 I wish I would have listened to you sooner. That's what one of my underclassmen in medical school came up to me to say a week away from a step one exam. And that's because he wished he followed those tips earlier. So in this video guys, I'm going to give you those same tips that he chose not to follow until the last minute. Hopefully you do because it's going to not only help you get a high score, but it's going to keep you calm and relaxed throughout the process. If you're excited, let's get into this video after this intro. All right guys, what is going on? Luxury for an MD journey helping you succeed on your medical journey with less stress. Today we are going to hit the topic of topics amongst med students, step one, and how to do well. I'm going to give you plenty of tips that are both practical, things that you can take away immediately, and things that are very mindset based that I learned the hard way that you should avoid. And these are not only tips from my own experience, but also tips from top performing students in my class. These are the students getting to 50s, to 60s, and even to 70s. So if you want to be in that upper epsilon, these tips are definitely going to help you out. At the very end, I'm going to give you guys a resource that you can go to if you want information. But without further ado, let's get into tip number one. So tip number one is to focus on your questions instead of your reading. Typically when we create a step one schedule, you may be doing it right now. You're focused more on what first day chapters you're going to be covering on what day, what week, and trying to span that out over the course of four to six weeks. But really that's the wrong approach because the most improvement you make and your score is doing more practice questions over time. So you don't want to delay the growth in your score improvement to later. That's when you typically will start doing practice questions. Instead you want to focus on how much of a ratio you're spending on questions versus reading on a typical day. So if you're spending 10 hours, which is not abnormal for a step one dedicated studying, you want to do about 60% of your time doing some type of practice questions. So that may be you will that may be doing flashcards on questions you miss or pre-made flashcards, anything where you're just practicing with some type of question bank. And then the other 40% should be spent on reading, gathering material, maybe watching some videos. And typically the study schedules that I've seen for the students that I've coached is they spent a lot of time trying to fit in as much for a state and pathoma and sketchy with little time given to question blocks. But it's really the latter that gives you the most improvement in your grade. So focus on those more and your, your latter weeks throughout your step one studying, you want to raise that percentage even more. So if you're spending 60% of your time on questions, originally, then around week three, four or five of your study prep, you want to get into like the 75 to 80%. Doing more practice questions, saying similar topics, asked in different ways are going to help you stay calm and prepared for the actual exams. So more practice questions is likely going to lead you to a better score. You can't say the same about how many times you read first aid. So try to do more practice questions and make sure your study schedule from start is focused on spending more time there. So tip number two is one that I absolutely love, and it's definitely going to help you focus on doing more questions. And that's the idea of focusing on reverse learning. Now, reverse learning is not something foreign to you. It's simply the idea of using a high yield resource to quiz yourself and then using that to basically direct you on what you'll be studying. So typically the flow is to read first aid and then quiz yourself on some question blocks and then do more first aid and then keep causing yourself. Instead, I recommend that you do your UL questions. You keep track of the questions you're missing through Anki writing on a notebook, putting in a Word doc, keep an Excel sheet, pick your method. And then based off of the topics you keep missing, refer back to first aid, refer back to Pat Belma or other resources that you enjoy using and basically strengthen your understanding of that material. So focus instead on giving yourself as many opportunities to make mistakes through flashcards and practice questions instead of the other typical approach where you're just reading. In the end of the week, you have this old crap moment because you don't understand cardio or germ or micro. So make sure you give yourself as many opportunities to make mistakes. Now, so when the test comes around, you can feel more and more prepared and feel through each question that you likely have seen it before. So speaking of micro tip number three is to focus sometime every single day on micro and farm. These are the two topics that most students need a lot of repetition to nail down, may not be well taught in their medical school curriculum. It depends on where you go to school and honestly can trip you up the most on step one, but if you do focus your time on mastering them by doing a little bit every single day of micro and farm, and I'll recommend some resources. Second, I promise you your grades are going to be much more likely to be higher than that of your peers and to get in that 250 to 60 range. These are the questions that are really easy money if you've seen it plenty of times, but if you haven't, they're the most difficult. And some of the resources to really master these topics of micro and farm are things like sketchy medical, that includes sketchy farm, sketchy micro. Obviously, great resources. Picmonic is great for anyone that likes short videos, laying farm flashcards are also amazing and things that I recommend and any resource that I mentioned in this video, we've linked down below with any corresponding discounts I may have for you guys, so check those out, but definitely make sure when you're designing your study schedule or if you're studying for step one right now, you focus a little bit of your time. It could be 20 minutes, doesn't have to be too crazy, but make sure you focus a little bit of time doing both farm and micro every single day because you are most likely going to be able to pick those low-hanging fruits and raise your score pretty exponentially. So make sure you take advantage of tip number three. So