90% correct on STEP 1 = 265+? If you're hoping for a high score, speculate here!

[Asp]

My working hypothesis, based on talking to some others, and my own observations on medical student ability, is that a 90% on STEP I translates to about a 265+.

Unfortunately I don't have enough data, so I'm asking for your input. If you scored 80%+ on UWorld (or equivalently, 265 on the UWorld practice tests), I'd like to know how many questions you thought you missed per section, on average, on STEP I.

I'm making this thread because I think some of the percentages being tossed around are unreasonably high. I think very high scores on STEP I do not require stratospheric percentages correct (the curve is more generous than many think). If this proves correct, hopefully this can prove assuring to some people who are trying to obtain high scores for competitive specialties.

My own scores on UWorld Qbank / UWSA1 / UWSA2 are 85% / 265 (85% correct) / 265 (90% correct). I feel like I missed about 10% of questions on the real test. I think I scored a 265+, but could see myself getting a 255+ or less likely, 275+ (one can always dream =)). Anyways, if you're also bored waiting for June 14, I'd like to hear your speculations.

----------------

95% = 275+
MY INTERPRETATION: Missed 2 questions per section. You knew your stuff and you have high test-taking IQ (MCAT Verbal = 15) and flawless calibration. 1/200.

90% = 265+
MY INTERPRETATION: You missed 4-5 questions per section. You knew your stuff and have high test-taking IQ (MCAT Verbal = 13,14), but your calibration is suboptimal -- you tend to over-think some questions (i.e. overestimate their difficulty and go for the "tricky" answer) and are your worst enemy. 2/100 achieve this; these scores aren't that rare at all, especially at top schools, where it's more like 5/100 achieve this.

85% = 255+
MY INTERPRETATION: You knew your stuff, but your test-taking IQ (MCAT Verbal = 12) is limiting you. I think the best advice to people at this level is to stop focusing only on minutiae. You need to focus on the meta-test, in order to score higher. That is, not just what the question is asking, but whether the question is a "hard question" or not, and why the question is being asked (what concept is being tested?). If you can predict the % correct and the main point in the Educational Objective in UWorld, you probably have good meta-test skills.

---

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[PokerDoc]

how do you account for varying degrees of difficulty between tests.

Case and point, my test had almost no biochem on it and one of my friends had 40 biochem questions.. Had I gotten his test my % surely would be lower.

 

[psychforme]

how do you account for varying degrees of difficulty between tests.

Case and point, my test had almost no biochem on it and one of my friends had 40 biochem questions.. Had I gotten his test my % surely would be lower.

who says there are varying degrees of difficulty besides neurotic medstudents on sdn?

 

[drizzt3117]

The wild card is the experimental questions. I hope you're right on the percentage, but I guess we'll see. I hope marking < 4 per set is good enough. I was about the same %s on UW and much higher % on NBMEs.

 

[MilkmanAl]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: Once you start talking about scores this high, question draw is a really big factor. "Test-taking IQ" doesn't help you too much if they're throwing a bunch of ridiculous questions at you. Also, measuring your testing ability by MCAT verbal score isn't really the most accurate measure I've ever seen.

That said, your percentages are probably pretty close - close enough, at least.

 

[rem6775]

I don't think you can speculate this precisely. Tests will probably be different and people will do differently on them and thus the percentages will change slightly. When you get to 260+, there is going to be a bigger impact of individual questions on the score, and thus there will be greater impact by the correctness of your guesses. I also don't think you can necessarily use how many you marked as a simple estimate. I always mark a ton of questions (on UW, UWSA, NBMEs and the real test), but that never correlated with my scores.

 

[aashkab]

i think you should rework your working hypothesis to not have hard percentages but rather a DIFFERENCE between you versus national mean for that block of questions. So your hypothesis accounts for test variability. I think at the end of the day, that's all that matters. Of course, that eliminates the point of trying to predict your score because you only have an idea of how many percent you got correct, not the rest of the nation.

