How to Prepare for USMLE Step 1 Using PLAN10

USMLE Step 1 covers years of basic science, and much of the difficulty is organizational: knowing what is left, what needs another pass, and what today should hold. This guide shows one practical way to organize that work in PLAN10, starting from what the exam actually tests.

It is written for medical students who already use, or are choosing, study resources and want a clear structure around them. It does not tell you how many hours to study or which score to aim for. Where PLAN10 has limits, they are stated.

Start with what Step 1 actually tests

Before building a plan, read the official description of the exam. The facts below come from the USMLE program’s own pages; everything else in this guide is a study-organization suggestion, not an official requirement.

Source: usmle.org — Step 1 overview, “Step 1 Content Outline and Specifications” and “Examination Results and Scoring”, checked 21 October 2026. Always confirm details with the USMLE program before you book or study.
What it assesses	Whether you understand and can apply important concepts of the sciences basic to the practice of medicine, with an emphasis on the principles and mechanisms of health, disease and modes of therapy.
Format, from 14 May 2026	One day, one 8-hour testing session, divided into fourteen 30-minute blocks of no more than 20 questions each.
Format, before 14 May 2026	One 8-hour testing session of seven 60-minute blocks of no more than 40 questions; no more than 280 items in total.
Results	Reported as pass/fail for exams taken on or after 26 January 2022. Results are typically available within four weeks, but the program advises allowing at least eight weeks when you plan around them.
How content is organized	An integrated outline with two dimensions, system (for example cardiovascular or renal) and process, with published percentage ranges for systems, disciplines and physician tasks.

That last row is the useful one for planning. The specifications list each system with a range: for example, cardiovascular at 7–11% of the exam, respiratory and renal/urinary together at 11–15%, and reproductive and endocrine together at 12–16%. Disciplines such as pathology (45–55%) and physiology (30–40%) cut across those systems. Because the ranges can change, read the current table on usmle.org rather than copying numbers from any guide, including this one.

Official, not advice. Eligibility, registration, scheduling windows and rules come from the USMLE program, NBME, ECFMG and your school. PLAN10 is not affiliated with any of them.

Your resources, and where PLAN10 fits

Most students build Step 1 preparation around a handful of resource types. Common examples include:

A question bank, such as UWorld or AMBOSS, for timed practice blocks and explanations.
A review book, such as First Aid for the USMLE Step 1, as an outline to annotate.
Video series, such as Boards and Beyond, Pathoma for pathology, or Sketchy for microbiology and pharmacology.
Flashcards, for example in Anki, for spaced repetition of facts.
Practice assessments: NBME’s self-assessments and the free sample questions on usmle.org.

Which of these you use, and how many, depends on your school, your budget and how you learn; this guide does not rank or recommend them. PLAN10 does not replace any of them and does not contain their content. It is where you decide when each topic, practice block and review happens, and keep track of what is done.

Independence. UWorld, AMBOSS, First Aid, Boards and Beyond, Pathoma, Sketchy, Anki and NBME are trademarks of their respective owners. They are named only to identify the resources. PLAN10 is not affiliated with, sponsored by or endorsed by any of them.

Find what other students have already organized

Building a Step 1 structure from nothing takes hours, and many students in your year are doing exactly the same work. The Public Library in PLAN10 is where students share courses, study rounds and Countdown Collections so that others can start from them.

Open Public Library from the sidebar. You can search, switch between All, Courses, Rounds and Collections, and sort by Newest, Most imported or Highest rated. Each card shows who published it, its rating and how many students imported it.

Figure 1A shared Step 1 course and its preview. The preview lists every subject and lecture before you import anything.

Preview first. Preview shows the description and the full contents: here, a cardiovascular subject with six lectures and a renal subject with five.
Import an editable copy. Import into my account adds the course to your Course Manager. It is your copy: rename lectures, reorder them, add the topics your school emphasizes, or delete what you do not need.
Rate it once you have used it. Ratings are open to students who imported the resource, which keeps them tied to actual use.

If the author later publishes a new version, your copy shows that an update is available, and you choose which changes to apply. Nothing in your copy is replaced without you reviewing it.

