2011 COMLEX Level I Experiences and Scores Thread

[bleeker10]

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Haven't seen a thread like this for those of us taking the beast this year so I thought I'd make one. When's everyone taking it? I'm taking it May 24th so I now have just over 60 days until I take it.

What materials are being used? I'm using FA, Goljan, BRS Phys, and Savarese along w/ Kaplan COMLEX and USMLE Qbanks (provided by school), USMLEWorld, and COMBANK.

Anyone taking USMLE too? I'm undecided since I'm military. I'll see where I'm at in a month and I can schedule it then.

 

[autumnsnow]

So I haven't done much of biochem yet, and I was wondering what were the highyield sections from within that subject? There always seems to be questions from the genetics portion, but is there anything else that's always tested?

 

[countthestars]

Aside from genetics, biochem just isn't high yield enough for the COMLEX to go crazy over it.

 

[lion2013]

took my exam yesterday. WOW....not only was it poorly written and tested ridiculously random stuff that didn't seem to mesh with my 1st two yrs of med school, but I think the state standardized testing done at the elementary school level involves more rationality, better grammar and relevant images... I felt like for half the Qs I was guessing. There was literally no micro....out of 400 Qs, maybe 20ish. Barely any repro, the OMT wasn't bad minus random crap I've never been taught/I think they totally made it up haha. Good thing I'm taking the USMLE or I'd feel like a complete ***** for studying respiratory, renal, cardio and heme. In contrast to what a lot of stuff people have been saying, my test form barelyhad any repro and what was tested was really simple....once again, it was so poorly written that at some times I felt like I was trying to decipher what a toddler was saying. Another 2 months would not have prepared me for that. Oh yeah...it was nothing like my comsaes or COMBANK. I hope the curve is good + 😡 + 🙁 +

 

[Sydney Pierce]

Did any of you who have taken it think that many of the concepts that repeatedly appear on COMBANK reflected the concepts actually being tested?

I have gone through Goljan and FA a couple of times, but have really focused my studying on knowing concepts that come up over and over on the tests I take on COMBANK (ie re-read the sections in FA/Goljan for every single question I do).

I just dont want to be completely thrown off test day (which may happen anyway since this is a crap shoot), but I was just wondering what you thought (besides it being random) where you happy with COMBANK's ability to teach you important concepts?

Thanks!

 

[Hokie06]

hey sydney, i finished combank yesterday and took a comsae exam today. im not sure if the comsae questions are representative of the real exam, but in my opinion, comsae exam was about on par with combank. so i would say if you are doing well on combank, you will likely do well on comsae also. they are pretty straight forward. a few questions were vague but even those you can get to the answer by elimination. hope this helps!

 

[fenceguy1984]

I've seen at least 3 people say they had a bunch of birth control Qs on their test. What kind of info are they asking? Any good sources since there's not much of anything in FA.

My buddy took his COMLEX last week. Said it was pretty heavy in Psych drugs, including over doses (just like on COMBANK), lots of Qs on inherited diseases and their mechanisms, he also had lots of repro birth control Qs. Umm, what else . . . said not much biochem at all, just some simple genetics for those inherited diseases. Lots of OMM but easy chapman pts. He said there were a good number of very simple "gimmie" questions. Overall he said it wasn't too bad and he was glad for totally blowing off studying biochem.

2 weeks and counting . . . wrapped up the last 200 or so Qs on combank this week averaging between 75-85, more towards the 80's if I don't click the micro of pharm button 😉

 

[OneChance28]

What have you done so far? If you haven't already, go through all of Combank. That should get you at least all the easy questions down that can add up quick if you make a few small mistakes. Also, which areas were weak for you according to COMSAE?

I have gone through most of Uworld with about a 50% average and about 300 question on combank with 66-75 average. C told me that my micro was the weakest heavy topic. On B that moved up to the other side and couple categories came down but pharm and couple others went up. The consistent weaknesses are where Health promotion, thermoregulation, and stuff like that. Since micro, pharm, path, and phys are usually higher yield and those have moved up; I was expecting my score to be better. I have no idea how interpret where I am really at and how to approach this last push.

 

[dozitgetchahi]

Took this thing last Monday. Here's my impressions...

- Very different beast vs. the USMLE. Just as everyone's been saying, many qs were vague and written so that more than one answer was arguably correct. Other times I'd read a question, pause and go "wtf are they even trying to ask here?" There are somewhat fewer "reasoning" qs and more "you know it or you don't" qs, although I was surprised at how easy it was to rule out some answer choices at times. On many qs there simply aren't good distractors, which can be used to your advantage.

- This exam is long. At 400 qs, it's nearly a block and a half longer than the USMLE (332 qs) in terms of raw question volume. I felt like sheer endurance and willpower came into play more with the COMLEX than the USMLE.

- Qs seemed to emphasize random facts learned in the first 2 years of medical school much more than the USMLE.

- OB/GYN qs were really, really in depth. My school has a very detailed women's health block, and even with that experience + my rather intensive boards study effort I felt like there were at least 2-3 OB/GYN qs that I was simply not equipped to answer. I honestly suspect these were experimental; if I had no idea what to do with these, I can't imagine too many other people did. Oddly enough, I didn't get the birth control qs everyone is talking about (although I did see a fair few other qs mentioned here).