tip number four is pretty profound because it can cause a shift of anywhere from 20 to 30 points in the wrong or the right direction on your final score. So I know I got some of y'all's attention and it's simply tip number four is this idea of being prepared for the hills and valleys. Step one is hard. There's obviously a lot of information that's like obvious, but the other part that's difficult is that you typically can't predict consistency. It would be nice to say week one I had the score week two I would have this score and then keep moving up the ladder. But what most students will find is throughout their days, they'll have some spikes where they feel really good about themselves and say maybe step one isn't so bad. And then a couple of days in a row, you'll take some practice questions or your practical practice test and you'll see your score dip or not improve as much as you want to. That can lead you to be really hard on yourself. But really it's just part of the journey. It's going to have its hills and valleys. And if you're ready for that day in and day out, you're going to be able to move through it with momentum versus kind of having setbacks. And so let me give you an example. I learned throughout the first two weeks that my score was going up and then they would go down up and down. And what I realized is that I would have two to three bad days, you know, where my scores on my practice exams and questions wasn't as ideal as I wanted to. And when I reflected on the questions that I was missing, I realized that maybe the first question in the line of difficulty was pretty hard and I probably wouldn't have got it on that track. But the next question was something I was actually supposed to be able to get correctly. I knew the information, but I let the question prior to it really kind of dictate my mood, my momentum and stressed me out. And that anxiety continued throughout those practice questions and led to my score to dip. But when I reflected on how many questions I should have gotten, right, you know, it was a raise in my points of anywhere from 20 to 30 points, the same thing happened on practice exams. And so this is, you know, a principle I teach a lot, which is focus on earning points on every single question. So if your last question was difficult to shrug your shoulders and say, maybe I wasn't supposed to get that, but the next one, focus, if you, if you know the topic, you're going to feel good about yourself and you can take that momentum to the next question. So Hills and Valleys guys, step one is a journey. It is a challenge. If you think you're going to get through it unfazed and having this nice like success roller coaster, it's not true. So be ready for the Hills and Valleys because when the time and the test comes around, you'll be ready for it on the actual exam. I promise you're going to do better because anything that's going to seem like a step back is just something that you're going to be able to shrug your shoulders on and move forward. So take that as a mindset change, but I promise you, if you adapt to it and you commit to it, you're going to be able to get to the end of it with a smile on your face and a score you're going to be happy with. Now, tip number five is the tip that I gave to the student at the start of this video who didn't listen to me until the very end. And that is simply being okay to veer away from your schedule. It's obviously important to have a study schedule, but you're going to wake up some days and not feel like studying. You're going to wake up some days and need another extra hour or two of sleep. Take it. I would wake up and have my study schedule start at eight o'clock and wake up at seven thirty and realize I was not going to be functional to actually study. So when it was eight o'clock, I simply hit this news button and try to sleep for another two hours. Sure, my study schedule was a little bit shifted and I had to make some adjustments, but that sleep was worth it. And it's simply the principle of making sure you're taking care of yourself. So obviously sleeping, eating correctly, getting exercise. And if you have to veer away from your schedule to make sure you include more of certain things, such as sleep, do it because at the end of six weeks, you're going to wish you did an extra hour of studying here and there is not going to lead you to a better score, but a lack of, you know, an hour of sleep every single day is going to impact your score. So make sure you take the importance of the latter and get your sleep when you need to eat some food. If you have to end your study day a little bit early, that's OK. You know, this is a challenge and it's a journey, but you want to get to the end, unfazed. And to do that, you have to make some compromises. So you may not be able to stick with your study schedule exactly to a T, but that's totally fine, because the score, as long as you have the right principles in mind, will reflect it. And tip number six, guys, is also something that has to do with your study schedule. And that is to have a cut off time. And I can't tell you how many times I had classmates that were studying the same time as I was, but would take their studying into the late hours of the evening, even though we started at the same time. That's because they wanted to get a little bit of extra time. And when we look at our scores, we all scored around the same. And it's not because I'm smarter or they're, you know, need more hours. It's simply because those extra hours that we're really fatigued don't actually impact you very much. And so having a cut off time, the benefits of it, guys, is if I would end my study schedule at 6.30 or 7 o'clock, most days it was around 7.00, 7.30, then I could use an extra three hours to enjoy myself. That would be watching TV. That would be going for a run, getting a workout if I hadn't gotten one. I learned magic tricks during my step one because I wanted to like entertain myself and get away from my first eight book. So find whatever you want to, to spend a time way that can be doing absolutely nothing if that's what you prefer, getting some more sleep. But make sure you have a cut off time and being strict with that. You know, you don't have to be exactly to a T with the rest of your study schedule, but definitely with your cut off time, you should. I promise you those extra 30 minutes, you think you could have been more productive, wouldn't actually lead you to a better score. You're just going to have to be efficient