Still though, I can tell when I may get a question right that others may not. Its interesting to know what 1 percentage point translates into a 3 digit score (i would guess like 2 points for every 1 percent and it may not be a proportionate amount at the tips of the curve).

although it is too late now for my becuase test is a week away, i too would also like to really know how it works because its rather frustrating on having it being based on so much of a whim, and even if it is a whim, at least tell me what that whim is.

it would be reassuring to know how the algorithm for the computer that generates tests works. and hopefully, it has some checks and balances built in to not create a test with 150 biochem and 150 anatomy questions in my case

 

[drizzt3117]

I don't think you can speculate this precisely. Tests will probably be different and people will do differently on them and thus the percentages will change slightly. When you get to 260+, there is going to be a bigger impact of individual questions on the score, and thus there will be greater impact by the correctness of your guesses. I also don't think you can necessarily use how many you marked as a simple estimate. I always mark a ton of questions (on UW, UWSA, NBMEs and the real test), but that never correlated with my scores.

Well, I only mark questions that I'm not 100% sure of the answer fwiw.

 

[Asp]

I'm pretty confident the "test variability" people speak of is somewhat exaggerated. Assume a mean percentage correct of 70%. If the standard deviation in question difficulty was 18% (95% of questions fall between 35% correct and 100% correct) that translates to a standard error in the mean of 18 / sqrt (46*7) = 1.0. That implies that 95% of tests will fall between average 68-72% correct.

Hence I feel the percentages I give are equally applicable to everyone's test with a fudge factor +/- 2%.

As for the comments about subject breakdown (having no biochem, etc), it's unlikely that you have glaring subject weaknesses if you are scoring 265+ or even 255+. The reason you missed 30 questions is not because you bombed one "weak" subject, but because you were just suboptimally calibrated for the entire test.

And by the way when I say "suboptimally calibrated" that's just a nice way of saying intelligence limitation. It is that portion of the test that exists on the penumbra between your knowns and your unknowns, that razor sharp edge between Option A and a seemingly equally plausible Option B, that challenges your decision-making skills under uncertainty -- i.e., your intelligence. The dirty secret which I have seen few people admit, is that after a certain point Step I becomes less knowledge test, and more IQ test. Some people, no matter how hard they work, will not score a 255+. They just don't have that extra gear. Not that it really matters, of course, as that gear has very little to do with having a successful career.

I know after the test I didn't really regret not reading Goljan cover to cover (which I had never had time for). I regretted making bad decisions under uncertainty. I regretted momentary lapses in intelligence.

 

[Asp]

The wild card is the experimental questions. I hope you're right on the percentage, but I guess we'll see. I hope marking < 4 per set is good enough. I was about the same %s on UW and much higher % on NBMEs.

drizzt I will be interested in learning your score, since according to my predictions you should be scoring 275+ =)

 

[drizzt3117]

Yeah, we'll see how it goes. In retrospect I think my test was reasonably difficult, but I didn't make any "stupid" mistakes. I got a couple questions wrong for sure, but they were hard ones that I didn't know the answers to after finishing rx, uw,, kaplan and memorizing rr/fa and other sources. There were a few questions (3-4) that I got wrong that I could probably have reasoned my way through, but I narrowed them to two answer choices and made educated guesses. By the same token, I also got 3-4 wild-ass guesses right, so I suppose it balanced things out. All I know about it was that the test essentially felt like NBME 7, hopefully I did equally well.

 

[2012mdc]

My working hypothesis, based on talking to some others, and my own observations on medical student ability, is that a 90% on STEP I translates to about a 265+.

Unfortunately I don't have enough data, so I'm asking for your input. If you scored 80%+ on UWorld (or equivalently, 265 on the UWorld practice tests), I'd like to know how many questions you thought you missed per section, on average, on STEP I.

I'm making this thread because I think some of the percentages being tossed around are unreasonably high. I think very high scores on STEP I do not require stratospheric percentages correct (the curve is more generous than many think). If this proves correct, hopefully this can prove assuring to some people who are trying to obtain high scores for competitive specialties.

My own scores on UWorld Qbank / UWSA1 / UWSA2 are 85% / 265 (85% correct) / 265 (90% correct). I feel like I missed about 10% of questions on the real test. I think I scored a 265+, but could see myself getting a 255+ or less likely, 275+ (one can always dream =)). Anyways, if you're also bored waiting for June 14, I'd like to hear your speculations.

----------------

95% = 275+
MY INTERPRETATION: Missed 2 questions per section. You knew your stuff and you have high test-taking IQ (MCAT Verbal = 15) and flawless calibration. 1/200.

