 Today, we're going to break down exactly how to create a study schedule to help you pass USMLE Step 1, but doing it with confidence, let's get into it. Now, we're going to be covering a lot in today's episode, such as how long you need to study for Step 1, how to study and create a Step 1 schedule during your prededicated, your dedicated period, and at the very end, also be talking about a very effective tool that makes the entire process so much quicker, more efficient, and a lot less stressful. So, if you're watching this on YouTube, feel free to jump to the part of the episode that you're most interested in, let's get into it. Now, the first question that we need to answer before even creating our study schedule is answering how long should you be studying for USMLE Step 1 now that it's past fail? And in case you're unfamiliar, typically you would take USMLE Step 1 after your first two years of medical school or maybe a year and a half, and typically you would take it into summer between your second and third year, and usually your school, most schools, will give about four to six weeks to study for it, and then out to merely take the test. Some of them will even get anywhere from six to eight to 12 weeks to do it, and again, it will depend completely on your institution. And so my typical recommendation is to count on five to six weeks of dedicated prep where you're not doing anything else but studying for Step 1, and if you're somebody who struggled even more so in their pre-clinical courses, or maybe it's been quite some time, maybe you're an international student and you have to take USMLE Step 1 to do residency here, definitely consider giving yourself anywhere from six to eight to even 10 weeks to study for the test, that way you're ready and able to pass with confidence. Now, if any of those time frames feel like it's too quick or too ambitious, we'll be breaking down the rest of the episode in both the pre-dedicated as well as the dedicated period. In the pre-dedicated period, we'll be talking about how to create a study schedule alongside while studying for your other classes, as well as the dedicated of how to most effectively use your time in those five to eight to 10 weeks that you'll be studying for USMLE Step 1. Let's go ahead and break down how to create a Step 1 schedule during your pre-dedicated period. Now, when I'm working with students, particularly the ones that I coach one-on-one, a lot of students have a tendency of coming with a very ambitious schedule while still trying to study for their classes, and then they wonder why they're stressable. Again, at the very end, I'll talk about a very effective tool on how to essentially make that entire process a lot more seamless, a lot more simpler, but if you're just going to create your own study schedule now, usually what I recommend is to simplify and make it as easy as possible, because the most important thing to remember is that there is an exponential difference between the focus and the tenacity and intensity that you study with during your dedicated compared to when you're studying with alongside the rest of your classes, and Step 1 is still several weeks to months to years away. And so the best thing you can do for yourself is to take a deep breath and make the entire process a lot more simpler. And the main decisions that I have students during the prededicated aside in terms of their study schedule is one starting to commit to the study resources that are very time intensive, that would be really beneficial if you just got through now that you were going to be using when it's dedicated. And often what falls into this bucket of a resource that's very helpful, but also time intensive ends up being a resource that's very video heavy. So some of my favorite include things like Padelma or Sketchy or Picmonic or Online MedEd or the Goliath Lectures, still audio, but same concept. Sometimes getting through those episodes and those videos as much as you can during your prededicated often is the best priority you can make yourself versus how many questions should I do or how many flashcards should I get through? Because if you can get through all those videos, then you free up so much more time during your dedicated prep that you can now just start jumping into flashcards and questions instead of having to spend hours every single day watching videos. And so if you're in that prededicated phase, my biggest recommendation would be finding that one or two resource that is very video or time heavy and saying how can I get at least 75% of this material done by time is dedicated. So for example, you're four months away for starting your dedicated prep for step one and you choose to use Sketchy and Padelma as your two main resources. Let's just say, for example, there are a hundred videos in both of them. There's definitely a lot more. But if you use that as an example, and your goal should be how can I get through 75 of these videos by the time my dedicated starts? That way you only have 25 to go through during the first few weeks, which should be much more simpler. And while using that backward math, you may come up to, oh, I need to watch three videos a week. Perfect. Now you have to ask yourself, where in your week do you have the most available time to watch a video? Ideally, you're trying to match these high yield resources