Hi, everyone,
Just wanted to share my experience with USMLE Step 3--> here are the details:
When- I took the exam on November 15 and 17, 2008 (a Saturday and a Monday).
Results- I got my results back on the morning of Wednesday, Dec 10, 2008, via email (Passed comfortably, score similar to both Step I and II)
Preparation- First Aid for USMLE Step 3 (read through it twice, including CCS cases, and made lots of notes), Kaplan QBank (scored 59% on about 1,000 or so questions, all random and timed in sets of 50), and the CD that USMLE sent to me after registering (scored about ~78% or so on the sample test, I can't remember exactly, and went over the CCS cases on the CD multiple times in order to be comfortable with the format). I studied a couple of months for the exam, during lighter rotations, about 1-2 hours daily, on average.
Actual exam- The multiple-choice part of the exam is divided into blocks of either Outpatient or Inpatient/ER. I thought that the Inpatient/ER blocks were much tougher than the Outpatient blocks- fortunately there were only 2 of those blocks on the first day (out of 7), and 1 block on the second day (out of 4). I finished each block with 1 minute or less to spare.
There were quite a few questions that tested your ability to manage very atypical clinical scenarios, ones that you may find in real life practice and not in textbooks. There weren't a whole lot of questions with pictures or charts, but, oddly enough, on my exam, >50% of the questions that included pictures were those of male/female genitalia???(vaginal prolapse, labial HSV-II, scrotal swelling, syphilis ulcer). There was only one question that required use of headphones (peds cardiac question). I remember a handful of questions on vaccination protocol (ex. Tetanus) and statistics (ex. PPV, NPV). There were tons of questions regarding best initial step in management. You should also be aware that some questions are stand-alone and others are sequenced together as a case or set of 2-3 items.
The nine CCS cases were pretty straight forward, except for one, and my cases ended well before the 25-minute alloted time. The following were my cases:
1) General Health maintenance for pt with oa/dyslipidemia/htn
2) Aortic dissection
3) Pancreatic CA
4) Cardiac tamponade
5) Acute cholecystitis
6) Pneumonia
7) Menorrhagia/Dysfunctional Uterine Bleeding
8) Temporal arteritis (this case started off looking like rheumatoid arthritis)
9) COPD Exacerbation
I purposely scheduled the exam on Sat-Mon, to give me an extra day to review the CCS cases in the back of FA, and to go over the CCS cases on the CD from USMLE.
That's it for now; I will edit this post if I remember any more details. Good luck to you all.
Just wanted to share my experience with USMLE Step 3--> here are the details:
When- I took the exam on November 15 and 17, 2008 (a Saturday and a Monday).
Results- I got my results back on the morning of Wednesday, Dec 10, 2008, via email (Passed comfortably, score similar to both Step I and II)
Preparation- First Aid for USMLE Step 3 (read through it twice, including CCS cases, and made lots of notes), Kaplan QBank (scored 59% on about 1,000 or so questions, all random and timed in sets of 50), and the CD that USMLE sent to me after registering (scored about ~78% or so on the sample test, I can't remember exactly, and went over the CCS cases on the CD multiple times in order to be comfortable with the format). I studied a couple of months for the exam, during lighter rotations, about 1-2 hours daily, on average.
Actual exam- The multiple-choice part of the exam is divided into blocks of either Outpatient or Inpatient/ER. I thought that the Inpatient/ER blocks were much tougher than the Outpatient blocks- fortunately there were only 2 of those blocks on the first day (out of 7), and 1 block on the second day (out of 4). I finished each block with 1 minute or less to spare.
There were quite a few questions that tested your ability to manage very atypical clinical scenarios, ones that you may find in real life practice and not in textbooks. There weren't a whole lot of questions with pictures or charts, but, oddly enough, on my exam, >50% of the questions that included pictures were those of male/female genitalia???(vaginal prolapse, labial HSV-II, scrotal swelling, syphilis ulcer). There was only one question that required use of headphones (peds cardiac question). I remember a handful of questions on vaccination protocol (ex. Tetanus) and statistics (ex. PPV, NPV). There were tons of questions regarding best initial step in management. You should also be aware that some questions are stand-alone and others are sequenced together as a case or set of 2-3 items.
The nine CCS cases were pretty straight forward, except for one, and my cases ended well before the 25-minute alloted time. The following were my cases:
1) General Health maintenance for pt with oa/dyslipidemia/htn
2) Aortic dissection
3) Pancreatic CA
4) Cardiac tamponade
5) Acute cholecystitis
6) Pneumonia
7) Menorrhagia/Dysfunctional Uterine Bleeding
8) Temporal arteritis (this case started off looking like rheumatoid arthritis)
9) COPD Exacerbation
I purposely scheduled the exam on Sat-Mon, to give me an extra day to review the CCS cases in the back of FA, and to go over the CCS cases on the CD from USMLE.
That's it for now; I will edit this post if I remember any more details. Good luck to you all.
Last edited:
so I just ended up not doing it. 