90% = 265+
MY INTERPRETATION: You missed 4-5 questions per section. You knew your stuff and have high test-taking IQ (MCAT Verbal = 13,14), but your calibration is suboptimal -- you tend to over-think some questions (i.e. overestimate their difficulty and go for the "tricky" answer) and are your worst enemy. 2/100 achieve this; these scores aren't that rare at all, especially at top schools, where it's more like 5/100 achieve this.

85% = 255+
MY INTERPRETATION: You knew your stuff, but your test-taking IQ (MCAT Verbal = 12) is limiting you. I think the best advice to people at this level is to stop focusing only on minutiae. You need to focus on the meta-test, in order to score higher. That is, not just what the question is asking, but whether the question is a "hard question" or not, and why the question is being asked (what concept is being tested?). If you can predict the % correct and the main point in the Educational Objective in UWorld, you probably have good meta-test skills.

I ended my 2nd pass thru UW at 89 or 90%. Last 3 practice tests were 264, 262, and 264. I was shooting for 270+ but walking out of that test I felt I would be happy with anything near a 260. My hardest block I felt like I may have missed 7 and the easiest block 1 or 2. I'm thinking/hoping I got 25-30 wrong total at most and I end up in the 90%+ range. I can dream that a lot of the weird questions I got were experimental and maybe I only missed 10-15 real questions.

I "only" scored 11 on MCAT Verbal so I don't know about that comparison 😎

 

[MilkmanAl]

Posts like that one make my soul cry out in pain. Shooting for a 270? At least you'd settle for a 260.

 

[username456789]

I ended my 2nd pass thru UW at 89 or 90%. Last 3 practice tests were 264, 262, and 264. I was shooting for 270+ but walking out of that test I felt I would be happy with anything near a 260. My hardest block I felt like I may have missed 7 and the easiest block 1 or 2. I'm thinking/hoping I got 25-30 wrong total at most and I end up in the 90%+ range. I can dream that a lot of the weird questions I got were experimental and maybe I only missed 10-15 real questions.

I "only" scored 11 on MCAT Verbal so I don't know about that comparison 😎

Being forced to scramble for a psych residency in the middle of South Dakota won't be so bad.

 

[2012mdc]

Posts like that one make my soul cry out in pain. Shooting for a 270? At least you'd settle for a 260.

To be exact I did say anything close to a 260 would make me happy so saying I would "settle" for a 260 isn't very accurate. Again I would be happy with anything near a 260.

Is there something wrong with shooting for a really high score? Obviously I won't "need" a 270 vs a 260 but if it kept me motivated and got me through 14 hour days...whatever works right?

 

[2012mdc]

Being forced to scramble for a psych residency in the middle of South Dakota won't be so bad.

I've heard some nice things about South Dakota

 

[Domenech]

Way to go buddy! What a way to totally bust the confidence that took me a week to build, just before the dreadful July the 14th.

I have a feeling I'd be fast asleep when the result comes out

 

[naus]

Posts like that one make my soul cry out in pain. Shooting for a 270? At least you'd settle for a 260.

What's with the bashing on people who are aiming high?

Different people have different motivations. For instance, I need to couple match halfway across the country into one of the most competitive cities in one of the most competitive specialties. It sucks. I'm not aiming for 260 because I'm some genetically modified gunner trying to ruin your happy thoughts.

 

[hawk126]

/

 

[Asp]

This thread is useless without updates so here's mine. I got my score this afternoon after countless hours of trying to get into the logjammed site. But it was worth the wait:

271/99

I still believe I achieved this with about a 90% accuracy rate on questions. So guys, the curve on the real thing is much more generous than that for NBME practice exams!

I got a 13 on MCAT Verbal. And in retrospect I remember at least 5+ questions where I was down to two answer choices, and simply made a bad guess. Usually by thinking the question was harder than it actually turned out to be. So I think if you're better calibrated than me, a 275 or more is a very achievable score.

Hope that encourages anybody out there who is wondering whether it's worth it to try a bit harder. It is. You have plenty of headroom.

 

[Krazykyle]

This thread is useless without updates so here's mine. I got my score this afternoon after countless hours of trying to get into the logjammed site. But it was worth the wait:

271/99

I still believe I achieved this with about a 90% accuracy rate on questions. So guys, the curve on the real thing is much more generous than that for NBME practice exams!

