Boards and Beyond

What is Boards and Beyond and who sells it?

The McGraw Hill product page describes it as student-tested and faculty-trusted, designed and taught by award-winning educator Dr. Jason Ryan and a team of physicians. Jason Ryan founded it in 2014 in West Hartford, Connecticut, per two company-data sites (Mergr and Tracxn).

McGraw Hill acquired Boards and Beyond on 6 December 2022, per the McGraw Hill press release. McGraw Hill is a Platinum Equity portfolio company. The purchase price was not disclosed. Tracxn lists no funding rounds and 9 employees as of 31 July 2026. LinkedIn still lists the company as self-owned, which is out of date given the acquisition, so we weigh the Tracxn headcount lightly.

What is in the subscription?

The Step 1 Preclinical course has more than 490 videos, each tied to a question set, with more than 2,300 USMLE-style questions and First Aid page references, per the McGraw Hill product guide. Older pages say 440 plus or 447 videos, so the course appears to have grown or the pages are out of date. We quote the current guide.

The Step 2-3 Clinical course lists more than 260 videos and more than 1,300 questions, per the McGraw Hill product page. It also lists performance tracking across 16 categories, simulated lab values with a calculator, and a link to the White Coat Companion book.

Two smaller lines sit alongside them. Clinical Confidence is aimed at new clinicians and covers Hospital Medicine, Surgery, Pediatrics and OB/GYN, and an OMM Series covers osteopathic manipulative medicine. Quizzes run in timed or tutor mode, with custom playlists and slide PDFs. Per the product guide, video is streaming only, with no downloads. The vendor's pricing page also lists notes, quiz tracking and mobile access as part of the subscription.

About 2,300 questions for Step 1 is a fraction of the 3,600 plus UWorld lists for its Step 1 bank per UWorld's product page, and of the 5,000 plus USMLE-Rx lists for Qmax per its home page. These are vendor-stated counts and the questions serve different purposes: here they check a lecture, there they are the main study method.

What does it do well?

It gives structure to a student who needs it. Each video comes with questions, and the Step 1 course ties to First Aid page numbers, so a student working from First Aid has an index into the lectures.

Northwestern's Feinberg School of Medicine lists the resources used by high Step 1 scorers and rates Boards and Beyond highly, and one student there called it "by far the best of any resource I used". The page's date is not stated. It is one school's list, selected by the school, so it shows that strong students use the course, not that the course raises scores.

The product spans more than Step 1. The Step 2-3 course and the Clinical Confidence modules mean a student who liked the format can stay with it into clinical years.

Where does it fall short?

It is a course, not a bank. The iatrox audit of the Step 2 CK product, from a vendor-adjacent blog, describes it as video-first, without an adaptive high-volume timed practice engine, an AI tutor or spaced repetition, and says to treat it as a course rather than stand-alone prep. The question counts above fit that description. A student who needs thousands of additional timed questions must buy them elsewhere.

Video is streaming only. A student who studies on trains or in hospitals without reliable connectivity cannot download lectures, per the product guide.

Refund and auto-renew terms are not stated. The vendor's pricing and FAQ pages show only a welcome stub without JavaScript, and no Reddit or Student Doctor Network thread covers the topic. Read both on the live site before paying.

What does it cost?

The headline range, per the vendor's pricing page, is from $24 for one week to $399 for two years, as of October 2026. A product line for new clinicians is priced separately. A third-party ladder from about two and a half years ago lists intermediate terms and is not reproduced here. The 7-day trial, McGraw Hill's monthly 10 percent promotion, the AMA member perk and the open refund question are in the pricing section.

How does it compare with Pathoma and the question banks?

Pathoma is the nearest comparison for format. It is a pathology-only video course, written and taught by one physician, at a much lower list price: $99.95 for 12 months per Pathoma's pricing page. Boards and Beyond covers the whole of Step 1 and does so with more videos and more questions. A student who wants pathology depth at low cost can start with Pathoma. A student who wants one lecturer for all subjects should price Boards and Beyond.

USMLE-Rx sells its own Express Videos for Step 1, 90 hours or more by the vendor's count, at $149 for 12 months per its pricing page. It is the closest like-for-like video product, and it is a cheaper one on the page we read. We have no source comparing teaching quality between the two.

UWorld and AMBOSS are the question-bank half of a typical pairing. Boards and Beyond does not compete with either, and its own question sets are too small to stand alone.

What about compliance and institutional use?

No HIPAA, SOC 2 or HITRUST attestation is stated, and a lecture course that holds no patient data does not need one. The pricing page has an Institutional Purchases section with no prices in it, so a school buying for a cohort has to ask McGraw Hill for a quote. No public group rate exists to cite.

What does the evidence say?

Two 2024 papers mention the tool, and neither tests it: a MedEdPublish paper on the use and financial burden of third-party resources among medical students, and a Cureus literature review on study strategies, exam scores and study resources.

No study of Boards and Beyond's effect on scores is published, and neither is a comparison with other video courses. The McGraw Hill page speaks of helping institutions improve learning outcomes, and no data supports that sentence.

Who should buy it, and who should not?

The verdict

Buy Boards and Beyond for the lectures, not the questions. It earns a place for the student who studies by watching and listening, and none for the student who needs volume. The Step 1 course carries about 2,300 questions against UWorld's 3,600 plus, which is the gap a second purchase has to fill.