How do NBME Shelf Exams compare to Step 2 Questions?

[johnqmedstudent]

How do NBME Clinical Shelf Exams (for example, Medicine) compare to the types of questions asked on the USMLE Step 2?

Would doing practice questions for the USMLE Step 2 prepare one for the medicine NBME Shelf Exam?

Also, how do the questions in MKSAP 3 For Students compare to the questions on the shelf exam?

Thanks👍

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[Jaydoc311]

I will take step 2 in a week, so I can't answer that part of your question, however, I used usmle world online question bank and mksap to prepare for my medicine 3rd year clerkship shelf. It was my worst shelf of the year, but then again it was the first one that I took and had no idea what to expect (I still passed easily, though). I thought that the mksap questions were pretty good as far as difficulty level. USMLE world also had good questions, and had the added benefit of having all the topics mixed together. One drawback of mksap is that the chapters are divided by topic, so your thinking is already sort of narrowed down. I think this makes the questions easier and can give a false sense of security.

After the first clerkship, I used Pretest for most other clerkships for question practice and either Blueprints or Kaplan notes for my primary review source. I had much better luck with this combo and would recommend it to anyone. As I'm sure you'll soon find out, reading the official textbooks that your clerkships recommend can be kind of unreasonable, especially on the busier ones. Good review books are essential for shelf review. Hope this helps!

 

[Law2Doc]

Also, how do the questions in MKSAP 3 For Students compare to the questions on the shelf exam?

It's a mixed bag. On the one hand these questions are made up by the same folks who make up the shelf, so you'd think they are comparable. And in fact they are similar in style to what you might see. On the other there are a ton of reports on SDN that these questions aren't all that well tuned toward the subject matter tested on the shelf. And the real problem with the medicine shelf IMHO, isn't the questions as much as the timing -- the test is too long to actually mull over the questions, which is a problem because a lot of the answers to each question often look pretty good on first blush.
In my opinion medicine is medicine, and any problems you do should be somewhat useful, be it MKSAP, World, Pretest, etc. But I don't think anyone has found a "magic bullet" resource that guarantees you a good grade on that test.