I recently took Comlex level 3 and I wanted to share my experience. I finished comquest at 78% first time average, combank with 73% average untimed mode. I scored a 230+ (i'll leave it at that) on USMLE step 2 and below 450 on Comlex step 2 with my OMM actually being above average on the score report.
Whenever I finish a 40 question combank or comquest test, I can assure myself of my overall score within 10% almost 99% of the time, meaning I know I would get 30-32/40 correct and that would for the most part be my score every time. However, when I took comlex level 3, I can guarantee myself that there is no possible way I scored above 55% correct on that examination. I wrote a tally at the end of each section of questions I had "marked" and the total was 120, meaning any 1/5 of those answers could have been correct. I could guarantee 100 were correct. That leaves 180 questions where I would give myself no more than 1/2 chance of being correct. Based on this total calculation I got 225/400 at most which comes out to 56.25%. I spent a whole month reading kaplan master the boards, comquest, combank, savarese with all the practice tests in the back and if I took the test again I dont think its possible to score above 60%, unless I was a physician practicing for ten years and took a month off to study.
Test breakdown: 15% cardio, 10% GI, 10% Pulm, 20% peds, 10% ob/gyn, 5% OMM (which comprised of positional questions that you could not reason or you can not find in savarese, with one chapman point, and 3 viscerosomatic reflexes at most) 5% were questions on what the most proper organization to contact first after seeing a patient (CDC, local health authorities, police, etc...) and 25% completely random you will never see in medicine. 5 Questions about hepatitis markers but on combinations you have never seen in your wildest dreams, that do not exist ( I never knew you could be immunized and still have an active infection, you can have +IgG, +IgM, +core antibody, - core antigen, you name it, just draw any combination of markers out of a hat and what's the diagnosis). Unfortunately, there is no logical thinking or reasoning on this examination. For example, let's say you're a gunner and you know a certain dose of a "supplement" is the recommended dose to prevent osteoperosis in post-menopausal women, well guess what, whatever the true number is on UpToDate won't be an answer choice, I'll leave it at that.
Here's my frustration; if Combank states the average is 67% overall for users and comquest is 70% for users, I can guarantee you the average for the COMLEX Level 3 can not be more than 50% overall as compared to those other qbanks!!! If people actually score 70% correct on COMLEX, the comquest and combank true averages should be 90% and I would say a safe passing score on combank should be 85% because you will get 20% less correct on the actual COMLEX THAN ON THOSE qBANKS, I GUARANTEE IT.
But there can be no way that 50% can even be a passing score on a national board exam. Even the COMSAE you could reason 90% of the questions and if you look up the correct answer you can say "oh wow that was easy if I just thought it through." But about 1/3 of the questions on the comlex level iii can not be reasoned.
I would appreciate your guys thoughts and your experiences after the test with your actual scores and how you truly felt compared to doing the qbanks. Anybody here think they even got within 10% of the questions correct on the actaul COMLEX than they did on lets say comquest or combank?? Because I know for sure I did about 25% lower on the actual exam.