Has anyone done WORSE on the real thing than on the NBME self assessment?

[Clair de Lune]

I took the Step I last week & I've been freaking out ever since. I have kind of a bad feeling about it. I took the NBME self assessment exam and scored a 600, so I thought I'd be OK to take the exam. But now I'm starting to remember questions that I think I probably missed & it's starting to upset me a little. Has anyone heard of someone doing decent on the NBME self assessments and then end up bombing the actual Step I? Please be honest with me...I'm starting to get really scared!!

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[lindyloohoo]

I've asked this question more than once in other threads and never got a response. I'm interested in hearing people's responses too. Share please!!

 

[Med4ever]

What was harder the self assesments or the real thing? Did u guys feel the real thing was VERY similar to the self assesments?

 

[neilc]

i did worse by about .5 SD, maybe even more

the self assessment is a very accurate example of test style questions. but, the content can change quite a bit. i had a lot of biochem and i suck at biochem, so that dragged my score down. just be aware that the STYLE of the questions is what you should get from the self assessment, not neccesarily difficulty or distribution of questions.

 

[Clair de Lune]

I felt like they were very similar. However, I was really nervous during the real thing so that's why I'm worried I will not do as well on the actual Step I as I did on the self-assessment.

 

[MissMedicine]

were there any released exam repeats on the actual exam... just curious

 

[Stinger86]

i did worse by about .5 SD, maybe even more

the self assessment is a very accurate example of test style questions. but, the content can change quite a bit. i had a lot of biochem and i suck at biochem, so that dragged my score down. just be aware that the STYLE of the questions is what you should get from the self assessment, not neccesarily difficulty or distribution of questions.

Well put. I really think the only correlation you can make between your step score and assessment score is whichever one you can convince yourself of first.



As far as released items on the actual exam, here's my take. There aren't SUPPOSED to be any verbatim released items on the actual exam, because they're all retired questions. However, there might be a question on the step that is very, very, very similarly worded to a released question, but it is not actually the same. That way, the NBME can give you practice questions without giving away free answers, but they can also keep testing similar concepts (because if they kept retiring concepts, they'd run out of questions!!)