57-60% correct to pass Step 1??

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okgo2503

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Ok so a lot of schools' deans have thrown around the whole "you need 57-60% correct on Step I to pass" statement. (and I think First Aid put it at even a higher percentage) Does anybody else think this seems a bit high? Considering that only about 5% of students (give or take) fail Step I, this would mean that about 95% are getting at least 57% right on the actual exam.

But what confuses me is that the Uworld average % correct is somewhere in the mid-50% correct. From what people have said, the real exam isn't THAT much easier than Uworld. So wouldn't it seem like a larger percent of students would be failing if you really needed 57-60% to pass Step I? Sorry if this doesn't make sense. My stressed/panicked mind is unable to form comprehensive thoughts at this point :p

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Actually in 2008 (the last year data is available for) nearly 23% of the tests taken were failed. The 94% passing rate that is often quoted includes only US allopathic students who are taking the test for the first time.

As for the failing score being around the 5th percentile using mean=~220 SD=~20, well I think that if you do poorly enough they don't include your score in the calculations.
 
so a lot of the whole "the real exam isn't THAT much easier than Uworld" thing is recall bias from the 20 or 30 percent of questions are on par with, or harder than, UW questions. In actuality, there are a bunch of pretty easy gimme questions on the real test, stuff that you should know if you've passed the 1st two years of med school.
 
so a lot of the whole "the real exam isn't THAT much easier than Uworld" thing is recall bias from the 20 or 30 percent of questions are on par with, or harder than, UW questions. In actuality, there are a bunch of pretty easy gimme questions on the real test, stuff that you should know if you've passed the 1st two years of med school.

I think it all depends on your level of knolwedge. My test had like 20% biochem, the hard questions were harder than Uw, but all in all it's easier IMO. Keep in mind not all the qs count towards your score also.
 
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I think it all depends on your level of knolwedge. My test had like 20% biochem, the hard questions were harder than Uw, but all in all it's easier IMO. Keep in mind not all the qs count towards your score also.

/wrists if I get 20% biochem
 
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I think it all depends on your level of knolwedge. My test had like 20% biochem, the hard questions were harder than Uw, but all in all it's easier IMO. Keep in mind not all the qs count towards your score also.


About how much of that biochem would you say is stuff covered in First Aid? And how much was obscure stuff you'd never get even if you read like 4 sources? My test is in 2 weeks and biochem is my weakest point so I'm trying to figure out how much time I should spend on it. If a decent amount of the questions were either stuff that are in FA or stuff I won't get even if I read 2 other outside sources, I won't spend as much time on it. Otherwise I might have to since that's kind of my weakness right now :(
 
About how much of that biochem would you say is stuff covered in First Aid? And how much was obscure stuff you'd never get even if you read like 4 sources? My test is in 2 weeks and biochem is my weakest point so I'm trying to figure out how much time I should spend on it. If a decent amount of the questions were either stuff that are in FA or stuff I won't get even if I read 2 other outside sources, I won't spend as much time on it. Otherwise I might have to since that's kind of my weakness right now :(

I mean, it all depends on where you're at. If you're not comfortable with where you're at re: first aid, then you should concentrate on that. I thought I overstudied for it and I would have had I gotten a test without much biochem.
 
I heard that most of the time on step I if you've never heard of it in your life, its probably not the right answer.
 
I heard that most of the time on step I if you've never heard of it in your life, its probably not the right answer.

This is good advice for any test. It doesn't seem to hold true for UWorld though. It seems that in UW if you haven't heard of it, it's probably the right answer, since they seem to love to test obscure facts.
 
i agree with the OP. i don't get how the UWORLD average is 57% and that translates into around a 220. i am starting to get afraid that doing relatively well on "uworld" is a false sense of security.

and i don't see why the NBME would be any easier than UWORLD. UWORLD has easy questions as well and some thought questions like so many people say are on the actual NBME. sigh, I guess we'll find out the hard way.
 
and i don't see why the NBME would be any easier than UWORLD. UWORLD has easy questions as well and some thought questions like so many people say are on the actual NBME. sigh, I guess we'll find out the hard way.[/QUOTE]




I just took Step 1 yesterday...and I do not believe that it was easier than UWorld. There are plenty of "easy" questions on the real exam, but also many challenging ones. There are 300+ questions on the Step 1, of course there will be a lot of "easy" questions....but I believe that it is all relative. There are also many questions that are considerably more difficult...likely because the topics were not discussed in UWorld, FA, or Goljan. For example, I EASILY couldve missed half of the questions because of this. Purely went off of what I learned in med school because the material wasnt in either of the study sources that I mentioned.

