Customer Reviews

Rapid Review USMLE Step 2, 1e

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One of the problems I found when I started looking at Step 2 CK prep books is that there really aren't any that are comprehensive enough to be used as a stand-alone review. First Aid (FA) is considered to be a "Bible" by many people for Step 1, but the Step 2 CK FA book isn't nearly as good. I had liked the Goljan Rapid Review (RR) book for Step 1 a lot, so I got this one for Step 2. Here are the pros and cons:

PROS
Several of the RR chapters were really strong, including cards, heme/onc, neuro, peds, psych, renal (which he calls nephro) and ob/gyn. I felt like I understood cards concepts in particular that I had never quite gotten before. The neuro has a good review to help you localize lesions. He gave a trick for estimating respiratory acid/base compensation that I had never seen before, and I thought it was pretty good when I tried it. There are lots of charts and tables if you like that kind of thing, although they can be hard to read sometimes because the print is so small. I liked that each of the chapters has ten practice questions that you can do right after you read it to review. They're actually pretty good questions and help emphasize some of the points in the book. You can also go online and get access to another 350 questions, which I didn't do.

CONS
There is minimal derm, ophtho, musculoskeletal, stats, emergency, and preventive medicine, so you'll need another source for these. The one good thing about the EM chapter was the burn section. I don't know why he had so much detail about burns, but it was really helpful. There was not enough room for notes in the margins. I took a lot of notes from my question bank, and my writing was so small that I could have passed for a Parkinsons patient. For some reason, he separated out the onco and infectious diseases into their own chapters. I didn't like that the book was part organ system-based and part subject-based. It was kind of arbitrary what he put where, because some onco and ID topics were covered in the organ system chapter. After a while, I got to know where things were in the book, and this wasn't such a nuisance any more.

Compared to FA:
I actually didn't like FA very much, but the derm section was really good, and I'm glad I had it since RR didn't have much derm. I did really like the high yield facts section, which I read over the day before I took the test. It's in a question and answer format like Secrets. FA had a lot more room to take notes, which was good, because I got my copy from one of my friends who graduated last year, and it already had all of his notes in there. On the downside, if RR is too condensed, FA is too sprawling. There aren't enough tables, and it's hard to review the topics. It wasn't organized well for studying, at least not for me. It also has a separate ID chapter, which is annoying. The ophthalmology, preventive medicine and stats weren't very good in FA either, so it's not like it's just a RR thing. MS and EM were marginal. There's not enough detail in a lot of places. I had to use my Step 1 FA book to look things up for my Step 2 FA book sometimes. How retarded is that? Finally, I didn't think the resources review was all that helpful.

I HAD PASSED MY STEP 1 6 MONTH AGO WITH A CORE OF 96 AND NOW I AM PREPARING FOR 2 CK. I DECIDED TO BUY THIS BOOK FOR MY STUDY, BUT UNFORTUNATELY FOR ME THIS BOOK IS NOT SUFFICIENT, I DIDN'T FIND A LOT OF USEFUL INFORMATION AND SEEMED TO MY THAT I READ JUST ANOTHER BOOK FOR MY STEP 1 PREPARATION. I THINK THAT THERE WAS ONE BIG MISTAKE, MISTAKE IN THE AUTHOR. THIS BOOK MUST BE WRITTEN BY CLINICIA, NOT BY PATHOLOGIST. I COMPARED KAPLAN 2 CL LECTURE NOTES TO THIS BOOK, AND BELIEVE ME THEY ARE NOT COMPARABLE, CHOOSE KAPLAN. I BELIEVE IF YOU WILL USE ONLY THIS BOOK FOR PREPARATION- NO MATTER HOW MUCH TIME YOU WOULD STUDY- NO SUCCESS! DO NOT BUY IY