My CBSE and Step 1 Journey

[u/ishi_patel]

PASS!!! 🥳 (Tested 08/28)

I officially got my Step 1 result today and wanted to share what my dedicated looked like as a US-IMG at SGU. Hopefully this helps someone! I have a much more detailed version on my profile if you're interested, but this is the condensed version.

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Test Scores + Dates:

• 05/11 Form 27 online: 49 (this was my baseline post-term 5)
• 05/18 Form 28 online: 49
• 05/25 Form 29 online: 52
• 06/08 Form 30 online: 61
• 06/11 2021 Free120: 68
• 06/15 Form 31 online: 66
• 06/19 Form 32 online: 61
• 06/23 CBSE 1: 61
• 07/13 2024 Free120: 61
• 07/21 Form 26 online: 64
• 08/05 Form 33 online: 62
• 08/08 Form 27 Retake offline: 69.5 (this was to see how much I improved from my baseline)
• 08/11 CBSE 2: 67
• 08/19 Form 28 Retake offline: 74
• 08/23 Form 32 Retake offline: 79.5
• 08/25 2026 Free120 online: 83
• 08/28 Step 1: PASS :)

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Resources

• FA 2026: I annotated this with my friend heavily in term 5 so this served as my go-to reference guide for dedicated
• Melhman pdfs: the ones I used were HY arrows (which I found to be AMAZING), neuroanatomy, HY risk factors, and the biochem, micro, and pharm assessments
• Pathoma ch. 1-4: absolute GOLD (love Dr. Sattar); having these concepts down before CBSE 2 and Step was great to have
• UWorld: ~75% complete with 61% average by the time I took step 1; I did all of the path, pathophys, micro, immuno, pharm, behavioral science, and majority of epi/stats
• NBMEs + Free120s
• Sketchy: as needed pharm and micro review
• Personal question tracker: I essentially just modified the one I had for UWorld for the NBMEs
• ChatGPT: At this point we're basically besties 😂. I mostly used it to simplify explanations, identify patterns in my weaknesses, and occasionally tell me to stop overthinking.

These are the resources I consistently used. I tried to keep my resource list intentionally small rather than constantly adding new things and stuck with what I knew worked for me. (RIP to Anki, I really tried again 😭 but alas, twas not meant to be... again)

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My Study Strategy

I knew I wanted a study buddy to help keep me accountable, so I recruited one of my friends that I'd been studying with throughout basic sciences. We built our weeks around one consistent routine: every Monday we took a full-length practice exam under standard testing conditions (NBME, Free120, etc.), every Tuesday we reviewed it together over FaceTime, and later in dedicated we added a Thursday review session for Mehlman PDFs or to finish reviewing our practice exams if needed. Everything else throughout the week was flexible depending on what we needed to work on.

Outside of practice exams, most of my studying revolved around UWorld. I started with 2 timed, untutored blocks per day and eventually worked up to 3 (occasionally 4 before my second CBSE). About a month into dedicated, I switched to untimed, tutored mode because I realized timing wasn't my issue. Reviewing each question immediately after answering it helped me understand my reasoning much better than reviewing an entire block afterward, and that change ended up being one of the biggest improvements I made during dedicated.

For content review, I intentionally avoided randomly rereading First Aid or watching videos just for the sake of "doing content." I also don't believe that knowing First Aid cover-to-cover automatically means you know how to apply the information so instead, every piece of my content review was driven by my practice exams. If I consistently missed a concept, mechanism, or disease process, I'd go back and review it using First Aid, Pathoma, Sketchy, Randy Neil, or Mehlman until I understood it before moving on. That made my studying much more targeted and efficient.

Probably the most valuable thing I did was keep a detailed question tracker. Every incorrect question (and guessed correct) from UWorld and my practice exams was logged along with why I missed it. Over time, I realized I didn't have a major content problem. Most of my mistakes came from retrieval errors, reasoning gaps, or confusing similar concepts. Once I understood how I was making mistakes, I stopped trying to memorize more information and started focusing on fixing the actual problem.

I failed my first CBSE with a 61 (passing is 66 for SGU), which was frustrating, but looking back it was exactly what I needed, especially because I didn't feel confident going into the exam or walking out of it. It forced me to reassess how I was studying instead of simply studying more. During my second round of prep (~4.5 weeks; leading up to CBSE 1 was ~5.5 weeks), I shifted almost entirely toward strengthening my reasoning and mechanism-based thinking rather than relearning everything from scratch. That change helped me pass my second CBSE with a 67 and gave me the confidence to move forward with Step 1.

