USMLE Step 1 Tutoring
Five weeks of dedicated and your NBME has not climbed a point. You know something has to change and nobody can tell you what. Step 1 tutoring here means one to one with a medical student who cleared it recently, sat through the same plateau, and can name what is costing you the pass!
What you are up against
Sitting near the line is its own kind of stress. There is no score to improve toward and no credit for a near miss, so a whole year of work resolves into one word. We would love to make sure that word is Pass!
Here is where first-time takers landed last year! If you are an international graduate, read the third row, because one in four does not clear it and that is the group we are asked to help most often.
| First-attempt Step 1 pass rate, 2025 | Pass | Fail |
|---|---|---|
| US and Canadian MD schools | 93% | 7% |
| US DO schools | 89% | 11% |
| International medical graduates | 75% | 25% |
Official USMLE performance data, usmle.org.
What Step 1 tutoring includes
Every Step 1 tutoring package includes the same six things, whether you book five hours or forty. Each one is here because one of us went without it and remembers how that felt!
Having cleared their own boards, every mentor comes in with the exam still fresh, and our Step 2 scorers sit at 270 and above. Because they remember which questions felt unfair, recent counts for more here than senior.
Before you meet, your mentor has read your brief and pulled the questions you missed. Your hour opens on the block you are weakest in rather than on a conversation about what to do today.
In session one the weeks you have left get mapped against the blocks you are weakest in. As NBME scores arrive, later sessions revise it.
Recorded if you want them to be, and every recording comes back with an AI summary of what you covered and what you agreed to do next. At 11pm you can reread the summary or jump to the explanation instead of trying to recall it.
From your mentor's calendar, book whatever suits. Weekly, twice weekly, or saved up for the fortnight before test day.
Whatever Step 1 tutoring hours you do not use carry to Step 2 CK, Step 3, or med-school application coaching. Nothing lapses, ever!
What we look at first
“I am really struggling to understand why my scores are not improving after five weeks.” That sentence turns up in almost every first session we run, and every mentor here has said a version of it themselves. A plateau has three possible causes, and knowledge gets blamed far more often than it deserves, because it is the failure you can feel. The good news is that all three are fixable!
“I feel like I have learned nothing in two years.” Your mentor sat in that same chair recently, so they know that recognizing a topic in First Aid and answering on it are different things. They will find the gap and close it with you!
“I am never 100% sure of half of my answers.” Talking yourself out of right answers is something your mentor did too, right up until somebody watched them work through a block and showed them where the reasoning broke.
“I did not have a day off from studying for a month.” Every mentor here has run a month like that and watched their scores flatten because of it. Yours will rebuild the week with you before it costs you the exam!
Where your hours go
Nobody here is going to tell you to study more. Every one of us tried that first, and if you have gone a month without a day off, more hours is the last thing you need. Burnout and a plateau look the same from the inside.
Rereading First Aid feels like work and rarely raises a score, and you can get those hours back! Your mentor shifts that time into practice, and into the kind of review that finds why your reasoning broke rather than re-reading the answer you already got wrong.
How many hours you need
Nobody wants to commit thousands of dollars of Step 1 tutoring to fix a problem they cannot name yet. You should not have to, so here is the honest pattern across the industry on top, and what a thirty hour package normally does with your time underneath.
Every plan is different, so treat the lower half as the usual shape rather than a rule! In session one your mentor will tell you where your own hours are best spent!
How many hours
What thirty hours do
Notice how little of it is content. Two hours go on the plan, eight on the blocks where you are losing marks, and the other twenty go on working questions with someone watching how you work and on review that finds the reason you missed one.
If your own split needs to look different, it will. A retaker rebuilding from a fail spends far more of the run on the first half of that bar, and someone whose content is solid spends almost none of it there. Your mentor will show you your version in session one!
Your run to test day
A dipping NBME two weeks out is something every mentor here has lived through. It is the night you stop studying, open the scheduling page, and start pricing a postponement.
Yours will have your revised plan in front of you the day that score lands, because they remember sitting up with nobody to send it to! Across a dedicated period, the sessions fall roughly like this.