I got a 13 on MCAT Verbal. And in retrospect I remember at least 5+ questions where I was down to two answer choices, and simply made a bad guess. Usually by thinking the question was harder than it actually turned out to be. So I think if you're better calibrated than me, a 275 or more is a very achievable score.

Hope that encourages anybody out there who is wondering whether it's worth it to try a bit harder. It is. You have plenty of headroom.

Not to belittle your point, but I think it is a fallacy to claim the a 275+ is "very achievable", not only do you have to know essentially the entirety of the examination core information, but you have to know exactly what they are looking for in a question close to 100% of the time which is not an easy task on some questions.

It would take a very high level test taker, having an exceptionally good day with most of their questions they have narrowed down to two answers going their way.

 

[2012mdc]

I ended my 2nd pass thru UW at 89 or 90%. Last 3 practice tests were 264, 262, and 264. I was shooting for 270+ but walking out of that test I felt I would be happy with anything near a 260. My hardest block I felt like I may have missed 7 and the easiest block 1 or 2. I'm thinking/hoping I got 25-30 wrong total at most and I end up in the 90%+ range. I can dream that a lot of the weird questions I got were experimental and maybe I only missed 10-15 real questions.

I "only" scored 11 on MCAT Verbal so I don't know about that comparison 😎

Good day. 260/99

Given how I felt after the exam I was very happy. It felt harder than any NBME so it makes sense my score was a little bit lower than my last practice

 

[Asp]

Not to belittle your point, but I think it is a fallacy to claim the a 275+ is "very achievable", not only do you have to know essentially the entirety of the examination core information, but you have to know exactly what they are looking for in a question close to 100% of the time which is not an easy task on some questions.

It would take a very high level test taker, having an exceptionally good day with most of their questions they have narrowed down to two answers going their way.

Luck plays some role, but less than you think. 2-3 points max. At the end of the day, how high you score above 270 is determined by 1) your verbal IQ and 2) your calibration.

It is very difficult to improve verbal IQ. Most people can improve their calibration if they do enough questions of the same style. If you calibrate to UWorld too well, however, you will be missing questions on the real thing unless you make an adjustment. Some of the questions on the real thing are just stupidly easy -- by that I mean sometimes knowing more and being smarter can actually make you get the question wrong. All the questions on UWorld tend to be tractable to meta-level thinking.

 

[bbydoc]

Luck plays some role, but less than you think. 2-3 points max. At the end of the day, how high you score above 270 is determined by 1) your verbal IQ and 2) your calibration.

It is very difficult to improve verbal IQ. Most people can improve their calibration if they do enough questions of the same style. If you calibrate to UWorld too well, however, you will be missing questions on the real thing unless you make an adjustment. Some of the questions on the real thing are just stupidly easy -- by that I mean sometimes knowing more and being smarter can actually make you get the question wrong. All the questions on UWorld tend to be tractable to meta-level thinking.

sorry for the ignorant question, Im an IMG and not familiar with the MCAT but what does the verbal IQ part involve?

 

[Asp]

sorry for the ignorant question, Im an IMG and not familiar with the MCAT but what does the verbal IQ part involve?

On the low end, it's reading comprehension. On the high end, it involves these incredibly subjective questions where the way you get them right is understanding the psychology of the question writer.

So pretty much it's an IQ test.

 

[blackbird11384]

Luck plays some role, but less than you think. 2-3 points max. At the end of the day, how high you score above 270 is determined by 1) your verbal IQ and 2) your calibration.

It is very difficult to improve verbal IQ. Most people can improve their calibration if they do enough questions of the same style. If you calibrate to UWorld too well, however, you will be missing questions on the real thing unless you make an adjustment. Some of the questions on the real thing are just stupidly easy -- by that I mean sometimes knowing more and being smarter can actually make you get the question wrong. All the questions on UWorld tend to be tractable to meta-level thinking.

Am I the only person that thinks Asp sounds uber pretentious? Don't mean to be hard on you Asp, but I hope you don't speak this way in person.

 

[Asp]

Am I the only person that thinks Asp sounds uber pretentious? Don't mean to be hard on you Asp, but I hope you don't speak this way in person.

