Consistency of daily scores for UW

[NucleusAccumben]

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Hey guys, I'm new to this board and hoping I can get some advice. I've been studying for a week and a half for boards and have been getting 50 to 60% on UW on random and some on subject. I took UWSA #1 this past weekend and got 56%. All of sudden today I did a random 48 quetions and got like 39%. This is substantially lower than what I've been getting with random questions. Are some of you having "off" days aswell with UW? I love UW it's been great, but this threw me for a loop today. Advice from present and past board studiers are welcome! 🙂

 

[ZagDoc]

This is what my first two weeks of scores looked like:

 

[sebsvenmdc]

Hey guys, I'm new to this board and hoping I can get some advice. I've been studying for a week and a half for boards and have been getting 50 to 60% on UW on random and some on subject. I took UWSA #1 this past weekend and got 56%. All of sudden today I did a random 48 quetions and got like 39%. This is substantially lower than what I've been getting with random questions. Are some of you having "off" days aswell with UW? I love UW it's been great, but this threw me for a loop today. Advice from present and past board studiers are welcome! 🙂

Yeah, don't worry, dude. My scores fluctuate too. In January, they were nuts! Ranging from 40s-80s. Now, things have become more consistent, but I still can drop 20-30% on a round if they ask all the stuff I don't know.

 

[Slide]

This is what my first two weeks of scores looked like:

That graph seems to be a universal experience for most.

 

[NucleusAccumben]

Thanks for replying. I feel a little more normal now. That's the thing about studying for this beast: you don't know what's the normal progression for studying, uw scores, nbme scores etc because everybody's a little different.🙂

 

[psychforme]

I don't understand if the people on this site are ******ed or something. I found the UWSA #1 completely impossible but now doing the USMLEword q bank it's pretty easy. Getting the same percentage on UWSA #1 in the qbank boggles my mind.

 

[Depakote]

This is what my first two weeks of scores looked like:

looks about right.

 

[hateroftheyear]

as an outlier to the general consensus, i find that my qbank percentage rarely deviates more than 5% in either direction, with the overwhelming mode at 79 or 81%. I don't know why this is, but unless there is a particularly tough question set with a <50% cumulative average, I seem to get 79 or 81 almost every time with a score in the mid to low 70s not too infrequently as well. I think the UWorld "formula" loses its predictive ability above 70 and will only tell you that you will probably score >240, but there's no way to know how high. the exception to that rule is if you manage to pull off a cumulative % above 80, which is truly impressive and indicative that you will probably destroy the exam (260+). in the 60s and you're likely to score in the 220s - 230s region, perhaps even higher. In the mid to high 50s you will probably pass, and anything lower than that you may be in trouble.

 

[confuse]

Anyone doing UW in Tutor mode? I do mine in tutor mode on the subjects that I just reviewed over so my % is overly inflated. What I noticed is that at the beginning of the 48 question set, I average 50-60% correct but as I progressed through the latter half of the question set and read the explanation for my wrong answers, I would average in the 80s % so that my cumulative average is in the 70s. That make me really suspicious of UW because I haven't learned much new things while doing the questions but still score higher from just seeing similar question style.

 

[NucleusAccumben]

Anyone doing UW in Tutor mode? I do mine in tutor mode on the subjects that I just reviewed over so my % is overly inflated. What I noticed is that at the beginning of the 48 question set, I average 50-60% correct but as I progressed through the latter half of the question set and read the explanation for my wrong answers, I would average in the 80s % so that my cumulative average is in the 70s. That make me really suspicious of UW because I haven't learned much new things while doing the questions but still score higher from just seeing similar question style.

I alternate from subject (timed) to random (timed) 48's, and trying to fit in a UWSA or NBME on the weekends. I figure I'm trying to use UW as a learning tool, so why not do some 48s on subject to make sure I'm covering holes that Goljan or FA do not cover. Personally myself I think as long as your doing questions is the best thing. I think after reviewing responses from my initial response, I'm going to place more faith in the predictive value of UWSA, NBME scores of my possible performance on the real exam. Hopefully this will work. Maybe I'm overthinking it. 😕

 

[rahulb]

Anyone doing UW in Tutor mode? I do mine in tutor mode on the subjects that I just reviewed over so my % is overly inflated. What I noticed is that at the beginning of the 48 question set, I average 50-60% correct but as I progressed through the latter half of the question set and read the explanation for my wrong answers, I would average in the 80s % so that my cumulative average is in the 70s. That make me really suspicious of UW because I haven't learned much new things while doing the questions but still score higher from just seeing similar question style.

i call it the '1st block' effect.
i took a uw self assessment yesterday and got a 75% after the 1st block. 2nd block was 89% and 3rd/4th were similar. i nearly always blow my first block of the day regardless of what qbank im using.

for this reason i moved my exam from 8am to 1pm so i can wake up and work through a few blocks to get all the bad guessing out of the way lol

 

[kookaiDO]

i call it the '1st block' effect.
i took a uw self assessment yesterday and got a 75% after the 1st block. 2nd block was 89% and 3rd/4th were similar. i nearly always blow my first block of the day regardless of what qbank im using.

for this reason i moved my exam from 8am to 1pm so i can wake up and work through a few blocks to get all the bad guessing out of the way lol

I had the same problem on UWSA1 (but with lower scores!), but I thought that the first block was just much harder than the other blocks. I don't think it was because it was the first block necessarily, but more due to the level of difficulty... who knows..