COMLEX 1 Experiences

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Buster Douglas

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Wow... that last packet sucked.

Just glad it's over. :thumbup:

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i feel like everyone else i talked to thought it was ok; i guessed a ton...and i had weird stuff like omm during pregnancy; i had a ton of omm which i did not expect and a ton of immunology

i was frustrated too; oh well
humed said:
I took Level 1 today and I did not leave the test feeling wonderful at all.
I was actually frustrated at all the stuff I wish I had spent more time studying
 
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Took it today… it wasn’t too bad. PT aPTT bleeding time…. what is the disorder? Also a matching section with all of the hematologic drugs. The pictures sucked! Who knew the first picture EVER taken was of a kidney with hydronephrosis (at least that’s what my answer was). Overall, very straight forward. Second set of 50 was silly easy.
 
James20062 said:
Took it today… it wasn’t too bad. PT aPTT bleeding time…. what is the disorder? Also a matching section with all of the hematologic drugs. The pictures sucked! Who knew the first picture EVER taken was of a kidney with hydronephrosis (at least that’s what my answer was). Overall, very straight forward. Second set of 50 was silly easy.

LOL Yes I had said picture as well. I also went with hydro since the history backed it up.
 
raidermedic said:
LOL Yes I had said picture as well. I also went with hydro since the history backed it up.

Yeah, it was hydronephrosis.

It looked like they xeroxed a B & W photo out of a book and stomped on it a few times.
 
Our OPP staff said there would not be any Chapman's on this years COMLEX.
Can anyone confirm this? Thanks.
 
i only had one chapman's point question (colon-leg relationship i think) a lot of parasypathetic/sympathetic stuff relating to spinal levels..page 102-104 in savarese plus the questions on page 109-111 were high yield for my test.
 
[QUOTE='08]Our OPP staff said there would not be any Chapman's on this years COMLEX.
Can anyone confirm this? Thanks.[/QUOTE]

I took it yesterday, and thought I 'd post my experience.

1.) The pics are absolutley worhtless, enough so that I was taken time to comment on every picture
2) it took me 4.5 hours start to finish. the test is very similar to COMLEX qbank in terms of queston style and length. In fact there were questions that I swear were word for word from the bank.
3) the online 50 questions are also very similar, and the interface is the exact same.
4) twelve of my classmates took it at the same time and we all had the exact same test! WTF?

Overall i thought the test was very basic and one step answers. It generally onle asked for the Dx. I had very little path, and straight OMM. Viscerosomatics was close to 20% so know those tables in savarese cold. Symp and Para were also very high yeild. I think I had like 5 parasymp questions in erectile dysfunction. There was alot of micro, (major bugs), and Pharm, psych drugs were big. It generally didn't get specific, but it did with the receptor for sumatriptan (5ht1D) it also had 5ht1A as an answer choice.
I had a weird questions about some national vaccination program and a refrig, still have no idea what that was about. I had a question about L3 and it's dx, but they gave the dx in the question stem :confused:.

As others have posted alot of basic anatomy, no cancer drugs, i had 2 cranial a sbs compression, and a torsion. Oh and lots of sacral stuff.

I studied for the Usmle and then skimmed savarese and did the last of my COMLEX q bank in the 2 days in between my tests. I felt overprepared after taking it. Hopefully my score says that too.

I'll post more if I can remember. Good Luck :thumbup:
 
would you reccomend holding off on Biochem until the week after (I take USMLE i week s/p).
 
OSUdoc08 said:
Yeah, it was hydronephrosis.

It looked like they xeroxed a B & W photo out of a book and stomped on it a few times.
LOOOOOOOOOOOL! HAHAHAHAH "stomped on it a few times!"
 
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MDmiracle said:
I took it yesterday, and thought I 'd post my experience.

1.) The pics are absolutley worhtless, enough so that I was taken time to comment on every picture
2) it took me 4.5 hours start to finish. the test is very similar to COMLEX qbank in terms of queston style and length. In fact there were questions that I swear were word for word from the bank.
3) the online 50 questions are also very similar, and the interface is the exact same.
4) twelve of my classmates took it at the same time and we all had the exact same test! WTF?

Overall i thought the test was very basic and one step answers. It generally onle asked for the Dx. I had very little path, and straight OMM. Viscerosomatics was close to 20% so know those tables in savarese cold. Symp and Para were also very high yeild. I think I had like 5 parasymp questions in erectile dysfunction. There was alot of micro, (major bugs), and Pharm, psych drugs were big. It generally didn't get specific, but it did with the receptor for sumatriptan (5ht1D) it also had 5ht1A as an answer choice.
I had a weird questions about some national vaccination program and a refrig, still have no idea what that was about. I had a question about L3 and it's dx, but they gave the dx in the question stem :confused:.