I actually don't really talk much in real life, haha. I'm a little bit schizoid. It's all good, I'm going into diagnostic rads.

 

[blackbird11384]

I actually don't really talk much in real life, haha. I'm a little bit schizoid. It's all good, I'm going into diagnostic rads.

Hah OK. I'm interested in Path so I shouldn't complain.

 

[Alethio42]

he does talk like this in real life; sometimes you have to just smack him around a lil bit to quiet him down

 

[Krazykyle]

Luck plays some role, but less than you think. 2-3 points max. At the end of the day, how high you score above 270 is determined by 1) your verbal IQ and 2) your calibration.

It is very difficult to improve verbal IQ. Most people can improve their calibration if they do enough questions of the same style. If you calibrate to UWorld too well, however, you will be missing questions on the real thing unless you make an adjustment. Some of the questions on the real thing are just stupidly easy -- by that I mean sometimes knowing more and being smarter can actually make you get the question wrong. All the questions on UWorld tend to be tractable to meta-level thinking.

Sorry, but I simply do not agree with this. I think the idea of "calibration" that you have created is rather arbitrary. Additionally on one hand you are saying luck may play a role in only 2-3 questions, but on the other hand you are saying a score of 275+ is easily achievable. At at that high end however 2-3 questions may be the difference between a 270 and 275 so I think it is a little short sighted to believe "verbal IQ" is what plays the largest role in scores at the high end.

As someone previously noted, the way you are presenting this comes off as rather pretentious.

 

[DivCurlZero]

Hmmm... I am going to have to say that I disagree with the assumption that MCAT verbal = IQ, unless by IQ you simply mean reading ability. Otherwise, many other components of what normally get factored into "intelligence" are completely ignored if you're only considering MCAT verbal. Also, I increased my verbal score by 4 points during the week leading up to my exam, which, while anecdotal, makes me doubt that the verbal score is as static as people think.

I will also have to agree with the people in this thread who say that luck definitely comes into play on the real score. I could have easily increased my score by 10 points or so if I had gotten a better "draw" on certain questions but could also have potentially dropped too depending on the circumstances.

To each his/her own, I guess.

 

[Asp]

I guess it boils down to -- what is the difference between a 270 and a 275+?

Hypothesis I: Luck.
Granted, 270 and 275 are just close enough that luck could in fairly unlikely scenarios bridge the gap. But consider my case: I missed about 30 questions on the test. I believe a 275+ requires missing less than 20. Rough approximations to be sure. But it's not just 2-3 questions, hence it's not fair to just dismiss this 5+ point difference as "luck." Maybe a 2-3 point difference -- any more is pushing it IMO. In other words, the test is measuring some real quantity between 270 and 275.

Hypothesis II: This quantity is knowledge.
Look, there are a lot of people with awesome memories in medical school. People who have read FA/Goljan cover to cover multiple times, and some who even managed to retain those sources. If all it took was knowledge, plenty of people instead of the handful every year would be achieving 270+ scores.

Hypothesis III: This quantity is verbal intelligence, with the MCAT Verbal being a rough proxy. My favored hypothesis, justified above.

-----

DivCurlZero -- impressive that you increased your MCAT verbal by 4 points in a week, but you probably just became better calibrated, which is dynamic. For most people there is a score that they cannot consistently score higher than, no matter how much work or practice they put into it. For me, that was 13. That's the measure of my verbal intelligence, which is relatively static. So I am a good test-taker, but not great.

-----

I think it is a little short sighted to believe "verbal IQ" is what plays the largest role in scores at the high end.

Would you mind posting your MCAT Verbal and STEP I scores? I'm curious as to whether you have personal experience to back this statement up.

 

[badasshairday]

MCAT VR score, 8.

USMLE step 1 score, 250.

 

[Asp]

MCAT VR score, 8.

USMLE step 1 score, 250.

Congratulations on that score. However, you are not limited by verbal intelligence at 250. I actually have a couple friends who scored in the 250-255 range. They will be great doctors, far better clinicians than I, but one of them I know also had a low verbal MCAT.

Verbal intelligence becomes important in the jump from 255 to 265. It becomes almost the dominant factor past 270.