with the material you're learning in class of your own cardiology may make sense to watch the Padelma or the sketchy videos related to cardiology related topics. And then you'll ask, okay, where in my week do I have the most efficient time to do so? Maybe you find, okay, Saturdays are usually where I finish round three, maybe I can give myself another hour, hour and a half to watch those one or two videos, or maybe I can just do a video on a Wednesday and then two videos on a Saturday and make that the rest of my schedule all the way up to my test prep in early May. You can already start to see how this approach and the student who takes this approach will feel like they're making progress towards dedicated without making it super stressful. Now, once you fit in the resources into your schedule, the next thing we have to talk about is how to fit in questions and how much now in terms of priority, I would recommend getting through those video resources as quickly with as much focus as possible, and then focusing on the questions because you're going to do tons of those when dedicated comes around. And then the second thing is to pick an amount of questions that just feels stupid easy to say yes to. If I came up to you and asked you, could you do one question a week? Most of you guys would be like, yeah, like, of course I could. Okay, what about five? Yeah, 10? Yeah, 100. Now a few of you may be watching this and saying, 100 feels kind of hard, fine. Pick that number where you feel that comfort level where it feels very simple to say yes to, especially when you're pre-dedicated and you are months, weeks, and even years away from when you're dedicated. That makes much more sense. And I'm going to use a quote that I just love here for YouTube, which is it's much better to be good consistently than great occasionally. It's much better to do five questions on a weekly basis and do 10 questions, but only do them one out of every four weeks of a very busy block. And so for you, that breakdown may come to about 20 or 40 questions a week. And then just like we did for the resources, you may say, okay, Wednesdays, I'm going to do five questions on Saturdays. I'm going to do 10 questions a little more time. And on Sundays, I have some time just not as much. I'm going to commit to five questions every single Sunday. Again, that student starts to make progress towards making some momentum towards dedicated without making it feel super stressful. And three quick points that I want to emphasize on how to effectively do questions during pre-dedicated. One, make sure that the majority of the questions that you're doing are focused around the topic that you're learning. So if you're on your cardiology block and make most of them do cardiology, two, I do like to have some mix, especially with the students that I work one on one with that I interject of random questions they've learned from topics from prior semesters. So if you do 40 questions a week, maybe 30 of them will be cardiology, maybe Wednesday and Saturday will be cardiology questions. And then Sunday, maybe 10 questions that are random from topics you've learned in the past, so you can still get that nice space repetition. And then three, the question is, well, what resource should I be using? Should I be going to your world? Should I be holding onto those questions? And typically my recommendation is that if you're several months away from starting your dedicated, getting into your world probably will lead you likely to be in the setting where you remember too many of the answers and don't actually get the benefit from your world. So instead, I recommend using some other question banks. And I've been an entire episode on my favorite step on resources, my favorite step on Q banks, I'll link that down below. But usually my easy go to recommendation is to definitely consider checking out usmlerx, which is from the same makers that make first aid. So if you want to not have to go through that book and test yourself on a material, you can have usmlerx alongside your classes and then get closer to your dedicated and then start doing your world as your main practice question set. Now so far, we have our resources and our questions. And the next one is plus or minus. But if you are somebody who really enjoys pre made flashcards and using on key, then this is the last component of how to use pre made on key cards into your pre dedicated prep. Now there are tons of pre made on key card debt collections that are out there absolutely for free. Reddit is a great place to find them. If you want our collection of every on key card or every on key collection that we have for all phases of medical school, definitely consider checking out the domination bundle. It's a large Google drive of all of our favorite on key decks across the internet. It's a free bonus that's included for any student who checks out the domination bundle. So again, if you want, you guys can check that out below. But just like my recommendation on how to incorporate questions into your daily spaces, usually my recommendation for on key is on the same thing. One, you want to commit to time. So instead of saying I'm going to do 20, 30, 50 flashcards single day, I usually say, let's pick a time. What feels very easy for you to say, I can do 10 minutes of flashcards. I can do 20 minutes. If I ask you 