NBME's...form differences and order of use

[Taus]

would anyone mind giving a quick run-down of the differences b/w the 4 forms and generally preferred order of use...thanks a lot

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[Buckeye(OH)]

wtf are you talking about?

 

[lord_jeebus]

3 and 4 are newer. Perhaps this means they are more representative of today's Step 1.

I only took #3 and thought it was very representative of the real thing.

 

[Taus]

wtf are you talking about?

there are 4 official practice tests put out by the NBME (the ones you buy for 45$ each)....I've read a lot of posts about how there are differences in content and difficulty b/w the exams and that certain forms are more representative of the real thing......most people use these guage how they're gonna do on the real thing and to get used to the real style of questions asked..

 

[Taus]

thanks jeebus

 

[superoxide]

would anyone mind giving a quick run-down of the differences b/w the 4 forms and generally preferred order of use...thanks a lot

This is how I did it:

First: Form 1 (Easiest of the 4 forms)
Second: Form 4 (very heavy on molecular/cell Biology). I thought this one was the hardest (wierdest) of them all. I had no idea how I would score on it while doing it. I was just hoping to pass it, but ended up scoring a 460
Third: Form 3 (good balance of easy, moderate, difficult questions)
Fourth: Form 2 (same difficulty level of Form 3)

I thought Forms 3 and 2 were the closest to the real thing so try to do those as you get closer to your test date. I scored 209 and 216 on Forms 3 and 2 respectively. My actual Step 1 score was 203.

Good luck.

 

[smalley]

how many questions are there in 1 form.........is it 350 like the actual exam??

 

[GOGETA]

how many questions are there in 1 form.........is it 350 like the actual exam??

each NBME has 4 blocks of 50 questions= 200 questions

 

[godschosenone]

Anyone else other than Buckshot have anything to add about the differences in the 4 NBME forms? Like rank order maybe easiest to hardest. or Best one to take when? When to take the last one? Thanks y'all.

 

[godschosenone]

This is how I did it:

First: Form 1 (Easiest of the 4 forms)
Second: Form 4 (very heavy on molecular/cell Biology). I thought this one was the hardest (wierdest) of them all. I had no idea how I would score on it while doing it. I was just hoping to pass it, but ended up scoring a 460
Third: Form 3 (good balance of easy, moderate, difficult questions)
Fourth: Form 2 (same difficulty level of Form 3)

I thought Forms 3 and 2 were the closest to the real thing so try to do those as you get closer to your test date. I scored 209 and 216 on Forms 3 and 2 respectively. My actual Step 1 score was 203.

Good luck.

so your score on form 1 might be a lil inflated?

 

[pratik7]

Does anyone know a rough conversion between the percent correct on the NBME forms and the average score of 215. Is it 50, 60 70, 80%

 

[godschosenone]

Does anyone know a rough conversion between the percent correct on the NBME forms and the average score of 215. Is it 50, 60 70, 80%

i just did 35-37/50 @ 510 (221) = ~70-74% so probably mid-60's

 

[missmod]

I thought forms 3 and 2 were the most representative, Form 4 was the hardest with lots of molecular bio that was similar to my exam. If you know that you will be doing all four forms, I would do them in this order:

Form 1 - easiest, similar to the released Q's
Form 4 - hardest, useful if you look up answers to hard Q's
Form 2
Form 3 - these two were the most representative.

If you'll only be doing one or two of them, do Form 2 and 3. There is an alleged "answer key" out there (try the valuemd website) from someone who got an almost perfect score (800) on these exams so that you can compare your answers. I scored around 80% on these exams when I did it during my last week of studying and that correlated to around the 230's.

 

[predodoc]

I thought forms 3 and 2 were the most representative, Form 4 was the hardest with lots of molecular bio that was similar to my exam. If you know that you will be doing all four forms, I would do them in this order:

Form 1 - easiest, similar to the released Q's
Form 4 - hardest, useful if you look up answers to hard Q's
Form 2
Form 3 - these two were the most representative.

If you'll only be doing one or two of them, do Form 2 and 3. There is an alleged "answer key" out there (try the valuemd website) from someone who got an almost perfect score (800) on these exams so that you can compare your answers. I scored around 80% on these exams when I did it during my last week of studying and that correlated to around the 230's.

When you say you scored 80%, is that for all 4 forms? I thought since form 1 is less difficult that you would have to score higher to make the same score and vice versa on form 4? Or are you just estimating your %correct?

 

[IndianBabu]

Is it possible to copy/paste all the questions for later review AND do the exam at the same time? Or is there not enough time?

I wanna save the answers, but I also test myself too.

 

[wxl31]

could someone explain these tests to me? are they computer version only? do you get a copy after to review answers?

 

[DrThom]

could someone explain these tests to me? are they computer version only? do you get a copy after to review answers?

You get them from the nbme website. www.nbme.org
They cost $45 dollar each.
As far as I know, they are just computer version but you do get a nifty score report immediately.
No, you don't get a copy to review answers after but there are ways around this...

 

[goldensnow]

hi, can u tell me the link of those NBME answers. i want to know what i went wrong.

 

[AmoryBlaine]

This question is supremely not important (no disrespect to the OP). They are all good representations of what the test is like and scored appropriately. At the end of the day, your performance on Step1 is not going to have anything to do with the order in which you took NBMEs.