Need advice on last few days? Scores are all over the place.

[Belleza156]

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Week (-8): April CBSE = 200? Something like that, school had us take it to see were we stood during MSII, 2nd semester.
Week 1: Too scared to take any NBME
Week 2: Kaplan Individual Test = 66%
Week 3: Kaplan Qbank = 55%
Week 4: NBME 11 = 242 (offline)
Week 5: NBME 7 = 245 (offline), NBME 3 = 240 (offline)
Week 6: UWorld 1st Pass = 71%, NBME 12 = 217
Week 7: UWSA 1 = 232, Free 150 Q's = 92%
Week 8:UWSA 2 = 230
Week 9: NBME 13 = 232
Week 10: ????

I just started week 9, took NBME 13 today. Not sure where I should go from here. I am aiming for 240 +/- 10. I would at least like to go in to my exam day having gotten a 240 on the last NBME. I started off by doing the Qbanks and then offline NBMEs (as you can see they overpredict by far from actual NBME online score). Everyone says UWSA overpredict which worried me because I scored roughly 230 in both, but then also scored more or less the same on NBME 13. So I'm going to go ahead and say that I'm standing at 230 +/-10 right now. I asked for an extension of 2 weeks, being that I was supposed to take my exam last week. So right now my date is for August 2nd, but I can take it up to August 10th. What could I do in these next 10 days to boost my score, or at least ensure it?

I haven't read FA cover to cover even once because I honestly hate it. However,I have gone through most of it by doing the Qbanks and looking up each answer in FA and annotating from UWorld. I guess one option is to read it cover to cover, but the questions I miss aren't usually from information that's in FA. I have listened to Goljan audio like 3X and read 80% of the book throughout MSII and the 1st 7 chapters in the last two weeks. I haven't done Pathoma, but I did watch the free videos and really liked it. I did the DIT questions throughout the year, but I didn't watch the 2 weeks of videos, I'm really not a fan of that Brian Jenkins guy. I'm on my second pass of UWorld, not really bothering with doing Kaplan again. So any ideas what I should do with the next few days?

Option 1: take exam August 2nd

Option 2: Finish 2nd pass of Uworld

Option 3: Take all remaining NBMEs. I have NBME 4,5,6 that I haven't looked at. Would any of them be predictive if I take them online? I already exhausted NBME 3,7,11,12, and 13 as options. Also go over all the ones I have taken.

Option 4: Sign up for Pathoma.

Option 5: Read Goljan's RR cover to cover.

Option 6: Read First Aid cover to cover.

Option 7: Go over the subjects that my bars on the NBME score reports show the largest range or lowest performance. Lowest are Biochemistry (odd since this was my undergrad major), Genetics, Histo/cell bio, and physio. For some reason my general principles score in midrange but specific systems are mostly in the higher performance range.

Would any of these options or a mixture of them help me go up another 10 points in the next 10 days? I'm not aiming for the stars like the majority on SDN. I have no need to score 260 and beyond. I'm interested in Emergency Medicine and a 220 is about average for that. But I prefer to be in the 230-240's range so I don't have to worry too much about it. Any advice would be really really appreciated! Maybe a few of you were sitting where I am right now and did something specific the last few days to do well???

 

[alternatego]

stop the offline nbme nonsense, if you use them that way they won't be good predictors, they are good for learning new stuff, not for evaluation.

IMO, grab FA and read it cover to cover on your last 10-12 days and be done with your exam. Most posters who have done that have managed either to get the same score on their last NBME or score higher.

 

[Belleza156]

Between NBME 4,5,6 is any one more predictive than the other?

It was good to do some offline NBMEs because I wasn't going to buy each and every single one! But maybe I should have bought the ones I did do and saved 3,7,and 11 for the end. I honestly thought that two online NBMEs and two UWSA would be enough to gauge where I am. I didn't anticipate being in such a relatively unpredictable state.