 

[killinsound]

edit

 

[Asp]

friend verbal 9, score 273

Interesting anecdote. This would be strong evidence against my position if it were true. Were his other MCAT subsections similarly low, or was verbal an outlier? Is he a native English speaker? And did he prepare enough to maximize his verbal score?

 

[ThePursuit]

What I would LOVE to see is about 300 ppl who scored 250+ take the test a second time and compare their scores. That would be cool.

 

[badasshairday]

verbal 9, score 260.

friend verbal 9, score 273

To add to this.

Another poster on SDN had a VR 9, and scored 259.

I know plenty of people who scored very well on the science sections of the MCAT, scored well over all (ie. above a 32) but had VR's of less then 10.

I don't know Asp, maybe you may be on to something, but I think you are putting too much stock into the VR score. Step 1 doesn't really need verbal reasoning ability. You just need to know your stuff and not fall for tricks... and I think this can come from reading and doing enough questions.

Plus the VR just is skewed, depending on where you grew up, schools you went to, novels you read (or did not read) while grewing up. I do agree with you to a certain extent that each person has an upper limit on VR score, but I think if you spent enough time on doing enough practice passages/questions you can burst through that ceiling.

 

[turkeyjerky]

yeah, I agree with you guys who're saying the VR score of the mcat isn't all that important for success on the usmle, aside from being a surrogate for plain intelligence. The questions on the mcat and the usmle just aren't all that similar, and the focus is completely different.

However, I do think that Asp is on to something withe the whole "calibration" thing. I think that's a big reason why people improve so much on their uworld scores from beginning to end. Towards the end of my studying, I got to the point w/ many questions that I knew the diagnosis, if not the actual answer to the question, just from reading the first line of the vignette. The problem with this is that it's tough to get appropriated "calibrated" to the usmle questions 'cause all but the most recent nbme's are obsolete and no outside source of questions are completely representative in style and scope (uw is the best, but it's not perfect).

That said, I the biggest difference in scores, once you get above 260, is due to the sample of questions. The test (based on my own and many other's experiences) seems to be skewed towards certain subjects on different tests. If you happen to get a test geared towards an area you're strong in, you'll do well and vice-versa.

 

[WellWornLad]

Leave it to SDN to make me feel like a f*&^king idiot at 259/99.

But seriously, for this theory it seems like data << speculation.

 

[princess peach]

MCAT VR 10 Step I 274

don't think MCAT verbal has anything to do with anything

 

[aashkab]

Interesting anecdote. This would be strong evidence against my position if it were true. Were his other MCAT subsections similarly low, or was verbal an outlier? Is he a native English speaker? And did he prepare enough to maximize his verbal score?

Asp, what do you think an 80% translates into on Step 1? I feel confident enough that I scored around that percentage.

 

[rem6775]

This thread is beyond pointless. Why bother speculating about what percentages correlate to what when you have no idea.

 

[Asp]

I'm not actually that fixated on MCAT Verbal. Really, you could use the other subsections as well as a proxy for general (verbal) intelligence.

Still, I am surprised that of the 270+ scores mentioned recently, most of the people had low =<10 MCAT Verbal scores or low MCAT scores overall. Especially given the hard data out there which shows a non-trivial amount of the variance in STEP scores explainable by MCAT scores.

Knowledge level does probably still explain >50% of the variance in scores above 270. But I think at that level verbal reasoning and calibration become relatively more important.

Put it another way. The person who scores 220 almost certainly knows more than the person scoring 200. But the person scoring 270 may not know that much more than the person scoring 250. He may be a better verbal reasoner (can get questions right through inference), or is better calibrated to the particular style of questions to guess correctly.

One of the posts brings up a good question. Which is how do we calibrate ourselves better for the actual test? UWorld is good but the question quality is actually better than the real thing. The better the question quality, the more "meta-data" there is draw inferences on the answer.

I personally did not do the NBMEs. Perhaps someone can comment on which the NBMEs (NBME7?) match the current test format and style in terms of the "meta-test." If so, I think it would be highly prudent to switch over from UWorld towards the last week of studying and do some NBME questions. The problem there is that since no answers are provided to NBME practice tests, they are really bad to learn from.

But I think you can improve your score up to 5 points if you focus less on knowledge and fact retention, and more on calibration. It's the difference between adding to your ability, and multiplying the ability you have by some non-trivial factor =). At some point you have enough ability, or the negative flux of knowledge approaches the positive flux sufficiently that the latter becomes more useful.