Getting started
When your date is six weeks out, waiting a week for a sales call is time you do not have. There is no consultation call to sit through here! Pick your hours, tell us where you are, and we take it from there.
Before every Step 1 tutoring session
If you have booked Step 1 tutoring before, you know the session that opens by asking what you want to do today. Ten minutes of your hour are gone before any work happens. Ours do not start that way!
Your mentor prepares before they meet you, every time, and your hour opens on the work. Here is what that preparation buys you!
Step 1 tutoring options
Across all five Step 1 tutoring options the format is the same, one to one and 60 minutes a session, at one price for Step 1 and Step 2 CK!
The same ten hours of one-to-one Step 1 tutoring, priced across the field. Every figure below comes from the company’s own published pricing, so compare away!
What a retake costs
Step 1 tutoring costs a meaningful amount of money and we would rather not pretend otherwise, especially on a student budget. It helps to hold it next to what sitting Step 1 a second time costs you, and we would much rather you never had to find out!
The fee is the small part. The year is the expensive part, and the attempt stays on your record for every program that reads it.
Being straight with you
Plenty of students arrive convinced they need Step 1 tutoring when what they need is another two weeks and some sleep. We would rather you passed than bought! If you are in the right-hand column, say so during matching and we will point you somewhere better.
Your satisfaction guarantee
Three promises stand behind every package, and none of them is about your result. You are in safe hands here :)
If the fit is wrong, just say so and we will match you with someone else. Unused hours stay yours!
If the first session or two does not land, every unused hour is refunded, within your first 4 hours and 60 days of signing up.
Use them whenever suits you. To Step 2 CK, Step 3, or application coaching, they carry across!
We will not guarantee a pass. Behind any promise like that sit conditions buried in the terms, and we would rather not write one. If the tutoring is not working for you, the spend comes off the table instead.
Questions
Often no, and we would rather tell you that! If your NBMEs sit comfortably above the line, Step 1 tutoring is the wrong spend and Step 2 CK is the better use of the time, since it is scored and now carries the weight in residency applications.
Where Step 1 tutoring earns its cost is a pass in doubt, a retake after a fail, or practice scores close enough to the line that you cannot call it.
Because this exam is a skill, and the people best at explaining it did it recently! A mentor who sat Step 1 eighteen months ago remembers which questions felt unfair and what they cut when time ran short. Ten years out, an attending remembers the syllabus.
That is also what sets our rate. In our view you get a better teacher, and we would rather make that argument than hide it.
Across the industry, students who take tutoring for the Steps average around 35 hours. For a first attempt that usually means 10 to 20, and for a retake, 25 to 40.
Committing before anyone has looked at your situation is guessing, though, which is why five hours exists. Start there, and in session one your mentor will tell you whether you need more.
First a questionnaire, covering your test date, your most recent NBME, what you are using, which blocks feel worst, and when you can meet. We read it and match you with a mentor inside 24 hours!
Their calendar link comes to you and you book your own sessions. Everything runs online, at 60 minutes a session, recorded if you want them to be, with an AI summary of each session sent back to you afterwards.
Medical students and recent graduates who cleared their own boards, screened on their score and on whether they can teach, which are different skills. Among our Step 2 scorers, 270 and above is the bar.
By exam, by weak areas and by when you can meet, we match you, then introduce you before your first session.
Yes, at the same prices! If you finish Step 1 with hours left, they carry across.
Yes. Whatever value you have left carries across at the prices above. Because the hourly rate differs, the number of hours changes, so a $997 balance becomes roughly 7 hours.
Three monthly payments on every package from 10 hours up. On each option above, and again at checkout, you will see the amounts.
We are rooting for you
Every one of us sat where you are now, with a date on the calendar and a number that would not climb.
It got better once somebody looked at the work with us, and your mentor is there to do the same for you!
Start with five hours of Step 1 tutoring, or take the full run to test day. Either way there is a plan built to your weeks, someone who prepares before every session, and a satisfaction guarantee behind it. We would love to help you get this one done :)