Assistance/advice raising NBME/uwsa score from 250 to 260?

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AshNiffler

AshNiffler

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I actually would like at least a 260 on the step 1 but I seem to be stuck in the low 250s. I'm not complaining, I'm very grateful etc, but I still want that 260 tho. I'd appreciate it if someone had any ideas on what it is I should be doing... if you need more specific info please ask. Thank you.

@ActinicKeratosis @Transposony @plasmodium
 
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AshNiffler said:
lol I can't believe its come to this.

For personal (ahem ahem monetary) reasons, I actually would like at least a 260 on the step 1 but I seem to be stuck in the low 250s. I'm not complaining, I'm very grateful etc, but I still want that 260 tho. I'd appreciate it if someone had any ideas on what it is I should be doing... if you need more specific info please ask. Thank you.

@ActinicKeratosis @Transposony @plasmodium
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My final score was low 250's...so I'm technically not qualified to give you advice on how to break 260. Regardless, I really think it comes down to limiting stupid mistakes. Walking out of the exam I could recall at least 10 or so questions that I absolutely shouldn't have gotten wrong. In other words for me it was more test taking ability than knowledge deficit. Hopefully some 260's can chime in.
 
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ActinicKeratosis said:
My final score was low 250's...so I'm technically not qualified to give you advice on how to break 260. Regardless, I really think it comes down to limiting stupid mistakes. Walking out of the exam I could recall at least 10 or so questions that I absolutely shouldn't have gotten wrong. In other words for me it was more test taking ability than knowledge deficit. Hopefully some 260's can chime in.
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Thanks for your input! I completely agree but it's easier said than done, I keep screwing up easy questions and getting hard ones right...
 
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I completely agree with @ActinicKeratosis. Haven't gotten my score (and did not feel good afterwards cause I did make a lot of dumb mistakes lol) but when I was scoring in the 250's, it really didn't come down to more knowledge, per se, but making sure I didn't misread or jump too quickly to an answer. Obviously it still happens time to time but that's what pushed me from low 250's to getting into the 260's and even 270's consistently for my last 5 practice tests. And when I would review them, I definitely noticed that I was making a lot fewer "silly" mistakes.

On that, one thing I did in particular was cross out each answer choice for each question. This way, for example, if I wanted to selected Mycoplasma and accidently quickly selected Mycobacterium marinum because I just glanced and saw "Myco-" it would force me to quickly glance at each answer choice to strike it out and it took maybe 5-10 extra seconds but definitely saved me a few times on the NBME's.
 
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jpwsurf21 said:
I completely agree with @ActinicKeratosis. Haven't gotten my score (and did not feel good afterwards cause I did make a lot of dumb mistakes lol) but when I was scoring in the 250's, it really didn't come down to more knowledge, per se, but making sure I didn't misread or jump too quickly to an answer. Obviously it still happens time to time but that's what pushed me from low 250's to getting into the 260's and even 270's consistently for my last 5 practice tests. And when I would review them, I definitely noticed that I was making a lot fewer "silly" mistakes.

On that, one thing I did in particular was cross out each answer choice for each question. This way, for example, if I wanted to selected Mycoplasma and accidently quickly selected Mycobacterium marinum because I just glanced and saw "Myco-" it would force me to quickly glance at each answer choice to strike it out and it took maybe 5-10 extra seconds but definitely saved me a few times on the NBME's.
Click to expand...

Thanks! I'll try that when I take the next NBME. And I'm sure you did fine, good luck 🙂
 
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AshNiffler said:
lol I can't believe its come to this.

For personal (ahem ahem monetary) reasons, I actually would like at least a 260 on the step 1 but I seem to be stuck in the low 250s. I'm not complaining, I'm very grateful etc, but I still want that 260 tho. I'd appreciate it if someone had any ideas on what it is I should be doing... if you need more specific info please ask. Thank you.

@ActinicKeratosis @Transposony @plasmodium
Click to expand...


It's fine. We all have our own goals, however, I believe USMLE 1 is used as an algorithmic cut-off rather than as a quantitative factor humans actually look at. I have no personal experience these kinds of scores, but I browse a lot of SDN, Facebook, and Reddit. What I've noticed differentiates 240/250 from 270+ is a straight up intuition for the basic sciences. Like (again, this is all pure speculation) being able to like logically come up with a line of reasoning that's never been mentioned in FA/Uworld/Pathoma. It takes a while to develop. Also, ANKI really helps with the fundamental memorization. Rapid Review by Goljian also seems to help some people. Another trap I speculate people fall into is that when they're already scoring so highly, the overvalue the details they don't know as opposed to trying to do something hard like revisit a simple concept they've more likely memorized than understood. Again, I'm only scored 240 once and then dropped on NBME 18 so I'm like not in your league.
 
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AshNiffler said:
Update, just took NBME 17, got a 260, I know it's not the USMLE but :soexcited:
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Congrats on the score! Any tips for the last 10-15 days to getting 245 or +? I definitely don't have FA memorized(only read once) & have yet to finish UW. Would you go back to FA at this point or do a ton of uw questions & nbme?
Last nbme (16) was 239

Also whats your take on revisiting missed/flagged questions?
 
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@AshNiffler Great job ! Keep at it and I'm sure you'll be posting a similar Step score in the experiences thread!
Between this NBME and your recent one, was there any significant revision that you've done, worked on weaknesses, or simply changed your test taking strategy?
 
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AZ7 said:
@AshNiffler Great job ! Keep at it and I'm sure you'll be posting a similar Step score in the experiences thread!
Between this NBME and your recent one, was there any significant revision that you've done, worked on weaknesses, or simply changed your test taking strategy?
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Thanks! Fingers crossed🙂

Tbh I think it came down to minimizing little mistakes as much as possible like everyone said above (thanks guys!!), I still screwed up on 3-5 easyyyy questions on this NBME but I'm making progress lol. It really helped to realize that at this point I must already have a solid knowledge base so it was time to re-direct my focus to how I take the exam. I read questions really fast so this time I reread the last line just to make sure, when I was having problems picking an answer I just knew I must have missed a word or phrase in the question so I go back to the question. My last NBME was last month, 251 but I did the UWSA2 last week and got a 254. In terms of change of strategy I never really had much of one, just read first aid, do questions and finish up my second pass of uworld, I've basically just been doing questions since February. @walakin25 said I needed to do at least 5000 🙂
 
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