- I'm not sure that having only 2 days in-between the USMLE and the COMLEX were really enough to use Savarese to its full advantage. Personally, I never found OMM to be very intuitive as a medical student (although I did well in the classes), so I should've known better than to try to cram Savarese in 2 days. It's a detailed book that's loaded with facts, much like FA; thus, unless you read it in depth when you were taking OMM throughout the first 2 years (or are otherwise grossly confident in your OMM knowledge), budget yourself enough time to read Savarese more slowly. I'm sure I potentially lost points on a few relatively easy OMM qs because I didn't do this.

- There were maybe 3 pure biochem qs (all easy) and 2-3 biostats qs (again very easy). There were 2-3 very tricky embryology qs that I didn't feel came from FA, and I'm not sure how I would have gone about trying to study for them.

- I was surprised at how hard some of the micro qs were. Micro was one of my strongest subjects - I'd read CMMRS, thoroughly memorized the FA micro section, mastered the whole GT micro section and done 3 question banks' worth of micro questions - but even then I was frankly astonished at some of the details they asked about 😱. I think I managed to get all but about 2 qs right, and both of those asked for such esoteric nonsense that I'd be surprised if those qs weren't experimental.

- I also saw some fairly in-depth neuro qs that didn't seem to come directly from FA. (They seemed harder than any neuro I saw on the USMLE too.)

- You can't highlight, which I think really sucks. I also didn't like the COMLEX testing interface vs the USMLE FRED interface - not being to click directly to other flagged qs, etc is frustrating and tends to waste lots of time. Also, why can't you take a break every block? I was caffeinated and nervous for both the USMLE/COMLEX, and I really liked being able to empty my bladder every block with the USMLE. There was definitely a point in COMLEX block 6 where I was losing my edge because my bladder was on the verge of bursting.

- Matching! My 7th block was literally 75% matching/linked qs. Combine this with the matching qs from the other blocks and I think I had maybe 10-12 matching sets overall. They were everywhere on the exam I took, and some were super esoteric (one set I knew only because I'd been a political science major - I'm not sure what this stuff had to do with medicine, really).

- Not a single CT/slide was in focus. How hard can it be to make sure this is done properly for a medical licensing exam?

All in all, I just don't know how I did on the damn thing. It's nothing like the USMLE where I felt like I knew 80-85%+ of the questions cold and could make a very educated guess on most of the rest. Many COMLEX qs seemingly had so many loopholes that I'd read them once, mark an answer, read them a second time, get a whole new angle on what was potentially going on and then juke back and forth between answer choices until I had to settle at the end of the block. This hardly ever happened on the USMLE, and when it did it was usually because I'd overlooked something blatantly obvious the first time through.

All in all, good luck...

 

[Hokie06]

thanks for your feedback! how were the exams compared to the comsae exams? would you say they are comparable in difficulty?

 

[dozitgetchahi]

thanks for your feedback! how were the exams compared to the comsae exams? would you say they are comparable in difficulty?

Unfortunately I didn't have the time/money to attempt any COMSAEs (I wish I had). The only bank I have to compare with is the Kaplan COMLEX qbank, which I thought was actually pretty decent; I saw some repeats directly from it, and the difficulty was actually fairly representative of 50-60% of the real qs.

Now that I think about it, I actually got a *lot* of crazy psych qs that I only knew because my school really has an in-depth psych course. I'd like to buy my psych prof a beer at this point - his class easily bought me 10+ questions.

 

[DocShow]

A little less than two weeks out from my test and just took COMSAE A as an assessment. For those who've said their COMSAE was very different from COMLEX, what are the biggest differences?

Side note: The lack of grammar and sometimes information necessary makes the UWorld questions seem easier to me. I felt like either I really knew what they were asking about or I had absolutely no idea. Not even a chance for deductive reasoning. Just hope this isn't true for the real thing!! 😱👎

 

[pianoman90]

I have a question about the test day itself. I just took USMLE on 6/13 and took a 5 min break between each block and took 20 min for lunch which meant I only used 45min of 60 min.

I find that 5 min is enough time to stretch/restroom/etc...before starting another block. I know that people have said COMLEX has a 10 min break between 2 and 3, but are we able to take a 5 min break between each block? How do the breaks work?

 

[countthestars]

I have a question about the test day itself. I just took USMLE on 6/13 and took a 5 min break between each block and took 20 min for lunch which meant I only used 45min of 60 min.

I find that 5 min is enough time to stretch/restroom/etc...before starting another block. I know that people have said COMLEX has a 10 min break between 2 and 3, but are we able to take a 5 min break between each block? How do the breaks work?

You can ONLY take a break 3 times during the test. One is a 10 min break between block 2 and block 3 another is a 40 min break between block 4 and block 5 and the last break is a 10 min break between block 6 and 7. That's it. I asked my testing center if I took a 5 min break between 1 and 2 what would happen...they said if I did take a break, I would be written up for taking an unauthorized break. Remember, the 10 min breaks count towards your test time.