What exactly is this 57% passing score? Im advanced standing and a bit older than my classmates, so I dont hear much of these things. Personally, I figured that Id have to score like 70% and above to pass, but now I can see why a score in the 50%s would be more conceivable...
 
thanks for the feedback yankees, so you are saying about half your test was not in uw/FA/RR? wow
 
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I would say that probably 85% of the test was at least referenced somewhere in FA but not necessarily in enough detail to answer the question. I thought it was a lot easier than UW SA1 or 2 and marginally harder than nbme7.
 
i agree with the OP. i don't get how the UWORLD average is 57% and that translates into around a 220. i am starting to get afraid that doing relatively well on "uworld" is a false sense of security.

and i don't see why the NBME would be any easier than UWORLD. UWORLD has easy questions as well and some thought questions like so many people say are on the actual NBME. sigh, I guess we'll find out the hard way.

it has been awfully consistent with my performance on the NBMEs, thats all I can offer for now.. we'll see how it goes
 
i agree with the OP. i don't get how the UWORLD average is 57% and that translates into around a 220. i am starting to get afraid that doing relatively well on "uworld" is a false sense of security.

and i don't see why the NBME would be any easier than UWORLD. UWORLD has easy questions as well and some thought questions like so many people say are on the actual NBME. sigh, I guess we'll find out the hard way.

Just look at the % correct for a given score on each. 80% on UW SAs is a 260 and you need like 95% on NBME7 to get a 260.
 
Let me correct myself... I would say that at least 75% of my exam could be referenced in FA/UWorld/Goljan audio. That is all I studied from. What I was referring to earlier was an exact 46 question exam block....I truly believe it was comprised of off-the-wall, challenging, obscure concepts that arent directly taught in medical school or in the aforementioned sources. Im not trying to scare anyone, but thats my honest opinion (and this is coming from someone with advanced standing in medical school who has already had clinical medical training....that still doesnt make this exam that much easier! The details learned on Step 1 are quickly forgotten once in residency).

My take, though, is that most people cannot remember every single detail from FA/UWorld (at least I cant). So, just because I could flip through FA after taking Step 1 and say "oh, this was on the exam, so was this, etc etc," it doesnt necessarily mean that I had it memorized. I think that is the most frustrating part of the exam- seeing a question, remembering the exact page you saw it on, but not knowing that ONE TINY DETAIL they felt most important....a fair amount of that for me on the exam.

There are quite a bit of things (25%) on the exam that are SO basic that I glanced over them in FA (such as just knowing the EXACT definition of intracellular organelles would get you the correct answer...the problem, though, is that these details can often be glanced over when studying).

On the other hand (25%), there are a fair amount things as detailed as being able to interpret results from certain diagnostic devices (sorry folks, but I cannot go into detail...dont want to get grilled for discussing exam content).

As for the majority (50%), there were plenty of fair questions that are "base knowledge" and conceptual (ie identifying pathology, knowing treatments, how drugs work, etc).

The hardest part about the exam, though, is the TIME CONSTRAINT. I fly through UWorld, but on the real thing, I took my time reading (and Im not a fast reader to begin with). I got hosed on 2 blocks where I had like 10 questions with 5 minutes remaining... Lots of questions that I believe I could conceptualize and figure out, but had to pick an answer due to the time remaining..
 
Let me correct myself... I would say that at least 75% of my exam could be referenced in FA/UWorld/Goljan audio. That is all I studied from. What I was referring to earlier was an exact 46 question exam block....I truly believe it was comprised of off-the-wall, challenging, obscure concepts that arent directly taught in medical school or in the aforementioned sources. Im not trying to scare anyone, but thats my honest opinion (and this is coming from someone with advanced standing in medical school who has already had clinical medical training....that still doesnt make this exam that much easier! The details learned on Step 1 are quickly forgotten once in residency).

