Official 2010 USMLE Step 1 Experiences and Scores Thread

[FMD212]

Good luck all. I have my exam end of March and hope to be the 1st one to post here for 2010.

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[lacrossefiend73]

Any consensus on whether the Free 150 is okay to take early on or best left till the end? I took NBME 6 through my school a couple months ago and I'm about 5 weeks out at this point. I'll have done my first run through by the start of the 5 weeks. I was going to do these practice tests in this order for the rest of my time: Free 150 (beginning of 1st week), UWSA1 (end of week 2) , NBME 7 (end of week 3), UWSA2 (mid week 5).

Does this sound okay or does anyone have any suggestions?

 

[Macguy86]

Congrats to all that finished and the great scores! Quick question, when did your UWorld Scores stabilize? I am a week out from my test and I just scored a 52%!!!!!
I was scoring 70-80's!! i am freaking out right now.

 

[kryptik]

Any consensus on whether the Free 150 is okay to take early on or best left till the end? I took NBME 6 through my school a couple months ago and I'm about 5 weeks out at this point. I'll have done my first run through by the start of the 5 weeks. I was going to do these practice tests in this order for the rest of my time: Free 150 (beginning of 1st week), UWSA1 (end of week 2) , NBME 7 (end of week 3), UWSA2 (mid week 5).

Does this sound okay or does anyone have any suggestions?

If you've gone through the material once then your tests schedule looks good, except maybe do nbme 7 last

 

[metalrex]

Congrats to all that finished and the great scores! Quick question, when did your UWorld Scores stabilize? I am a week out from my test and I just scored a 52%!!!!!
I was scoring 70-80's!! i am freaking out right now.

Chillax bro.

This happens to me too, there are great 'feel good' times when I touch 70's and guess what ,right after that a test comes out in the 50's!

I think it's because of a skew that develops as you come towards the end of UW.You would have exhausted most of the questions and thus 'uniformity' is low, meaning you have more of something and less of other.If this so called majority area happens to be your weakness, then score crashes -that explains the fall from 70's to 50's.Happens to me often these days cuz I am done with almost 70% of UW and noticed lotta renal qs popping up-which led me to discover that renal happened to be majority of left out questions ..renal is my no strong forte and boom, scores crashed.

Take it as an opportunity to learn and don't worry if you have been scoring 70's + then you are doing great! An occasional blow shouldn't hurt ya at this point.

GL dude!

 

[Macguy86]

..

 

[metalrex]

I took the test wednesday. I think doing the NBME's and UWSA's helped me. Endurance wasn't a problem, and I definately thought the test was alot easier than UWorld and the UWSA's. I marked about 5 questions a block and probably another 5 I had to think a bit to get my answer(so i could've made errors), the rest was pretty straightforward. Alot of people agree that the test questions are easier than UWorld but apparently alot of people leave test day thinking they did awful, that doesn't really add up to me unless those people didn't get through all of UWorld. I thought the difficulty was pretty similar to NBME6/7, I marked a similar amount to those tests.

I felt like the stuff I saw and possibly missed that I didn't know on the test was stuff I wouldn't have seen no matter how much I studied. I remember I was planning in the last few days to do all this studying and put in long days the last couple before. I meant to flip through my big robbins and look at pics and read stuff I highlighted(I had the whole book highlighted... lol) and to go through all the margins in goljan and to go through my annotated FA and some flashcards I had. I didn't get around to any of that really. I got a haircut monday night from one of my friends and then ended up staying out late. I put in a good 6 hours on tuesday day before test just flipping through my annotated FA which helped my confidence. I woke up late like at 11 because I knew I wanted as much rest as possible(I hadn't gotten to bed until like 3). Night before the test I relaxed, as much as I could, I went to see game 5 cavs-celtics night before and then had to emotionally distance myself from the proceedings. I got to bed by midnight and woke up at 6 am(meant to sleep till 630 but once i was up i was too wired knowing i had the exam). I think keeping a good pace and taking a break every 2 blocks having good simple food is important. I didnt use up much of my break time at all(2 10 min breaks and a 20 min lunch break). I followed the same pace I had on Uworld and NBME's(about 40 min to get through the questions, 10 min to ruminate on a select few) and usually gained an extra 5-10 min of breaktime every block. Obviously I didn't need all of it and ended the day around 2:45 with like 40-50 min of breaktime left. It felt good and not like a full day(got out over 3 hours earlier than when I took the MCAT). I think doing 8 blocks of 48 questions is best for practice and always try to finish 10 minutes early so you're not pushed for time. In the last block I knew I was going to spend an extra 10 minutes second guessing myself so I just ended the block with 18 min left after making myself confident about the ones I marked. Hopefully I didn't just get an easy exam(might mean it's scored harder), but I thought the brunt of the material is all covered fine in FA/Uworld/DIT(several questions that were only in DIT and no where else), plenty of repeats, and I had several topics that I was questioned twice on.

