effective way to make the book content stick. This means that optimal question bank review entails having a copy of First Aid ready to annotate—or even just to locate the information. Get ready to flip those pages! It’s one of the best ways to learn First Aid.
4. Prioritizing the percentage of correct answers over learning content
Med students are data-driven individuals. We all love numbers, percentages, trends, etc. However, we fall into a trap when we allow the numerical information provided by UWorld to overwhelm the learning component. Students become overly enamored with percent correct and cumulative results, when what really matters is how much we are learning from the explanations. We cannot stress this point enough: Question banks are primarily learning tools, not assessment tool.
Additionally, students who focus too much on numbers are more likely to suffer study inertia. Why? Because these students are afraid to move on to the next question block until they’ve mastered the material. This leads to more reading, more passive watching of videos, more review of notes. Students move slowly through the Qbank to improve their chances of achieving high percentages on the next set. Let go of your concerns about numbers! Nobody will see your percentages. Keep the focus on where it should be: learning the exam content and improving test-taking skills.
5. Not adding other Qbanks to your prep to fill in the gaps
A theme we keep coming back to is that question banks are learning tools. Working through Qbanks helps you learn in many different ways. One of them is bolstering medical knowledge. This is accomplished through answer review, annotating First Aid, and connecting the bits of knowledge in your head.
On top of that, you learn how to answer questions well, which is exactly what you are doing on test day. I cannot stress this enough: All of your boards exams can be boiled down to answering questions. Medical knowledge isn’t enough; knowing how to answer questions utilizing this knowledge is a necessity, and the way you learn to excel at this is by answering tons of questions.
A second pass through UWorld can prove useful, but you will immediately recognize many of the questions, plug the correct answer in, and give a half-hearted effort to reviewing the explanation. The addition of a second Qbank can be a powerful way to work through another company’s question styles, plug holes in knowledge that you didn’t complete in UWorld, and double the amount of practice that you get in before test day. Plain and simple, the more questions you work through, the better prepared you will be.
Blueprint Test Prep has created a proprietary study platform for this very reason. The high-fidelity software includes practice exams, Qbanks, and detailed analytics to help you sit for your exam with the total confidence that you did everything possible to be well-prepared.
The explanations are on par with UWorld. Not only are you provided with these detailed explanations, but each question includes a “One Step Further” option, where you can answer another subject-adjacent question to the one you just answered.
There’s also a flash-card style “Rapid Review” attached to each question, so you can revisit the big picture of the disease process, in addition to the pointed knowledge necessary to answer the questions.
If you’d like to explore your other Step 1 prep options, give the Blueprint Step 1 bundle a try with two full-length Step 1 practice exams, personal analytics to track your progress, and more!
And for some (free!) Step 1 prep tips, check out these other articles on the blog:
