 With step one now being pass-fail, pretty much makes step two CK the new step one and that's super important for you to do well on to get into your dream residency. Today, I'm gonna be sharing with you the exact strategy I used to get a 257 on step two CK and the steps you can take to crush the exam as well. Let's get into it. Hey friends, welcome back to the channel. Today, we're gonna do a full breakdown of how to do well on step two CK and we're gonna be covering a lot. So if you're interested, feel free to check out the timestamps down below and go to the part of the video or the episode that is most pertinent to you. But as an overview, a few of the things that we'll be talking about include how much time you need to study, what is considered to be a good score for a competitive residency, as well as what your study strategy should look like when you're on the rotations, as well as when you have dedicated time just to study for step two CK. The very end we'll talk briefly about some of the resources you can use to help you do well but doing it with less stress. And as a teaser, towards the end of the episode, I'm gonna give you one tip that really helped me boost my score on a weekly basis when I was studying for step two CK, as well as one resource that I didn't have access to but I really wish I did because what I made the entire scheduling process so much easier, so make sure you stay tuned. First, let's go ahead and break down how long you need to study. Now, those will vary from school to school as well as your particular situation. So for example, I was able to fit one of my one month vacations during my fourth year during my summer and I was able to study for step two CK during that time. But some students may not have that luxury of having that full month off and so if you're in that situation, I usually would recommend adding anywhere from two to four months into your study schedule and ask yourself how long it will take you to get through your question bank source. Question banks typically for step two CK is going to be your world. So come up with how many questions you have to go through and ask yourself how long would it take me to go through your world about one and a half times? Usually the first pass to do all the questions and then at least another half pass where you're going through all the questions that you've missed or guessed correctly on so that way you're getting a nice review and repetition in. Also keep in mind that compare to step one where most students will delay using your world until it's time to really get into the studying. A lot of students will use your world in addition to the rotations to help them prepare for the rotation itself as well as the shelf exam. So you likely won't have as many questions that you think remaining and so sometimes that four to eight week block of dedicated prep in addition to a busy rotation may be perfect for you. And next let's talk about a question I know all of you guys have which is what is actually considered to be a good score? What should be my goal to go for? Particularly now that step one is pass fail. Now instead of just making up numbers I am big and going into the data so I already done the research for you but if you're interested in actually going through this document just go ahead and Google it charting outcomes NBME match and you'll find the most recent version which as the making of this video is in 2020. So essentially what this will tell you is the data of everyone who has surveyed and actually responded. So that is a caveat to remember of what their scores were what their step one scores were which will matter for you guys because now it's pass fail but also how many research experiences they had to they match or not. And so if we go to the part of the document that we actually care about which is the average step two score then we'll realize that at least in 2020 and keep in mind step one score still existed the average score for people that are matching was 247. Now this comes with a big caveat that this is dependent on the students who are responding to the survey. So if somebody who didn't do so well on step two CK or didn't do well in the residency match they may not have responded to the survey. And so this may actually over inflate what the scores may have been but we have a pretty good amount of data here. We have 16,000 students who matched and about 1500 students who didn't. And so having that score of 247 gives you a nice little breakdown. Now what will happen over the next few years now that step one has passed fail I typically will probably expect that the score will stay more or less the same until students and schools start to focus more on step two CK study much earlier on. And so you may find that your school starts to give you question resources like you world maybe in your second year for you to start doing question blocks and other resources. And then you may start to see the score start creeping up into the two fifties. In addition to seeing the average score I think more importantly is for you to be able to see the score based off of the specialties you're interested in. So if we go to this document right here and I'm just gonna go ahead and zoom in then this basically breaks down the average step two score and the range for students who matched as well as didn't match. And so if I find the specialty I'm in which I'm an internal medicine physician then I'll be able to see that people that match got between a 230 and a 250. Now I got a 257 so again that basically tells you that there are people who did much better than me who probably just didn't respond and thus is not reported within this document. And then you can essentially find what you wanna do. So if you wanna be a neurosurgeon you can say cool like I'm clearly gonna need a much higher average step two CK score compared to my peers who may be