NBME 6- my review

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gotgame83

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Well since there hasn't been much feedback on NBME 6 yet I thought I would start a thread giving my own opinion since I just completed the exam a few minutes ago.

The exam is definitly worth doing. The question stems are a bit longer then was seen in nbme 1 and 2. I think it covered a good range of topics and included a few calculations. As for difficulty, I felt that the exam was more challenging then nbme 1 and 2. I guess I would compare it with nbme 3.

They did repeat an easy molecular question from nbme 3 which made me a little mad.

I know there hasnt been much feedback on how well it predicts ones score yet however I "think" that it is overpredicting my score by about 20pts right now. Yes this is based on absolutely no merit at all just based on how well I know the material and the range that I think I am in.

Final thoughts: Good questions worth doing-score may be a bit high.
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Thanks for the review. It really helped me narrow down which of the NBME forms I will take, 5 or 6. I think I am going to go with 6.
 
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haha, a review of a practice exam. What have we become? (thanks for the review by the way, much appreciated)
 
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i just finished taking nbme 6. i scored 4 points lower than i did on nbme 1, which i took last week. i definitely thought it was harder than nbme 1...also took longer to get through.
 
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i took nbme 6 today
scored 470
felt it was much tougher than the other forms
did nbme 4 three weeks back
scored 460 in that
 
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I havent done nbme 4 yet so Im not really sure how that one stacks up but I personally didnt find nbme 3 all that difficult, well atleast not as challenging as everyone makes it out to be. I think that the questions in nbme 6 are fairly well represented across a variety of disciplines. The only problem I have with recommending doing nbme 6 over nbme 3 is the lack of feedback and score correlation.

If you want to see where you stand based on your score from an nbme practice exam I find it more useful to compare my score vs the score of other people and see how they performed on step 1.

So as of right now I would recommend nbme 3 just because it has a better "predicting history"
 
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hey gotgame83
can u tell me ur scores in nbme 3 and 6
i am also planning to do nbme 3 in another 1 week
exam is may last week
 
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pr20 said:
hey gotgame83
can u tell me ur scores in nbme 3 and 6
i am also planning to do nbme 3 in another 1 week
exam is may last week
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I scored 6 pts higher on nbme 6 compared to nbme 3, which were taken one week apart. Im trying to refrain from giving out exact scores on my nbme exams until after I get my results, which unfortunately wont be until july 16th, because quite a few ppl from my medical school know who I am on here. I just dont want to be the guy who was doing very well on the nbmes only to mess up on the real deal.

I feel that the nbmes haven't exploited my weaknesses yet so I feel that they may be overpredicting my scores. But I am taking nbme 4 this saturday so we will see.
 
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Thanks for the review... I definitely plan on incorporating this test into my prep schedule. :)
 
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Took this today. I thought that it was more challenging than #5 which I took last week, probably agree that its more on the level with #3(I've only done 3,5,6). I thought there were some hard behavioral questions and 4-5 path pictures where they didn't really give you any history, just the picture and asked you what caused it. Thats all I remember sticking out in my mind. Worth taking I think though.
 
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keitaiKT said:
NBME-6 overestimated my score by almost 10 points....
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Thanks for the feedback---did you take any other NBME's, and if so, was there a big range between scores? How long before your Step 1 did you take NBME 6? About how well did you do on the real thing? Was your performance distribution about the same? I ask because it seems like the greatest discrepancies in prediction come from the highest numbers, i.e. people who got 250+ on one NBME and getting 235-245 on the real deal. I haven't seen someone have 2 of their NBME1-6 scores overestimate their actual score yet.
 
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ive heard from a couple of cats that nbme 3 is the most predictive practice test of your real score..dont know why but ive heard it from multiple people...whats everyones take on nbme 1 and 2..those are the ones ive taken so far...

also heard that 5 was easy in another thread and now im reading 6 overestimates scores...
 
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jbuck824 said:
ive heard from a couple of cats that nbme 3 is the most predictive practice test of your real score..dont know why but ive heard it from multiple people...whats everyones take on nbme 1 and 2..those are the ones ive taken so far...

also heard that 5 was easy in another thread and now im reading 6 overestimates scores...
Click to expand...

IMHO people report that the exams vary in difficulty based on whether or not a given form emphasizes their weaknesses. Besides form 1 (which was way too straight forward), I think they're all fair judges of how you're doing.
 
