So overall I found the exam to be very similar if not slightly easier than the past exams I studied. I studied for a total of 5 weeks, 12 hours a day, every day. I did not use the dental decks at all, but I pretty much memorized the NBDE First Aid cover-to-cover, then supplemented it with mnemonics for biochem and micro from the USMLE First Aid as well as from this amazing website full of very helpful mnemonics:
http://crackthemciscreeing.blogspot.com/2007/09/mnemonics-easy-way-to-remember.html.
And then, lastly, I did several released exams about 3x each: I did the 2004, 1998 and 2002 exams. I also looked up everything and anything I wasn't sure of on Wikipedia.
I have to emphasize how useful the mnemonics are and I would HIGHLY suggest you use as many mnemonics as possible since with this volume of material you are bound to make errors without having some organized system of memorizing it.
As for the exam, there are clinical vignettes at the end of the first half and the beginning of the second half of the exam, and they are followed by a series of detailed questions regarding common conditions related to the cases such as rheumatoid arthritis, breast cancer, obesity, diabetes, osteoarthritis...etc So make sure you know the epidemiology, risk factors, symptoms, prognosis, and diagnostic tests for these as well as other common conditions. The easiest part of the exam was dental anatomy and the hardest was micro/path. Dental anatomy is were you can get some easy points if you know it cold, so definitely take advantage of this and really study this section well. Also definitely know your occlusion and tmj anatomy well as this is highly tested on the exam. Oh and also there are about 2-3 questions on ethics, so familiarize yourself with some basic ethic terms such as virtuosity, beneficence etc... and how they effect your decision making.
Also, I never actually took a full length practice exam but rather used all those questions as study tools and made sure I knew all of the answers and explanations for why they were right.
The exam had about 25% repeated questions, either word-for-word or slightly reworded but highly recognizable. When I was taking the exam I was about 100% sure of 250 questions, and then there were about 150 that I marked to look back at (definitely mark ANY question you are not 100% sure of since this makes it much easier to go back to once you finish a section). I finished the first half with an hour to spare and so was able to go through the entire thing again! The second half for some reason seemed more challenging and took me the whole 4 hours. Of those 150 that I marked, about 30 of them I didn't know and would not have known even if I had studied more since the difficult part of the question wasn't the content, but the wording of it made it hard to ascertain what it was they were trying to get at. The other 125 marked questions I was able to eliminate about 3 answers giving me a 50/50 chance of getting it right or wrong.
Most people I have talked to did not think they would do as well as they did and that goes for me as well. But remember you can get quite a few wrong and still end up with a great score. Every test has an individual curve dependent on the difficulty of that particular exam. I walked out of the exam knowing that I passed but unsure of whether or not I got a competitive score. I lost sleep thinking about questions I messed up on or didn't remember the mnemonic for. But it turns out that didn't make too much of a difference. I thought maybe I got somewhere in the low 80's and was then pleasantly surprised to see that I got a 90! I really wouldn't worry too much though, everyone studies differently, I mean my friend used mostly the decks and got a 91, I used mostly the first aid book and got a 90. It's all a matter of how you learn best. Also, you will find that the questions are mostly very straightforward and the answers for the majority of them seem to pop right up at you. I didn't even look at the other answer choices for most of the questions. So passing the exam is not hard, and most of the questions are not too challenging, but its those tough ones that make the difference between in getting a score in the lower 80's and the 90's.
Here is my score breakdown:
Comp: 90
Raw: 329
My Score National Average
Anatomic Sciences 84 64.6
Biochem/Physio 80 60.4
Micro/Path 81 65
Dental Anatomy 84 73.4
Let me know if there are more specific questions I can answer.
Good luck!