As others have posted alot of basic anatomy, no cancer drugs, i had 2 cranial a sbs compression, and a torsion. Oh and lots of sacral stuff.

I studied for the Usmle and then skimmed savarese and did the last of my COMLEX q bank in the 2 days in between my tests. I felt overprepared after taking it. Hopefully my score says that too.

I'll post more if I can remember. Good Luck :thumbup:


hmmmmmmm interesting
 
[QUOTE='08]Our OPP staff said there would not be any Chapman's on this years COMLEX.
Can anyone confirm this? Thanks.[/QUOTE]

There were.

Know GI tract.
 
so qbook OMM questions...worthless?

i'm done with comlex qbank, iv qbank and savarese questions so any suggestions? for omm practice at least
 
Dr. Hokis said:
so qbook OMM questions...worthless?

i'm done with comlex qbank, iv qbank and savarese questions so any suggestions? for omm practice at least

Do the Savarese questions and you'll know all of the OMM questions on the COMLEX.
 
OSUdoc08 said:
Do the Savarese questions and you'll know all of the OMM questions on the COMLEX.

some of those questions were friggin' hard man!
 
we use a diff lingo at comp for certain tests and such so its sort of like learning a new omm language for certain things.

nothin u have to worry too much about hot shot
 
MDmiracle said:
I had a weird questions about some national vaccination program and a refrig, still have no idea what that was about.


Agh I had that question too! In which medical school course were we supposed to learn that topic? :confused:
 
Can anyone who has taken the COMLEX tell me what the questions are like? The only practice exams I have taken were USMLE oriented. Ive been told the COMLEX questions are somewhat different... How so?
 
well from what i hear, you can actually answer the comlex questions where as the usmle has a 8th option choice in each question that says "WTF?"
 
Shodddy18 said:
Can anyone who has taken the COMLEX tell me what the questions are like? The only practice exams I have taken were USMLE oriented. Ive been told the COMLEX questions are somewhat different... How so?

Nah, they are about the same. There is a shift in emphasis of certain subjects, but the format is the same.
 
Can anyone who has taken the COMLEX tell me what the questions are like? The only practice exams I have taken were USMLE oriented. Ive been told the COMLEX questions are somewhat different... How so?

USMLE questions are a lot different, definately. Not just in content, but USMLE q's involve many more 2nd and 3rd tier reasoning, whereas COMLEX is more straight-forward. I've done 3 nbme exams, and took the COMLEX today, and assuming the nbme q's are representative, the USMLE is going to be MUCH more challenging. So if you've prepared for USMLE, you should be good :D
 
Could those that have taken the exam please comment on how you did on COMLEX Qbank prior to the test. I'm trying to get a feel for what percentage on Qbank correlates to doing well on the exam. Thanks.
 
turkdlit said:
USMLE questions are a lot different, definately. Not just in content, but USMLE q's involve many more 2nd and 3rd tier reasoning, whereas COMLEX is more straight-forward. I've done 3 nbme exams, and took the COMLEX today, and assuming the nbme q's are representative, the USMLE is going to be MUCH more challenging. So if you've prepared for USMLE, you should be good :D

I disagree. From what I've heard, the COMLEX questions require more knowledge of the clinical sciences and are less straightforward. This comes from Kaplan USMLE instructors and test writers.
 
OSUdoc08 said:
I disagree. From what I've heard, the COMLEX questions require more knowledge of the clinical sciences and are less straightforward. This comes from Kaplan USMLE instructors and test writers.




Can anyone comment on the biochem and behavioral med aspects of either exam? I've heard they are bigger on USMLE but that is just what I've heard, can anyone describe what they've actually experienced this year? Is the biochem fairly straight forward, like enzyme deficiencies, or do you have to know every amino acid that can make pyruvate, type of stuff. Congrats to everyone who has taken it or is about to, thanks for your input.
 
During comlex I was taking ~30 minutes to confidently complete a block of 50 questions. During usmle I was spending 60 minutes and could have used more time on many of the blocks.

OSUdoc, comlex is absolutely oriented toward the clinical, you are right... however, the two tests are absolutely different in terms of their level of difficulty. Many of the answers on usmle require understanding of a 2nd and 3rd order...whereas on comlex a huge chunk of the questions (~50%) can be answered by simple word association/recognition. It could be that I had blocks of questions for each exam that best exemplified the disparity between the exams...I cannot say. I get a hunch that that's not entirely the case though.
 
gclax30 said:
Can anyone comment on the biochem and behavioral med aspects of either exam? I've heard they are bigger on USMLE but that is just what I've heard, can anyone describe what they've actually experienced this year? Is the biochem fairly straight forward, like enzyme deficiencies, or do you have to know every amino acid that can make pyruvate, type of stuff. Congrats to everyone who has taken it or is about to, thanks for your input.