going for family medicine or pediatrics. So if you guys are interested you guys can check out the charting outcomes data I'll actually link it down below in the description so you guys don't have to actually waste time Googling it. Just keep in mind they updated every two to three years so this data will likely change. It's particularly now that step one is past fail. Just expect that score to stay on the high side if not be a little bit on the higher side closer to the low 250s. So usually my answer to a student who's asking like what score should I aim for typically I'll say aim for the 250 because if you get higher than a 250 you can essentially go into any residency without worrying that your step two CK is a check mark that's not quite there. In my personal experience when I saw that score of a 257 I definitely had a big sigh of relief saying that okay my step two CK is not gonna cost me having a spot in a residency program that I'm really interested in. Then I could focus on really building up the rest of my residency CV and doing well in med school. Now let's go ahead and get in part of the episode that I'm most excited about which is the study strategy. First let's talk about what your study strategy should look like on the rotations. Now every rotation will fit on a spectrum of how relaxed it is and how much it allows you to do step two CK setting. So my personal experience certain rotations like psychiatry and neurology definitely gave me a lot more study time compared to rotations like internal medicine or surgery where the hours were long and I just had to always be in the hospital. And here on the channel as well as our website we have tons of videos and blog posts breaking down each individual rotation and what resources and the best tips to help you do well on each of those. And so if you guys are interested I will link down below a link to our website as well as our clinical rotations playlist that we have here on YouTube. But the main thing to remember is once you understand if a rotation is busy then ask yourself okay like how much time and what resource can I really commit to. The main thing in terms of strategy that you should really be focused on for your rotations is having a schedule that you'll be doing for questions, particularly to that rotation. So if I'm on internal medicine I may say every day I'm gonna go for at least five questions on a minimum. The goal is to do 10 to 15. And the way you would come up with those numbers for each rotation is you would look at the you world questions particularly to that subject. So if I was on psych and I noticed they had 400 questions and I had four weeks that means I had to roughly get through 100 questions each week. And then you'll have to ask yourself how many days you'll be able to commit to doing questions. So maybe you have seven days but three of them may be busy for your psych rotations. So you only have four days. That means you have to do roughly about 20 to 25 questions to get to that hundred average by the time the four weeks is done. And once you have your questions scheduled set in stone and again at the very end of the episode I'll talk about a resource that can speed this process up. Then the next thing is ask yourself like what resource can I fit in addition to help me do well for step two CK. Usually I'll have some kind of text that helps me follow along with the rotation as well as my questions. My main focus is questions every day and then do some reading versus all the way around which is most students do which is they focus too much on my reading and then they'll do like four or five questions here and there, it's not very consistent. So a very heavy focus on making sure you do your questions and then use your reading in the same light saying I have four weeks to get through this many chapters. How many do I have to get through on a weekly basis, on a daily basis and then break that down. That will be your schedule for your rotations without making it over too complicated essentially just two resources, one text, one questions with the heaviness on the questions. And my last tip for the rotations to prep effectively for step two CK is going to be essentially creating a list of the questions that you're missing. Now you can do this using whatever technique you want. I actually used a physical notebook when I was in my rotations because I just like actually liked writing things down. But as I got into more and more rotations and things got a little bit busier I started using more digital options. Initially started using Excel but you can use things like Notion or Anki and other flashcard systems. Again, there's tons of videos and episodes that we've made here on the channel on how to study well. I'll link down below an episode that I did on all the study strategies that really helped me get a 3.9 GPA in med school. And most of that GPA actually came from my rotations. So if you guys are interested I would link that down below. But whatever technique you use continue to collect every time you miss a question saying the last thing I want to do is miss it now and also miss it on my shelf exam and particularly on Step2CK. So when you miss something collect it in a way and then come back to it periodically. It may be saying on the weekends I'm gonna review the list of everything that I missed and make sure that I at least have refreshed on the topic and then maybe before my shelf exam and then we'll talk about how you can use it for Step2CK later in the episode. Now let's go ahead and talk about how your strategy would change during your dedicated. Now if you're imagining that you had four weeks because we'll use that as an example the first two weeks really the only goal is get through all the questions you have left or as many that are possible. And so for example as I'm making this episode your world has about 4,000 questions