how do you feel after you take the test?

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I thought it was way harder than I could have prepared for, so don't feel so bad
 
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medicinehopeful said:
i took the test yesterday, and i felt terrible about it. i thought it was actually harder than form 3. any thoughts?
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well what % of the questions would you say you got right that you know you got right? (the type of questions where not only can you explain why your choice is right, but why the others are wrong).

If you're at around 60% in terms of those, I think you're ok.
 
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i'm aiming for a 230...and during each block, i had about 15 that i had to make an educated guess on.
 
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medicinehopeful said:
i'm aiming for a 230...and during each block, i had about 15 that i had to make an educated guess on.
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if you knew 35/50 "stone cold" in each block and made "educated" guesses at most of the other 15, you'll get your 230. It sounds like you got > 80% of the questions right, and that should get you a 230.
 
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medicinehopeful said:
i took the test yesterday, and i felt terrible about it. i thought it was actually harder than form 3. any thoughts?
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Agreed (I took form 3 three days before the test). After the third block (which I crushed), the test was pure torture. I was tired and could barely breathe through my nose (allergies). I felt confident on only a small minority of questions. It took every picogram of epinephrine for me to not give up and hang myself in the bathroom. After the test, I felt defeated, depressed, and physically and emotionally drained.
 
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Then again, if you guys thought it was hard so did everyone...

I didn't feel great when I left either, but I ended up doing just fine.
 
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medicinehopeful said:
i'm aiming for a 230...and during each block, i had about 15 that i had to make an educated guess on.
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I'm in the same boat with medicinehopeful. I walked into the test thinking I'd get through it no problem because I had done well on all the practice tests I took beforehand (NBME forms 2 and 3, and the free 150 questions), and walked out feeling like I was not ready enough. I had about 90-95 questions that I wasn't sure about, and that's assuming that I got all the other ones I thought I was sure about correct. If you do the straight math, that's like 70ish% which is barely passing, right?

I keep hearing different things about how the test is graded though. Some say not all questions count (randomly), some say not all blocks count, some say the test adjusts itself to your level based on how many questions you answer correctly in the beginning of the block. Anyone know which of these is true? Or how you can gauge how well you did? This feeling of having absolutely no idea is just miserable.
 
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KidAtHeart said:
I'm in the same boat with medicinehopeful. I walked into the test thinking I'd get through it no problem because I had done well on all the practice tests I took beforehand (NBME forms 2 and 3, and the free 150 questions), and walked out feeling like I was not ready enough. I had about 90-95 questions that I wasn't sure about, and that's assuming that I got all the other ones I thought I was sure about correct. If you do the straight math, that's like 70ish% which is barely passing, right?
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If you were "totally sure" on 260 questions, that's 74% right there. If you're totally sure on 74%, the other 26% is not going to fall into the "no clue category". If you get half of the "unsures" right, that would be 87%.......of course you're going to miss some of the questions you were totally sure on, but even if that% falls to 84% or so, 84% is still going to get you probably about a 235 or so. so no, you are likely nowhere near barely passing.....
 
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lumbering said:
Agreed (I took form 3 three days before the test). After the third block (which I crushed), the test was pure torture. I was tired and could barely breathe through my nose (allergies). I felt confident on only a small minority of questions. It took every picogram of epinephrine for me to not give up and hang myself in the bathroom. After the test, I felt defeated, depressed, and physically and emotionally drained.
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This describes my feelings exactly.
 