40, you're gonna 40 doesn't feel nice. Fine. Stick to 15 or stick to 20, whatever it may be. And then doing that amount on a daily basis or every other day or doing it on a weekend. Again, stick to something that you can be good consistently versus great occasionally. And then my next recommendation is to still use that 50 50 split. So if you're using pre-made flashcards, usually I'll recommend half of them be towards the topic that you're learning about. So if I'm going to do Saturday and Sundays for my on key sessions, 30 minutes each, because that's what I picked. And I may say Saturday is going to be my cardiology on key cars. And I'm just going to do them from like on King or Zonke or a bro and Cephalon doesn't really matter. And then on Sunday, I'm just going to do other topics. And usually my recommendation to do topics that you're a weekend or topics that most students are a weekend. And usually what I found after working with so many students ends up being topics like pharmacology, microbiology, bio-can immunology and bio stats, I'll kind of make a combo pre-made deck of all of those into one. And then I'll do 30 minutes of those. So again, on Saturday, I may be doing on key cards related to the thing I'm learning in class. And then on Sunday, I may be doing those things that are going to likely cost me the most points. But if I can build confidence now, then when dedicated starts, I'm just already ahead of the game. And before we get into the nitty gritty of how to prepare for your dedicated prep, if you're interested in our entire step one strategy, make sure you go right here to see our full pass fail strategy. Lots of people have enjoyed this episode, enjoy the video. So I will link that down below in case you're interested. Let's go ahead and get into the detail of how to study during your dedicated prep for us on step one. Now again, this period can range anywhere from five to eight. And I've seen some students take up towards the 12 or 14 weeks. But usually the way I like to simplify step one scheduling is to break however much time you're studying and think of it into thirds. So if I was studying six weeks, for example, which is a very nice average that I may think of my first two weeks. And during that, my goal is to go ahead and try to get through all of my content once and ideally try to finish all of those heavy video resources. So again, ideally during my prededicated, I'm already trying to get through and turn through a lot of those videos and Patoma or sketchy or Picmonic or whatever you pick, but I'm also making that goal that first third or first two weeks of trying to get through every topic. And usually the way I'll do this is I'll go through first aid and I'll say, okay, the first topic and usually in first aid is always biochem. And then one of the major organ systems is usually like GI or cards. And I may say, okay, for the first three days, you're going to do cards during the AM and biochem during the PM. And then I'll essentially will create a schedule where I know that within the first two weeks, I'm ideally covering all the topics. Now, if you're somebody who just goes through material slower because you're a slower reader and need to go through more videos or for whatever reason, it is completely okay to make that period longer. The reason it's useful is I usually at the end of the first week, I don't take a practice exam, but at the end of the second week, after I've gone through a majority of the topics, ideally all of them, then I can take my first two practice exam to know where I stand in terms of scores. And since becoming pass fail, the practice exams that are given by the enemy and me are usually just reported as pass fail. You don't really get an estimate like three digit score, but there are different things such as the comp exams that a lot of schools will give you or things like the self assessments from your world that may as they make me of this episode, still give you some kind of relative score to understand how you're doing compared to others. And so you can still use this. My goal is to try to get that first practice exam down. Once you've gotten to the first two weeks, ideally where the majority of the material from first aid is covered. Now next we'll talk about how many questions to do. And typically my recommendation is to make at least a minimum of two blocks of 40 questions that you do every single day for a minimum of 80 questions per day. You may have to build up to this, especially if you haven't done too many questions during your classwork. So maybe 40 questions a day or for the first week and a half and jumping to 60, then 80 and then 100. Usually my recommendation for a lot of students that I work with is to start with two blocks and then making the goal by the end of two and two and a half weeks to get to two and a half blocks. And usually my distribution is is that if you had followed my international schedule where you're doing cardiology or one topic in the morning and another topic in the evening, my first block would usually cover that topic. And then the second block would cover the secondary topic. And then once you're able to add in an extra 20 to 40 questions for an ultimate goal of 100 to 120, then those last 20 to 40 questions can just be random of things that you've learned as well as things you haven't. So that way