 

[Hokie06]

so are you given 4 hours to complete 200 questions with 10 minutes for a bathroom break b/w block 2 and 3 that counts toward your testing time? can you spend more than 1 hour on a block of 50 questions since u are given a total 4 hours?

 

[dozitgetchahi]

so are you given 4 hours to complete 200 questions with 10 minutes for a bathroom break b/w block 2 and 3 that counts toward your testing time? can you spend more than 1 hour on a block of 50 questions since u are given a total 4 hours?

Yes - you can essentially allocate your time for specific blocks within that 4 hour span however you'd like.

 

[Jiggles100]

Just a question about the Kaplan Q bank and results? What are people averaging on the Qbank? I'm about 63% first time through and 77% second time.

Can anyone speak to how that reflects on the actual COMLEX?

Also, in reading about the COMSAE, they say you do about 26 points better on the COMLEX, do people know if that is true?

Congrats to everyone thats done and best of luck to those who still have to go.

Also, quick poll - my school won't allow us to continue to 3rd yr rotations without passing COMLEX, are there schools out there that let you go on and start no matter what happens on step 1?

 

[phinee16]

Does anyone know how predictive the COMSAEs are? I know that COMSAE B & C are closest to the exam, but do they overpredict/underpredict by a lot?

Also, is there a forum for discussion about the different COMSAE questioins like there are for NBMEs?

Thanks!

 

[Hokie06]

Just a question about the Kaplan Q bank and results? What are people averaging on the Qbank? I'm about 63% first time through and 77% second time.

Can anyone speak to how that reflects on the actual COMLEX?

Also, in reading about the COMSAE, they say you do about 26 points better on the COMLEX, do people know if that is true?

Congrats to everyone thats done and best of luck to those who still have to go.

Also, quick poll - my school won't allow us to continue to 3rd yr rotations without passing COMLEX, are there schools out there that let you go on and start no matter what happens on step 1?

finished COMBANK first pass mid 80s

 

[emkrueger]

Just a question about the Kaplan Q bank and results? What are people averaging on the Qbank? I'm about 63% first time through and 77% second time.

Can anyone speak to how that reflects on the actual COMLEX?

Also, in reading about the COMSAE, they say you do about 26 points better on the COMLEX, do people know if that is true?

Congrats to everyone thats done and best of luck to those who still have to go.

Also, quick poll - my school won't allow us to continue to 3rd yr rotations without passing COMLEX, are there schools out there that let you go on and start no matter what happens on step 1?

i've been manually calculating the averages last dozen or so 50q random blocks that i've done, and it seems to consistently range from 64-68%

 

[caspace9]

for those that already took the comlex, were specific OMT treatments and set ups (counterstrain, muscle energy etc) heavily asked or just general principles?

 

[fenceguy1984]

😳)

 

[Hokie06]

.

 

[bleeker10]

I emailed the NBOME today to ask when scores should be released. I was told there's no real timeline for releasing scores but it takes 4-6 weeks and the May 24th test will be released no later than the week of July 4th.

 

[deleted245139]

So following a wedding and a honeymoon, I thought I would post my experience:

Exam Date: May 27th
Resources: 2yrs of ass-busting, Goljan, FA, HY molecular/cell, HY behavioral (very underrated book IMHO), and HY Neuro (along with a smattering of others)
Exam Prep: COMBANK (2 times), Kaplan COMLEX bank (1.5 times), Kaplan full-length (absolutly excellent... 400q, timed, equivelent difficulty to COMSAE i would say, and you can review each Q with a full explanation... budget a full day for it, but in retrospect, and excellent -and free- resource), COMSAE B

First... a horror story:
This may infact be a world record, so please take note and notify Guiness. As I walk into the Prometric testing center, and sit down for the intake, the proctor scans my drivers license.
"sir, your license is expired"
"oh gosh, yeah, my birthday was two weeks prior... no big deal though.... right? RIGHT?!?!!?!?"
"I can't let you take the exam sir, I'm sorry..."
"WHAAAAaAAATTT?!?!" followed by what I can only describe as a combination of crying, whimpering, and I may have pee'd a little (JK haha)
Her suggestion was to find the closest DMV and recert then come back... it was 945am, and the allowed me till 1015 to make it back to whick I thought 'this lady is NUTS... a DMV in 30 min??'
As I left the location in a panic, thinking that I would owe 600$ more and another test day, and postpone a wedding and tell my now-wife... i was devastated. While passing downtown though, I decided I needed to try. I cut across 3 lanes, and to make a long story short, defied the laws of science and made it to a DMV and got a new license in 30 min.
I walked back into the test center at 1016, shirt untucked, hair a mess (side-note: I look psychotic in my new license hahah), and sat for the test.

