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to those people who took the beast already, how much easier were the 150 free questions than the real thing... from the few people i have talked to, some say it was easier while others say it was about the same level of difficulty.
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unoriginal said:
to those people who took the beast already, how much easier were the 150 free questions than the real thing... from the few people i have talked to, some say it was easier while others say it was about the same level of difficulty.
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I hope it's just like the real test because I just did the 150 practice questions and they were rediculously easy. Somehow I doubt the real test will be straight-forward and simple. I'll let you know in two days when I take the real thing.
 
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still - a great confidence booster for the few days prior to the exam
 
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i think these questions have the same value as the nbme exams; that is, while the questions may be less difficult, the concepts within the questions are important and knowing them well will ensure success on the real exam.
 
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lord_jeebus said:
Rather easier, and notable for lacking anything near the difficulty of the hardest 10% of real questions
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how well did your three digit estimated score (via that site with the usmle score estimator) correlate to the real thing? was it around the same level?
 
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I had several CD questions on my test, so they are worthwile in reviweing.
also some of the questions have the same difficulty than the ones in the CD
 
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I thought it was considerably easier. I did wayyy better than I could even hope for on the real thing. The closest factor was the paid NBME exams.
 
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how are you guys getting scores? i did the questions and got a % right. did u plug it into the calculator for an estimate?
 
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The score estimators take this into account when calculating your score. I got a 78% on the Free questions 2 weeks before the exam, and it was calculated to ~237. With Q-bank at 71%, it was a 234. The point being that the 7% was probably the additional "easyness (not a real word)" being taken into account.

I think that the questions were reflective of the average questions on the real test, but some of the more difficult questions from the USMLE weren't well represented on the free questions.
 
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Miami_med said:
The score estimators take this into account when calculating your score. I got a 78% on the Free questions 2 weeks before the exam, and it was calculated to ~237. With Q-bank at 71%, it was a 234. The point being that the 7% was probably the additional "easyness (not a real word)" being taken into account.

I think that the questions were reflective of the average questions on the real test, but some of the more difficult questions from the USMLE weren't well represented on the free questions.
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was your real score close to what that site projected your score based on the free questions?
edit: oops i see the question was already asked...
 
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Go to medfriends.com and go to the USMLE calculator. Some people have put together a database that equates your score on several predictive exams (150 released, Qbank, MCAT, NBME forms) to the real thing. It will give you your 70% confidence interval. So for Miami's 78% on the released questions this website says his 70% confidence interval is 135 +/- 11.

I think it's interesting that the tightest confidence interval of the four values is the 150 released questions. The MCAT has a +/- of 17 points, and Qbank and the NBMEs have confidence intervals of +/- 13. I just hope our year's 150 released questions isn't abnormally easy compared to previous years.
 
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i've heard that some of the free questions pop up on the real exam ..... i know that some of the questions on the real exam aren't counted cause they're being evaluated for future exams. do you guys think the free questions will be counted? also, does anybody know how many of the questions on the exam won't be counted? is it 50 or less?
 
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According to the NBME between 10 and 20% of your 350 questions will be "experimental" and not counted in your final score.

I could only pick out one experimental question on my test-it had a typo.
 
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Hallm_7 said:
Go to medfriends.com and go to the USMLE calculator. Some people have put together a database that equates your score on several predictive exams (150 released, Qbank, MCAT, NBME forms) to the real thing. It will give you your 70% confidence interval. So for Miami's 78% on the released questions this website says his 70% confidence interval is 135 +/- 11.

I think it's interesting that the tightest confidence interval of the four values is the 150 released questions. The MCAT has a +/- of 17 points, and Qbank and the NBMEs have confidence intervals of +/- 13. I just hope our year's 150 released questions isn't abnormally easy compared to previous years.
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i don't think the nbme's or free 150 questions change year to year...
 
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WhoisJohnGalt said:
The NBME's don't, but the 150 free questions must, since they made a big deal about ours having audio this year. They definitely might have many of the same questions (who knows), but they do change it up a bit.
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From what current 3rd years have said, the free 150 from 2007 barely changed from the free 150 from 2006. I think the thing about having audio clips this year is just a warning that, in the future, there might be. But so far, I don't think there have been any audio clips put together with any testing materials.

At least, I hope so. I mean...audio. Just when it couldn't get worse....
 
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WhoisJohnGalt said:
The NBME's don't, but the 150 free questions must, since they made a big deal about ours having audio this year. They definitely might have many of the same questions (who knows), but they do change it up a bit.
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oh.. i was under the impression that the audio/video was just a new section added on to the end of the original free 150 questions... but i could be wrong!
 
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There weren't any questions on the 150 released that had audio or video. That made me wonder why they had audio/video in the tutorial at the beginning, especially since there isn't supposed to be audio on the real test.
 
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From those who have taken the real exam, how predictive was the medfriends score estimator in terms of these free 150 questions?
Thanks in advance :)
 
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caffeine52 said:
From those who have taken the real exam, how predictive was the medfriends score estimator in terms of these free 150 questions?
Thanks in advance :)
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I think medfriends overestimates the score of the free 150 questions. I got a 72% on those questions and medfriends estimated my Step 1 score to be 220 (+/-11). Since the questions were easier I thought, I took 11 points off and that gave me a 209. I think the score estimator on wikipedia takes into consideraion that these questions are easier. It gave a 211, which I think is still high for me. I haven't looked over 15-20% of the stuff yet. I have about 3 weeks left. But the good thing was that the questions I missed were either silly mistakes or because I hadn't looked over that material. So in my opinion, the free 150 questions test is a good test to take to determine whether the test taker remembers the memorized material or whether he/she is having problems applying the concepts.

Here's the scoring table on wiki. They also have explanations for these questions.
http://www.wikitestprep.org/sample_nbme.asp
 
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The free 150 questions were easier than the real thing, but the score med friends estimated was close to my actual score. I think if you have time, the free 150 are still worth doing (but I would give preference to the NBME practice exams if you are limited for time). Overall, medfriends was a good predictor of my score (except I scored higher than what it predicted from my MCAT score).
 
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Fusion said:
Same question here - could someone post the link? I can't seem to find it anywhere on the nbme website, though I see options for the $45 assessments.
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http://www.usmle.org/Orientation/2008/menu.html
 
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I did the first 50 of these after I was done studying and they are sooo much easier than NBME, UW, kaplan etc. When I take my test tomorrow I can comment on that, but I have to say, I can only hope the test will be like those.
 
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They are awesome. Most similar to the real one among: UW, Qbook and Qbank. I haven't seen the paid NBME though.
 
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