My take, though, is that most people cannot remember every single detail from FA/UWorld (at least I cant). So, just because I could flip through FA after taking Step 1 and say "oh, this was on the exam, so was this, etc etc," it doesnt necessarily mean that I had it memorized. I think that is the most frustrating part of the exam- seeing a question, remembering the exact page you saw it on, but not knowing that ONE TINY DETAIL they felt most important....a fair amount of that for me on the exam.

There are quite a bit of things (25%) on the exam that are SO basic that I glanced over them in FA (such as just knowing the EXACT definition of intracellular organelles would get you the correct answer...the problem, though, is that these details can often be glanced over when studying).

On the other hand (25%), there are a fair amount things as detailed as being able to interpret results from certain diagnostic devices (sorry folks, but I cannot go into detail...dont want to get grilled for discussing exam content).

As for the majority (50%), there were plenty of fair questions that are "base knowledge" and conceptual (ie identifying pathology, knowing treatments, how drugs work, etc).

The hardest part about the exam, though, is the TIME CONSTRAINT. I fly through UWorld, but on the real thing, I took my time reading (and Im not a fast reader to begin with). I got hosed on 2 blocks where I had like 10 questions with 5 minutes remaining... Lots of questions that I believe I could conceptualize and figure out, but had to pick an answer due to the time remaining..

Took mine today and couldn't echo your thoughts above and these any better. I always had extra time in World and almost never had extra time on the real thing. I'm not sure what it is.. maybe when I see an "obvious answer" in a practice block, I just pick it.. but on the real deal, it's easy to get caught up in thinking "can this really be the answer?".. and then it gets even worse when you catch them trying to trick you, because it then makes every other "easy answer" later even more unsettling than the ones you have to work for.. ugh. I'm dreading and hopeful for the score release, and will be crossing my fingers in the meantime!
 
Weird. I took almost all the time in the Uw sa's (average 55 min per set or so, but finished the real test in about 4 hours and 15 mi of actual test time (took about 2 hours of total breaks. P
Took mine today and couldn't echo your thoughts above and these any better. I always had extra time in World and almost never had extra time on the real thing. I'm not sure what it is.. maybe when I see an "obvious answer" in a practice block, I just pick it.. but on the real deal, it's easy to get caught up in thinking "can this really be the answer?".. and then it gets even worse when you catch them trying to trick you, because it then makes every other "easy answer" later even more unsettling than the ones you have to work for.. ugh. I'm dreading and hopeful for the score release, and will be crossing my fingers in the meantime!
 
Let me correct myself... I would say that at least 75% of my exam could be referenced in FA/UWorld/Goljan audio. That is all I studied from. What I was referring to earlier was an exact 46 question exam block....I truly believe it was comprised of off-the-wall, challenging, obscure concepts that arent directly taught in medical school or in the aforementioned sources. Im not trying to scare anyone, but thats my honest opinion (and this is coming from someone with advanced standing in medical school who has already had clinical medical training....that still doesnt make this exam that much easier! The details learned on Step 1 are quickly forgotten once in residency).

My take, though, is that most people cannot remember every single detail from FA/UWorld (at least I cant). So, just because I could flip through FA after taking Step 1 and say "oh, this was on the exam, so was this, etc etc," it doesnt necessarily mean that I had it memorized. I think that is the most frustrating part of the exam- seeing a question, remembering the exact page you saw it on, but not knowing that ONE TINY DETAIL they felt most important....a fair amount of that for me on the exam.

There are quite a bit of things (25%) on the exam that are SO basic that I glanced over them in FA (such as just knowing the EXACT definition of intracellular organelles would get you the correct answer...the problem, though, is that these details can often be glanced over when studying).

On the other hand (25%), there are a fair amount things as detailed as being able to interpret results from certain diagnostic devices (sorry folks, but I cannot go into detail...dont want to get grilled for discussing exam content).

As for the majority (50%), there were plenty of fair questions that are "base knowledge" and conceptual (ie identifying pathology, knowing treatments, how drugs work, etc).

The hardest part about the exam, though, is the TIME CONSTRAINT. I fly through UWorld, but on the real thing, I took my time reading (and Im not a fast reader to begin with). I got hosed on 2 blocks where I had like 10 questions with 5 minutes remaining... Lots of questions that I believe I could conceptualize and figure out, but had to pick an answer due to the time remaining..