from the time you wake up and start studying to that cut off time. And you're more than likely going to be able to do that. And tip number seven, guys, is my home run hitter. For any of you guys that made it to the end of this video, it's how you should be designing your study plan. And I could give you a study schedule and many students of mine have gotten the ones that I've recommended. But why not create one that's perfect for you? So I'm going to give you a system on how to develop that for yourself. And I promise you if you use this, your score is just going to soar. So I call this my tier system. Now essentially how it works is when we go through week one or week two, we may already have a study schedule kind of designed. But after doing some of the practice questions and the practice tests, we may realize that our weaknesses are really having on certain topics and not so much on others. But if you tend to go with the same study schedule every student puts out there on Reddit, student doctor form, or even my website, you're going to basically be structuring your study plan according to my weaknesses or somebody else. But you want your study plan to be personalized to you. So the way the tier system works, guys, is you can do this on a daily basis. But I recommend on a weekly basis. At the end of week one, you're going to look at your UL questions. And you're going to look at the practice test that you may have taken that week. And look at what topics are causing you difficulty and what topics are you doing really well on. So I'll give you an example, but these numbers aren't concrete because there's going to be different for everybody else. So we're going to look at your UL percentages that you got right over that week. And it may say that for certain topics, you were doing anywhere from 80% to 90%. That would be a topic that you're pretty good at. Maybe that stats for you, for example. And then tier number two may be a topic where you're getting anywhere from 60% to 75% on, or 60% to 79% on. Those are the topics that you're good at, but you still need some work. And then anything less than the 60% may be a tier three, which means you need a lot of work on this. This is a big weakness and you better hope that you prepare for it. Otherwise you're going to be anxious when it comes up on the exam. These for a lot of us, maybe micro, farm, biochem, you name it, right? So three tiers and the percentages are personalized to you. So you can see what your ranges are for your scores. You may be doing really well on certain topics, but your height may be 85. Maybe 85 is a good number for you. And maybe anything below 55 is really terrible. Make your own tiers. Once you make your tiers, basically design the next study week or redesign it based off tiers. So things that are tier three, things that are really difficult, let's say you struggle with dermatology, you struggle with micro, and you may struggle with another topic. We'll just say it's path, just general path that's in first aid. For those topics, you wanna do at least one of those typical tier three topics every single day. So you may do derm on one day, you may do micro on a second day. Obviously we may be doing micro every single day because that's what I recommended earlier in this video. But you guys get the gist. Tier three is dedicated every single day. Now things that are tier two would get dedicated as like your next topic, your second topic of the day with your tier three. So maybe you're somewhat good at cardio, but you're getting between that 60 to 79%. That may be tier two for you. So then you would put that as tier two. And tier threes are topics that you do really well on behavioral stats. Most students typically do well with those questions. And you just need to do those every three to four days. You may just focus on that in one week and spend like a short amount of time. But the way this thing is gonna work, and again it's personalized to you, tier three topics, difficult topics are gonna be done every single day. And you're gonna reevaluate every end of the week to see what tier three, two, and one topics are for you. You may have some former difficulty topics that have now kind of moved up in percentage because you're doing better. And then some old topics that are getting a little bit more difficult. So it's going to be able to help you personalize how you're spending your time. So hopefully that makes sense. If you guys have more questions on the tier system, you just want me to make a complete video on this and just kind of demonstrate on a whiteboard more than happy to do so. I teach a lot of my coaching students this and they feel like they really have control over their study schedule, which is sometimes all we really need during step one prep is control. So if you wanna learn more about the tier system and you feel like some questions that I have left unanswered, just let me know. I'll be more than happy to answer them. And guys, you have made it to the end of the video, but before I close, I wanna give you guys a resource you can go to in case you want some more info. So I basically gathered the tips from some of my top classmates that have scored above a 255 or higher and asked them what their study schedules were, kind of what were the common recommendations that they believed every student should be doing. And I put that into a nice little guide for you guys and I'll be linked down below. And since you made it to the end of this video, this discount's not available anywhere else, but you can go ahead and put step 250. So that's the score we're trying to get everybody to get 25% off on the guide. Again, that'll be linked down below in the description. So hopefully it helps anyone that's interested, but by no means do you feel pressure to check it out. If you guys have any questions, make sure to just go ahead and comment down below. I'm more than happy to make more step one videos for you guys, if you guys enjoyed this one. But let me know whatever questions you guys have for this video or any other topics. I'm more than happy to make it. Thank you guys so much for sticking to the end. Thank you guys for subscribing and if you haven't, go ahead and hit that subscribe button and then thank you for subscribing. Make sure you like this video so I can get out to more people and the step one in medical school community. And again, I will stop babbling like I always do. Thank you guys so much for watching. I will see you guys in the next video. Take care, my friends.