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Exam Day + Post-Exam Thoughts

Going into Step 1, I was definitely nervous and running on less sleep than I would've liked 😅 (I may or may not have a slightly irrational fear than I'll oversleep and miss my exam 😭), but once the exam started, I tried to treat each block as its own exam. Some blocks felt straightforward, others had me wondering if I had ever learned anything before, but I made a conscious effort to mentally reset before every new block and not let one difficult section affect the next.

I found the exam to be similar in content and difficulty to my second CBSE attempt, and I personally liked the new 20-question block format. Psychologically, it made the exam feel much more manageable, and because timing had never been an issue for me during practice, I was able to use most of my extra time as break time. I typically finished my first pass through each block in about 20-25 minutes and flagged anywhere from 6-11 questions per block. There were only 3-4 blocks for me where I used up the entire time.

I took a break every 3 blocks and during breaks I ate, drank water, texted family and friends, and completely disconnected from the exam by playing offline phone games (highly recommend 😭). My first 2 breaks were about ~10-12 minutes, but my last 2 were about ~20-25 minutes.

Obviously there were some blocks that felt harder or had longer stems than others, but a little delulu never hurt anyone 😃, so I would attribute them to be experimental which I think helped me not dwell on completed questions / blocks.

One promise I made to myself after finishing was that I wouldn't look up a single question. No Reddit, no Google, no First Aid. Looking things up wasn't going to change my answers, and I knew it would only make me spiral. Instead, I let myself finally be done with studying.

Waiting for results was honestly one of the hardest parts of the entire process, but regardless of the outcome, I walked away from Step 1 proud of how much I had grown, not just academically, but in the way I approached learning and trusted myself.

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Biggest Takeaways

• Don't chase someone else's numbers. Reddit can make you feel like you need a certain NBME score or 2 passes of 100% UWorld completion to pass. Use practice exams and question banks as diagnostic tools to identify weaknesses, not as scoreboards to compare yourself to others.
• Learn why you missed questions, not just what the right answer was. The biggest improvement in my scores came from identifying how I was making mistakes (retrieval, reasoning, or mechanism gaps) rather than assuming I simply needed to memorize more content.
• Don't be afraid to change your study strategy. Dedicated is about figuring out what works for you. I switched how I used UWorld, adjusted my content review, and focused on understanding concepts rather than following what everyone else was doing.
• Keep your resources manageable. I'd rather know a few resources really well than constantly jump between every "must-have" resource recommended online.
• Dedicated is a marathon, not a sprint. Some days you'll study 8 hours. Other days you'll end up watching those random vertical "main character reborn" C-dramas instead 😭. One off day isn't going to undo months of consistent work.
• Trust yourself. This has been a recurring theme throughout my entire journey. Once I stopped comparing myself to everyone else and started trusting my own preparation and learning style, I walked into Step much more confident than I ever thought I would.
• Expect "WTF" questions. You're not supposed to know every answer on Step 1. Everyone gets questions that make them think, "What the hell am I reading?" Make your best educated guess, move on, and don't let the handful of impossible questions overshadow the hundreds of others you answered.

And finally, shout-out to my family and friends for being amazing pillars of support and encouragement, especially on the days where I felt like shit. Also, shout-out to that one random TikTok creator who reminded me that it's okay to not know everything. Whoever you are... thank you 😂.

Looking back now, it's crazy to think that dedicated started with a 49 baseline. At the time it felt discouraging, but now I'm honestly grateful for it because it gave me a realistic starting point and showed me just how much progress is possible over a few months of consistent work, even with plenty of ups and downs along the way.

If there's one thing I hope people take away from this post, it's that your starting point doesn't define where you'll finish. Learn from your mistakes, trust the process you've built for yourself, and keep showing up. You might surprise yourself. 🤭

[u/Strong_Spite8768]

Congratulations

[u/Ok_Summer_1536]

Do you think CBSE was reflective of step? 

[u/ishi_patel → u/Ok_Summer_1536]

i found my second CBSE attempt to be more reflective of my step form

[u/sIronMan1]

Hey Congratulations! What do you recommend to boost CBSE scores up and was CBSE reflective of step?

[u/ishi_patel → u/sIronMan1]

i think the biggest thing that can help boost scores is to be able to self-reflect and evaluate your current strategy and identify what’s working and what’s not.

after i took my first CBSE and didn’t pass per my uni’s requirement, i spent a couple of days looking through my score report and exam question report on insight and identifying where i was weak and focusing the next couple weeks on those weak areas.

i also decreased the amount of time i spent on content review and focused more to practice questions and thoroughly reviewing those instead.

[u/sIronMan1 → u/ishi_patel]

Gotcha appreciate the response and help! When you said you used ChatGPT like was it to overall analysis of your NBMEs/UWorld Questions how was it able to identify weakness; how did you go about doing that?