Reflections on the test:
Now my recollection will be spotty, but suffice it to say, I was able to take the test (though it took me till around 5 or 6 pm to finish it thanks to the AM snafu).
My exam was a GI-fest, which took my by surprise. I've never heard of someone saying they had alot of that, so I went light with my review on it. I was glad I was comfortable with GI, but I suppose I wish I put more into it... che sera sera though... You can't beat yourself up over it.
Things that they went crazy on: GI, Neuro, Repro
Things they went light on: Respiratory, pharm (thank God haha)
Thing I didn't see at all: cystic fibrosis (genetics in general), BCH (some metabolic DZ were on there)

My review is sparse, and I apologize, but In terms of recourses, I hope this may help:
COMBANK - excellent. A little on the easy side, but the question pace and structure really prepare you nicely for the exam
Kaplan COMLEX - very good, liked the structure, liked the pacing.
Kaplan full length COMLEX - best thing I did... A full 8hr 400 Q exam, identical breaks/pacing/structure as the actual exam, a FULL review after the test, and a breakdown of your score both by dicipline and system. best of all, if you have the Kaplan Q bank, its a free test. The grade issued is a raw, 2-digit score of % correct, and try as I might, I could not find a conversion so I have no idea what a 'good' score would be.
USMLE-World - this may be blaspheme, BUT I only did about 1000 Q. Here was my thought... I only took COMLEX. The writing of the questions and the structure between the two are STARKLY different. I felt comfortable with my thought processes and sort of thought Uworld would only hurt me by forcing me into a different thought process. I notices my scores would fluctuate in both USMLE and COMLEX Qs if I did one then the other... SOOOO I put all my eggs in one backet
Kaplan USMLE - see above... did about half
GOLJAN - I started outlining this in Jan and passed thru it nearly 3 times. I LOVED it and really made it a principle resource (more-so than FA). It's ALOT of detailed stuff, but each chapter really interrelates concepts and systems which I found helpful in constructing my thought processes.
FA - great, though a bit light, and I did minimal annotation. I really didn't touch this till 7 or so weeks out. (weird, I know)

Anyway, I hope this was helpful, if not motivational - If I can take my test after a horror show like that morning, and I can survive it, every one of you guys/gals can kill this thing.

I wish you all the best of luck, and I'm crossing every finger and toe that the scores exceed everyone of our wildest hopes. Good luck to all!!

(please disregard spelling errors... I'm terrible, I know it, and my wife rips on me all the time for it already )

 

[bleeker10]

So following a wedding and a honeymoon, I thought I would post my experience:

Exam Date: May 27th
Resources: 2yrs of ass-busting, Goljan, FA, HY molecular/cell, HY behavioral (very underrated book IMHO), and HY Neuro (along with a smattering of others)
Exam Prep: COMBANK (2 times), Kaplan COMLEX bank (1.5 times), Kaplan full-length (absolutly excellent... 400q, timed, equivelent difficulty to COMSAE i would say, and you can review each Q with a full explanation... budget a full day for it, but in retrospect, and excellent -and free- resource), COMSAE B

First... a horror story:
This may infact be a world record, so please take note and notify Guiness. As I walk into the Prometric testing center, and sit down for the intake, the proctor scans my drivers license.
"sir, your license is expired"
"oh gosh, yeah, my birthday was two weeks prior... no big deal though.... right? RIGHT?!?!!?!?"
"I can't let you take the exam sir, I'm sorry..."
"WHAAAAaAAATTT?!?!" followed by what I can only describe as a combination of crying, whimpering, and I may have pee'd a little (JK haha)
Her suggestion was to find the closest DMV and recert then come back... it was 945am, and the allowed me till 1015 to make it back to whick I thought 'this lady is NUTS... a DMV in 30 min??'
As I left the location in a panic, thinking that I would owe 600$ more and another test day, and postpone a wedding and tell my now-wife... i was devastated. While passing downtown though, I decided I needed to try. I cut across 3 lanes, and to make a long story short, defied the laws of science and made it to a DMV and got a new license in 30 min.
I walked back into the test center at 1016, shirt untucked, hair a mess (side-note: I look psychotic in my new license hahah), and sat for the test.

Reflections on the test:
Now my recollection will be spotty, but suffice it to say, I was able to take the test (though it took me till around 5 or 6 pm to finish it thanks to the AM snafu).
My exam was a GI-fest, which took my by surprise. I've never heard of someone saying they had alot of that, so I went light with my review on it. I was glad I was comfortable with GI, but I suppose I wish I put more into it... che sera sera though... You can't beat yourself up over it.
Things that they went crazy on: GI, Neuro, Repro
Things they went light on: Respiratory, pharm (thank God haha)
Thing I didn't see at all: cystic fibrosis (genetics in general), BCH (some metabolic DZ were on there)

