COMLEX II ONLY, Qbank question. Please help!

[Disimpact22]

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I'm currently scheduled for Step II on July 3. I'm only taking COMLEX. Currently I have Uworld and Combank. I'm trying to get some insight into what would be the best combo of qbanks given my remaining time:

UWorld + ComBANK
UW + ComQUESTor
Comquest + Combank?

I love UW as far as teaching and scope goes but I truly have no idea how well it translates to COMLEX only testing. For Step I I found COMQUEST to be way too basic. COMBANK was great in both questions and explanations. I also should have done more UW. I scored a 515 for Step I and am shooting for a 530+ for Step II.

Before I get flamed, yes I used the search function and found lots of differing opinions. I'm sure I'll get a bunch more here but at least they're "fresh". Some of the pertinent posts were from 2007 and below.

Thanks a lot all.

 

[Disimpact22]

A

 

[FrkyBgStok]

ive been using combank and uworld and it seems to be a good pairing so far. i liked comquest for level 1, but there were about 1000 more questions with combank. Some of the explanations suck but uworld is top notch so it covers where combank is lacking.

 

[FutureDO2016]

So UWorld and COMBANK is the best combo and from what I'm hearing COMQUEST isn't good for Level 2 COMLEX?

I liked combank and comquest for Level 1 because I felt it reinforced topics.

 

[bearboots]

For non-OMM, it was hard to know which one is better for teaching and reinforcing clinical concepts. I purchased combank for extra explanations and practices questions but can't determine yet on how it is from a learning perspective such as UW. There were so many threads here on SDN where it was promoted one way or another for comquest or combank lol and you couldn't tell if it was the company disguised giving those recommendations. I did hear comquest from a total amount of questions available are shorter like FrkyBgStok said (i.e. 1000 vs 2000ish for combank).

Combank does have a mobile app which works okay but it looks like the company was bought out by another company called TrueLearn. I don't know TrueLearn's background history but it seems they own a bunch of board prep stuff unrelated to usmle/comlex. Combank was written by students and comquest by practicing physicians but you can't tell how comquest questions are because there aren't any demo samples or even a mobile app to choose and try.

I can't confirm and would love to know if anyone actually did both comquest and combank and can share how the non-OMM explanations are written between the two. I'm looking for something as close to as UW-depth as posssible!

 

[nullpathic]

I've been using all three question banks to prepare for my COMATs and Level 2 and here are my thoughts:

USMLE World: Definitely worth buying. The questions oftentimes seem to be overkill for COMLEX, but I take notes and learn a lot from their explanations. It hasn't been similar to the COMAT question focus or style, though, so I'd definitely recommend using one or both of the COMLEX q-banks for that. If you're taking the USMLE, this is a no-brainer. If you're taking only the COMLEX, I'd still recommend it in order to get a good background.

ComBANK: They have a lot of questions, but I feel that is because they throw in a lot of WTF questions. While I haven't encountered many WTF questions on the COMATs (I read that the NBOME is ramping up their quality so maybe they threw out those questions), I guess this could help avoid being thrown off on the COMLEX if they were to show up. It would probably serve only that purpose, since I doubt they'll be asking me the same WTF question. To echo the previous poster, I don't know if they got bought out or what is going on, but they have changed to Testweapon to Truelearn over the past year and offer a lot of non-USMLE/COMLEX products now and might be losing focus.

ComQUEST: My school provides this to us and requires us to complete it. They have less questions, but there are less WTF questions and I don't know what's more important yet. Some explanations can be more detailed because they vary from a couple of sentences up to UWorld length paragraphs. The question style and topics are the most similar to what I've seen on the COMATs so far. They emailed me, and I'm assuming all of their subscribers, about 3-4 weeks ago saying they're adding more questions with more thorough explanations to reflect 2015 standards, and I did see about 60 questions added to my account over this period (they show up in my account sporadically). Those questions have had much more lengthy explanations. Hopefully they'll continue adding more questions like those.

For now, I'm assuming the COMAT and COMLEX Level 2 are pretty representative of each other and I'm sticking with all 3 Q-banks! I feel like each one contributes something unique and it isn't worth skipping one.

 

[FutureDO2016]

I've been using all three question banks to prepare for my COMATs and Level 2 and here are my thoughts:

USMLE World: Definitely worth buying. The questions oftentimes seem to be overkill for COMLEX, but I take notes and learn a lot from their explanations. It hasn't been similar to the COMAT question focus or style, though, so I'd definitely recommend using one or both of the COMLEX q-banks for that. If you're taking the USMLE, this is a no-brainer. If you're taking only the COMLEX, I'd still recommend it in order to get a good background.

ComBANK: They have a lot of questions, but I feel that is because they throw in a lot of WTF questions. While I haven't encountered many WTF questions on the COMATs (I read that the NBOME is ramping up their quality so maybe they threw out those questions), I guess this could help avoid being thrown off on the COMLEX if they were to show up. It would probably serve only that purpose, since I doubt they'll be asking me the same WTF question. To echo the previous poster, I don't know if they got bought out or what is going on, but they have changed to Testweapon to Truelearn over the past year and offer a lot of non-USMLE/COMLEX products now and might be losing focus.

ComQUEST: My school provides this to us and requires us to complete it. They have less questions, but there are less WTF questions and I don't know what's more important yet. Some explanations can be more detailed because they vary from a couple of sentences up to UWorld length paragraphs. The question style and topics are the most similar to what I've seen on the COMATs so far. They emailed me, and I'm assuming all of their subscribers, about 3-4 weeks ago saying they're adding more questions with more thorough explanations to reflect 2015 standards, and I did see about 60 questions added to my account over this period (they show up in my account sporadically). Those questions have had much more lengthy explanations. Hopefully they'll continue adding more questions like those.

For now, I'm assuming the COMAT and COMLEX Level 2 are pretty representative of each other and I'm sticking with all 3 Q-banks! I feel like each one contributes something unique and it isn't worth skipping one.

Thanks for the review of all three question banks!

 

[Disimpact22]

Thanks for the advice Null. I bit the bullet after all and bought COMQUEST. I just did one set of questions and found them to be somewhat less WTF inducing than COMBANK qs. I'll be using CQ for a while too and see. I was just getting so frustrated with COMBANK. The questions in UW that I don't know are valid, I can learn from the answers. However in CB many of the ones I didn't know felt so random as to almost be useless. In this initial tiny sampling I have found that CQ "seems" to be somewhere in between the extremes of UW and CB. BUT of course this is COMLEX studying so I'm sure everything I think I'm doing right will change again soon.

 

[FutureDO2016]

Any more input from people who already took the test?

 

[FutureDO2016]

anymore input...COMBANK or COMQUEST for Level 2CE?

 

[dntke1518]

anymore input...COMBANK or COMQUEST for Level 2CE?

I am using UWorld and COMBANK. I felt like COMBANK covered Level 1 well and my classmates that have already taken Level 2 have said that they felt COMBANK was fairly accurate of what you will see. I

 

[Disimpact22]

In the end I did both combank and comquest--CB twice, CQ once plus all incorrects. I kind of regret not doing uworld, at least the IM section. Except for some of the really wtf questions in both banks I've squeezed every drop of info I could out of the two. Wish me luck and prayers please! I take COMLEX II real soon. Will update when I get my scores.

 

[blastoff]

what was the verdict on this?