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I felt absolutely horrible after the test, psychologically and physically. I tortured myself rehashing the test and remembering questions I got wrong, but in the end I got the score my NBME's predicted (which I was thrilled with). Interestingly, I had hardly any asterisks next to the bars on my actual exam score report compared with having nearly all asterisks on my most recent NBME score report, which (assuming that the scales they use for score reports are similar) suggests that I got a significantly higher number of questions wrong on the actual thing than the NBME but got the same score on both. Although I haven't heard anything from an official source regarding how they grade questions, it seems to make sense that your score is affected by the level of difficulty of the questions you get right and by how difficult your test is overall. Also, don't forget that there are experimental questions, so it really is nearly impossible to predict your score based on your perceived performance without knowing which were experimental questions. My advice is, as hard as it may be to wait, try not to rehash the test and just trust in your past NBME scores--they were a great predictor for me, and often underpredicted the scores of my friends. You all deserve a break after studying so hard, so enjoy having finished the boards!
 
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ginger60 said:
I felt absolutely horrible after the test, psychologically and physically. I tortured myself rehashing the test and remembering questions I got wrong, but in the end I got the score my NBME's predicted (which I was thrilled with). Interestingly, I had hardly any asterisks next to the bars on my actual exam score report compared with having nearly all asterisks on my most recent NBME score report, which (assuming that the scales they use for score reports are similar) suggests that I got a significantly higher number of questions wrong on the actual thing than the NBME but got the same score on both. Although I haven't heard anything from an official source regarding how they grade questions, it seems to make sense that your score is affected by the level of difficulty of the questions you get right and by how difficult your test is overall. !
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There is no real difference in the "difficulty of the test overall" from student to student. One test might seem harder than another, but only because a student didn't happen to be good at topics that were heavily tested. But with 350 questions, it's all going to even out.
 
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anesthesiarocks said:
There is no real difference in the "difficulty of the test overall" from student to student. One test might seem harder than another, but only because a student didn't happen to be good at topics that were heavily tested. But with 350 questions, it's all going to even out.
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I disagree. some of the 50q blocks are harder than others, and it's a roll of the dice which question block you receive. This is what makes some of the tests harder than others; if you happen to get 7 of the easier blocks, your test is easier.
 
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DocMizzle said:
I disagree. some of the 50q blocks are harder than others, and it's a roll of the dice which question block you receive. This is what makes some of the tests harder than others; if you happen to get 7 of the easier blocks, your test is easier.
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I'm assuming the curve evens all that out but nonetheless, I'd rather take my chances with an easier block and try to get fewer wrong. Probably walk out much happier that way 😉
 
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cdql said:
I'm assuming the curve evens all that out but nonetheless, I'd rather take my chances with an easier block and try to get fewer wrong. Probably walk out much happier that way 😉
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Agree -- all the tests are presumably going to get curved so that the same number of students do well and poorly regardless of which test form they get. But it would be nice if a form you felt was hard was, in fact, considered hard by everyone and the curve was more generous. It's hard to know if it was hard for everyone or just you though.

I'm personally hoping most of my test was composed of those experimental questions -- it would explain a lot. 😀
 
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does anyone feel that they may have made stupid mistakes on the test just due to nervousness? I can think of four questions that I would normally have known the answer to that I am positive that I clicked the wrong answer on. and now, i'm kicking myself in the behind for that.
 
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medicinehopeful said:
does anyone feel that they may have made stupid mistakes on the test just due to nervousness? I can think of four questions that I would normally have known the answer to that I am positive that I clicked the wrong answer on. and now, i'm kicking myself in the behind for that.
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I hear you man. I have had nightmares of graphs and all that of questions I may have potentially messed up. But you know what I think. I think when you sit in front of that computer screen and begin to take one question at a time the norepinephrine really does cross those synapses and the correct answers shine a bit brighter than the others and that is what most people pick. That is assuming you have prepared well of course. For both our sakes I hope that was the case... 🙂
 
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amen all,

i feel the same way. i made at least 10 such mistakes. maybe i actually got some of my dumb mistakes right but i'm not giving myself the benefit of the doubt and am assuming i screwed up. it's been a day since i took the exam and am fretting over the results already. at this point, i just want to pass. anyone know what a percentage for minimum passing is? i figure i'll aim low at this point, post exam, while i aimed super high in all the weeks preceding the test date.

i don't even know how to gauge how hard my exam was cause i can only assume blocks with questions i didn't know were heavy on subjects that i'm historically bad at. in that sense, i don't know how you one can even say they had a tougher/easier test as compared to other test takers. any thoughts?

i'm in a dark hole in my mind at this point.
 