My review is sparse, and I apologize, but In terms of recourses, I hope this may help:
COMBANK - excellent. A little on the easy side, but the question pace and structure really prepare you nicely for the exam
Kaplan COMLEX - very good, liked the structure, liked the pacing.
Kaplan full length COMLEX - best thing I did... A full 8hr 400 Q exam, identical breaks/pacing/structure as the actual exam, a FULL review after the test, and a breakdown of your score both by dicipline and system. best of all, if you have the Kaplan Q bank, its a free test. The grade issued is a raw, 2-digit score of % correct, and try as I might, I could not find a conversion so I have no idea what a 'good' score would be.
USMLE-World - this may be blaspheme, BUT I only did about 1000 Q. Here was my thought... I only took COMLEX. The writing of the questions and the structure between the two are STARKLY different. I felt comfortable with my thought processes and sort of thought Uworld would only hurt me by forcing me into a different thought process. I notices my scores would fluctuate in both USMLE and COMLEX Qs if I did one then the other... SOOOO I put all my eggs in one backet
Kaplan USMLE - see above... did about half
GOLJAN - I started outlining this in Jan and passed thru it nearly 3 times. I LOVED it and really made it a principle resource (more-so than FA). It's ALOT of detailed stuff, but each chapter really interrelates concepts and systems which I found helpful in constructing my thought processes.
FA - great, though a bit light, and I did minimal annotation. I really didn't touch this till 7 or so weeks out. (weird, I know)

Anyway, I hope this was helpful, if not motivational - If I can take my test after a horror show like that morning, and I can survive it, every one of you guys/gals can kill this thing.

I wish you all the best of luck, and I'm crossing every finger and toe that the scores exceed everyone of our wildest hopes. Good luck to all!!

(please disregard spelling errors... I'm terrible, I know it, and my wife rips on me all the time for it already )

And after that big mess before your test started, you still probably crushed it. You lucky dog

 

[countthestars]

Prob not a good idea to post test questions here...just saying.

 

[countthestars]

Sorry, thought that was a comlex test question because I remember a question almost exactly like the one you posted on my test...Posting test questions is not a good idea because you might get in trouble discussing test questions from the NBOME. I would be cautious about it...

 

[bowk]

I took Comlex last week and was surprised by the amount of material that I was blindsighted with. It was a ton of RANDOM questions; however, our dean told us apx. 20% of questions are "pilot" questions and don't count so when I had no idea what was being asked I just chalked it up to pilot and moved on.

I have spent the past three months preparing...used mostly First Aid (did case studies USMLE book and their question book too), did COMBANK, USMLEWORLD, took 2 comsaes (scored high 500s), and read Savarese. I was pretty confident going in but left hoping that everyone walked away from it feeling shaky.

I took USMLE this week and it is a much better written test. Overall, the COMLEX was poorly written with very vague questions leaving you wondering what the question writer was going for. The OMM killed me. There was an OMM question every 4-5 questions and there were OMM words I had never heard of. There were quite a few OMM questions re: TMJ, cranial treatments, SIMS positions, lots of sacral questions, and MANY questions re: muscle attachements and innervations (both autonomic and somatic) to organs/body parts. The neuromuscular system was by far the heaviest part of my exam, disc herniations, anatomy, dermatomes, nerve palsys---had to know all this cold. Other big sections- biliary system, repro (birth control, cancer), and nuero (lots of localizing lesion questions). There was a diabetes drug that I'd never seen before and also a few contraindication pharm questions that again were not in First Aid. Compared to USMLE, COMLEX asked way more "treat with X" questions.

The time was the biggest issue, you have 4 hours to take AM and 4 hours to take PM section. The clock runs continuously and I wish it was split into hour segments like USMLE. It's easy to want to stay on a section but don't do it! You'll run out of time near end, so pace yourself. Time was an issue for me with each section. There really wasn't enough time to take any breaks other than 40 minute lunch break so don't drink a ton in AM before test.

 

[Hokie06]

hey bowk, congrats on being finished with everything! it seems like you had a lot of MSK/anatomy questions, do you think its worth memorizing the appendix with all the muscles, innervations, insertions, and origins at the end of savarese? some people have said earlier this wasnt necessary, what is your opinion?

 

[popcorn11]

yeah i was wondering the same thing..how specific do we have to know the levels of innervation..like do we have to know it as specifically as differentiating between L1-L3 and L2-L4? and do we have to know muscles like palmaris longus/flexor digitorum profundus and flexors and all that??

 

[DocShow]

I took Comlex last week and was surprised by the amount of material that I was blindsighted with. It was a ton of RANDOM questions; however, our dean told us apx. 20% of questions are "pilot" questions and don't count so when I had no idea what was being asked I just chalked it up to pilot and moved on.

I have spent the past three months preparing...used mostly First Aid (did case studies USMLE book and their question book too), did COMBANK, USMLEWORLD, took 2 comsaes (scored high 500s), and read Savarese. I was pretty confident going in but left hoping that everyone walked away from it feeling shaky.

I took USMLE this week and it is a much better written test. Overall, the COMLEX was poorly written with very vague questions leaving you wondering what the question writer was going for. The OMM killed me. There was an OMM question every 4-5 questions and there were OMM words I had never heard of. There were quite a few OMM questions re: TMJ, cranial treatments, SIMS positions, lots of sacral questions, and MANY questions re: muscle attachements and innervations (both autonomic and somatic) to organs/body parts. The neuromuscular system was by far the heaviest part of my exam, disc herniations, anatomy, dermatomes, nerve palsys---had to know all this cold. Other big sections- biliary system, repro (birth control, cancer), and nuero (lots of localizing lesion questions). There was a diabetes drug that I'd never seen before and also a few contraindication pharm questions that again were not in First Aid. Compared to USMLE, COMLEX asked way more "treat with X" questions.