COMLEX: more anatomy, more pharmacology, OMM

USMLE: more biochem, more behavioral sciences, more neuro
 
hudsontc said:
During comlex I was taking ~30 minutes to confidently complete a block of 50 questions. During usmle I was spending 60 minutes and could have used more time on many of the blocks.

OSUdoc, comlex is absolutely oriented toward the clinical, you are right... however, the two tests are absolutely different in terms of their level of difficulty. Many of the answers on usmle require understanding of a 2nd and 3rd order...whereas on comlex a huge chunk of the questions (~50%) can be answered by simple word association/recognition. It could be that I had blocks of questions for each exam that best exemplified the disparity between the exams...I cannot say. I get a hunch that that's not entirely the case though.

Most people at my school agree that the USMLE is less difficult than the COMLEX. This may have to do with the way that we were trained, however.
 
Dr. Hokis said:
Does he flip you a nickel for each time you come to his rescue on this board?

He doesn't even know my name. Please continue the personal attacks. I welcome them.
 
please don't waste room on this thread slamming him. although it is entertaining, if you want to do that please go find another thread that he has posted in. people who check this thread often will get tired of filtering through this crap just to get to some information before they take there test in the next few weeks.

Thanks all
 
I was just wondering if y'all could comment on any calculations/equations that would be helpful to know for COMLEX. Thanks.
 
DMBmatty08 said:
I was just wondering if y'all could comment on any calculations/equations that would be helpful to know for COMLEX. Thanks.

ZERO.

There was not a single calculation or equation on the entire exam.
 
Well I am taking it tomorrow. We'll see how good a year of preparation does. My USMLE Qbank scores are all over the place today...from a 62% to a 90% to a 34% sheesh! I'm so sick of questions :(

Thanks for your feedback everyone, especially you OSUDoc, I went and got my driver's license renewed hehehehe
 
chimebo said:
Thanks to all who have posted their experiences. I was wondering how much physio you felt was on the exam...were there questions on the cardiac cycle and press-volume loops? Also, was there a lot of respiratory phys? Thanks. From what I have heard from my friends that have taken the COMLEX in NY, there have been a bunch on questions about Cardiac, in general, and Psych drugs. Good luck to all!

There wasn't a single pressure volume loop, and very few, if any graphs.

Most of the cardiac questions were about electrolyte imbalance.
 
Took COMLEX yesterday...here's my 2.5 cents:
Overall, the exam (my version anyway) was very heavy on OMM/neuro/anatomy, female repro/endocrine, pharm/micro.

I had zero embryo questions, zero biochem questions (except 1 basic glycogen storage ds question that was concept based...though a friend of mine had matching with 3 or 4 of the storage diseases, but all you had to match was the enzyme deficiency...gimmes), 1 'genetics' question ("what is the mode of inheritance of Huntington's Disease?"...wow) 2-3 phys questions (pulmo fxn test related and electrolyte related). I actually had a calculation question regarding false positives and sensitivity / specificity.
Most of the OMM questions were viscerosomatic related; I had 3 tenderpoint questions, 1 chapmann's reflex q, lots of anatomy-based neuro.

The first 30 questions of all 8 blocks were 1st or 2nd order questions, from 31-50 on all 8 blocks, I had 2 or 3 part questions, and baout 75% of them required you to get the first part right to be able to answer the 2nd or 3rd part (eg, you had to know what drug to use to pick the right mechanism).

The pictures were of absolutely pathetic quality; blurry gram stains (i couldn't tell if it was a diplococci or a rod), very fuzzy radiographs (i had about 4 or 5 plain films and 1 MRI)...even had a black and white DRAWING of a fungas (which I think is rather sad)...the only thing that wasn't blurry were the EKGs (I had 2 of them).

I didn't think it was that great of a test. 1/3 of the questions were challenging, 1/3 were no brainers, 1/3 (or more) were very random, vague badly written questions that required you to assume alot of info in order get the right answer.

Very clinically oriented; I even had a question about the progression of treatment for an asthmatic on an albuterol MDI that wasn't getting the appropriate relief.

I don't think it tested on the material I've learned the past 2 years...it was very heavy on a few subjects. I know everyone's test is diff, and everyone has a different experience, but I don't understand why there is a "heavy" subject on everyone's exam, rather than equally distrubiting it among all subjects. Everyone gets gimmes, everyone gets random pharm mechanism or ADR questions that are hard, and everyone get's OMM/anatomy; no one seems to get any biochem or embryo or genetics.

Overall, the quality of the questions was poor, the picture quality was very poor, there were a handful of good, solid questions, but the majority were either random, vague clinical vignettes requiring you to assume something, or 1-step logic gimmes.

Take what a say with a grain of salt though, because everyone's test (day to day) is different, and things are emphasized on other tests that weren't on mine. Format wise, I think you can expect the same style of questions, but what subject blocks you're going to get is random.
 
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