USMLE - How do you review question explanations in UWorld? (2024)

It depends. I'll review a question even if I got it right if I marked it, if a cursory glance at the explanation contains things I didn't consider, or if a very low number of people got the question right

Obviously if I got it wrong I will always review

However if I got a question correct, did NOT mark it, remember feeling confident about it, and a high percentage of takers (75%) got it right, I will simply skip reading about it

Entadus said:

It depends. I'll review a question even if I got it right if I marked it, if a cursory glance at the explanation contains things I didn't consider, or if a very low number of people got the question right

Obviously if I got it wrong I will always review

However if I got a question correct, did NOT mark it, remember feeling confident about it, and a high percentage of takers (75%) got it right, I will simply skip reading about it

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A+ color coding game.

Seriously though, I always feel that the explanations have more to read about even if my reasoning was completely correct. It's kind of annoying sometimes.

Paeon said:

I'm taking way too long to do this. Did you read everything for right and wrong questions? Or just focused in the wrong ones? Thanks!

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I think there are different schools of thought on this and it ultimately comes down to your personal learning style. I focused my studying around uworld and therefore put a lot of time into reading and understanding every question explanation. I'm now almost done and don't regret the fact that it took me 4+ hours per block because it really helped me integrate all the material in a way that I don't think first aid or pathoma can.

ninjaman22 said:

I had lots of time in my hand since I started doing UWorld slowly back in January. After over 5 months, I recently finished my first pass. What I did was basically annotate everything into FA that wasn't in FA (some little detail or sometimes the big signaling pathways). So I read through every single explanation no matter how easy or hard the question was and annotated stuff that were missing in FA. I did a pass of FA and that was amazing how much more extra stuff I learned from those UWorld annotations. Now I am doing my second pass of UWorld and FA hoping to solidify those knowledge. But since I am doing my second pass of UWorld, I am doing 3 blocks/day and then taking about 20-30 mins to review each block. Basically, I am reading the educational objectives and looking at the pictures and charts. If I miss a question, then I will look at it in a little more detail.

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Ha! This is perfect, I started my second pass of UWorld too and I'm going to start doing what you and @Entadus are doing! Thanks.

Entadus said:

It depends. I'll review a question even if I got it right if I marked it, if a cursory glance at the explanation contains things I didn't consider, or if a very low number of people got the question right

Obviously if I got it wrong I will always review

However if I got a question correct, did NOT mark it, remember feeling confident about it, and a high percentage of takers (75%) got it right, I will simply skip reading about it

Click to expand...

I like this approach! Thanks.

ninjaman22 said:

I had lots of time in my hand since I started doing UWorld slowly back in January. After over 5 months, I recently finished my first pass. What I did was basically annotate everything into FA that wasn't in FA (some little detail or sometimes the big signaling pathways). So I read through every single explanation no matter how easy or hard the question was and annotated stuff that were missing in FA. I did a pass of FA and that was amazing how much more extra stuff I learned from those UWorld annotations. Now I am doing my second pass of UWorld and FA hoping to solidify those knowledge. But since I am doing my second pass of UWorld, I am doing 3 blocks/day and then taking about 20-30 mins to review each block. Basically, I am reading the educational objectives and looking at the pictures and charts. If I miss a question, then I will look at it in a little more detail.

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I like your approach. Thanks for sharing. This is exactly what I'm planning to do.
So it takes ~4 months to do a complete thorough pass of UWorld? How many hours did you study for this per day? And how many UWorld questions were you able to do in a day during your first pass?

Reperfused said:

I like your approach. Thanks for sharing. This is exactly what I'm planning to do.
So it takes ~4 months to do a complete thorough pass of UWorld? How many hours did you study for this per day? And how many UWorld questions were you able to do in a day during your first pass?

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Well it depends. I had school until mid April so I couldn't really do a full block of UWorld per day. First, I wanted to focus on school and do really well on classes since we were still covering some high-yield block i.e. GI, endocrine, and repro. I would basically do 20-30 questions every morning before class and then review them in the afternoon. It took me almost 2 hours to review and annotate those questions. However, I picked up the pace after school ended and was able to finish the last 900 questions in a month also with a thorough review. In the end, it took me about 3 hours to review 44 questions.

Dr Dazzle said:

Noticed uworld allows 40 qs per block? Has the exam changed?

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Yes, they kept the same number of blocks but reduced the number of questions per block to no more than 40. Most people who took the new version of the test had 280qs total. However, some report that the last block had less than 40qs.

How come you don't know, are you a third/fourth year?

ninjaman22 said:

Well it depends. I had school until mid April so I couldn't really do a full block of UWorld per day. First, I wanted to focus on school and do really well on classes since we were still covering some high-yield block i.e. GI, endocrine, and repro. I would basically do 20-30 questions every morning before class and then review them in the afternoon. It took me almost 2 hours to review and annotate those questions. However, I picked up the pace after school ended and was able to finish the last 900 questions in a month also with a thorough review. In the end, it took me about 3 hours to review 44 questions.

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Definitely took me a long time to go over questions! On the second pass it can get boring too. Try to right down a quick note of why the right answer is correct (ie aplastic anemia in pt with seizures --> carbamazepine --> mech = decrease sodium influx at cortical neurons) and match it to the explanation when you go over the exam. That way you know you are getting things correct because you actually know the concept and didn't just memorize the question. You'll also end up with a nice list of important high yield facts you can review later quickly.