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I still don't know what to think about other people's perceptions of the different NBME exams. I've taken two of them, Forms 5 and 4. I took NBME 5 as a baseline and my score was 224/520. I took NBME 4 a couple days later after only getting through less than 1/2 of BRS Physio(reading too slow) and my score was 226/530. In my opinion, the tests felt similar in difficulty and emphasis. I don't think my few days of reading some physio added any points on NBME 4. My performance breakdowns were different, save for 2 subjects, however. On one organ system, my performance on NBME 5 went from the lower limit of borderline all the way to a true star on NBME 4. On others, my performance dropped from the range including a star to hitting the shaded borderline area. I probably need to target every subject...

Also, the tests are scaled. So, if you do well on one form but don't repeat your score performance on another, I think it means you really knew the topics tested on one form relative to everybody else, but the opposite was true for another form. I took NBME 4 shortly after taking NBME 5 mainly because of all the talk about NBME 5 being "so easy" and was looking for corroboration. I'm glad I did it. Now I plan on taking NBME 1 this Sunday, this time after hitting some of my weakest areas with Goljan RR. Anyway, it just dawned on me that I spent my 15 minute break yacking away on SDN. Gotta get back at it.
 
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Mediculous said:
Thanks for the feedback---did you take any other NBME's, and if so, was there a big range between scores? How long before your Step 1 did you take NBME 6? About how well did you do on the real thing? Was your performance distribution about the same? I ask because it seems like the greatest discrepancies in prediction come from the highest numbers, i.e. people who got 250+ on one NBME and getting 235-245 on the real deal. I haven't seen someone have 2 of their NBME1-6 scores overestimate their actual score yet.
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Form 6 was the only one I took, because I didn't have the time or money to do more than one. But in general, the estimated score I was getting from Kaplan Q bank was the exact same score that NBME 6 predicted, both of which under-predicted my score by 10 points. If you want to know what my range was on step 1 you can message me :)
 
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keitaiKT said:
Form 6 was the only one I took, because I didn't have the time or money to do more than one. But in general, the estimated score I was getting from Kaplan Q bank was the exact same score that NBME 6 predicted, both of which under-predicted my score by 10 points. If you want to know what my range was on step 1 you can message me :)
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overpredicted or underpredicted? Sorry, you said one in one post and one in the other.
 
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JDWflash44 said:
overpredicted or underpredicted? Sorry, you said one in one post and one in the other.
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Hey, yeah, sorry about that - my score was UNDERpredicted by the practice test. My actual boards score was HIGHER. Clearly I need to stop checking SDN before bedtime.
 
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I went from a 550 on Form 5 (taken 4 days ago) to a 610 on Form 6 (taken today) having only studied Physiology and some Molecular Bio in the interim. Had studied most of pharm, path, and micro prior to taking both. I think Biochem was very underrepresented on Form 6, I would be thrilled if there was that little on my actual exam. I think that accounted for such a big jump in so little time.

No real point of reference, but I would suspect that Form 5 is more representative of the real thing.
 
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NBME 6 is not actually that bad, there are quite a few lemons thrown it. Although the last block had some tricky questions, I was amazed how much overlap there was between UWorld/Goljan with NBME 6.
 
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DragonWell said:
I really hope that describes my actual test.
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I don't want to ruin anyone's test, but there was one cardio pharm question that I saw verbatim on UWorld a couple of hours before taking the practice test. The only difference was UWorld wanted to know the drug's side effect, while NBME just wanted the drug :laugh:
 
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I just took NBME 6. I thought I'd contribute to the "review" of a "practice test" :)

I took form 4 three weeks ago before I started studying. I found it very difficult, but that could have been because I didn't remember anything from class. It was terrible.

NBME 4: 340 = 175

I took form 6 today after studying for 3 weeks. I have two more weeks to study, and I haven't quite made it through all the organ systems yet (couple more to go). My average on UW this week is 58%.

NBME 6: 480 = 214

I thought the questions on 6 were somewhat easier (but it's scaled anyway, so that shouldn't matter too much, right?). Less molecular cell type stuff than Form 4 in my opinion. I'd definitely recommend the test, and, like someone else said, there was a lot of overlap with UW. Anyway, take that info for what it's worth.
 
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