The options for resources when studying for boards can get a little overwhelming, so I thought I would give some reviews on the resources I used. To preface: I learn best with auditory repetition, so I used a lot of video resources.
Sketchy micro/pharm: the only resource significantly correlated to better boards scores. I'm a statistics nerd, what can I say? It took me a few run throughs of each video to really get them down, which was easier to do with 5-10 min Sketchy micro videos than 15-30 min Sketchy pharm videos, but these pictures were definitely in my mind during boards.
Pixorize: similar to Sketchy but for biochemistry. Unfortunately my subscription ran out right before my dedicated study time began, or I would've gone through all the videos a second time. They only have 6 month subscriptions so make sure yours doesn't run out too soon like mine did. Even without a second review, I had the vitamins down pat for test day.
Pathoma: probably the single most high yield boards resource out there. He goes through enough physiology to get you to really understand the concept in the most efficient way possible. I used most resources to just go along with whatever system my school was teaching at the moment, which meant that I left the pathoma basic pathology section until dedicated study time thinking I had a good basic knowledge. After going through this one section, my UWORLD percentage jumped probably about 15-20%. Don't put that section off, it's SO IMPORTANT!!
UWORLD: the undisputed champion of question banks. It will rip your heart and soul out and crush it until you know absolutely everything there is to know about everything. My advice here is to not start UWORLD too early because that will only lead to tears and very very low percentiles. I'd say make sure that you are very comfortable with most of the material from second year before starting UWORLD. I started in January doing only questions we had already covered the topics for and added in the new topics as we went. Comes with two very difficult four hour practice exams to when you need to freak yourself out and study HARD on the home stretch.
Boards and beyond: I liked their videos for repetition. A bit longer than Pathoma videos, but they also cover some topics (like psych and pharm) that Pathoma doesn't.
Kaplan: this was given to us by the school. I used the question bank, which was a decent intro into the world of doing both USMLE and COMLEX questions at the beginning of second year. I liked that they had two 8 hour practice tests to practice your test taking stamina. I watched only their OMM video lectures but I wasn't thrilled with them. They also gave us physical books to study, but honestly they didn't contain enough material and I ended up writing in a lot of missing stuff the one time I tried to study with them.
Truelearn: another school given question bank. Probably a little more difficult than Kaplan but not by much. They had USMLE questions, and COMLEX questions with both the old blueprint and the new blueprint, so that was useful.
Anki: probably my biggest regret was downloading anki at the beginning of second year, being put off by its terrible graphic design (it looks like it should be running on windows 97... oof), and then never using it. I learned way too late in the game that you can google "Anki Sketchy deck" and find flashcards to reinforce every aspect of each Sketchy video. It probably would've saved me a couple rewatches of the videos, but it's a huge deck and you need to start it real early second year.
First Aid: I'm not a huge textbook learner, so First Aid wasn't as much of a bible as I thought it would be. I used it as somewhat of a basis and made sure to read the section before doing the other resources on that topic so I wouldn't have information I had absolutely never seen before coming at me in a video. Some people use it as their notebook for everything they learn second year, which is cool, but I liked my iPad version and getting the 2019 copy when it came out. I also liked the rapid review for buzzwords right before the test.
USMLE-RX: if First Aid is your bible, this is for you. It's made by the same people, has super short (1-5min) videos on each topic on the book as well as flash cards, a question bank, and a few other resources that I didn't utilize. I liked that you can select the difficulty of the question bank, so if it's your first day learning GI, you can do easy questions and get the basics down before doing the harder ones. They had an option to do practice tests, but they had to pull unused questions from your bank from that, so it wouldn't be representative of the distribution of the exam unless you did that before doing any questions in the bank.
Rapid review pathology: an actually decent pathology review book given to us by the school. A lot of nice colorful pathology pictures.
