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Hello fellow med students!
I just found out that I passed my step 2 on my second attempt. I'd like to share my experience for those who are in a similar situation to what I was in...
First off, some info:
Step 1 COMLEX: 435
Step 2 COMLEX attempt #1: 388
Step 2 COMLEX attempt #2: 445
I found out I failed around mid october. It was really scary, since I was midway through interview season, I still had not taken my COMLEX PE, and I felt like I had already done all I could for studying. To make matters worse, I found out the day before my top choice residency's interview! My school's idiot dean in charge of clinical education advised me to take a leave of absence, stop interviewing, delay my COMLE PE, and maybe scramble in to residency if I was lucky. I'm so happy I didn't listen. Here's what I did instead:
#1 - Do an honest post mortem: In my case, I think my failure wasn't from lack of trying, it was actually from a fear of failure itself. I got burnt out from studying even during years one and two, from the negative reinforcement of damaged (surgery, ha ha) attendings on rotations, and from getting all those questions wrong in the question banks. I didn't realize it until doing a post-mortem after failing, but when I got a question wrong, I would stress out a little. I would be stressed that I wasn't learning fast enough, I would worry about what would happen if i failed, and I would get discouraged. Maybe I would take a quick facebook break that burnt 30 minutes of time. So that cycle lead to working hard yet getting a crappy score because of negative internal re-inforcement when I got a question wrong. This realization for me was a prerequisite to doing better. THE BOTTOM LINE IS FEAR IS A CHOICE, NOT A "GIVE-IN".
#2 - Don't keep this to yourself. 80% of the people I disclosed my failing scores to ended up having a failure of their own in step 1, 2, or 3. And even those who are rock stars on the boards and don't have a failure have failed in some aspect of their life like their personal life, etc. Everybody fails. If they haven't, they haven't been pushing themselves hard enough and they fail by default.
#3 - Enhance your body's function to increase cognitive function. Absolutely go for a 30 - 60 minute workout first thing in the morning. This is an evidence based strategy to increase your study performance. I also utilized yogaglo.com for yoga and meditation sessions for a quick 5 minute burst in between question sets.
#4 - Consider speaking to a psychiatrist or learning specialist if you haven't already. You may have a learning disability that is masked by an otherwise high functioning mind.
#5 - Use other tools to keep your motivation high. I ended up watching videos on youtube by this guy called Mateusz M. Holy crap, they were amazing. In between question banks, I would watch them to get pumped up. On the way to my second exam, I just listened to the playlist (he's also on soundcloud). I was so pumped up the second time that I was getting annoyed that there was that stupid tutorial between me and starting the exam! I think I'm going to donate $100 to his youtube chanel. Those videos really kept me going there for a while.
#6 - Change your study resources. The first time, I used comquest, master the boards, and uworld. I had done uworld throughout the year while on rotations. I memorized master the boards and I did all the comquest questions. I think comquest sucked in terms of explanations. master the boards was awesome, but it was limited in scope while the COMLEX level 2 is more broad ("random" if we want to use pessimistic language) in terms of scope. So what I changed is I chose kaplan high yield, which is by the same guy (conrad fischer) but a little broader and explains stuff a little better. I kept uworld, doing the questions I got wrong, but only a little.... My main question bank became COMBANK, which was waaay better for step 2 compared to comquest. ComBank would explain answers better. It had a BEAUTIFUL data analysis page where you could see where you were improving, your ranking over the last few questions, overall ranking, by subject recent performance, right to wrong, wrong to wrong answers, etc. It was amazing. I think it was a little easier compared to the actual comlex, but so was comquest. What I mean by this is that while the questions themselves were actually pretty similar, the answer choices usually only had one good answer and the others weren't even close. On the actual test, the answer choices felt closer together, making the questions slightly more challenging. Combank people, if you are reading, this is what you need to change. But in terms of breadth and question type, the combank was spot on. My averages was 69% overall and 80-88% on tests towards the end.
#7 - Realize that this process is a "mastry", not some certification and then it's over. You are entering a profession where you will constantly be "practicing" to improve, to build your knowledge. So it's not such a big deal to have failed. As long as you keep at it, you will win, and after that, nobody will know or care that you had some failure along the way, what will matter is how you responded to it, that you kept fighting, that you grew, that you stayed motivated, passionate, and that you eventually kicked butt.
I ended up studying for 6 weeks, 2 of which were "vacation" and 4 of which were with a preceptor who let me stay at home for several days per week and when I was there, I would be studying. One week of those 6 was spent studying for my COMLEX CK and doing a few interviews i had scheduled before failing. I opted not to delay the CK, despite being so limited for time, because I wanted to eliminate any risk in the eyes of the program directors. And obviously I kept the interviews because I wasn't going to get ranked unless I showed up. As woody allen once said, 80% of life is just showing up! 😉
Another key thing is to not have your graduation date delayed beyond July 1st. It makes you inelegible for the ACGME match and while technically still elligible for the DO match, you're an inconvenience logistically because you miss out on orientation for the new class of interns. I'm graduating in the last week of June, and I'd actually prefer to have graduated in mid june, because some programs start their orientation then.
OK guys, this has become a super long post. I hope it helps someone, and I hope others who failed and then passed will add their tips. There are many out there in this situation, I actually brought it up on interviews and people appreciated the honesty and some of my interviewers even mentioned that they failed!!! So keep at it, you're going to be OK....