for Step2CK which is crazy but ideally you've been doing questions with your rotations and so you may come into your dedicated finding that you only have 2,000 or 2,500 left to do. And so if we use that example of four weeks you may say okay I have two weeks or less 14 days I may spend two of those 14 doing practice tests so that gives me 12 days to go through these questions. And so you would use the same concept that we did for rotations you would divide the total questions by the days you actually have to study and then come up with a number and ask yourself how realistic it is. For example if you had 2,000 questions put 12 days to review that's about 200 questions a day and you may find that doing four blocks or doing five blocks of your world is just not feasible. And thus you may decide okay let's go ahead and try to finish all these in three weeks and then you'll figure out okay that's 100 and roughly 120 questions and that's three blocks much easier to say yes to. So that main focus during that dedicated during that first two, two and a half to three weeks should be getting through the rest of the questions in your world that you haven't gone through yet. And so usually that would mean that your day will be anywhere from 80 to 120 questions for some students especially if you have a lot more of your world to cover mean that you have to do 160 questions but usually two to three blocks of 40 questions is a sweet spot. Now to finish off practice questions you wanna make sure they're gonna spend all this time doing these questions that you actually learned from your mistakes. So just like we were doing before during rotations use that said study method and collect all of the mistakes that you're making any questions that you got wrong or a question where you guessed correctly but you actually didn't understand what the concept was. Add that to your list, add that to your flashcards and then usually this is what I would do in my personal setting is every morning I would go to that system for 15 to 30 minutes and saying let's just make sure that you don't make the same mistake again Laksh. And ideally now I start to see my score go higher and higher. And for some students the schedule of doing three blocks plus review plus reviewing the mistakes that they've done from prior days may just be all that they have time for but if you do have more time in your schedule or if you have a longer dedicated prep usually I'd recommend finding just one resource that you really enjoy and committing to it ideally in the middle of the day where your energy tends to be lower. So that's a great time to transition into some of the best resources for step two CK and I intend to make a much more elaborative episode on this. So if you guys are interested make sure you add the comment section down below on YouTube. But let us first talk about practice questions I would just stick with you world wouldn't really focus too much on anything else except using the practice MBA me's on a weekly basis to get a practice questions set essentially done. You can also use the examples and the self assessments that you world gives you that's anywhere from five to six exams you have available to you. You by no means have to do all of them my usual schedule was to do one on a Saturday take the rest of Saturday off review the test on a Sunday morning and take the rest of Sunday off and then use Monday and Friday to pretty much be very question heavy. Now in terms of resources that are focused much more on content to help you build that understanding of step two related topics I'll recommend all of those in our future episodes and make sure you guys subscribe but the main one that I enjoyed recommending has to be online method and my personal experience using OME or online method was that I really enjoyed the videos from Dr. Williams particularly during my rotations so nicely fit into my step two CK prep and full disclosure because I wanted to spend more time doing questions actually didn't dive into the videos very much during my step two CK prep instead because I had already seen most of those videos during my rotations I use the nice online meta notes that come with each corresponding video and went through those as a nice review and refresher and if there was ever a point or a topic that I was still struggling on then I would dive into the video to get a better understanding and if you guys are interested in learning more about online meta I've done a full review particularly right after I took step two CK on how I used it so I'll link down below that blog post as well as that video and if you guys want to check it out I'll also be linked down below it is an affiliate link so if you guys are interested we do get a commission but by no means you have to feel pressured to use that link you can just type in online meta and Google and go to third link now the next resource that I just incidentally came across when I was studying for step two CK happened to be step two CK secrets now this is a very small book full of a list of questions that are a fair game for step two CK and the way I use step two CK secrets is I added it towards my last week week and a half again my first two weeks were spent finishing all my year old questions and then I transitioned to just doing all the questions that I had marked because I got it wrong or I guessed correctly I had a step two CK secrets as an additional question source because then I was really just using as a confidence booster it's just a list of questions with the corresponding answer immediately afterwards that doesn't really teach you anything it just gives you the answer there and I could say that if I knew the answer to everything in that book I'd feel pretty confident going into the test and by no means should be your first or your go-to resource but it's a nice confidence booster you can add to the very