Aashkab, I believe an 80 percent corresponds to about a 245-255.

 

[aashkab]

hey asp, i think this thread has some really interesting test taking strategies, correlations, etc

and thanks for the prediction (i'd be ecstatic)

have you ever given any thought about what you term "verbal reasoning" simply as "pattern recognition." I think referring the ability to detect patterns in a VERBAL setting might be too strict in that THIS test is a scientific/medical knowledge test. I'd assume that taking Step 1 is stimulating different areas of my brain than taking the MCAT verbal section (i'm not sure though because i never took the mcat, got lucky with one of those programs).

with that said, how about mathematics skills which relies heavily on patterns in terms of correlating with your test taking IQ? I think a strong argument, although i'm too lazy to make it, can be said for strong mathematics students too.

i realize that your argument is designed around the 270+ people and may not necessarily refer to those scoring lower, but i think that mathematical strength might play a bigger role in it all.

also, what do you think of IMGs (that are actually born and raised internationally) and their "verbal" test taking abilities? I think that there are many ENGLISH schools abroad but I'm not sure if they necessarily may have the same "verbal" skills. many IMGs do CRUSH step 1.

 

[johnbeck]

I scored a 265+. My preparation was a much larger factor to receiving a high score than natural test taking ability.

 

[abmd]

I scored a 265. I got a 10 on verbal. My preparation was a much larger factor to receiving a high score than natural test taking ability.

can you say which sources you used to get a total of 10,000 questions

 

[johnbeck]

USMLE World 2X, USMLE Rx, Kaplan, NBME practice exams, Free 150 and Free 144, and in addition to these resources our school has a program in which 4th yr students who scored well on Step 1 write their own board style questions and teach us concepts using these questions.

 

[Asp]

I also did 10,000 questions. It's a very effective way of increasing your calibration, versus reading texts (i.e. Taus method). I would highly recommend this strategy for people who are not naturally great test takers.

If your verbal ability is sky high, you can get away with just focusing on knowledge. Reading texts is of course the fastest way to learn raw facts.

 

[Asp]

hey asp, i think this thread has some really interesting test taking strategies, correlations, etc

and thanks for the prediction (i'd be ecstatic)

have you ever given any thought about what you term "verbal reasoning" simply as "pattern recognition." I think referring the ability to detect patterns in a VERBAL setting might be too strict in that THIS test is a scientific/medical knowledge test. I'd assume that taking Step 1 is stimulating different areas of my brain than taking the MCAT verbal section (i'm not sure though because i never took the mcat, got lucky with one of those programs).

with that said, how about mathematics skills which relies heavily on patterns in terms of correlating with your test taking IQ? I think a strong argument, although i'm too lazy to make it, can be said for strong mathematics students too.

i realize that your argument is designed around the 270+ people and may not necessarily refer to those scoring lower, but i think that mathematical strength might play a bigger role in it all.

also, what do you think of IMGs (that are actually born and raised internationally) and their "verbal" test taking abilities? I think that there are many ENGLISH schools abroad but I'm not sure if they necessarily may have the same "verbal" skills. many IMGs do CRUSH step 1.

Verbal reasoning is not the same as pattern recognition, in my opinion. Success on MCAT Verbal depends to a large degree on recognizing what the author of a passage believes, even if it is not explicitly stated. It's inferential, not recognition of a previously seen pattern. Verbal reasoning is "thinking about thinkers." English fluency is also not the same as verbal reasoning, as long as the ability to think about thinkers is not lost in translation.

Where verbal reasoning comes in on the test is when you get a question you haven't quite seen a close variant of. Then you have to use your verbal reasoning to analyze the stem and given answer choices and decide:

1) Does this seem like it should be an easy, medium, or hard question?
Basically this tells you whether you should pick the obvious answer, or whether to consider it a possible distractor and look more deeply at the other answer choices.

2) What would be the "Educational Objective" of this question?
Could this EO pass a committee? Reading comprehension just tells you what the question is. Verbal reasoning tells you why the question is.

Sometimes when your reasoning ability exceeds your knowledge on a subject, you start going down a bad path and justifying a wrong answer. You then have to have the discipline to trust your verbal reasoning.