I just found out that I passed my step 2 on my second attempt. I'd like to share my experience for those who are in a similar situation to what I was in...
First off, some info:
Step 1 COMLEX: 435
Step 2 COMLEX attempt #1: 388
Step 2 COMLEX attempt #2: 445
I found out I failed around mid october. It was really scary, since I was midway through interview season, I still had not taken my COMLEX PE, and I felt like I had already done all I could for studying. To make matters worse, I found out the day before my top choice residency's interview! My school's idiot dean in charge of clinical education advised me to take a leave of absence, stop interviewing, delay my COMLE PE, and maybe scramble in to residency if I was lucky. I'm so happy I didn't listen. Here's what I did instead:
#1 - Do an honest post mortem: In my case, I think my failure wasn't from lack of trying, it was actually from a fear of failure itself. I got burnt out from studying even during years one and two, from the negative reinforcement of damaged (surgery, ha ha) attendings on rotations, and from getting all those questions wrong in the question banks. I didn't realize it until doing a post-mortem after failing, but when I got a question wrong, I would stress out a little. I would be stressed that I wasn't learning fast enough, I would worry about what would happen if i failed, and I would get discouraged. Maybe I would take a quick facebook break that burnt 30 minutes of time. So that cycle lead to working hard yet getting a crappy score because of negative internal re-inforcement when I got a question wrong. This realization for me was a prerequisite to doing better. THE BOTTOM LINE IS FEAR IS A CHOICE, NOT A "GIVE-IN".
#2 - Don't keep this to yourself. 80% of the people I disclosed my failing scores to ended up having a failure of their own in step 1, 2, or 3. And even those who are rock stars on the boards and don't have a failure have failed in some aspect of their life like their personal life, etc. Everybody fails. If they haven't, they haven't been pushing themselves hard enough and they fail by default.
#3 - Enhance your body's function to increase cognitive function. Absolutely go for a 30 - 60 minute workout first thing in the morning. This is an evidence based strategy to increase your study performance. I also utilized yogaglo.com for yoga and meditation sessions for a quick 5 minute burst in between question sets.
#4 - Consider speaking to a psychiatrist or learning specialist if you haven't already. You may have a learning disability that is masked by an otherwise high functioning mind.
#5 - Use other tools to keep your motivation high. I ended up watching videos on youtube by this guy called Mateusz M. Holy crap, they were amazing. In between question banks, I would watch them to get pumped up. On the way to my second exam, I just listened to the playlist (he's also on soundcloud). I was so pumped up the second time that I was getting annoyed that there was that stupid tutorial between me and starting the exam! I think I'm going to donate $100 to his youtube chanel. Those videos really kept me going there for a while.
#6 - Change your study resources. The first time, I used comquest, master the boards, and uworld. I had done uworld throughout the year while on rotations. I memorized master the boards and I did all the comquest questions. I think comquest sucked in terms of explanations. master the boards was awesome, but it was limited in scope while the COMLEX level 2 is more broad ("random" if we want to use pessimistic language) in terms of scope. So what I changed is I chose kaplan high yield, which is by the same guy (conrad fischer) but a little broader and explains stuff a little better. I kept uworld, doing the questions I got wrong, but only a little.... My main question bank became COMBANK, which was waaay better for step 2 compared to comquest. ComBank would explain answers better. It had a BEAUTIFUL data analysis page where you could see where you were improving, your ranking over the last few questions, overall ranking, by subject recent performance, right to wrong, wrong to wrong answers, etc. It was amazing. I think it was a little easier compared to the actual comlex, but so was comquest. What I mean by this is that while the questions themselves were actually pretty similar, the answer choices usually only had one good answer and the others weren't even close. On the actual test, the answer choices felt closer together, making the questions slightly more challenging. Combank people, if you are reading, this is what you need to change. But in terms of breadth and question type, the combank was spot on. My averages was 69% overall and 80-88% on tests towards the end.
#7 - Realize that this process is a "mastry", not some certification and then it's over. You are entering a profession where you will constantly be "practicing" to improve, to build your knowledge. So it's not such a big deal to have failed. As long as you keep at it, you will win, and after that, nobody will know or care that you had some failure along the way, what will matter is how you responded to it, that you kept fighting, that you grew, that you stayed motivated, passionate, and that you eventually kicked butt.
I ended up studying for 6 weeks, 2 of which were "vacation" and 4 of which were with a preceptor who let me stay at home for several days per week and when I was there, I would be studying. One week of those 6 was spent studying for my COMLEX CK and doing a few interviews i had scheduled before failing. I opted not to delay the CK, despite being so limited for time, because I wanted to eliminate any risk in the eyes of the program directors. And obviously I kept the interviews because I wasn't going to get ranked unless I showed up. As woody allen once said, 80% of life is just showing up! 😉
Another key thing is to not have your graduation date delayed beyond July 1st. It makes you inelegible for the ACGME match and while technically still elligible for the DO match, you're an inconvenience logistically because you miss out on orientation for the new class of interns. I'm graduating in the last week of June, and I'd actually prefer to have graduated in mid june, because some programs start their orientation then.
OK guys, this has become a super long post. I hope it helps someone, and I hope others who failed and then passed will add their tips. There are many out there in this situation, I actually brought it up on interviews and people appreciated the honesty and some of my interviewers even mentioned that they failed!!! So keep at it, you're going to be OK....
