{"id":732,"date":"2011-06-08T20:58:00","date_gmt":"2011-06-09T01:58:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mindonmed.com\/2011\/06\/what-is-usmle-step-1-anyway.html"},"modified":"2011-07-23T18:39:50","modified_gmt":"2011-07-23T23:39:50","slug":"what-is-usmle-step-1-anyway","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/old.mindonmed.com\/2011\/06\/what-is-usmle-step-1-anyway.html","title":{"rendered":"What Is USMLE Step 1, Anyway?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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I’ve been tweeting things like USMLE, Step 1, ginormous exam, boards and ohmygoshimfreakingout<\/i> a lot lately and today it occurred to me that a good number of my followers are not in medicine and may have absolutely no clue what I’m talking about. I wrote a little about USMLE in my Medical Education in the US<\/a> post, but I thought I’d share a bit more detail about the reason behind why I won’t be tweeting next Friday, as I’m sure my absence will be painfully obvious <\/i>(addicted, me? oh, stop it).<\/span><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n
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Original Photo Courtesy of Flickr Creative Commons User: WaltStoneburner<\/a><\/span><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

United States Medical Licensing Exam – Step 1 <\/b><\/span>
There are 3 Steps taken over the course of one’s medical education, the first, which is what I am about to take, is after your second year* of medical school. This exam is basically a final over what you learn your first two years.<\/span>
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Cost:<\/b><\/span>
$525 for the exam itself, additional if you take a review course. Most choose to take some sort of review course, but not everyone. A good chunk of my classmates chose Doctors In Training, which is basically as inexpensive as they come at $770 (or approximately the amount of money I have spent on caffeine and ibuprofen in the past 6 weeks).<\/span>
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Length:<\/b><\/span>
322 Questions divided into 7 blocks of 46 questions<\/span>
60 minutes alloted per block, 15 minutes for tutorial, 45 minutes for break time<\/span>
Total – 8 hours<\/span>
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Subjects:<\/b><\/span><\/p>\n