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Law2Doc said:
That's where you pour the EtOH after the test.
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i'm tryin it, but it's not helpin...

took the test today, and i don't feel good about it at all. my first two blocks were really unbalanced. the first block i barely had enough time to get to the last question and click a random answer before the screen shut off. the second block i was done with 18 minutes left. that kind of pissed me off. the rest of the time i finished with about 10 minutes left. i scored a 226 on the nbme 3 with 2.5 weeks left to go and a goal of anything over 230 so i was feeling good goin in, but honestly i felt like i was making (un)educated guesses on at least half the questions in each block. there were so many questions where i was like "man, i knew this two weeks ago, but now i can't remember." there were also a couple nitpicky anatomy questions like what artery supplies this 1 inch part of obscure organ X (the same one asked twice!) yet there was only one question on the whole exam on drug interactions through p450 (thought that would be higher yield), no vasculidities, no reproductive cancers, and 3-4 "what should you say next" questions per block (though i guess that may be the norm, but annoying). three questions i didn't even recognize any of the words in the 5 answer choices. hopefully these were experimental ones.

anyways, i left feeling like "what the heck just happened?" 3 double-glenlivet on the rocks later, i dont' feel much better. about to hop in the shower and head out though. maybe being reintroduced to life and civilization after 3 months of waking up, going to the library, sleeping, repeat (including block exams, final exams, shelf exams, and step 1)will make me feel better.

sorry, don't really post much around here. just had to rant a bit.
 
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I'm kind of on the opposite spectrum. I felt good after leaving the exam. However, I have a crumby track record of feeling good after exams and not doing as well as I thought I would. I usually score higher than I think when I feel like i was ripped a new one by the exam.
 
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blz said:
I'm kind of on the opposite spectrum. I felt good after leaving the exam. However, I have a crumby track record of feeling good after exams and not doing as well as I thought I would. I usually score higher than I think when I feel like i was ripped a new one by the exam.
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😀 I'm the exact same way. I once walked out of an ochem exam thinking I aced it. I received an email two days later indicating I had gotten a 40% on it!
 
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I felt good after the exam, as well. It's weird because I've never felt confident after a standardized test. I'm getting more and more nervous as I wait for the score, though!
 
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UCLAstudent said:
I felt good after the exam, as well. It's weird because I've never felt confident after a standardized test. I'm getting more and more nervous as I wait for the score, though!
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Since there were a different range of exam forms, some more closely covering the FA/UW/Qbank material than others, and everybody will have had their own strengths and weaknesses, some of which may have been exploited on a particular test, it's pretty reasonable to think some people will come out feeling like they hit more out of the park than others.
 
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UCLAstudent said:
I felt good after the exam, as well. It's weird because I've never felt confident after a standardized test. I'm getting more and more nervous as I wait for the score, though!
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same here. most standardized exams are touchy feely questions. the questions on the usmle are a lot of straight forward - you know it or you don't. i guess that's why it's easier to come out thinking you did well since the questions are more hit and miss (except those dumb patient-doctor questions).
 
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ill go with humbly hopeful. I walked out feeling like i had performed well - was confident in most of my answer choices, was able to make strong educated guesses, etc. So that 230-240 score seems quite possible, but i continue to tell myself i may have overestimated how well i did in case that <230 comes knocking
 
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DocMizzle said:
I disagree. some of the 50q blocks are harder than others, and it's a roll of the dice which question block you receive. This is what makes some of the tests harder than others; if you happen to get 7 of the easier blocks, your test is easier.
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well you're not thinking of it the right way. Instead of thinking of their being 7 data points in determining how hard your test is(with each data point being from very easy to very hard), you need to think of it as being 350 data points. The questions selected in making out a block are chosen randomly....it's not like the test makers say "let's make this a hard block". If 20 questions into block 3 those questions are actually more difficult on average, question 21 isn't any more or less likely to follow this trend than question 21 on block 5.