The time was the biggest issue, you have 4 hours to take AM and 4 hours to take PM section. The clock runs continuously and I wish it was split into hour segments like USMLE. It's easy to want to stay on a section but don't do it! You'll run out of time near end, so pace yourself. Time was an issue for me with each section. There really wasn't enough time to take any breaks other than 40 minute lunch break so don't drink a ton in AM before test.

Thanks for the feedback, bowk! I feel the same way about the break situation. It makes it much easier to keep track of time, even if that's not necessarily an issue for you. Would you say the COMSAEs you took were comparable to the real deal? My school requires us to take and pass form C before we take COMLEX, and I took form A on my own. I scored mid-500s on both. Kind of disappointing, but I'm still 10 days out, so maybe I have time to bring it up a couple more points.

 

[deleted245139]

(for me at least) COMSAE was pretty spot on in terms of difficulty level. Different topics were covered, but everything else was consistant. As Bleeker said in an earlier post, the image quality is identical: ie, horrible. I stared at one pic for what must have been 10 min. and finally pushed my chair back to realize it was a zoomed in and terrible picture of an 'apple-core' lesion. crazy.

10 days left will serve you well... hit on your weaknesses, and youll do just fine! good luck!

 

[Sydney Pierce]

real quick question and would appreciate your thoughts. i have a couple of days left and plan on taking the majority of the day before off, but i was wondering what is most logical. i have gone through all of my combank q's and redone the micro and was thinking of just studying my butt off on the major high yield stuff and not do any more questions. i feel like i'll be learning/cramming stuff in whcih is good, but i know everybody says do questions, questions, and more questions. thoughts??

 

[deleted245139]

if youve finished the Q banks, and are down to just a few days, it may be best to hammer on things that are short term like pharm, the FA HY lists in the back, goljan blue margins, ect... absolutly take the day before to rest. it did wonders for me. I did half days the two days before the test and it really let things settle for me and gel. You'll do great... keep up the hard work and you'll be thru the finish line before u know it.

 

[Hokie06]

i agree with janus, finished qbank 5 days ago and i've been reviewing materials that im weak in since. taking the test in 2 days~ good luck!

 

[kevinra]

James Makker Neurosurgeon provides his high quality neurosurgery services to individuals in need of the best medical service and care. Aside from his private practice with individual patients, he also performs spine and neurosurgery at three hospitals within the region. His expertise and quality is well known and reputed within the local and state medical community.

 

[bleeker10]

Well four weeks has come and gone and still no score. I'm betting it's a full 6 weeks before we get our scores which sucks

 

[Dissected]

Took this thing last Monday. Here's my impressions...

- Very different beast vs. the USMLE. Just as everyone's been saying, many qs were vague and written so that more than one answer was arguably correct. Other times I'd read a question, pause and go "wtf are they even trying to ask here?" There are somewhat fewer "reasoning" qs and more "you know it or you don't" qs, although I was surprised at how easy it was to rule out some answer choices at times. On many qs there simply aren't good distractors, which can be used to your advantage.

- This exam is long. At 400 qs, it's nearly a block and a half longer than the USMLE (332 qs) in terms of raw question volume. I felt like sheer endurance and willpower came into play more with the COMLEX than the USMLE.

- Qs seemed to emphasize random facts learned in the first 2 years of medical school much more than the USMLE.

- OB/GYN qs were really, really in depth. My school has a very detailed women's health block, and even with that experience + my rather intensive boards study effort I felt like there were at least 2-3 OB/GYN qs that I was simply not equipped to answer. I honestly suspect these were experimental; if I had no idea what to do with these, I can't imagine too many other people did. Oddly enough, I didn't get the birth control qs everyone is talking about (although I did see a fair few other qs mentioned here).

- I'm not sure that having only 2 days in-between the USMLE and the COMLEX were really enough to use Savarese to its full advantage. Personally, I never found OMM to be very intuitive as a medical student (although I did well in the classes), so I should've known better than to try to cram Savarese in 2 days. It's a detailed book that's loaded with facts, much like FA; thus, unless you read it in depth when you were taking OMM throughout the first 2 years (or are otherwise grossly confident in your OMM knowledge), budget yourself enough time to read Savarese more slowly. I'm sure I potentially lost points on a few relatively easy OMM qs because I didn't do this.

- There were maybe 3 pure biochem qs (all easy) and 2-3 biostats qs (again very easy). There were 2-3 very tricky embryology qs that I didn't feel came from FA, and I'm not sure how I would have gone about trying to study for them.

- I was surprised at how hard some of the micro qs were. Micro was one of my strongest subjects - I'd read CMMRS, thoroughly memorized the FA micro section, mastered the whole GT micro section and done 3 question banks' worth of micro questions - but even then I was frankly astonished at some of the details they asked about 😱. I think I managed to get all but about 2 qs right, and both of those asked for such esoteric nonsense that I'd be surprised if those qs weren't experimental.