Check shared work against the outline. Library resources are made by students. They save setup time, but they are not reviewed against the official content outline. Compare the systems and topics with the current specifications before relying on them.

Organize your preparation by system

Whether you import a course or build your own, the structure that maps most directly to the content outline is one course for Step 1, one subject per system, and one lecture per topic you intend to review. In PLAN10, a course contains subjects, and subjects contain lectures (each lecture can also hold sub-items).

To build it yourself, open Course Manager, choose New Course and then Create New Course. Give it a name and a colour, then add subjects such as Cardiovascular, Respiratory, Renal & Urinary, Gastrointestinal, and Biostatistics & Epidemiology, and add topics under each with New Item.

Figure 2A Step 1 course organized by system. Each row is a topic; the pill shows completed reviews out of those scheduled (for example 2/2), and the row colour reflects the mastery you recorded.

A few habits keep this structure useful for months:

Name topics the way you will review them. “Heart failure” is easier to schedule and to search than “Lecture 14”.
Keep subjects aligned to the outline’s systems. It makes gaps visible: a system with three topics next to one with fifteen is a question worth asking.
Schedule reviews with a Review System. In Review Systems you build your own spacing patterns and apply them to lectures; PLAN10 then places each review on your calendar (labelled R1, R2, R3 and so on). PLAN10 does not ship a default schedule; you decide the intervals.

Make the workload visible

Step 1 preparation is long enough that it is easy to lose track of what has been reviewed. Open the course and switch from By Subject to Statistics.

Figure 3Course statistics: totals by state, coverage, the mastery you recorded, and revision activity. Filters at the top limit the view to a subject, a status or a time range.

The statistics view summarizes what you have logged in PLAN10:

State of play: how many topics are untouched, started, current, mastered or lapsed, and how many reviews are completed.
Coverage: the share of the course you have started, with mastery shown separately.
Mastery distribution: the strong, moderate and weak ratings you gave after each review.
Revision activity: reviews completed, the share of due reviews done, and how many are overdue now.
By subject and Upcoming reviews, with optional widgets for revision velocity, overdue backlog and progress trends under Customize.

What the numbers mean. These figures describe your own records: what you scheduled, completed and rated. They are a way to see gaps, not a prediction of exam performance.

Plan revision in rounds

A course says what to study. A study round says when. In Round Planner, a round is a run of days, and each day holds tasks: lectures from your courses, or custom tasks such as a timed question block or a self-assessment.

A common pattern is one round per system or pair of systems. The example below is a ten-day cardiovascular round: a topic or two a day, question blocks on the harder days, a review day for weak topics, and a self-assessment at the end.

Figure 4A ten-day cardiovascular round. The bar shows tasks and days completed; each day card has its tasks, Add Task and Send to Cal.

To create one, choose New Round, give it a title and dates, then add tasks to each day From Course (lectures) or as a Custom Task. Two settings on each round, both on by default, decide how it connects to the rest of PLAN10:

Keep tasks linked with Calendar: changes and completion stay in sync between the round and the calendar.
Update course progress from lecture tasks: completing a task that is a lecture from one of your courses also updates that course’s progress. Custom tasks, and tasks not linked to a lecture in your own course, do not change course progress.

Send a day to your calendar

When a day’s tasks are ready, use Send to Cal on that day. You pick the date, optionally a time, and which tasks to send. They then appear on the Master Calendar and in that day’s Daily Planner, next to reviews scheduled by your Review Systems and anything from your other courses.

Figure 5Sending a round day to the planner: choose the date, an optional time, and the tasks to send.

Let AI draft or rework a round

Rounds take time to adjust when a week goes badly. Plan with AI, on any round, opens the AI Planner. You describe the change in plain language, for example “move congenital heart disease after the review day and add a timed question block on day 7”, and PLAN10 builds a draft of the round. Nothing changes until you review the draft and save it.

Figure 6The AI Planner on a phone: a plain-language instruction, suggestion chips, the courses in scope, and optional reference material.

