 So how many weeks do you need to study for step one? In this video, I'm going to break down step by step. If I was a new med student, exactly how I would plan my whole dedicated prep. Let's get into it. All right, guys. Welcome to another video in the MD journey or the TMJ show. If you're listening to it on the podcast, my name is Luxion, internal medicine resident, making videos just like this to help people just like you succeed on their medical journey with less stress. Today I want to talk about a topic that's really famous on this channel, the podcast's blog, and that is step one related questions. You guys can't get enough of those. And I want to answer question really, how long should you be studying? And this answer will vary depending on who you ask as well as who you are. And we'll talk about a few of those things in this video before we get started. Make sure you show your support for this video by hitting that like button. It really helps the channel and the community grow or growing at a much faster rate than I've expected. So appreciate your support. And if you haven't subscribed already, we're putting out two videos just like this on a weekly basis. So go ahead and subscribe as well as hit that notification bell to know when videos go live on Wednesdays and Sundays. But let's get into today's video about how you should study for step one and specifically how many weeks you need, how much time you need. Now, I will practice by saying that this is my opinion, but you're watching. So here it is. And I would recommend that you spend about six to eight weeks studying for step one. This is dedicated. So this doesn't include things that you're doing with your classes. You know, all of that is great to build a foundation, but specifically where you're just sitting down and saying, I'm doing nothing else or very little else except studying for step one. Now, most institutions in the United States at least give you about five to six weeks. It was like vacation time, but not really vacation time to go ahead and prep for step one without any course obligations or any rotations. And that's pretty simple. That's what I had. And I took about five weeks to study for my step one. My recommendation for the six to eight weeks really comes down to how long it realistically should take you to get through some of the key resources and potentially get through them twice to understand both the concepts as well as make some mistakes and not have to make them on test day. That's the ultimate goal. So the main resource that all of us use to study for step one is you will for step one, a question bank that has about 2400 questions, at least the making of this video, it may go up and may go down depending on questions they add as well as take away. And so 2400 questions, you know, if you assume that you do two question blocks of 40 questions each, which is typically average for a typical step one study day. If you imagine doing 80 of them or 80 total questions, it usually will take you 30 days to get through one set of all 2400 questions. So if you plan on doing it twice, which I recommend you do at least twice, if not one and a half, the half being just doing all your missed questions the second time around that comes to about 60 days or two months. That's basically why I recommend doing about two months of six to eight week dedicated prep, but you can get away with making it shorter by doing a little bit more you will during maybe a month before you start your dedicated to just kind of get the question things started or starting doing a little bit more questions towards maybe a week two or three when you have done some of the more time intensive resources like first aid, Patoma, sketchy things that require you to watch a lot of videos may take a lot of your time earlier and your dedicated once you finish them, you can then spend that time you were doing the videos instead do more question blocks. This is kind of how I approach my studying. Like I said, I studied for about five weeks during my dedicated to prep for step one and during my week three, four or five, I really ramped up my questions of doing anywhere from three to four question blocks a day and just focusing on the reviews and mistakes that I made. So if you're trying to decide how long you should be studying for step one, the first question you should ask is how long would it realistically take me to get through some of the key resources? So count for your 2400 questions. I want you to pick how many questions you can comfortably feel like you can get through in a day, you know, and also count for time that it takes you to review. Are you a slower reviewer or are you somebody who can get through them pretty quickly? You know, find your strengths and weaknesses and then ask yourself what other resources do you plan on using? But try to get an idea of how many resources of your realistic want to use and how long they'll take you to do. If you're somebody who wants to incorporate videos, then maybe you want to spend more time starting the videos a little bit earlier on so that way you're dedicated. It doesn't have to be as long. These are things you need to start considering. And if you're somebody who hates watching videos, then maybe your dedicated prep can be shorter because you can get through these questions even quicker. And the last few things I want you to consider is where do you plan on doing some of your practice exams? So the NVME, the creators of the USMLE Step One exam for least sample exams you can take. And the idea is you want to take about one practice exam each week of your dedicated and maybe your last week, week and a half you want to take an extra one to get a little bit more practice doing real Step One like questions. So you want to account for those days doing nothing else but those practice exams. So that may give you a day where you lose from doing your world and you want to account for them as well. And the last thing you should consider on how long your Step One studying should be is one, how your performance has been thus far. You know if you're struggling in your original classes, maybe you need to expand and start studying for Step One a little bit earlier to give yourself the time to rebuild that foundation and then get into the part where you're really raising your score into the 230s, 240s and ideally 250s, 260s. In addition to understanding how you've done, ask yourself, how do you do a test? If you're a poor test taker, if anxiety takes over for you, if that really makes you struggle and underperform, then again maybe you need more time or an optimal amount of time where you can get through the resources without stress at the same time not doing it over too long of a time where again you still get stressed out. And then finally, if you're somebody who is a little bit disadvantaged, so somebody who may be coming from a Caribbean school, somebody who is an international medical school graduate, somebody who is a DO graduate or soon to be, those are unfortunately instances where it's a little bit harder to get into residency. You just wanna make sure where you get the best Step One score as possible to not have somebody looked other way when really they have no reason to just because the name behind your name is not an MD or the school that you come from is not considered a top tier. Those things shouldn't play a role in where you know the residency, but unfortunately they do. So you wanna make sure that you don't give other people excuses not to look at you. So if you need to study longer because you fall in those categories, then I recommend maybe expanding that into a two and a half month or three months. And your institution likely isn't gonna give you a full two to three months off. So what you need to start considering is how can you start doing some of those initial resources with your classes? Can you start watching sketchy videos or pat down the videos? Or maybe you wanna do a 40 question question block of your world every other day to just kind of get ahead as well as get exposure. But those guys are all the things I want you to consider when it comes to how long you should be studying for step one. I know there's a lot there and really there's no one right answer. Six to eight weeks is about average. Again, you can see I study a little bit less because I just wanted to get it over with. But you may need to study a little bit longer just to account for your personal circumstances. So that's it for this step one video guys. If you guys want more help on your step one exam then check out the playlist that we have basically some of the most popular videos on this channel are regarding step one, I understand. So hopefully you guys enjoy them. And if you want a little bit more help you wanna understand some of my key concepts that I found to be useful when I was studying for step one, we do have a free 30 minute kind of tutorial masterclass session where I kind of walk you through my favorite lessons and discoveries that I made when I was studying for step one. I really think we'll help you out as well. And I'll be linked down below. You guys can access absolutely free. That's basically it for this video guys. Hopefully you enjoyed it. Make sure before you leave that you go ahead and support this video and community by tapping that like button as well as subscribing to the video and hitting that notification bell to be notified when new videos are coming at you every Wednesday and every Sunday each week. And also I appreciate all of you guys that do make it to the end. Drop your comments down below with encouraging comments as well as questions. I really appreciate the interaction of love and making these videos for you. So hopefully you guys can experience that and feel that on the other end of the camera. That's basically it for today. I'm gonna stop that one like I always do. Thank you guys so much for joining me on my journey. I'll see you guys later on yours. Take care. Peace.