Books for Prep | |
 - good exam simulatora good book that helped me prepare for my test. i liked its format being divided into exam blocks like the real test. i don't think it's the best book available, yet, it's a good pick and investment as exam simulator. Rating:  - excellentI heard both positives and negatives about this book but I love to have it. It has been pretty much helpful. Rating: - More QuestionsWell, I must say that the best way to place high on Step II is to really build your foundational knowledge of the application of medicine during your 3rd year. That said, I feel that the importance of doing practice questions for several months before the actual exam cannot be overstated. But there is really an art to "doing practice questions." One part of that art is to have a huge bank of questions available. Basically, each question in the entire bank adds one (or sometimes a few) little fact(s) to your fund of knowledge. If you have a limited bank of questions, and that is your primary "test prep" source, then you run the risk of not being adequately prepared for the actual exam. Unfortunately, as we all know, USMLE can be rather nitpicky. So simply knowing a broader base of detailed facts can play in greatly to your advantage on the real exam. I found "USMLE Step 2 Mock Exam" to present a very good variety of facts that were not as well covered in other sources (Kaplan, NMS, other minor sources). Thus, it added to my overall knowledge base in a complimentary way, which is exactly what I hoped for when I purchased the book. I recommend this book as an additional resource while preparing for Step II. If you have the time, it can help to go through this book and your other resources more than one time each. I found that the questions I had seen more than once bought facts to my recall much faster during the exam. Many facts I learned in this book were directly applicable to helping me understand questions on the actual exam. Rating: - A question vignette format of his Secrets BookIf you read Brochert's Step 2 Secrets book, then you will have no problems navigating through the Mock Exam. The book is good in that it reinforces some key ideas from his Secrets book, and it's another source of questions for your Step 2 prep. As far as teaching you something different from his Secrets or Crush books, you won't get that in this book. The book is most helpful not with its clinical vignette questions, but with its "most common" questions, which showed up a lot on my exam. In short, there are better question books and banks out there, so think twice before buying this book IF you haven't already read Secrets or Crush Step 2. Rating: - Very helpful question bookGreat book! Lots of questions very similar to those on the exam. I found myself thinking back to a lot of these questions as I was taking the exam. The explanations for the questions are concise yet helpful. I didn't have a chance to complete all the exams in the book but it was still very helpful. In association with Amazon.com | |