Suggestions give common starting points: balance workload, reduce intensity, increase daily workload, add review days, spread difficult lectures, or finish earlier.
Planning scope tells it which courses to draw lectures from.
Reference material is optional: a PDF, image, text, Markdown or CSV file (up to 20 MB), such as your school’s schedule.

AI planning is included with a monthly allowance, shown in Settings. Treat the draft as a starting point: check that the topics and the pace make sense for you before saving.

Keep each day short and visible

A good Step 1 plan fails if it is not visible on the day. PLAN10 brings everything due today into one list: reviews from your courses, tasks sent from rounds, and anything else you added. Add the exam and your practice assessments as Countdowns so the remaining days are always in view.

Figure 7Today’s planner: a review already done, a pharmacology review and an afternoon practice block. On a phone, the countdowns sit just below it.

Reuse a round someone else shared

Rounds can be published too. In the Library, switch to Rounds, preview a round to see its days and tasks, and import it. The imported round appears in your Round Planner as your own copy, so you can change its dates, edit tasks, and send days to your calendar.

Figure 8A study round shared in the Public Library, ready to preview or import.

How an imported round relates to your courses depends on its tasks:

When a published round’s tasks refer to lectures, PLAN10 suggests matching lectures from your own courses and only asks you about the ones it is not sure of.
Tasks that do not match one of your lectures are imported as custom tasks. You can still complete and send them, but they do not update course progress.
Course progress updates only for tasks linked to lectures in your own courses, and only while the round’s Update course progress from lecture tasks setting is on.

If your systems course or a round worked well, publishing it saves the next student the same setup. Students can publish three kinds of resources today: courses, study rounds and Countdown Collections. Nothing is shared automatically; you choose what to publish.

In Public Library, choose + Publish, or use Publish on the course or round itself.
Choose what you are sharing and which item. The dialog lists what will be published: for a course, its subjects and lectures; for a round, its days and tasks.
Edit the title and description, and optionally add a classification (for example Licensing & Certs) to help others find it.
Choose the visibility: Public (listed and searchable) or Private by code (hidden from browsing and opened with a code you share, for example with your study group).

Figure 9Publishing a course: what will be published, the listing title and description, an optional classification, and visibility.

You can manage everything you have published from My Publications. When you improve a published course, publishing an update lets students who imported it review the changes in their own copy. Please share only your own organization of topics, never material copied from paid resources.

An example week

Here is one way a week inside a cardiovascular round might look in PLAN10. It illustrates structure, not a recommended workload: adjust the pace to your school, your resources and how your reviews go.

Day	From the course	Custom tasks
Mon	Cardiac cycle and pressure–volume loops	Short review of last week’s weak topics
Tue	Heart failure	Timed question-bank block: heart failure
Wed	Ischemic heart disease	Flashcard reviews
Thu	Antiarrhythmic drugs	Timed question-bank block: arrhythmias
Fri	Congenital heart disease	Flashcard reviews
Sat	Scheduled reviews only	Go back over flagged questions
Sun	None	Rest, or catch up on what slipped

Two things make a week like this hold up: the reviews your Review Systems schedule keep appearing alongside new topics, and a lighter day gives the plan room to absorb a bad day without rebuilding everything.

Checklist

Read the current Step 1 overview and content specifications on usmle.org.
Decide which resources you will use, and when each one fits.
Look in the Public Library for a systems course or round you can start from.
Organize one Step 1 course by system, with one lecture per topic.
Build a Review System and apply it, so reviews land on your calendar.
Plan one round per system and send each day to your calendar.
Add the exam and practice assessments as countdowns.
Check Statistics weekly for untouched systems and overdue reviews.
Publish what worked, so the next student starts further ahead.

For the semester around Step 1, see How to Organize Your Medical School Study Schedule. To share exam dates and deadlines with your class, see How to Share University Events and Important Dates.

Try it with one course.

Create a free PLAN10 account, add the course you are studying now, and give its exam a date. You can import or share the rest later.

Create your account Learn about PLAN10

Ali AlhakeemWritten by Ali Alhakeem for PLAN10. Product details describe PLAN10 as of October 2026. Product images are real PLAN10 screens with fictional demonstration data.