AAAAACK!!!! Help!!!

[superchango]

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so, i am slated to take the boards in 2 weeks and 2 days. after taking form 1 of the nbme i am a little worried. ok, a lot worried. my score is....drumroll please...a whopping total of 330 which amounts to a 172. that's right. not passing.

how could this happen after all the studying i've been doing?

i will admit this: i was awake for quite some time before taking this test trying to fix a screwed up sleep schedule. also, i have been saving anatomy and embryo for the very end. i have a lot to review that i have reviewed once, that has just plain fallen out of my head. my average on qbank has been about 60% on qbank with a recent 72%, so i thought i wasn't doing too horribly - and that i might actually pass!!

so, what do i do? do i reschedule the test for later? i've heard this form 1 was the easiest of the bunch? do i relax, study hard today and try taking another nbme tomorrow? aaaaaah!!!!!!!!!!!!! i feel like a lot of the questions on the nbme weren't exactly the stuff i was studying, anyway (i tried looking things up in first aid and a lot of it just was not there!) I think I am going to go bang my head on a wall...

 

[chintu]

Welcome to the world of NBMEs...Glad you took that thing a few weeks before the real exam. I took it 5 wks prior to actual exam (which I am taking in 10 days) and didn't score as high as I expected (NBME 1=204). Let me tell you what I did that helped me bring it up to a NBME 3=219 in 2 wks later. Qbank 100 q/day w/ explanations in thorough detail for each and every single answer choices, learned BRS path cold, read FA each day 20 pages. When you do Qbank try to understand why you didn't get the right answer (the concept behind it) rather than just knowing what's the right answer and look up that concept in another solid board review book. And don't use the % on Qbank as a gauge, just use it as a learning tool. Always do mixed Q's on Qbank rather than indivi. subjects and time urself. NBME Questions I think are a lot harder than Qbank in many ways...they have a lot of general Q's that go back to the concepts taught in medschool and then a lot of WTF questions and some hardcore minutiae questions too. A good idea would be to get those files w/ all NBME questions and go over each concept in the questions which I plan to do w/ another person on sdn. This will tell you why you are getting qbank right and not NBME. With your given score I highly recommend pushing back the test a little at least since I don't know if you can improve all that much in the last 2 wks before the test and you might be in jeopardy. Good luck!

 

[naveenanirada]

Postponing the steps has saved many a brilliant doctor's career.Whats a few weeks later,rather then a low pass.
Good luck friend!!

 

[Brickhouse]

Well for every action there's an equal and opposite....I'm choosing to oppose the above two posts -

I would just continue to work hard for two weeks and cram in as much first aid as you can - but make sure you understand the reasons behind what's in first aid. I think that's first aid's biggest weakness is that it's just a bunch of word associations but the boards will ask why, not what. I suggest Goljan audio lectures if you don't already have them. I wish I had listend to those from the beginning, but I discovered them late.

If you push the test back you'll just forget more stuff you've already learned. That's what I think. I can't tell you how much stuff was on my test where I thought to myself "Damn, I really did know the answer to that question - two weeks ago" I thought NBME form 1 was hard too.

Good luck!