Step I absolutely freaking out-i really need your advice.

Started by docmd2010
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docmd2010

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so i'm sure many of you have read my posts, my studied had been going really well up until today. have been scoring in the 70's on Uworld,

took nbme 4 about 5 weeks ago and got a 228
took nbme 3 about 3 weeks ago and got a 226
took nbme 6 1 week ago and got a 242
took nbme 5 just now and got a 211!!!!!!!!!!!! WTF!!!!!:scared::scared::scared:

My test is in 2 weeks exactly. Now my confidence is absolutely shot. I can push my test back if i need it, but do you recommend that?

I thought nbme 5 was the hardest one yet, not even close in difficulty to the other ones. I am in absolute dismay. Please can you help me? What the hell is going on with me? I've reviewed everything already and was just planning on reviewing stuff, but what should i do now?

Thanks
 
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Just relax. Breathe.

I heard NBME 5 underpredicts your score. NBME 5 killed me too and it was waaay off from my other NBME scores, so I wouldn't get all worked-up over it.

Like you said, you reviewed the material already. Just strengthen your weaknesses these last few days and you'll do fine.

Good Luck!
 
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you're doing uworld right? kaplan too maybe? every now and then you turn in a poor performance I bet. maybe get a 40% or something? there are weird question sets that just seem to cover stuff that each of us is particularly weak in. you definitely have strengths, or else you would not have scored as you did on previous NBMEs. fear not. there's no way NBME5 has any bearing on your step 1 score. just look at it like a rough uworld qset. you've worked too hard. don't let this rattle you. you know this stuff. just buckle down and hit FA tomorrow and do some questions.
 
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I'm in agreement with the above posters. I didn't do form 5, but if others have thought it was hard then it must have had some challenging aspects to it. Were there any specific subjects that dropped in your performance breakdown?

Just remember that 2 weeks is a ton of time. During my time studying, I kind of hit a wall at the 2-weeks-out point. I was stinking it up kinda bad on UW (getting some 50% blocks and missing questions I shouldn't have been). I actually decided to take a day off of studying and doing questions to kind of refresh and recharge, and it worked for me. Perhaps this can be useful to you, too, especially since you have some time left before your test. If you're not comfortable taking an entire day off from studying, then maybe you can study for half a day or something.

Anyways, I'm sure your drop in score is not a reflection of your studying or your intelligence. Like the others have said, you know your stuff. Just take this opportunity to take a breath, re-focus, and finish strong over these last 2 weeks. Good luck to you.
 
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thanks for your support guys. i really appreciate it. i've repeatedely sucked it up in behavioral on all the nbmes. i think that this nbme was heavily skewed. the first block had pretty close to 30-35 pharmacology questions and about 10 or so behavioral questions that were just ridiculous in my opinion. the next block was on the easier side. third block was really hard in my opinion and so was 4. 4 was mostly a combination of about 20-25 anatomy questions, about 4-6 biostats questions, and the rest molecular biology. Honestly, I would consider myself a pretty good pathology student but recieved a borderline perfromance in that area. i noticed that one of you guys said that you had a poor performance in 5 and it underpredicted ure actual score. if you don't mind me asking by how much? cuz i dropped 31 points from nbme 6 to nbme 5. Maybe nbme 6 was an overestimation of my score, and nbme 3 and 4 were in the ballpark, so now maybe that nbme 5 is only about 15-18 points away-that seems like it could be a normal variant if that was the case. I'm def. going to hit up studying hard these next 2 weeks. So ya'll think i should keep my test date where it is?

Thanks!
 
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docmd2010 said:
i noticed that one of you guys said that you had a poor performance in 5 and it underpredicted ure actual score. if you don't mind me asking by how much? cuz i dropped 31 points from nbme 6 to nbme 5. Maybe nbme 6 was an overestimation of my score, and nbme 3 and 4 were in the ballpark, so now maybe that nbme 5 is only about 15-18 points away-that seems like it could be a normal variant if that was the case. I'm def. going to hit up studying hard these next 2 weeks. So ya'll think i should keep my test date where it is?
Click to expand...

I just heard or read it on various forums and threads that it underpredicts. I have yet to take my exam. Its on June 26. I'm just an average joe, so my NBME scores are not stellar.

NBME 5 (5/23/08): 190
NBME 4 (5/30/08): 209
NBME 2 (6/12/08): 214

Now I'm not sure if I'm on an upward trend, but I found NBME 5 more difficult than the others. The difference is nearly 20 points from 5 to 4. But 4 and 2 are pretty close.

