Wanted to give my 2 cents on Step 3. I took it last week. I'm a PGY-1 EM resident.
I started studying about 6 weeks out by just doing some practice questions from the Kaplan Step 2 and Step 3 Qbooks that I/my co-residents had lying around. I'd do these either before or after shifts. About 3 weeks before the exam, I activated my USMLE World subscription and received MTB by mail (hooray for my residency program paying for both!!)
I had my "easy" month in January (anesthesia) which was essentially 7am to 2-3pm M-F. The rest of the time, including weekends, was spent reading MTB and doing practice questions. I was off of work for the 4 days prior to my exam. True to my form on Steps 1 and 2, I would read a chapter in MTB, and then do the corresponding UW questions in untimed tutor mode, reading the entire explanation for each question. I started with the topics I'm less comfortable with (rheum, derm, GU, peds, OB) and left the topics I'm more comfortable with (cards, surg, GI, tox) for last. To be honest I ran out of time and didn't get through all of the chapters of MTB, and I only finished about 66% of the UW questions. I didn't really do any cardio or GI questions at all, and left those up to fate. On an intern's schedule, you can only do so much.
I averaged a 70% on UW, and those were weighted towards the subjects I'm weakest at, so I figured that was good enough. I wasn't going to torture myself over this stupid hoop like I did for Step 1 and 2.
MTB was a waste of time and not very helpful. If I could do it all over again I would've just used UW. I agree with the above user who mentioned that UW and MTB constantly contradict each other. It became pretty frustrating.
Regarding CCS: do the UW cases, and read the explanations. The cases on the real test didn't seem quite so invovled as the UW explanations make them out to be. 8/9 of my cases resolved early and CCS ended up taking only about 2/3 of the total time. I think everyone has a similar experience. Just act like you're in the ED/clinic and you'll be fine. Do what you do best and pretend it's just another day at work. Learning to manage the "clock" and the timing of orders is another beast altogether - the only way to similate that is by doing the UW cases. But after 6 or so, you should catch on. I definitely spent less time obsessing about CCS, and the vast majority of time focused on MCQs. I actually thought the CCS was kinda fun.
I haven't gotten my scores yet, so we'll see if my opinion is even worth anything. I rarely check SDN anymore, but I'll try to remember to post again when my scores return.
Best of luck to all of you!- LW
SCORE!!!!!
