One Week Down, 3.5 More to Go
Ahhh, that feels so good. I just finished my requisite hours of USMLE Step 2 CK studying for the week. I am now entitled to a weekend break with no studying. I can catch up on some errands and deal with my growing inbox. As I mentioned before, I will be taking the USMLE Step 2 CK on July 1st. My basic study plan involves studying M-F, and taking the weekends off. I posted my general schedule here.
In addition to reading and doing USMLE World questions, I have decided to take one NBME practice exam (there are 4 available) each Friday until before my exam. The NBME practice exams are super cool. The questions are a good reflection of material on the real exam. Also, I found out from the USMLE Step 1 that your scores on the practice exams are an excellent proxy of your score on the real thing.
I just finished my first NBME practice exam and got my score report. I passed, and I did fairly well. This rocks! Basically, if I continue to improve by even a few points on each of the next three exams, I will do very well on the real thing. I am very happy right now!
Now, it’s time to think about anything but congestive heart failure, stages of labor, and diagnoses of medical conditions. I feel like I am making good progress and I have earned a break. Cheers!
Note: Photo is Scope doing his “Scary Spice” face.
My name is Kendra and I am a fourth-year medical student attending 
Hey, will you post a list of what specialties you have completed?
I didn’t realize you were already going into 4th year, but I feel like you have only done: surgery, psych, family med, IM, GI and radiology?
Is this right?
Janelle,
You have it correct. Those are the rotations I have completed. Technically, I still need to do peds and ob/gyn (cores). Normally you would do those in your 3rd year, but because I wanted to stay at one hospital, it sort of messed up my schedule a bit. I say I am in my 4th year because I only have 8 months of rotations to complete, and I will be graduating and matching in the spring of 2010. So, for all practical purposes, I am a 4th year.
That seems weird, you only have 9 months of rotations in 12 months?
I don’t get the curriculum of island schools at all! We have 12 months of rotations in 1 year, and we don’t get vacations. Lucky you!
Actually, it’s not as good as it seems! We actually end up having the same amount of required clinical weeks of rotations. Here is the requirement:
“Ninety (90) weeks of clinical rotations are required for graduation. This includes Advanced Introduction to Clinical Medicine, which is twelve (12) weeks in length. Forty-eight (48) weeks of core rotations and thirty (30) weeks of electives are required. Within the thirty (30) weeks of electives, eight (8) weeks must be Medicine sub-specialties and four (4) weeks must be Surgery sub-specialties.”
However, we have a trimester curriculum for the basic sciences. This means that we don’t get a “summer vacation.”
I began med school in August of 2006. I began my clinical rotations in January of 2008, and I will finish around February of 2010. It’s the same number of weeks. I just started earlier!
I know, it can be confusing.