So because of this, your way of thinking about "hard blocks" and "easy blocks" is just an artificial construction. It has no more meaning than you saying "it's a roll of the dice as to what questions 35-60 will be like on the test".
 
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KidAtHeart said:
On the bright side, a lot of people seem to feel this way, so it may mean there will be a good curve.
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Well, considering that 90+% of all US allo first time takers pass, and considering that there is an average score about 30 points above passing, odds are pretty good that most of the people on here concerned about passing will. It would be hard to imagine too many of the strugglers are SDNers considering this is the home of so many overachievers.
 
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Law2Doc said:
Well, considering that 90+% of all US allo first time takers pass, and considering that there is an average score about 30 points above passing, odds are pretty good that most of the people on here concerned about passing will. It would be hard to imagine too many of the strugglers are SDNers considering this is the home of so many overachievers.
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I have been waiting for my results for a little over 3 weeks now and my 'feeling' of how I did has slowly deteriorated over the weeks. :laugh: Its kind of funny actually.... Atleast it's nice to know I am not in the chamber of torture a lone. Maybe they really are doing some kind of experiment on us... 😕
I did have a question for ya'll though. Most of you who have taken the exam did you get at least two blocks that were harder than the rest... I have been reading a lot of threads since my exam and most people report having at least two tough blocks on the exam and the others being mediocre to easy... I guess my point is that if you think you did well on at least 5 blocks and the other two were like a shot of Old Monk (nastiest rum I've ever had) then you should be fine.
 
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Law2Doc said:
I'm pretty sure those headphones probed my mind while I was testing -- they were uncomfortable as heck.
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Yeah I felt as if I was in an airplane trying to withstand barotraumatic tympanic membrane effusion... 🙂
 
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mohaven said:
I have been waiting for my results for a little over 3 weeks now and my 'feeling' of how I did has slowly deteriorated over the weeks. :laugh: Its kind of funny actually.... Atleast it's nice to know I am not in the chamber of torture a lone. Maybe they really are doing some kind of experiment on us... 😕
I did have a question for ya'll though. Most of you who have taken the exam did you get at least two blocks that were harder than the rest... I have been reading a lot of threads since my exam and most people report having at least two tough blocks on the exam and the others being mediocre to easy... I guess my point is that if you think you did well on at least 5 blocks and the other two were like a shot of Old Monk (nastiest rum I've ever had) then you should be fine.
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Yeah, I definitely felt there were two blocks (3 and 6 for me) that were *harder* than the rest. But as has been stated, the pulling of questions is totally random, and all the tests should be somewhat equivalent in the difficulty of the questions, so its probably just that certain blocks randomly get a higher concentration of these questions
 
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anesthesiarocks said:
well you're not thinking of it the right way. Instead of thinking of their being 7 data points in determining how hard your test is(with each data point being from very easy to very hard), you need to think of it as being 350 data points. The questions selected in making out a block are chosen randomly....it's not like the test makers say "let's make this a hard block". If 20 questions into block 3 those questions are actually more difficult on average, question 21 isn't any more or less likely to follow this trend than question 21 on block 5.

So because of this, your way of thinking about "hard blocks" and "easy blocks" is just an artificial construction. It has no more meaning than you saying "it's a roll of the dice as to what questions 35-60 will be like on the test".
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My point isn't that the blocks are pre-selected. You're right, questions for each block are chosen randomly. However, you could randomly receive a block with more difficult questions, making that block more difficult. Now if person A gets more of these difficult blocks than person B, I would say person A's test was harder.

