The United States Medical Licensing Exam

For better or for worse, exams are an ever present feature of a medical life. From the first few months at medical school, students are bombarded with all kinds of exams. Why then would anyone volunteer to sit more? This is exactly what I asked myself when I first heard of the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE).

Like many medical students, I had always thought working in the USA would be an interesting and useful experience, even if it were only for a few years. I knew next to nothing about the process of getting licensed to work there until a couple of years ago when a few friends mentioned that they were contemplating doing the USMLE. I managed to find out a bit more about the whole process and after talking to a few people (not least my parents, who had to fund the process), decided that my intercalated degree year was the right time to do the Step 1 exam. I was not sure at the time whether I definitely wanted to work in the US but concluded that this was the best way of keeping my options open while trying to maximise my chances of doing well in the initial exam, …