NBME basic science comprehensive

[obiwan]

Hey all

Just wondering for those who have taken the bs comprehensive exam what you thought about it. i thought the questions were nothing like those i've done on usmle world and that there were a lot of more random questions with graphs and figures that were very confusing to intrepret. do you know how much alike it will be with the actual step test b/c if it is, then i don't think i'll be doing too well.

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[2cr8tive]

hi Obiwan, im taking the NBME comprehensive in a couple of weeks. any advise?

 

[agranulocytosis]

Is this NBME Basic Sciences Comprehensive the group of 4 (now 5 or 6) forms available for purchase (or illegal download)?

 

[2cr8tive]

i dont think so or else everyone at my school would ace it

 

[ASDIC]

the highest score in my class for this was 245 and the class average was 170.

 

[obiwan]

hi Obiwan, im taking the NBME comprehensive in a couple of weeks. any advise?

Its 200 questions and our school gave us 4 hours so you need to be pretty good at pacing yourself. the best thing to do is go over first aid really well. we were given a week to study for the test which gave me enough time to go over first aid once (also we have another block of pathology left so we had to learn the new stuff while we were studying). like i said, there are quite a few questions where they give you a figure/graph which I found were just really confusing so I don't know of any good way to study for those. good luck.

 

[obiwan]

Is this NBME Basic Sciences Comprehensive the group of 4 (now 5 or 6) forms available for purchase (or illegal download)?

No, the basic comprehensive exam is an NBME exam that is administered by your school. those other exams are just sample step 1s that you pay for to take.

 

[agranulocytosis]

the highest score in my class for this was 245 and the class average was 170.

Our school requires a 55% raw on the test to pass, meaning the school internally curves the scores somehow so that 55% raw becomes 70% weighted. I've heard it's actually quite tough to score 55?

 

[InternationlDoc]

my % on kaplan behavioral (after 100 questions) is an 82%....I would be happy to get a 52% on the shelf I took!! I thought the shelf exam was tough (granted I took it lightly and did not review prior to exam - just did Qbank + Qbook without reviewing much psychopharm or some behavioral crap)

I think Obiwan is correct with respect to pacing. I had 55 questions left in the end and 30 minutes to dothem in dunno WTH I was so slow in the first 2 hours

Don't know about the comprehensive test, but could only imagine it too be even harder than subject shelf I took.

Incidentally, I already took 150 released item thingin from NBME and got 88% on it...soo...really we come back to the original question: These subject shelves or comprehensive NBME representative of step???!!

If yes then

 

[Redrox]

We just took ours today and I was wondering, is the comprehensive basic science exam the same every year and between schools?

 

[Argatroban]

I took the NBME comp also. My USMLE world average was pretty much a dead on predictor of my comp score. One of my friends took the step soon after and scored somewhere very close to his comp score.

 

[MedLover25]

We just took ours today and I was wondering, is the comprehensive basic science exam the same every year and between schools?

No, it is not.

 

[tperrin]

Our school requires a raw score of 60% on the NBME comp shelf. Anyone know the USMLE step 1 equivalent to this 60%?

 

[Redrox]

175.
It's not unreasonable, I scored 84(235) with two months of school to go, but it still seems like kind of a dick move for the school to require everybody to net a passing step 1 score without having begun their study month.

 

[Consul]

I took the NBME comprehensive at school a couple of weeks ago and scored an 86 (240). I skimmed through First Aid a few times but no hard core studying. The questions were a little wierd with lots of charts and pictures. Overall, almost everything could be found in First Aid. I probably guessed on about 30 questions (out of 200 total).

We get a couple of months off to study for the Step. How many points do people typically improve after taking this baseline exam? My goal is 250+.