end so in case you're interested there are plenty of used options that just work perfectly fine I'll link down below some links to Amazon you guys can check out if you're interested now the next resource is something that we've already naturally fit into the rest of the episode that is your personalized list of missed questions and weak topics now we've already talked about how to fit this into your rotations by doing it on a weekly basis as well as how to do this with your UL questions by doing it at the start of your day but it's nice to have a list of questions again on Excel or Notion or flashcards and essentially being able to demarcate where you've been able to cover a topic so for example, I've had a big hundred list of questions that I just missed I could quickly put those topics down on the list and anything that had covered and felt that I had gotten confidently on I would put like a green highlight on them or Notion I may bold it or on my Excel sheet I may go ahead and change it to a different color any topic on my list that I tried to review but I was like, ah, you kind of still suck at this I may color coded as orange or red and saying, okay, this is a good indication that on a weekly basis maybe on a Saturday come back to your list and find the next orange topic and then go watch a video on it so again, my resource of choice was online meta so if I found that I was struggling with OBGYN topics because I always struggled with those for stuff to use CK and particularly I would go to those relevant videos and then if I felt that I had mastered it I would then change my color from orange to green but I found this to be a very nice way of one collecting my mistakes from U-World and putting it in one place but also visually being able to see as I'm going through my reviews the second time of saying, okay everything is now is green your test is tomorrow you got this and your confidence stays up and simply using that trick of going through this list of questions on a daily and a weekly basis and then color coding it based off my confidence level I really found that my score started improving because I was no longer missing those questions that were related in U-World the second time and I saw, okay, I went from 40% on my U-World percentages now 60, 70, 80's and ultimately getting that 257 on step 2 CK now I promised at the start of the episode I'd share a nice tool that'll help you improve and quickly speed up the scheduling process for step 2 CK let's go ahead and dive into cramfighter now if you guys are not familiar with cramfighter it's essentially a nice automated study schedule for essentially any test you want to do and I think the best way to show you how it works is to just go ahead and dive in so you can essentially create a new study plan and we're going to say we're going to study for a standardized exam I'm going to graduate next year that's my med school that I went to and I can say I'm going to study for step 2 CK in this example and I'll essentially ask you like how far is your test? So maybe you are three rotations away or maybe you're six months away we'll say we're three months away now I'm going to start studying tomorrow and I want to finish again I usually want to say a week before the exam so that way if anything goes wrong I still have a buffer time so we'll put that and then boom now once you decide on your schedule you can actually decide on the resources you intend to use so you can actually go in here and type in things like U-World and I may go ahead and click this and then I'll say because I'm three months away every day I'm going to actually try to just do 10 questions that's going to be my total number of daily questions I'm going to do and then add that in and then in addition I'm going to go ahead and add an online med ed as my other main resource and then that's what we'll stop because we'll cover the clinicals now through online med ed I can essentially click through every topic that I haven't covered and so if I've covered anything in the neurology system but I'm using blueprints and cramfighter now I can take those off the list but for this example we'll just say we haven't touched online med ed at all and so I'll just apply all of it so this is going to give me an average amount of time per day and I can also say oh actually like listening to most of my videos at 2x so then I actually adjust everything now once it quickly creates my schedule and I'll be able to see on each and every day what videos I need to go through and then how many U-World questions I have to do and if for any reason if I'm falling behind I can move any topic to the next day or essentially say I've already done it and check it off in cramfighter comes with a bunch of other resources for example I can choose the days that I want to click off so I'm going to go out of the country or out of the city for vacation I can add those days if I want to add a catch up day every few weeks I can put that into my routine and if I know that Sundays are going to be a busy day I can say make sure I do a light workload and then Mondays if I have more time open I can add more work there so lots of little flexibilities and things and again if you guys are interested in learning more about the features that cramfighter offers I've done a full blog post review on them and I'll link it down below but if you guys are interested in checking out cramfighter I'll add their link down below in the description as well now we've covered a lot of how to do well on step 2CK but if you guys are interested on how I use something called the sandwich technique using online meta to get that 257 then make sure you check out this episode which I'll link down below in the description but as always my friends hopefully I was a little helped you guys on your journey thanks for being a part of mine I'll see you guys in the next one, peace.