October 19, 2026
Practice quizzes now start by asking what kind of questions you want: General, Applied or Clinical Vignette. Students who are new to a topic, or earlier in their program, can practice at a level that fits before moving on to board-style cases.
New features
Choose your question level. Every practice quiz now starts with a choice of three levels:
- General: direct questions on the key facts and ideas, with no patient cases.
- Applied: short scenarios and small sets of results, where you predict what happens or work out what the findings mean.
- Clinical Vignette: full board-style patient cases in the USMLE Step 1 style, as quizzes have always been.
Board-style vignettes suit second-year students but can be too much for MSMS and first-year students, so everyone can now practice at a level that fits. If you tell Dr. Olivia which kind you want ("give me some basic questions", "board-style please"), she skips the choice. The level you picked last time is marked "Last used". Every level keeps the same five-choice format and the same explanations for every answer.
Enhanced features
- Your first question arrives sooner. Questions are written several at a time, and each one now appears as soon as it is ready instead of waiting behind the first.
- Fewer short or failed quizzes. Some medical topics were occasionally declined by the question writer's safety checks, which made a quiz come up a question short, or fail to start. Those questions are now written by a backup automatically, within the same quiz.
- One quiz for every learner. Learners on the independent (non-program) experience now get exactly the same quiz as students, including the USMLE System and Discipline labels on each answer.
Things to know
The Quiz button now opens a short choice of question level before the quiz starts, and the same choice appears when you ask Dr. Olivia to quiz you, unless you already said which kind you want. Questions now appear in the order they are written, so your first question shows up sooner.