I hope to break 220+ on the real thing. 🙄

And yes, keep your exam date. I think you'll be fine.
 
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Sounds to me like 5 is pretty heavy on what most people are weak on: ridiculous pharm, random biochem and anatomy.

I would keep your exam. You have 2 weeks to improve and from the looks of it, it was either a bad day or a random exam. You have a pretty strong trend going for you with this last exam as an outlier. Have you taken a break recently? B/c if you have just been trying to motor through w/o a break you could be burning yourself out and that could easily explain your score.

Plus your "terrible performance" is really close to the national average which is a pretty good place to end up due to a bad performance...


Keep the exam and try and relax. I think it was a fluke.
 
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thank you all for your responses. I think i'll go ahead and keep my exam date. I'm going to focus on behavioral, pharm, male and female repro path, respiratory path, biostats and micro, and also neuroanatomy. those areas stick out like a sore thumb when it comes to weaknesses and i will attempt to focus on those in the next 2 weeks.

keep the responses coming everyone! thanks so much for everyone taking there time to help me.
 
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oh my gosh buddy i'm so sorry to hear the bad news! also very freaked for myself after reading! seriously though it sounds like a b**** of an exam that was not predictive, you WILL get that 240+ or at worst 235+ and we both will be happy people next month...and many freaked out sdn'ers in the future will read your tale and be much relieved when they too have similar experiences. try to forget about it, be confident cause you are gonna rock the thing
 
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hsans!

how's it goin? i guess i've been better. yeah tell me about it, that nbme 5 was a piece of ****. I got it handed to me. dropped 31 points on that thing, i don't know what the hell happened. i have no idea why i dropped so much but i sure hope to hell isn't indicative.

there could only be three reasons why my apparent drop was so large

1) NBME 6 was an overinflation-boosting my score higher than it really is.

2) NBME 4 hit every single of my weak points all in 200 questions and I just got unlucky.

3) A little bit of both.

I'm hoping that it's more of #2. I feel that it might be since i had a progression from nbme 3 and 4 to number 6 after a good 3 week of studying.

don't worry about it hsans, i'm sure u'll do fine on nbme 5. i was being ******ed on that exam, took it at like 6:00 at night and stuff. that could have something to do with my score as well. i'm really scared though, do you think i should keep my test date wher it's at. have you heard of anyone dropping that drastically and still hitting big on the real deal?

hope you're studying well, when are you taking it again?
 
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I may be late in saying this, but for me the form 5 estimate also has a healthy drop compared to what every other assessment tool has predicted.
 
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I am set for a week from Monday, cant take it any later, wasn't planning on doing any more NBMEs but now am seriously considering taking one more this wknd to make sure i'm not f-ed!! just trying to stay positive, isnt this a miserable gd experience.

but hey, you said 30-35 pharm and 20-25 anatomy, i mean come on that's a fourth of the test right there, that aint right.

i would by NO Means push ur test back, u have sooo much time really, like i said absolute worst case 235+ and that is highly dubious IMHO, no worries, and i'll let u know how mine was after its over
 
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hutchinson, thanks for the reply! So it underpredicted quite a bit for you too huh? i kinda wish i didn't take that test! although i'm working considerably harder after it! if u don't mind me asking, how much of a drop did u notice, probably wasn't as drastic as mine.

thanks for the reply hsans, good luck to you next week. send me a pm and let me know how it goes.

anyone else out there think that nbme 6 is overpredicting ure score?
 
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I took #5 and scored lower than my UW %age would suggest. However, some other people found #5 to be easy. meh...i dunno.
 
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I really have realized you can't take what SDNers say for which NBMEs are 'easy' or 'hard'. The admins at my school say that is a myth, they are all scaled appropriately. besides, easy/hard is so relative to the person, as we have clearly seen in this thread. So I would advise people in the future to not get so caught up in taking the NBMEs that are hard vs easy vs most predictive.

Anyway, to docmd, I was thinking this morning not to worry about the 'overpredicting' thing, because think of it this way. You are NOT going to get a 211, that would be ludicris as you got a 228 before studying it seems. That would never happen. So say NBME 6 over-predicted you 10 points, that seems more reasonable than 30 points. That means you're getting a 232, which is a mere 4 points better than BEFORE YOU STARTED STUDYING. I think if you think of it that way, you'll see that 211 is a whack score that you didn't deserve and will not approximate on the real thing, and that 240ish score is definitely what's more likely considering WHERE YOU STARTED and how hard you've been working (plus UW avgs)

keep at it
 
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