- I also saw some fairly in-depth neuro qs that didn't seem to come directly from FA. (They seemed harder than any neuro I saw on the USMLE too.)

- You can't highlight, which I think really sucks. I also didn't like the COMLEX testing interface vs the USMLE FRED interface - not being to click directly to other flagged qs, etc is frustrating and tends to waste lots of time. Also, why can't you take a break every block? I was caffeinated and nervous for both the USMLE/COMLEX, and I really liked being able to empty my bladder every block with the USMLE. There was definitely a point in COMLEX block 6 where I was losing my edge because my bladder was on the verge of bursting.

- Matching! My 7th block was literally 75% matching/linked qs. Combine this with the matching qs from the other blocks and I think I had maybe 10-12 matching sets overall. They were everywhere on the exam I took, and some were super esoteric (one set I knew only because I'd been a political science major - I'm not sure what this stuff had to do with medicine, really).

- Not a single CT/slide was in focus. How hard can it be to make sure this is done properly for a medical licensing exam?

All in all, I just don't know how I did on the damn thing. It's nothing like the USMLE where I felt like I knew 80-85%+ of the questions cold and could make a very educated guess on most of the rest. Many COMLEX qs seemingly had so many loopholes that I'd read them once, mark an answer, read them a second time, get a whole new angle on what was potentially going on and then juke back and forth between answer choices until I had to settle at the end of the block. This hardly ever happened on the USMLE, and when it did it was usually because I'd overlooked something blatantly obvious the first time through.

All in all, good luck...

Thanks for the review...I took the USMLE on monday and have been trying to stay focused on OMM these past few days since I take the COMLEX tomorrow. I was expecting/fearing that this would be the case, but what can you do? I don't think I would have prepared any differently, because you can't prepare better for an exam that has unclear and vague questions. I'm probably just going to try and get a lot of sleep tonight and power through it as best I can. I'm more worried about my USMLE score anyway.

Best of luck to everyone taking it in the near future, we're all in the same boat!

 

[autumnsnow]

for those who have already taken it, aside from birth control was there any other pharm that was emphasized? any heme/onc drugs?

 

[beachblonde]

Thanks for the review...I took the USMLE on monday and have been trying to stay focused on OMM these past few days since I take the COMLEX tomorrow. I was expecting/fearing that this would be the case, but what can you do? I don't think I would have prepared any differently, because you can't prepare better for an exam that has unclear and vague questions. I'm probably just going to try and get a lot of sleep tonight and power through it as best I can. I'm more worried about my USMLE score anyway.

Best of luck to everyone taking it in the near future, we're all in the same boat!

We're in the same boat, I am sincerely dreading taking the comlex. I felt like the usmle really just wasn't that awful.

My school kinda didn't teach cranial so I am afraid I might be totally screwed. This stupid exam has already made a bunch of my friends cry.

 

[countthestars]

for those who have already taken it, aside from birth control was there any other pharm that was emphasized? any heme/onc drugs?

I had pharm from every subject including heme/onc. Probably had 4 or 5 anti-cancer drugs

 

[Dissected]

We're in the same boat, I am sincerely dreading taking the comlex. I felt like the usmle really just wasn't that awful.

Totally. The USMLE was totally doable, because you can prepare for most of the questions.. almost all of them were within reason if you were were ready for it. I guess I can't complain about the COMLEX until I take it, but I'm about at the point of conceding. One more pass through cranial and I'm taking the evening off to rest 😎

Good luck! I'm sure if we can pass the USMLE we will do fine on the COMLEX though 🙂

 

[Hokie06]

thats interesting. a lot of people i talked to found usmle to be harder than the comlex. i guess every test will be different

 

[Dissected]

thats interesting. a lot of people i talked to found usmle to be harder than the comlex. i guess every test will be different

I'm probably just psyching myself out. I guess we'll find out tomorrow 🙂

 

[Hokie06]

good luck man, i'm also taking it tomorrow. taking the rest of the day off

 

[Dissected]

good luck man, i'm also taking it tomorrow. taking the rest of the day off

Thanks, good luck to you as well!!

 

[Vita]