I agree with the time constraint issue. I had at least three blocks where I was down to the wire on time... like 8-10 questions left with 5 or fewer minutes. Several of the questions had very long stems and lab values that I had to look up to answer... in retrospect, I should have memorized those values so those questions would have gone faster.
 
so a lot of the whole "the real exam isn't THAT much easier than Uworld" thing is recall bias from the 20 or 30 percent of questions are on par with, or harder than, UW questions. In actuality, there are a bunch of pretty easy gimme questions on the real test, stuff that you should know if you've passed the 1st two years of med school.

I agree with this. The test is fair and not difficult. If your goal is just to pass that is pretty easy. On my test there were difficult questions for sure. However, there were definitely quite a few giveaways. Many of the questions are so redundant that if you knew the information, you will get it right.

For example, a patient may come presenting with every single manifestation of neurofibroma, and the question would ask what mutation do they have. If you know the information, you will get it.

There are also plenty of hard questions, but I would say maybe 30 out of 46 on every block can be considered simple.

Study hard and you will pass. Go through all of the UWorld questions, review First Aid at least twice. Passing is not difficult at all. There's a reason the average is 220 and not 190. They put in enough simple questions that if you have solid fundamentals you will do okay.

As for the time constraint, I didn't see it being a big problem. The tough part is staying focused for 7 hours. On UWorld I usually finish with about 10 min left. On the real test I finished the first few blocks with about 15 min left just because I am so wired. However, the last 2 blocks I finished with about 5 minutes left. I could catch myself rereading questions, dozing off, failing to think through concepts quickly, etc. The length of the test wears on you. Utilize your breaks, eat powerbars, have caffeine with you. Do whatever you need to do to stay focused.
 
So you really need like 60% on Uworld to pass this thing? I have 5 weeks with only 2 weeks protected studying time. Is that enough time to go from 40% to 60%?
 
So you really need like 60% on Uworld to pass this thing? I have 5 weeks with only 2 weeks protected studying time. Is that enough time to go from 40% to 60%?

that really doesnt make a lot of sense when the UW average isnt even a 60%.. how would the avg not be passing?
 
So you really need like 60% on Uworld to pass this thing? I have 5 weeks with only 2 weeks protected studying time. Is that enough time to go from 40% to 60%?

Well, that's a statistical question -- depends on how many questions you've already done and how many questions you can possibly do in the next 5 weeks.

I think many have already said that the key point to remember is that UW is a LEARNING TOOL, not an assessment tool. It doesn't matter what % correct you get as long as you're learning well from the explanations.
 
USMLE General Information FAQ
The USMLE program recommends a minimum passing score for each Step. Each of the minimum passing scores corresponds to answering 60-70% of the items correctly. Performance standards for USMLE are based on a specified level of proficiency. As a result, no predetermined percentage of examinees will pass or fail the examination. The passing scores are reviewed periodically and may be adjusted without notice prior to score reporting.
 
So you really need like 60% on Uworld to pass this thing? I have 5 weeks with only 2 weeks protected studying time. Is that enough time to go from 40% to 60%?


You definitely don't need 60% on UWorld to pass step1. 60% on UWorld is not the same as 60% on NBME. You should definitely shoot for 50%+ though, just to give yourself some room for error.

Doing 60%+ is very doable. If you just keep doing questions and finish the entire UWorld bank, towards the end you'll probably be scoring 60%+
 
Let me correct myself... I would say that at least 75% of my exam could be referenced in FA/UWorld/Goljan audio. That is all I studied from. What I was referring to earlier was an exact 46 question exam block....I truly believe it was comprised of off-the-wall, challenging, obscure concepts that arent directly taught in medical school or in the aforementioned sources. .
I felt like it's more like 85% or so was straight from First Aid. For the most part I skipped out on Goljan's book since it's just too long to read, but I listened to him twice and went over first aid 4 times or so front to back and averaged around 75% in uworld random the last 800 questions or so (the first 1300 I just just sort of learning FA so I didn't do so hot) and ended up with a 254 on the UWA2. There was some crap I just had absolutely no idea, but that's sort of expected :D I think there's about hmm 8-10 questions I had absolutely no idea at all which correlates to only 3% but I was able to narrow them down to 3 or 2 choices so that's not too bad. I definitely got some repeated from uworld and from goljan's audio though.
 
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