Skills are abilities to do things above and beyond what an average human being could. They are competencies that people possess that enable them to perform in certain ways. Skills are different from knowledge in that they require more than just knowing; they require doing and with some degree of proficiency. A special set of skills is also necessary during USMLE review sessions.

Skills are just as important as your knowledge as a medical student. They are part of what you need to learn and part of what your mentors must teach. Skills, however, differ from both knowledge and affective learning and are taught differently.

Thinking is a uniquely human trait. It is the most significant characteristic that separates human from other forms of life because human thinking is at a higher and more sophisticated level than that of other living things. These higher levels of thinking are described in many ways and often with highly specialized language. Some of the more common general labels are critical thinking, systematic thinking, theoretical thinking, and abstract thinking – all of which have the same context and is well-applied in USMLE reviews.

More specific terms that define particular aspects of thinking are processes that you are not aware that you are already doing. These are conceptualizing a clinical situation, comprehending the process of its occurrence, computing for the dosage of drugs that needs to be administered, inferring by listing down a couple of diagnostic tests for a specific disease process, interpreting the results, analyzing the patient's objective and subjective complaints, synthesizing the facts of the clinical case, generalizing and solving the problem presented – all of which still requires another process of higher level thinking of applying your knowledge and evaluating your decisions to effect treatment.

Theoretically, your books will try to explain thinking using technical terms. It involves three processes namely: intellectual, mental, and cognitive process – processes that you involuntarily do. With higher level thinking, a student can make sense out of the information and other stimuli that he or she encounters during USMLE review sessions.

Higher level thinking involves so many skills that a medical student should be able to do all of the following before it can be attained: to impose intellectual order or disorder, to gain insight, to predict consequences of medical treatments, to propose solutions to clinical problems, and to decide what to do when faced with a decision. A medical student's desire to get through the USMLE Step one will need to hone these higher level thinking skills. Going back to the first two years is not possible and only through a series of USMLE review can these higher level thinking skills be tapped and developed.