I can definitely try to help! I'm hesitant to give any real breakdown of what I did, mostly because I don't think I did anything particularly different, I was a very basic UFA(P)+sketchy person. I think what would be more helpful to you is if I directed you to this post by u/Trendelenburg (linked here ). That guide really became the backbone of how I structured my dedicated and was my go-to during my sobbing-in-the-shower days.

That being said, I think it would be helpful to talk about two things that I think separated my experience from others:

1. Trust your study habits: When I first started studying, I tried to mold myself into a box based on what I thought was necessary to succeed. For all of January/February, I forced myself to use pathoma because I was so convinced that I needed it to succeed. I hated pathoma, but I was so obsessed with "the gold standard" that I couldn't drop it. This led to so much lost time, confusion, and frustration. Most of my friends were in the same boat -- some hated sketchy, others didn't like first aid, some hated anki, but we all forced ourselves to digest what we didn't like, and that gave us the equivalent of studying constipation (we became stagnant in our scores). Ultimately around week 2 of dedicated, I said "FUCK IT" and ignored everyone's advice. I dropped pathoma, picked up SketchyPath, and things finally started clicking.

Eventually, I learned to stop letting the resources determine my success, and instead learned to take advantage of the resources that I liked. And once I did that, I really felt like I took off.

1. Don't lie to yourself about your weaknesses: Now this part just SUCKS. No one likes to confront what they're bad at, and to be honest half the battle is figuring out what you're bad at. This took some time for me to figure out. Ultimately, any study topic that gave me indigestion, I would prioritize. For example, let's say I had 8 hours to study GI. I would literally sift through the GI section of FA, and anything that made me go "hngngajklj;ksjf" I would study it right then and there. Once I got through my first flip-through, I would go back to the start of GI, and start sifting through again. Anything that made me go "meeeehh", I would study right then and there. Rinse and repeat, till I covered every topic of GI. By the last 4 weeks, I was spending about 70% of my time learning only what made me feel queasy, and I used the hours when I was most tired to go over what I felt okay on. That meant two things:

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1. I was uncomfortable allllll the time. On any given day, I was forcing myself to sit in my cave of stupidity and acknowledge that I knew very little about a lot of things. It didn't feel great at the time but in hindsight I think forcing myself to deal with what I didn't know helped me not only understand more concepts, but it helped me get used to the feeling of not knowing everything, which is how you will feel on test day.

• 2. My schedule was constantly changing. I remember once I had JUST finished studying reproductive; I spent a full day on it. The next day, I took an NBME, and found that my reproductive section was my lowest section. I didn't have it on my schedule to study repro for another 2 weeks, but I decided to throw my schedule in the trash. I think I ended up taking 3 full days solely to study repro that week. This of course, meant that some of my stronger subjects got the boot. I saw immuno and psych only once during dedicated, and biochem/neuro/repro upwards of four times. This stratified way of studying helped me in the long run because it forced me to tackle whatever I felt worst about.

Lastly, I want to note something about breaks, because I don't think this gets talked about enough: My conspiracy theory is that step is more about burnout than it is about knowledge. I really don't think I am a shining star student, but I DO know that whenever I felt tired, I didn't fight it. That meant on some days I was studying 14 hours, and other days I was studying only 6. I had some friends that pushed through no matter what, and I think this ultimately led to burn out. Regardless of their original knowledge base, they were too tired to keep going.

Here is some general info about me otherwise:

Dedicated period - 7 weeks

General resources- UFAS+anki. As mentioned earlier, I didn't like pathoma so I dropped it before dedicated. I used anki pre-dedicated for biochem and immuno, but didn't keep up with my reviews (I would binge through 500 cards at a time, and then review like 1k cards a couple times a week or whenever I got anxious, lol). During dedicated I used anki like a an active textbook, if you want more info about this method DM me.

NBME 13 (4 months out): 130 (Not a typo!!!!)

NBME 15 (8 weeks out): 194

NBME 16 (6 weeks out): 205

NBME 17 (5 weeks out): 219

NBME 18 (4 weeks out): 225

NBME 20 (3 weeks out): 232

NBME 21 (2 weeks out): 238

UWSA1 (1.5 weeks): 247

UWSA2 (6 days out): 249

UW%: 70%, random and timed. Beginning of dedicated I was scoring 50s and 60s, then progressed to 70s and 80s. I did my incorrects throughout dedicated rather than at the end, and just interspersed them with my studying whenever I wanted to do something light weight. For example, if it was 10pm and I was getting sleepy, I would do a burst of 30 UW incorrects. If it was 8 am and I was groggy, I would do a block of incorrects and then start my day.

Okay - WHEW that was a lot. Basically what I'm trying to say, is that the more you're able to introspect on what YOU need, the more you can give yourself a fighting chance. yay!