Just finished the exam and first off I must say that I felt better leaving the USMLE than I did leaving the COMLEX. It's been said over and over again but where the USMLE will try to get you to think and reason through a problem via multiple steps the COMLEX seemed to want to trick me by witholding information (e.g. stains, too short of a vignette, obscure fungi). I'll run through each system to see what I can remember.
Embryo - none.
Behavioral - Didn't have one equation that I had to solve, no biases either. I did have one question on sleep cycles but paging through FA that's all I seem to remember from this section. Thinking back on it I don't think I had any "What would you do if a patient came in and said this" type questions either.
BioC - One vitamin question then a few tricky ones involving gluconeogenesis, lactic acidosis, ketoacidosis - personally the USMLE BioC questions that I had were more of the big diseases e.g. a lipodystrophy, so for me personally I would say that the COMLEX had harder BioC (much to my surprise)
Micro - Yuck, and I thought I liked micro. You were given the bare bones to solve what organism they were talking about. I had a tinea or two but none of the "major" clues such as pseudo hyphae, rose bush, germ tubes, midwest etc, more so what it looked like on the head but no microscopic image for me. There were the obligatory HBV questions which weren't a problem and an HIV complication or two but not much else in terms of viruses. My advice is to be very clear on aerobes vs non, the "most common cause of x" as well as its ORIGIN as I got quite a few questions on what should be done to prevent its spread or how it got onto or into the body. Frankly I think USMLE had more "buzz words" in micro than COMLEX.
Immuno - had maybe 10 immuno questions, one was a set of IL's and function which was a relief to know. These were not tricky and I'd say FA is plenty.
Path - So little Path questions it was disappointing after bathing in it while studying for USMLE. I don't think there were any unfamiliar diseases and FA + BRS or RR is plenty. Probably the worst part of path was all the chest x-rays I got with half being obvious and half being wtf. Had several clotting questions, a few on polyps, not much on cardiovascular, several endocrine, and 1-4 each of repro, m/s, and renal if my recollection is correct.
Physio - Again, not many questions and not very difficult, I woudn't lose sleep over it.
Pharm - Probably the one subject comparable to the USMLE. How's this drug work... what's the major side effect... what should you use for this infection, etc.
OMM - probably the area I was least prepared for seeing as I studied for USMLE and USMLE alone until my test April 21st and couldn't push myself like I had been these few days in between. I didn't have one sacrum question, had a few innominates, one cranial, and just some other random areas like shoulder, wrist, etc. The hardest questions weren't the diagnoses they were the contraindications when given all the comorbidities. I'm not sure where this is emphasized to heavily but I haven't been exposed to it. Also, the "what's the next step" type questions weren't my favorites either. I used Savarese the last few days but mostly just for the questions in the back and had FA for COMLEX which I used mostly for M/S diagnosis because it has excellenct pictures and explanations.
There were no A/V questions and only one EKG.
I marked questions as I went along because time was not an issue at all and on average I'd say I marked 7ish/section that I was not 90% sure on. It doesn't seem that bad now that I've typed that out but the last section I bet I marked 13+ so that's the impression that I left with I suppose.
If I could re-prepare I would read MMRS again I suppose. Though my approach was to study for USMLE and then do a few days of OMM and this should be plenty... little did I know micro would be so tough.
The obligatory disclaimer is that every test is going to be different, certainly don't use my words as a study guide. Did I get my 600? I really can't say. If anyone has any questions I should be around today/tonight but then I'M GOING TO VEGAS, BABY!
