Advice for those struggling with Kaplan:

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I'd been doing pretty well in UWorld, 80-85% in my second 'pass'. I decided I needed a more accurate gauge of my knowledge, so I picked up Kaplan.

Holy s**t.

I was right back down to the mid-60's. Really demoralizing, and frustrating in that the questions seem way too detailed and not testable on the actual exam.

I've come to a realization though: Sure, getting the questions right is nice, but the real value is coming from understanding why my wrong answers (which are many) were wrong. I just got 4 questions in a single session whose answers directly contradicted what I'd learned from Goljan. Not minor points either.

Anyway, I guess what I'm trying to say if you're struggling with Kaplan when you were doing just fine before, remember that you're definitely not the only one, and that some of these questions are super picky. I feel like if you're taking things away from the explanations you're still in good shape. At least that's what I'm telling myself.

OK. Break over. Back to work...

I think you have a great outlook on things and have the right attitude.

I think your scores probably dropped between Kaplan and UW because the question styles can be somewhat different between the 2 qbanks and you might not be used to seeing things in that format.

I think that when you're performing at a level where you KNOW that low scores aren't indicative of needing to push your test date back (as you're doing now), then the low numbers--although they sting--are a great way to learn and move on. At some point, you have to think that there are only so many ways they can phrase certain testing points, and if you expose yourself to as many of those as possible before test day to learn the tricks, you'll be WAY ahead of the game.

Better to get them wrong now than on test day, right?