NBME practice exam- what to expect

[njslex16]

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I am taking my first practice NBME on Monday and am trying to see what to expect before I take it. How many questions does it have? Does it give you a score that approximates how you would do on the real exam? Does it tell you areas you need to improve on? and finally how long does it take to get your score back/is it instant? Also how many practice exams on average average should I take before the real Step? I've taken plenty over the last two years in med. school but don't know how many to take during this last 6 weeks of step 1 prep. Thanks for your help.

 

[johndoe3344]

1. 4 blocks
2. yes
3. yes
4. instant
5. as many as you want

 

[mdeast]

I am taking my first practice NBME on Monday and am trying to see what to expect before I take it. How many questions does it have? Does it give you a score that approximates how you would do on the real exam? Does it tell you areas you need to improve on? and finally how long does it take to get your score back/is it instant? Also how many practice exams on average average should I take before the real Step? I've taken plenty over the last two years in med. school but don't know how many to take during this last 6 weeks of step 1 prep. Thanks for your help.

Yes. It'll give you an estimate of your score. They may have recently changed the algorithm a bit so it is somewhat hard to do well. But, apparently good predictors.

Yes. It'll give you a breakdown of areas you performed well on, borderline, and poor with appropriate graph ranges to tell you how certain they are of your sufficiency (or deficiency) in that area mainly based on how many questions from that section were actually asked on your exam. (i.e. getting 2 renal questions wrong when there were only 2 isn't necessarily that predictive of whether or not you know renal well).

Instant scores back.

Most people I know took between 3-4. The NBME's are mainly to gauge where you are. You won't learn much from that in terms of content, but moreso in what areas you need to keep working on (drugs, bugs, renal, cardio, etc.). In other words, there's no point of taking one every 2 days. You should space them out at different points along studying once you've had time to improve in between them. Otherwise, you're just wasting valuable time that you could spend reviewing.

 

[blah354]

Hi guys.
I've been trying to figure out exactly what the difference is btwn the results and the "expanded feed back" results. Do we get the breakdown in just the expanded feed back? or is that included in the results as well?
Thank you!

 

[missmedschool]

Hi guys.
I've been trying to figure out exactly what the difference is btwn the results and the "expanded feed back" results. Do we get the breakdown in just the expanded feed back? or is that included in the results as well?
Thank you!

Expanded feedback lets you see which questions you missed. It also gives you a breakdown on percentages on each organ system/subject as well as the standard NBME bar breakdown.