you'll feel like the true testing environment. It's also very likely that you're going to have some videos you have left to go through or that your videos you're just going to have to watch a second time because you're missing constantly a topic that you thought previously out of master. Now usually with video resources, I recommend for most people during their study schedule is to put them in the middle of the day instead of the start or the end. Mainly because you're super energized, you usually tend to be more focused, makes more sense to do highly productive tasks like just doing the practice questions. We'll talk about an overall daily schedule in a second, but usually I'll make this more effective study strategies like actually doing the questions at the start of the day and then things that are a little bit more monotonous like watching the videos in the middle of the day. On a similar note, things that are very effective such as pre-made Anki cards if you're interested including them are things that are very easy to get into and so usually I would stack my days with them. So whenever I'm working with students one-on-one, usually I'll recommend stacking and starting with the pre-made flashcards usually focused around those four things that we talked about pharmacology, micro, biochem and immunology plus or minus biostats and they may do 15 to 30 minutes of those at the start of the day, 15 to 30 minutes of those at the end of the day and then they would go to reviewing questions or reviewing flashcards from things that they missed. Then you typically go ahead and jump into your first block, review your first block, go for lunch then by this time you're looking at anywhere from one to two p.m. and you can spend anywhere from two to three hours getting into your video resource and how you want to do this is up to you. Sometimes I'll have students who will jump to the next video that's in their queue if they're going through Patoma, they may just go to the next video they have to or I'll have students that divide this who will essentially say the first half I'm going to go to the next video I have to and the next half I'm going to go to videos and related video topics on things that I keep missing. So they're making themselves a list of things that they're struggling on and then they'll find the video that's relevant to that. So that's a very effective use of your time and then you essentially reverse it so then you'll jump into your second block of questions when you're a little bit more tired it's a great way to work on your stamina that way then jump into a review of those questions and finally end your day with pre-made flashcards from those four topics and that is essentially your step one day in a nutshell. Now last thing that we have to talk about and dedicated is how to fit practice exams and particularly when to do them. As we talked about I'm not a big proponent of doing a practice exam on your first week some students and some schools will make you do it before you even jump into your dedicated that is completely fine just to get an idea where you are. I don't give that score much weight because my personal score was 159 and I did great so it's a good reminder that you need to get your act together to do well but it's not a good reflection of necessarily how well you're going to do once it's time. Usually during week one my main focus is just trying to get through as much material as possible and usually I'm also giving myself at least a half day to a full day off usually I've made these Sundays and so on a week two I would usually take the practice exam on a Saturday and either spend the rest of my Saturday just taking off and then reviewing for a half day on Sunday and then taking that day off so that way I had a full day every week or just jumping into my practice questions doing my review and then giving myself entire Sunday off to relax before jumping right back in on a Monday and using your example of the typical six week dedicated prep typically you would be taking one practice exam all the way from week two all the way a week five. The only caveat here is once you're about a week week and a half away from your final exam I typically recommend stacking two practice exams back to back so that way you can work on the stamina that you'll need when you're actually taking step one so this may be a combination of doing like the second self assessment of u-world combined with the nbme that you haven't taken yet and then just taking them as if it's test day one saying how you're doing but then two also work on your energy your bathroom schedules things like what snacks you'll be eating how to stay up and fresh and it will be much more like test days that way when you actually do have to sit there for seven to eight hours doesn't feel like it's the first time you have because you've already trained for that part too so far we've covered how to create a predeticated and a dedicated step one schedule by yourself but let's talk about how you can use a tool to make the entire process a lot simpler and the tool that I want to share is cram fighter by blueprints and so in case you're not familiar cram fighter is essentially your own personalized scheduler for step one based off your time the resources you want to use so I'm just going to create a brand new study schedule actually I already