Are UWORLD assessments useful?

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I'm not sure how accurate they are, as I have yet to take the Step myself but more than anything, at least it's 400 more questions you get to add to your question bank. And unlike the NBME practice exams, you actually get the right answers and solutions. I personally felt that the questions from the assessment were actually easier than the qbank questions...
 
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From personal experience, they tend to overestimate your score by a lot (around 10 or more). If you're looking to see where you stand, I'd buy the NBME exams.
 
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Cliff Huxtable said:
Does anyone else feel some of the UWorld questions are ticky-tacky?
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You'll have to tell us what ticky-tacky means.

I also agree that the UW assessments may over-estimate your score. I haven't taken step 1 yet, but I took an assessment the other day and the result was way over where I think I am right now.
 
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Do you think just reading the "educational objective is ok" due to lack of time.

Is reading the lengthy explanation useful? I can't remember all that or annotate that in, I tried and it took me an hour for 10 questions!
 
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I can't tell if ppl are referring to the UWorld Self Assessments (UWSA) vs the UWorld Qbank...

Regarding the UWSA - I took one of them some time ago and took NBME 6 today...I think the UWSA is very generous (it seems they're trying to bandaid the ego injuries they inflict with their Qbank). I bought two of them but at this point I probably won't be taking the second one- if I take another practice test it will be another NBME instead.

PS: I just got the Kaplan Qbank a few days back cus I ran out of behavioral and biostat questions on UWorld and I have to say that it is closer to the NBMEs than UWorld is. It is a bit more recall also than World is and I'm guessing we need practice with both recall and multistep thinking. I'll just keep doing both on alternate days till test day with my emphasis on UWorld still.
 
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bola said:
I can't tell if ppl are referring to the UWorld Self Assessments (UWSA) vs the UWorld Qbank...

Regarding the UWSA - I took one of them some time ago and took NBME 6 today...I think the UWSA is very generous (it seems they're trying to bandaid the ego injuries they inflict with their Qbank). I bought two of them but at this point I probably won't be taking the second one- if I take another practice test it will be another NBME instead.

PS: I just got the Kaplan Qbank a few days back cus I ran out of behavioral and biostat questions on UWorld and I have to say that it is closer to the NBMEs than UWorld is. It is a bit more recall also than World is and I'm guessing we need practice with both recall and multistep thinking. I'll just keep doing both on alternate days till test day with my emphasis on UWorld still.
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Yes Kaplan is good for facts and minutae and Uworld for 2-3 step reasoning. I reccomend doing both so oyu have the complete essence of step 1.
 
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do you guys really recommend doing kaplan? I heard thats it tests on really minute stuff thats low yield. Im about 500 questions away from finishing world and Im trying to decide whether to redo world or get kaplan. Thanks
 
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AllUpOnYoMama said:
do you guys really recommend doing kaplan? I heard thats it tests on really minute stuff thats low yield. Im about 500 questions away from finishing world and Im trying to decide whether to redo world or get kaplan. Thanks
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I say it is high yield. I was scoring about 60% on Kaplan and am now doing UWorld and scoring 80+ percent. I think kaplan helped me achieve this score. But who really knows what is high yield, it differs for every test!
 
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Cliff Huxtable said:
Do you think just reading the "educational objective is ok" due to lack of time.

Is reading the lengthy explanation useful? I can't remember all that or annotate that in, I tried and it took me an hour for 10 questions!
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This is an excellent question, and I'm eagerly awaiting peoples' responses.
 
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cliff huxtable said:
Do you think just reading the "educational objective is ok" due to lack of time.

Is reading the lengthy explanation useful? I can't remember all that or annotate that in, I tried and it took me an hour for 10 questions!
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Knicks said:
This is an excellent question, and I'm eagerly awaiting peoples' responses.
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For some the educational objective is for a quick recap of what the emphasizing concept is about. I've seen others use the objective only because of saving time. Those explanations are surely long for some questions! If you REALLY think you understood the question concept and why the answer is so, then skipping the explanations and going to the objective is enough.

For others, such as myself - the objective isn't enough! If you can't remember/understand it, how could you recall it? I actually like to read through the right and wrong explanations, even for the correct ones. Unfortunately, it takes me almost 1 hour to review/annotate into FA ~ 10 questions that way too! I haven't found a way to speed that up. If I did, I wouldn't know how much I would actually comprehend or remember.
 
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I've gone through almost half of the questions on USMLEworld so far and I've read all of the explanations fully. Reading the objective is fine, but it doesn't explain the other answers and other potential questions on the same subject. I know how long it takes to do but you either have to do fewer questions or take the time out from somewhere else.
 
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pepotonoto said:
I haven't found a way to speed that up. If I did, I wouldn't know how much I would actually comprehend or remember.
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I found that when I take a test timed and then go through the 48 questions, I have to take a small amount of time to remember the little details about why I made one decision over another. This usually adds up to about 45-50 min of doing the questions and 2 hours reviewing.

If I use tutor mode, I annotate as I go and I don't have to bother with remembering why I chose one versus another and I usually spend about 2 hours total.

I still probably do about half in tutor and half in timed just because I like to use questions how they are supposed to be used.
 
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I feel like I'm in no-man's land with my scoring. All of this overestimation talk is driving me crazy.

I took UWSA2 and got a high 240s. Took the free 150 and got an 86%.

I'm afraid to take another NBME, as it could be disheartening a little if I do worse.

Any comments?
 
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SnakeEyes said:
I feel like I'm in no-man's land with my scoring. All of this overestimation talk is driving me crazy.

I took UWSA2 and got a high 240s. Took the free 150 and got an 86%.

I'm afraid to take another NBME, as it could be disheartening a little if I do worse.

Any comments?
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I feel the same way. I got mid-high 240s on the UWSAs and 88% on the free 150. I hope the predictions are accurate but my test is in 9 days so at this point I think it's best to just keep studying and not worry about predictions too much...Maybe looking at your performance on recent UW blocks would help predict as well? Personally I've kind of plateaued in the mid-high 70s but I think that correlates with the assessment predictions quite well...
 
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