Just took Step 3. Wanted to share my experience and maybe get a shred of validation from someone because at this point I’m absolutely certain I failed. I studied pretty hard for this test (uworld x2, 60% on first pass and 85% on second, went through all CCS cases, read MTB) and felt good going into it. Here’s my experience:
Day One: felt okay-ish. Lots of bio stats which I think I crushed, no issues with timing. But the medical questions were super weird. Felt like I was making an educated guess for all of them. Marked like half the questions for every section.
Day Two MCQ: Like everyone says, more like Uworld, but still way harder than I’d hoped. Marked about a third of the questions on each block.
CCS: Horrendous. I made some of the dumbest mistakes you could possibly imagine. Completely missed the diagnosis and management for two. Like, did not order the right screening test, was not remotely thinking about the right differential. In retrospect they were both incredibly obvious and I’m kicking myself for missing them. Another one I still didn’t know what was wrong with the patient but she seemed to get better. Another one I thought I knew what was going on but the patient refused to get better, so maybe I didn’t. And another one I tried to do an invasive procedure that the family refused and the patient never got better. So all in all five out of thirteen cases were COMPLETE s*** shows. Several others where I did ok but definitely made a few small mistakes regarding health maintenance/gold standard treatments.
I’m preparing myself for failure and trying to convince myself that wouldn’t be the end of the world. But if someone could tell me you screwed up this badly and still managed to pass I’d much appreciate it.
Also for reference: Step 1 221 Step 2 242. But those tests didn’t have CCS 🙁
Day One: felt okay-ish. Lots of bio stats which I think I crushed, no issues with timing. But the medical questions were super weird. Felt like I was making an educated guess for all of them. Marked like half the questions for every section.
Day Two MCQ: Like everyone says, more like Uworld, but still way harder than I’d hoped. Marked about a third of the questions on each block.
CCS: Horrendous. I made some of the dumbest mistakes you could possibly imagine. Completely missed the diagnosis and management for two. Like, did not order the right screening test, was not remotely thinking about the right differential. In retrospect they were both incredibly obvious and I’m kicking myself for missing them. Another one I still didn’t know what was wrong with the patient but she seemed to get better. Another one I thought I knew what was going on but the patient refused to get better, so maybe I didn’t. And another one I tried to do an invasive procedure that the family refused and the patient never got better. So all in all five out of thirteen cases were COMPLETE s*** shows. Several others where I did ok but definitely made a few small mistakes regarding health maintenance/gold standard treatments.
I’m preparing myself for failure and trying to convince myself that wouldn’t be the end of the world. But if someone could tell me you screwed up this badly and still managed to pass I’d much appreciate it.
Also for reference: Step 1 221 Step 2 242. But those tests didn’t have CCS 🙁
