As a matter of fact I'd promised shankool to write tis subject a few months ago but I was really busy so please forgive me for this delay

Ok let's first know what is step 2 CK
Step 2 is an examination of medical knowledge of 5 major subject
Internal medicine ,Pediatrics ,Ob\Gyn ,surgery and Psychaitry including Biostatics

The first steps of any successful study plan is to Know what are the resources you will use ,so lets start:
Internal medicine: you will need to have 2 books; Medstudy and Kaplan
Pediatrics :Kaplan
Ob\Gyn: Kaplan
Surgery: Kaplan
Psychaitry including Biostatics: High Yeild and Kaplan
Question books that differ in every stage of studing so we will talk about it later

The second step come By answering 2 major question :
Do you need to study all these books from one cover to the other , and How I Should Study ?
Well I will answer that of course noticing the individual diffrences of the subject and the importance of each one of them .
Let’s start of internal medicine and It is branches:
Gastroentrology: well it is mandatory to read this section from Kaplan, as for med study it is optional but preferred .
Cardiology: you should read Kaplan the new edition and also tho old Kaplan which consist of cases , the medstudy is only optional.
Pulmonary: you should read the Kaplan and very important to read the medstudy
Renal: you should read the medstudy. Kaplan here is not that necessary
Rheumatology: you should read the medstudy. Kaplan here is not that necessary
Endocinology: well it is mandatory to read this section from Kaplan, as for med study it is optional but preferred .
Hematology: Kaplan is the essential , from medstudy you may read the bleeding disorders and leukocytes disorders but not the subtypes of non-Hodgken Lymphoma
Infetious diseases : Kaplan is the essential, It’s preferred to read microcards( the clinical case, the diagnosis and the treatment)
Neurology : Kaplan is the essential, It’s preferred to read some chapters of Neruranatomy regarding brain vascular distributions, b rain lesions, spinal cord and midbrain lesions . and of Gross Anatomy regarding the upper and lower limbs nerves lesions
Emergency , preventive and all the other remaining sections of Kaplan

My dear fellows Yesterday was the labour day in the united states and in this occasion shut down , so I am sorry for being late

Ok let’s move now to the other subject :
The pediatrics, surgery and OB/GYN should be memorized from the Kaplan’s series in addition to the note of (Next step of management ) in OB/GYN which is available at Da3bool library
The psychiatry main source of study is high yield and for the biostatics is Kaplan psychiatry which contain sufficient information in its final chapters

Now how should we study to the exam ?
First of all you should study the above once and you may try to solve some question as pretest in internal medicine with your study
Then you should study with extra concentration all the subject and solve some question books such as:
Internal medicine : you may solve the following; the 75 questions at the end of the blueprint internal medicine book, Q&A Blueprint question of internal medicine
Pediatrics : you may solve the following; the 75 questions at the end of the blueprint Pediatrics book, Q&A Blueprint question of Pediatrics,
OB/GYN: you may solve the following; the 150 questions at the end of the blueprint OB/GYN, Q&A Blueprint question of OB/GYN
psychiatry : you may solve the following; the 90 questions at the end of the blueprint psychiatry book, Q&A Blueprint question of psychiatry, the differential dignosis and management chapter of lange psychiatry
All of the above choices of questions are optional but preferred to be solved after each subject
After finishing these two cycles of studying you are ready now for the most important, mandatory and rewarding step of your preparation which is the questions and the final review
I recommend you strongly to solve the Kaplan Qbook, the usmle world , and the Qbank
Respectively , and then do the final review of your book and your notes (taken from the explanation of the answers) and then solve the usmle sample send to you by the ECFMG
And go to your exam with confedence that you have done your best for the exam

These information are from my personal experience and I hope it will be helpful

Please don’t hesitate at all to ask whatever you want
God may help all of us

thank you
my friend is american doctor in pediatrics and he teaches me in my college and he told me that there is a Kaplan course rather than the book series and this course is impertant in preparation for the USMLE examination, so from your experience :these books that you mentioned above is enough or there is other informations in the courses not present in the book series of kaplan and medstudy and others
i want also to ask you : if there is a CDs for these courses and how we can by it?thank you again
with my best wishes

Dear Bel Sham Ahli!
The Kaplan course is different from the books!, there are actually two kinds of Kaplan courses, the Live Lectures and The Center Prep. , if you wanna take the second one you will see the lectures on DVDs (or tapes) which is as great as the live ones with the only exception that you can't ask questions, but of course you can rewind it!! and "let him repeat as much as you want!"
In the lectures there are a lot of information that is not included in the books, and they usually ask the student to add extra new stuff to the lecture notes they have
I believe that the Kaplan experience worth it!! It's probably expensive a little bit, but one of the advantages that a lot of people don't look at , is that you would be in the US, and you are gonna be exposed to the culture and learn about the people here and the lifestyle!!
I think it also help to finish the test preparation in shorter time, usually less than 6 months for each step if you work hard
the other plus, is that you don't need to worry about studying other stuff like med-study or high-yield, because most of the points are gonna be covered by the lectures or the notes.
this is what I see, but still it's controversial and depends on many other factors that will determine which choice is the best.