Any other questions feel free to ask or pm, now to wait 3 long weeks...

Maybe this comes as a repeat question, sorry folks.

I was curious to know how you derived best benefit from UW? I mean did you read the entire page of explanations for each question or just the edu objective pertinent to the question? How did you learn best?

I tackle the beast mid june and UW is taking some time..25% remains to be done and I wanna do two more passes at it given it's crucial importance.

 

[metalrex]

Awaiting to read exam experiences on the new short vignette format that NBME is introducing this week onwards......

 

[MilkmanAl]

I don't see how it will be any different than what they have now.

 

[kryptik]

yup, as much as they try to make it "clinical" blah blah, it still comes down to identifying memorized facts, there is always a bunch of clinically irrelevant items on every practice test i've done so far and yet they say they only test clinically relevant concepts

 

[RaraBovis]

I'd like to ask those who've taken the exam how frequent were image questions and how many (if any) required you to absolutely know the image to know the correct answer (I mean, you could not know the answer for sure from the question stem alone).

 

[Psychotropic]

I'd like to ask those who've taken the exam how frequent were image questions and how many (if any) required you to absolutely know the image to know the correct answer (I mean, you could not know the answer for sure from the question stem alone).

I took the test on 4/22. I'd say there were about 2 or 3 questions like that. Go through Goljan Images (the ones that correspond to his lectures) and you should be okay. You will always get one or two that you just won't know. You'll freak about it after the test, then you'll get your score back and be like whatev.

Otherwise, any other time there was a pic, looking at it was not necessary if you knew your stuff.

 

[Psychotropic]

Maybe this comes as a repeat question, sorry folks.

I was curious to know how you derived best benefit from UW? I mean did you read the entire page of explanations for each question or just the edu objective pertinent to the question? How did you learn best?

I tackle the beast mid june and UW is taking some time..25% remains to be done and I wanna do two more passes at it given it's crucial importance.

If you go check back on my study plan a page or two back, you'll see that I did 96q/day and I spent a good 4 hours reviewing the questions. I took my time and read through everything. I did not actively try to memorize details. I made sure to go through any pertinent images/figures provided in the explanation. Did I need to do all this? Probably not, but I can say after the fact that spending extra time doing USMLE World (which included reading the explanations in full) helped me tremendously. My advice would be to continue to use World as a learning tool and not as an assessment tool. Use NBME tests/UA Self-Assessments (I hear these are good, but never got around to actually using the one I paid for...oops) to see "where you are."

 

[kryptik]

what i am more worried is the heart sounds

 

[Psychotropic]

what i am more worried is the heart sounds

You know, I spent a couple hours during the last week of my study period listening to heart sounds/reviewing UW questions pertaining to auscultation. It did not help me one bit. Cardiology was one of the sections that I did have an asterisk by on my score report, perhaps due to the fact that I probably bombed the auscultation questions (maybe like 4 or 5 on my exam?). I still did great overall (254). I would worry about other high yield areas like path micro or pharm.

