COMSAE & NBOME Questions

[KeikoTanaka]

1.) In general, what is a good COMSAE score?

2.) I passed my schools designated "score" in order to qualify for sitting for the COMLEX, is it worth it to ask to take the additional COMSAE exams my school is offering even though they won't pay for the additional exams we have to take, and we'd have to pay for them ourselves?

3.) I purchased all the practice exams from the NBOME website already, will they be the same as the additional COMSAE exams my school plans on administering anyways? Or do schools have their own NBOME question banks that auto-generates tests?

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[AnatomyGrey12]

1.) In general, what is a good COMSAE score?

It just depends as COMSAE's are hard to interpret. I know people that went up 100 points from their COMSAE average to people who got right at their COMSAE average. I would say anything over 600 is really good. 650+ probably means you have a shot at 700+ on the real thing.

2.) I passed my schools designated "score" in order to qualify for sitting for the COMLEX, is it worth it to ask to take the additional COMSAE exams my school is offering even though they won't pay for the additional exams we have to take, and we'd have to pay for them ourselves?

Probably. It's a free practice test basically.

3.) I purchased all the practice exams from the NBOME website already, will they be the same as the additional COMSAE exams my school plans on administering anyways? Or do schools have their own NBOME question banks that auto-generates tests?

The school COMSAE's are unique questions. NBOME has COMSAE's reserved that only schools have access to.

 

[Neopolymath]

This is an indirect answer to your question but your Uworld average (depending on how you use it) and your general honest feeling of your class rank and stuff like that are really going to tell you if you are prepared for boards better than any COMSAE. They can tell you a range for sure. The COMSAEs are agreed to be largely garbage. Last year people greatly struggled with interpreting their scores.

I'm not saying you should do this, but you could do what I did. Take the school one to get them to shut up and then completely ignore that stuff and focus on doing well on UW as it has many more data points and most people agree that it translates to Comlex score roughly as well as long as your OMM game is not incredibly poor.

Only take this extra COMSAE if you want to practice extra bad questions with no explanations... Sounds like you would benefit from learning something from a quality Qbank or reviewing weak points more than the hours to give you a number that doesn't really mean anything. That's really non-specific advice because EVERYONE would.

Is this a confidence issue? Do you want to take it because you don't believe the first number or something? You don't have to answer those questions but you should think about your mentality to figure out what you need to do.

 

[Ho0v-man]

My comsaes were nothing like comlex. Comlex has longer stems and felt basically like a sprint compared to the leisurely pace of a comsae. That being said, my last two comsaes were both within 10 points of my comlex score.

If you plan to take USMLE, just focus on uworld and cram omm after step but before comlex. If you’re just focusing on comlex, I’d still focus on uworld but sketchy micro and pharm are your bible and you can ignore most of the nit picky cell bio.

The DO specific resources are so bad they can’t really help you with anything.

 

[KeikoTanaka]

This is an indirect answer to your question but your Uworld average (depending on how you use it) and your general honest feeling of your class rank and stuff like that are really going to tell you if you are prepared for boards better than any COMSAE. They can tell you a range for sure. The COMSAEs are agreed to be largely garbage. Last year people greatly struggled with interpreting their scores.

I'm not saying you should do this, but you could do what I did. Take the school one to get them to shut up and then completely ignore that stuff and focus on doing well on UW as it has many more data points and most people agree that it translates to Comlex score roughly as well as long as your OMM game is not incredibly poor.

Only take this extra COMSAE if you want to practice extra bad questions with no explanations... Sounds like you would benefit from learning something from a quality Qbank or reviewing weak points more than the hours to give you a number that doesn't really mean anything. That's really non-specific advice because EVERYONE would.

Is this a confidence issue? Do you want to take it because you don't believe the first number or something? You don't have to answer those questions but you should think about your mentality to figure out what you need to do.

Actually I agree, I think a question bank where I could get the actual responses back and learn from them is a much better use of my time at this point. If I can't review the COMSAE I'm not sure exactly how useful it is for me, other than telling me what I already know AKA my lowest scoring section is OB/GYN because our school just started it and I haven't reviewed it enough yet haha. I think you're right using that time for UWorld or whatever other question bank would be a much better use of my time. Thanks!