I took it today.
It really wasn't that bad. The wording wasn't the best, but I was freaking out after ready these forums because I thought it was going to ask me a lot of things from out of nowhere. I only took COMLEX, however, and I prepped using COMBANK, and I think that helped (got me used to the wording for sure, without getting me spoiled by the well-written USMLE type questions). I don't know how I did on it, but I'd be genuinely surprised if I didn't pass it (I hope I don't have to eat my words later).
Here are some of the things I remember:
- I had probably about 10 questions or so on anti-cancer drugs. Most of the drug questions were straight forward. I think they were all in First Aid.
- 5-10 questions on drug overdoses (pretty much just identifying what the overdose was based on how the person presented, nothing too weird).
- I had lots of GI, it seemed. I had several questions that asked almost the same thing in a different way. This kinda sucked because they were in different sections of the test, and most of the time I realized too late what they were going for with the previous similar question. Ah well.
- My Micro wasn't too bad - a lot of case presentations and you had to pick the best diagnosis. A few of them were weird and I thought I had no idea of the answer, but you could eliminate down to the right answer (one of them said it was a gram negative rod or something along those lines, and all answers choices but one was a gram positive).
- I had about 10 histology images on the exam. For most of the questions, you had enough info that you didn't need to look at the image to answer it. Only 1 of them couldn't be answered from the stem alone. The quality of the images was okay - not great, not bad. Most of the time I just didn't find them helpful because I am not very good with histology - they just looked like a bunch of cells to me. Some of them were very obvious (mostly the micro ones were easy to figure out).
- I had two 12 lead EKGs. One was pretty easy to figure out,the other was a little harder but still doable, I believe. I don't think they were really trying to get difficult with them, maybe they were just experimental.
- I had probably 5ish rhythm strips. One of them wasn't enough of a rhythm strip to really read it,but I could eliminate a lot of answer choices because they were very different from each other. The remaining rhythm strips were pretty obvious, and the answer choices again made the answer jump out.
- My cranial questions could be answered from Savaresse and the qbanks. I think I had about 3-4 cranial questions.
- For the other OMM: they were pretty much straight forward. Nothing crazy, and I believe most of the info was in Savaresse (but I will admit that OMM was one of my strong points going in, so it might have just been that I got a lot that were just things I happen to know). My advice is that if you are asked a diagnosis, just figure it out on your little sheet of paper and then look at the answer choices. They give you all of the information in the stem to be able to figure it out, and looking at the answer choices just makes it harder than it needs to be.
- I had some matching of cardio drugs. They were straight forward (though I forgot one for sure).
- Some of my ethics questions were weird, but I really don't know how you could prepare for them.
- I didn't get any repro drug questions (that I remember, anyway). Maybe 1.
- Overall, the matching/sets were easier to me than the other questions because they were so straightforward. Sometimes, the next question in a set would help you answer a previous one and whatnot. One block had 1/2 of it being matching/sets, so that was nice. All blocks had at least 5-10 matching.
I'm having trouble really thinking of what else. In general, I didn't feel like my exam was as heavy in repro as others were - I think I had quite a bit more GI stuff (and a little bit of endo). Mine wasn't neuro heavy - maybe 10-15 questions total. I agree that some of them seem a bit too clinical for our level, so maybe those were experimental (I hope, anyway!). MSK was represented fairly well, mostly in the form of OMM.
I didn't have an issue on time, but I always finish exams quickly so meh. I'd say that it is doable if you don't dwell on poorly written questions (and trust me...don't dwell).

Sorry if my response seems vague - I don't know how much I am allowed to say.

 

[dozitgetchahi]

thats interesting. a lot of people i talked to found usmle to be harder than the comlex. i guess every test will be different

I guess in terms of raw difficulty they weren't that far off from each other. With the COMLEX, however, the randomness factor is the kicker. In some ways the COMLEX feels like a more comprehensive test just because the qs run the gamut of everything you could have potentially encountered during the 1st 2 years of medical school (including medical legislation, billing issues, obscure ethics stuff, and clinical qs that frankly belong on step 2).

Really, though, a lot of qs aren't that hard and I keep hearing that many qs are experimental (including a fair portion of the wacky ones). If you go in there with a solid knowledge base from FA, question banks and Savarese, I think the test is doable. Just do whatever it takes to not lose your edge during some of the later blocks.

Oh, and be careful not to blow the easy qs. I honestly thought they were trying to trick you way less on the COMLEX than the USMLE (which itself wasn't as tricky as I'd been expecting). If you see a q that looks straightforward and has an obvious answer...for the love of god pick that answer. Don't be like me and give up a few qs from overthinking.

 

[lightbonesetter]

Well, I took this bad boy today! I am relieved to be done, but now the worrying begins. I don't know if studying for it or worrying about the score for 4-6 weeks is worse. Anyways, can anyone share how exactly this thing is graded? I have heard that 10-20% of the questions are "experimental" & that it's also graded on a curve. Is that true? I wonder if the experimental questions help you, or are they just thrown out?

I thought the exam was very representative of COMBANK. I also took COMSAE, form C & thought that was a bit harder than my test today. I had my fair share of random questions, but I know Goljan's Rapid Review & my Kaplan notes for Pharm, Neuroanatomy & Micro were golden! Saverese was well-represented, too. Best wishes to all yet to take the exam! Just be CONFIDENT! You got this!

 

[linkDO]

Well, I took this bad boy today! I am relieved to be done, but now the worrying begins. I don't know if studying for it or worrying about the score for 4-6 weeks is worse. Anyways, can anyone share how exactly this thing is graded? I have heard that 10-20% of the questions are "experimental" & that it's also graded on a curve. Is that true? I wonder if the experimental questions help you, or are they just thrown out?

Yea nobody seems to know the exact amount of experimental questions. Rumors from the various deans and question writers always seem to fall in that 10-20% range though. But I'm not so sure that they even know to be perfectly honest. Someone once said they heard it was a whole single block but I dont think that makes as much sense.
Also have heard that the test is curved to a mean of 500 for whoever took that test that day. Never seen either on the NBOME site but it does say that they curve to 500.