NBME 18 in comparison to UWorld

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canary90

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Hello there,

I have a question to those who have taken NBME 18. As far as I have read on the forum, people have found NBME 18 harder compared to other NBMES. I would like to know how have people found NBME 18 compared to Uworld questions in terms of difficulty level? Are nbme 18 questions harder and more convoluted than Uworld qbank questions?
I plan to take NBME 17 and 18 soon. Which one do you recommend taking first?

Thanks in advance! :)

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18 was different than the others because the stems were a bit longer, but I did not think it was necessarily harder. 17 was the easiest of all of them for me. That being said my score for 18 was two points higher than 17.

All NBME questions were different than uWorld. Not necessarily easier or harder. UWorld gives you TONS of info to make the diagnosis easy. NBME stems are shorter, and sometimes leave you to make inferences that you didnt have to make on world.

I would start with NBME 17 and save 18 for a week or so before your exam.
 
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18 was different than the others because the stems were a bit longer, but I did not think it was necessarily harder. 17 was the easiest of all of them for me. That being said my score for 18 was two points higher than 17.

All NBME questions were different than uWorld. Not necessarily easier or harder. UWorld gives you TONS of info to make the diagnosis easy. NBME stems are shorter, and sometimes leave you to make inferences that you didnt have to make on NBME.

I would start with NBME 17 and save 18 for a week or so before your exam.

Thank you for the input! :)
 
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It was about the same level as UWorld questions.

NBME 18 did have some *very* convoluted questions, but they comprised at most ~5% of the test.

I felt NBME 17 was relatively more straightforward than every other NBME, I got a lower score on 17 than I did on 18 though.

Form 12 was the hardest. I was guessing a lot and its also the NBME I scored the lowest on (15 incorrects).
 
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It was about the same level as UWorld questions.

NBME 18 did have some *very* convoluted questions, but they comprised at most ~5% of the test.

I felt NBME 17 was relatively more straightforward than every other NBME, I got a lower score on 17 than I did on 18 though.

Form 12 was the hardest. I was guessing a lot and its also the NBME I scored the lowest on (15 incorrects).

Thanks a lot for the feedback! :)
May I ask if you did NBME 13? I am wondering if it's similar to 17? I took it around a month ago. I felt the question stems were much shorter than UWorld questions and quite straight forward with few difficult questions. But the curve was a little hard.
Do you also recommend doing NBME 17 before 18?
 
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Thanks a lot for the feedback! :)
May I ask if you did NBME 13? I am wondering if it's similar to 17? I took it around a month ago. I felt the question stems were much shorter than UWorld questions and quite straight forward with few difficult questions. But the curve was a little hard.
Do you also recommend doing NBME 17 before 18?


Every NBME had its share of WTF questions (about ~5% of the questions), but other than form 12, I found all of them to be quite similar.
 
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I have done the following NBMEs so far :

NBME 12 - 610/251 (15 incorrects)
NBME 13 - 660/262 (10 incorrects)
NBME 15 - 640/258 (15 incorrects)
NBME 17 - 660/262 (10 incorrects)
NBME 18 - 690/269 (10 incorrects)

I missed about 10-15 questions on each of them - which tells me they are all pretty much standardised to be about equally difficult, although perhaps not equally predictive.

Every NBME had its share of WTF questions (about ~5% of the questions), but other than form 12, I found all of them to be quite similar.

You could save Form 18 for the last since its the newest and so probably most reflective of the current exam, but I ended up taking it early because I didn't want to risk getting a low NBME score on 18 right before the real thing and getting my morale shot down.

I'll probably take form 16 within a few days, so I have time to recover from the mental shock of a low NBME score before I appear for the real thing :blackeye:

That's exactly why I have also been a little apprehensive about taking NBME 18 at the end; if I end up getting a low score on it, it's going to bring down my morale too :unsure:

Thank you so much for sharing your NBME experience. You have been doing tremendous on all your NBMEs, so don't worry! Wishing you all the best for your real exam! You are going to rock it for sure! :)
 
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Thank you. All the best to you as well :)

Yeah, I really hope the NBMEs are as predictive as everyone says they are.
 
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