have one that made but you can essentially come in here and say cool like I'm going to study for a board exam or a course exam we're just going to say we're studying here I already have a med school here we're going to say we graduate next year and then you can choose what exam you're going to go ahead and study for but since we're studying for step one I'm going to click there and then you can choose the test that you have so right now we're in May we're going to say the test is three months away and you want to start studying tomorrow then you can actually say I want to finish and typically I would recommend giving things a buffer always so we're going to say we want to finish a week before the exam that way in case you're not sure if the test is something you're ready for or not you can go ahead and have a little bit of buffer time so now the beauty is is that now we know when our test is we can go ahead and pick the resources we want now cram frider will go ahead and recommend some resources so if you clicked any of these it will actually go ahead and add things like anki or online meta in first aid and you can also add things like the top four so here's your world board's beyond sketchy and you can also add their top six now as you guys know for my personal preference I recommend adding as little as possible and keeping the process simple so this is probably not a simple schedule because you're studying for six hours a day and if you're three months away then you likely have some schoolwork that you're also prepping with it so usually my recommendation is to add three things so in this setting we're just going to say we're going to add anki cards and let's just say we're going to go ahead and do the anki deck and every day we're just going to go for 50 cards I'm going to do a daily amount of 50 because those don't take me too long I want to go ahead and do some you world I could spell and I'm every day I'm going to go ahead and do 10 questions I'm going to bump that up later but for now I'm going to do 10 questions because I'm just starting out and then let's just say the resource that I really recommended or I wanted to do was Patelma so if I want to get into it I'm just going to go in there and I selected all the lectures that I need to do if you've already watched some of these I go ahead and like unselect the ones I've already seen but I don't really want to go through anymore but I'm going to go ahead and click apply now this already gives me an estimate of my time it says it's going to take me about almost two hours to study every single day usually I find that this number isn't always the most predictive and so you can play around with this but it's still a very nice tool because now I can just go ahead and confirm and then within a second I'll already have my full schedule so I already know tomorrow I'm going to be doing the on key and then you world and it's going to give me the relevant videos and the time that's going to take me depending on if I watch this video at 2x or watch the full thing and if I want to change my schedule or I want to watch you world after doing a few of the videos I can do that too and then once everything is done you can click check now the part about cram fighters I really enjoy is that in case something is falling behind like if you're not able to get to this last video I can just move it to the next day or if I needed to edit my schedule based off of things like my pace or my workload or days where I am like going on vacation or doing other stuff you can think change things around and then essentially rebalance your schedule and so that is the beauty of cram fighter where you have your own personal schedule you can see how practical things are and I have a lot of students that will go through cram fighter and then find themselves having so many things like where I'll say you have seven hours to study today and they only have two free hours that's a great lesson that okay you have over committed yourself and you need to back off and sometimes we're not the best at selling ourselves that and so having technology saying you actually don't have enough time to go through all those videos is very helpful now there are a lot more features that come with cram fighter to make studying for step one as well as any other board exam and tests for medical school a lot more simpler and actually made an entire blog post reviewing cram fighters on our website if you guys are interested I'll link that down below probably make an entire video in case you want to see a more step by step approach of using cram fighters if you guys are interested let me know in the comment section down below but if you are interested go ahead and check the link down below to go ahead and get your first try of cram fighters and then seeing if it helps you on your step one in prep now if you're so far enjoying just approach on creating an effective study schedule then you're going to love this entire breakdown and entire step one strategy and how to boost your score and study effectively but not have to study too many hours and still pass with success so make sure you guys check out that episode I'll link it down below in the description but as always my friends thanks for being a part of my journey hopefully I was a little help to you guys and yours I'll see you guys in the next one peace