difficulty of exam - changes?

[kellysmith]

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does the time frame in which one takes the boards affect the level of difficulty or the grading curve? i'm retaking the boards in november sometime and am getting nervous that this exam will be harder - especially after reading everyone's posts about their experiences in july or august. does anyone know or are people just shooting from the hip (blindly)?

 

[Idiopathic]

If it gets harder, it will be harder for everyone. I would believe that a test with fewer 'gimmees' will be easier to score higher on, ultimately. No one wants a hard test, but the people that come out freaking out about the test invariaby do fine, unless they were not prepared at all.

 

[nsh_00]

Well, According to the information page on the usmle website, they quoted that results of testtakers from May till June may be slightly delayed due to a necessary process of changing the question pool and also a slight affect of high volume of testtakers.
I took my test in Aug. and it was godawfully difficult, uncomparable to qbank, nbme or any question pool I've ever seen. As none of us have seen any other persons test, there is no way of comparing the difficulty level of our test to a test in the past,present, or future. We have no choice but to accept that they will be fair and grade us accordingly and that we will be competing for residencies along with people who took the test at the same time we did. I'm expecting my result soon so lets see what happens.

 

[Idiopathic]

I have said all along that I thought my test was more difficult than I thought it would be. But I have no previous experience to base this on, only QBank and the like.

 

[bigfrank]

This is a good question. I think the bottom line is that everyone gets a miserable exam and that, regardless, you're going to be judged in relation to your peers taking the same (or similar) miserable exam. "It will all come out in the wash," so to speak