About BoardsAtlas
Two question banks for the United States Medical Licensing Examination — Step 1, the foundational-science exam, and Step 2 CK, the clinical-knowledge exam. They are separate banks, written and reviewed separately, and you can subscribe to either or both.
Who writes and reviews the questions
BoardsAtlas was founded by international medical graduates who sat and passed the USMLE themselves and now practise as faculty at major US teaching hospitals. That matters for two reasons: we have taken these exams under the same conditions our users will, and we teach and assess residents against the same clinical standards the exams are built on.
Every question is written by a clinician working in the relevant specialty and reviewed by at least one other before it is published. Step 1 items are reviewed by faculty in the foundational sciences and the relevant organ system; Step 2 CK items are reviewed by clinicians practising in that specialty.
If you would like to know who reviewed a specific question, email us and we will tell you the reviewer's specialty and role.
How questions are reviewed
- Authoring — a clinician writes the vignette, the five options, and a full explanation, mapped to a discipline or specialty on the official USMLE content outline.
- Clinical review — a second clinician independently checks the stem for clinical accuracy, confirms there is exactly one defensible best answer, and verifies that each distractor is wrong for a stated reason.
- Editorial review — we check item-writing quality: homogeneous options, no cueing, no negative stems without cause, and no ambiguity between the top two choices.
- Guideline check — management and treatment items are checked against current major guidelines, and the source is recorded internally so we know what to re-check when guidance changes.
- Ongoing review — items are re-examined when guidelines change, when performance statistics look wrong (for example, an item most strong users get wrong), or when a user reports a problem.
Question bank last medically reviewed: July 2026.
Errata policy
We would rather be corrected than be wrong. If you believe a question, answer, or explanation is incorrect, out of date, or ambiguous, tell us — there is a report link on every question, or you can email admin@boardsatlas.com.
- We aim to acknowledge every report within 5 working days.
- A clinician who did not write the item reviews the report.
- If the item is wrong, we correct or withdraw it, and it stops being served immediately.
- If a scored item is withdrawn, it is excluded from your accuracy statistics.
- If we conclude the item is correct, we will explain why rather than simply closing the report.
What you'll find here
- Clinical-vignette, single-best-answer questions in the current USMLE format: 30-minute blocks of up to 20 items (14 blocks for Step 1, 16 for Step 2 CK).
- An explanation with every question — why the correct answer is right, and why each of the other four is wrong.
- Coverage across the disciplines and systems the blueprints sample — currently 5,232 Step 1 and 5,000 Step 2 CK questions published.
- Tutor practice, timed practice, single exam blocks, and full multi-block mock exams.
- Progress tracking by discipline and system, so you can see where to spend your time.
Independence
BoardsAtlas is an independent resource. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by the National Board of Medical Examiners (NBME), the Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB), or the USMLE program. USMLE® is a registered trademark of its owners. Always confirm current exam format, dates, and content specifications with the official USMLE guidance at usmle.org.
Contact
Questions, errata, or feedback? Email admin@boardsatlas.com.