askdoc-usmle

I would like to announce that Askdoc’s Method of USMLE Review for Step 1 is now available at my prep forum at http://forums.askdoc-usmle.com. As I promised to some of you before, it contains more or less the same instructions available to the participants in my prep course. It includes suggested alternate reviewers and q Books you could use for your review. If you have any questions about the review methods, feel free to post your questions there.

The prep course participants are currently revising pathology so only the pathology review methods are outlined. Once they’ve reached the other subjects, probably around 1st week of October, instruction for the other subjects will be posted there too.

The prep forum is currently limited to Step 1 and Step 2 CS only as it will take time before I can write up enough materials to fill them. However, one feature it has which members may like is a Groups section where members can form themselves into groups and have a place where they can do their group discussion and learning in privacy. Only group members can enter and post in their forum. They could also limit visibility of the forum to their own group. Groups wanting to have their own forum section should sign up at Askdoc’s USMLE prep forum and submit the names of all group members and the name of their group (which will the name of their forum under the Groups forum) via personal message to me. Please include if you want to keep it invisible to the public. Your group is good for 30 days. You can extend it twice at 30 days each time for a total of 90 days by sending me a personal message before the 30 days expire.

Small private groups are handy for discussing Step 1 concepts and even Step 2 CS cases.

Back in 2004 when I was just starting my preparation for the USMLE, my greatest fear was in failing this examination. My status as an old graduate made failing a stark reality for me. Every person I asked told me that as an old graduate I have no chance. The most encouraging response I got was, “maybe you’ll pass, but it’s impossible to match with really low scores.” When I went to forums, I hear horror stories of people failing which frightened me even more. Then once in a while, when I read of people celebrating and crowing about their 99’s, I secretly wished that that was me. Even my own family thought it was impossible for me to make it. It got so bad, it took me over a year to get around to seriously preparing for it.

Now 4 years later, with a double 99 in my belt, I feel bad whenever, I read about people failing the examination. If I can make it, they should be able to make it, too. 2 years ago I wrote an advise to someone who had failed already thrice and was plaintively asking people “What to do”. I’m happy she eventually passed her exam with an 82. Since that time, I am happy to note that a lot of people have passed and raised their scores and even got 99’s using that advise. A couple of them had the opportunity to catch me between Steps and was couched by me through emails to raise their scores with varying results. However, since that time, hundreds of people still failed. Some had read my advise but were doing exactly opposite of what I had written. Others, I found out did not understand how to implement what I had written.

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Today I’ll not talk about the USMLE but something else. Although I set up my blog on March 23, 2008, My first real post on the USMLE was posted exactly 4 months ago on March 28, 2008. So in a sense we are celebrating my fourth month as blogger and I’ll start by posting the different milestones my blog have reached.

After 4 months (as of July 27, 2008)

Total posts: 30
Number of pageviews: 7,046 - 4,439 in July alone
Number of Visitors: 2,290 - 1,528 in July alone
Number of Countries: 87 from 812 cities
Top 5 countries: United States: 1, 548; Canada: 122; India:117; Philippines:86; Pakistan: 48
Number of downloads of my ebook “How to Create a Study Plan for the USMLE”: 524
Alexa top rank for all websites: 3 month average rank: 2,852.091 (8,600,000 6 weeks ago)
1 week average rank: 751,712

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I would like to announce that I’ve compiled my series of posts on “How to Create a Study Plan for the USMLE” into an eBook in PDF format. I’ve also included the last 4 posts and completed the series. It is downloadable from this site. This ebook is released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 unported license.

You may distribute this ebook under the following conditions:

1. That the work will be preserved as is and you will not edit, alter or build on this work.
2. That you will properly attribute this work to its authors, askdoc.
3. That you will not use this work for commercial purpose.

Download the file by clicking this link: How to Create a Study Plan for the USMLE

If you have a blog or a website, feel free to use my links so you do not use your own bandwidth. The link is http://downloads.we-r-ebooks.com/study-plan.zip

If you want to email this ebook to a friend, you can either email the ebook itself or the link.

Thank you for your patience. I will continue to write about the USMLE and hopefully help more people achieve their dreams of becoming US physicians.

Hi everyone. Although it is with a heavy heart, I have decided to temporarily stop writing in my blog or anywhere for that matter at least for the next few weeks or maybe even permanently. A few days ago, I found out that someone from Egypt has been copy-pasting all the contents of my blog to his blog. He edits it to remove all reference to me as well as any links that will identify me as the author. In other words, he has passed off my works as his.

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I have decided to stop writing on this topic in my blog. It seems there is a blog called usmle.egmedicine.com who is not only copying my work, but is editing it to eliminate all references I have to any of my other posts. Not only does he not have the courtesy to ask for permission to republish the contents of my blog, neither does he give any author attribution, he even edited it to erase all references to me or my blog. I believe that is not only rude and discourteous it is pure piracy. The owner of egmedicine is registered as

Dr Mohamed Fouad Fakhreldeen
almahalla
almahalla alkobra, algharbia 31911
Egypt

This has made me lose faith in the honesty and fairness of people who I am trying to help. Doctors who would do this are not doctors worthy of the profession. I’ve seen other people copy my work, either they ask permission from me first or state that it was written by askdoc. This guy, I don’t know how to describe him.

We previously tackled one common myth about the USMLE. (See “Is the version of the USMLE for IMGs harder than for AMGs?” ) Now we will tackle another one. In order to answer this question we need to understand how the USMLE come up with questions to include in the USMLE.

The USMLE states that in order to pass the exam, one should answer correctly between 55% to 65% Continue reading »

I am actually asking myself that question… With all the Blogs by recent USMLE takers sprouting all over the place, do we really need one more?

However, the main reason I am starting this blog is to help people. With all the information I have in my head on how to prepare and ace this exam, should I just Continue reading »

Welcome to my USMLE blog. I hope you will enjoy reading them as much as I enjoy writing them. If the words in this blog benefit even one person, I will consider it a task well worth doing. Please come and visit as often as you like.