Although many times it averages out so that most test are similar in difficulty, my point is that because questions are chosen randomly, there ends up being a distribution such that some tests end up with more of the harder questions and are more difficult than other tests.
 
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DocMizzle said:
My point isn't that the blocks are pre-selected. You're right, questions for each block are chosen randomly. However, you could randomly receive a block with more difficult questions, making that block more difficult. Now if person A gets more of these difficult blocks than person B, I would say person A's test was harder.

Although many times it averages out so that most test are similar in difficulty, my point is that because questions are chosen randomly, there ends up being a distribution such that some tests end up with more of the harder questions and are more difficult than other tests.
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It all works out in the curve. Presumably you are graded against others who got the same questions (sort of like the question by question percentages you see on World in the tutor mode). I'm guessing -- nobody on here really knows.
 
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Law2Doc said:
It all works out in the curve. Presumably you are graded against others who got the same questions (sort of like the question by question percentages you see on World in the tutor mode). I'm guessing -- nobody on here really knows.
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That sounds logical. I'd think a question that only 6% of the entire nation got right probably shouldn't hold as much weight as a question that 75% of the nation got right
 
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cdql said:
That sounds logical. I'd think a question that only 6% of the entire nation got right probably shouldn't hold as much weight as a question that 75% of the nation got right
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Although all questions are weighted equally, this ends up being true because the standard deviation for the latter question is larger.

Standard deviation for a 1-point question that only 6% of the entire nation got right:

((0.06)(0.94))^(1/2) = 0.2375 points

Standard deviation for a 1-point question that 75% of the entire nation got right:

((0.75)(0.25))^(1/2) = 0.4330 points

Thus, the easier question becomes more important by a factor of about 1.8

A corrolary to this is that the most important questions are those that 50% get correct.
 
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lumbering said:
Although all questions are weighted equally, this ends up being true because the standard deviation for the latter question is larger.

Standard deviation for a 1-point question that only 6% of the entire nation got right:

((0.06)(0.94))^(1/2) = 0.2375 points

Standard deviation for a 1-point question that 75% of the entire nation got right:

((0.75)(0.25))^(1/2) = 0.4330 points

Thus, the easier question becomes more important by a factor of about 1.8

A corrolary to this is that the most important questions are those that 50% get correct.
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I have no clue what you are saying.
Probably best to answer all the questions correctly that you can and let the USMLE folks sort it out.🙂
 
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UCLAstudent said:
I felt good after the exam, as well. It's weird because I've never felt confident after a standardized test. I'm getting more and more nervous as I wait for the score, though!
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Me too! Now, I've started having dreams about questions I potentially missed (ones I was going back and forth on). It's driving me nuts. So now I think I either did well or failed.
 
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Ahhh.....it feels good to be done with the exam.

I got done with the exam yesterday, and am so relieved it's over. The beast was a difficult exam.
Intially, I felt kinda of crappy coming out of the premetric center since I thought it was an challenging exam. I felt mentally drained and worn down. I am the type of person who can memorized a fair amount of questions after exam so i can look over what I got wrong. But for this exam, after the first block, I sat in my little cubicle during my 5 minute break, smiling and saying to myself, "What the fu*k did I just take".
Anyway, I realized that this exam is probably the hardest exam anyone will ever take. Afterwards, I felt happy with myself since I knew I tried my best and studied the most that I ever studied for the past 3-4 weeks.

To those who are down after taking the beast, as long you believe in your heart that you tried your best, then that alone is an accomplishment in itelf.
Alexander Bell once said, "What this power is I cannot say; all I know is that it exists and it becomes available only when a man is in that state of mind in which he knows exactly what he wants and is fully determined not to quit until he finds it.
 
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I agree, I was super happy to be done and the test was a lot less scary than I had dreamed about! However, I neglected pharm in my studies while I was reading and learning from Goljan! Hopefully, I wont get a big sad face next to the pharm component of my test!
 
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