Matt Staum
staum.matthew@medstudent.pitt.edu
Study Plan
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40 total study days (roughly 7 weeks, including the 4 weeks of ICS)
One day off (or two half days off) per week, I took the day before the test off too.
I tried to get a good 4-5 hours in per day with ICS, and 8a-6p afterwards (in the last 2 weeks it
was more like 8a-8p)
Discipline based, because I would have to keep fewer books on me at any given time, and we
learned things by organ system the first time around.
Most heavily focused on path, pharm, phys and micro
Pharmcards for an hour every morning once ICS was finished.
50-150 UW or qbank questions/day. Usually 25 around lunch, 50 before I quit for the day and
some others thrown in randomly whenever I needed a break from reading.
During ICS I made a first pass through all the subjects (taking notes and highlighting my books),
then the next 2 weeks were for a second pass (only condensing notes and highlighted material)
and the last week was for tons of questions and review of any areas in which I felt weak.
My general plan for a subject was to read the corresponding sections in First Aid, then read the
review book(s), and then read First Aid again.
I started with USMLE World, and once I had 3-400 questions left purchased 1 month of QBank to
go through, and saved the final UW questions for final review. I did all questions in tutor mode
and read the explanations for any that I was not 100% sure of. I ended up finishing all of UW and
6-700 Qbank Qs. When doing questions I would do the first 25 or so only on the subject I was
studying, and then do the rest out of a pool of all the subjects I had hit so far.
I took a second CBSSA with 10 days to go. I did not do as well as I’d hoped on it which motivated
me to work extra hard for the remaining days. Had I done well though, I am worried I may have
eased off and not done so well on the real thing, so I’m not sure how useful it actually is.
Tips
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Sticking to your plan for free time is CRITICAL. Don’t shortchange yourself on R+R or exercise,
or you will burn out. I ran 5x/week, went out for beers a couple times a week and even saw a
few concerts during my studying.
Don’t be afraid to leave Pittsburgh for the last few weeks. Escaping the distraction and secondhand stress of classmates is wonderful as long as you’re somewhere you can stay productive.
Don’t push back your test date. Set a schedule, stick to it, and work hard the whole time. By the
end of 7 weeks anything I learned was pushing something else out, so adding another week
would not have helped. The last thing you want to do is have to burn a vacation month to take
your boards in May.
You know what works for you. Don’t reinvent the wheel, just beef up what already works.
For iPhone users, the application Mental Case lets you make flashcards on
flashcardexchange.com and then run them on your phone. This was HUGE for my last week or
so trying to remember all the inborn errors of metabolism, HLA associations, etc. Much more
convenient than carrying around piles of paper cards. This can’t replace pharmcards though.
Matt Staum
staum.matthew@medstudent.pitt.edu
Book list
High Yield Neuroanatomy, Embryology (get the 50 page first edition, it’s enough), Histopathology, Gross
Anatomy
Rapid Review Pathology
BRS Physiology, Pathology, Behavioral
First Aid
Microbiology Made Ridiculously Simple
Pharmcards (Lippincott)
Microcards (can’t find cards and don’t remember publisher)
Goljan Audio Lectures (I listened to these while running)
USMLE World and Kaplan Q Bank