OK, FINALLY I have a CE score and can post a bit of my experience.
I used USMLE World during third year as prep for the shelf exam for each rotation. Even though we only have to pass the shelf, I tried to do my best, and I think this paid off when the time came to study for CE. I'm not sure how other schools are, but, unlike Step 1, we get no dedicated time off to study for Step 2, so keeping up throughout the year and taking the shelf exams seriously is key. I ended up almost finishing USMLE World with 65% correct.
For benchmarking, my raw shelf scores were as follows: Internal Medicine 90, Obstetrics / Gynecology 74, Pediatrics 83, Psychiatry 89, Family Medicine 85, Surgery 82.
I did COMBANK 3-4 weeks before my test. I liked the fact that COMBANK's question format is very close to the real deal- ie including multiple matching sets, OMT, etc. COMBANK's brief answer explanations also make it very easy to blaze through the question bank quickly. I was disappointed however, in the accuracy of some of what they called "high yield" information. My sense with COMBANK is that they are a rather small operation, and I wonder how many test-takers they're actually sampling to determine what info is really high yield for COMLEX. I took extensive notes on COMBANK - especially trying to memorize the things that they said were COMLEX favorites, and unfortunately very few of these ended up on my test. Perhaps I had a newer test version. I felt like a short subscription to COMBANK was absolutely worth the time and money, but I wouldn't get hung up on knowing every fact, EKG finding or assessment scale which they say is "high yield"...
For books, I primarily used Secrets, and went back to the other books I used for shelf exams - Blueprints, Kaplan, etc. for any areas of weakness. In other words, I basically reread Blueprints Peds and OB/Gyn. The other book I used fairly extensively was Deja Review Family Medicine. COMBANK advises approaching this test thinking like a family doctor, and I found this to be a good way to approach studying for it. I maybe had 1 or 2 ortho or optho questions, but a boatload of Peds and OB.
On test day, the first 6 blocks of the test seemed more or less about like I expected - lots of Peds and OB as I mentioned before, general IM stuff, perhaps a half dozen EKGs and picture questions.
I cannot emphasize enough how important it is to not ignore OMM - I had lots of all kinds - autonomic levels, cranial, sacrum, counterstrain, ortho tests. I know a lot of people blow off OMM till the day before the test and do a half-hearted review, hoping they won't have too much OMM on their test. IMO this is really missing some potentially easy points, and come on, this is COMLEX - of course they will be pounding you with OMM.
It seems obvious, but take your time and look at the pictures carefully - on a couple I could see how if you looked quickly you could miss an important detail that cinched the answer.
My last two blocks were weird. Perhaps I was fatigued, but I felt like I had walked into a different test for my last two blocks. For the first blocks, I was finishing 15-20 minutes early, and having plenty of time to go back and agonize over marked questions. For my last two blocks, I almost did not even finish - NO TIME TO CHECK ANSWERS AT ALL. The tone and difficulty level of the questions just seemed to abruptly change, and each question had tons of labs, comorbidities, etc to wade through. Much closer to USMLE World style questions than the typical short stem COMLEX question. Like I say, perhaps it was just fatigue, or perhaps some new question styles are being tested...? In any case, I felt totally beat down walking out of this one.
I took one COMSAE, form A, about 3 weeks before the real deal: 730.
Real Deal: 770. Much better than I could have hoped for. Took about 5.5 weeks for the score to appear on the nbome website.
Hope this helps future test takers and good luck to anyone still waiting for grades...
Now back to waiting for my PE result...