 

[kryptik]

You know, I spent a couple hours during the last week of my study period listening to heart sounds/reviewing UW questions pertaining to auscultation. It did not help me one bit. Cardiology was one of the sections that I did have an asterisk by on my score report, perhaps due to the fact that I probably bombed the auscultation questions (maybe like 4 or 5 on my exam?). I still did great overall (254). I would worry about other high yield areas like path micro or pharm.

thanks for the input, will go over uw heart sounds the last week and watever happens happens. I think an asterisk by a system means you rocked it

 

[badasshairday]

If you go check back on my study plan a page or two back, you'll see that I did 96q/day and I spent a good 4 hours reviewing the questions. I took my time and read through everything. I did not actively try to memorize details. I made sure to go through any pertinent images/figures provided in the explanation. Did I need to do all this? Probably not, but I can say after the fact that spending extra time doing USMLE World (which included reading the explanations in full) helped me tremendously. My advice would be to continue to use World as a learning tool and not as an assessment tool. Use NBME tests/UA Self-Assessments (I hear these are good, but never got around to actually using the one I paid for...oops) to see "where you are."

Did you annotate a lot of World into FA? Or just mostly read through it with minor annotations here and there?

This question is for anybody else also with Uworld experience:

Also did you get to redo your wrong answers? If you select to make tests of wrong answers only, will the program cycle you through all your wrong answers after you complete the qbank? Or will it just choose questions from your wrong answer pool at random, and you may end up doing those questions multiple times?

 

[Psychotropic]

Did you annotate a lot of World into FA? Or just mostly read through it with minor annotations here and there?

This question is for anybody else also with Uworld experience:

Also did you get to redo your wrong answers? If you select to make tests of wrong answers only, will the program cycle you through all your wrong answers after you complete the qbank? Or will it just choose questions from your wrong answer pool at random, and you may end up doing those questions multiple times?

I didn't annotate a whole lot from UWorld into FA. I just read the answers and maybe scribbled figures on scrap pieces of paper to help memorize certain figures in the answers. Most of my learning came from Goljan RR/Audio, BRS Phys and UWorld as opposed to FA. FA was more like a roadmap for me as opposed to a go to reference (except for pharm...It was money for pharm IMO).

I didn't get to redo wrong answers, but I did redo marked answers. It selects marked answers at random and you can "unflag" them after you've gone through them.

 

[alan06]

I didn't annotate a whole lot from UWorld into FA. I just read the answers and maybe scribbled figures on scrap pieces of paper to help memorize certain figures in the answers. Most of my learning came from Goljan RR/Audio, BRS Phys and UWorld as opposed to FA. FA was more like a roadmap for me as opposed to a go to reference (except for pharm...It was money for pharm IMO).

I didn't get to redo wrong answers, but I did redo marked answers. It selects marked answers at random and you can "unflag" them after you've gone through them.

Did you feel the pharm and micro sections in FA and World were enough for the test? thanks!

 

[Psychotropic]

Did you feel the pharm and micro sections in FA and World were enough for the test? thanks!

Yes. I did supplement pharm with Lange Pharm Cards for iPhone and micro with MicroCards + MMRS. In retrospect, I could have probably gotten by without any supplementation.

 

[realjara]

what i am more worried is the heart sounds

I only had 3 heart sound questions on the entire exam. Normal heart sounds with physiologic splitting, AS, and MR. Not very high yield at all, so don't stress about it.

 

[RaraBovis]

what i am more worried is the heart sounds

http://www.cardiologysite.com/

This site may help. (auscultation drop down menu).
Most important in recognizing is the character of the sound...how the sound sounds. Helps to listen and run it through your head. The timing (between s1- s2, s2-s1 and whether early or late systole/diastole etc. does not help much...esp. when patients so often have tachycardia, AF etc). My prof told me this and I felt he was absolutely right.

But as said by those who've taken this exam, this is low yield, plus there maybe other giveaways in the question stem so it may not be important for the boards.
Just wanted to share.

 

[kryptik]

http://www.cardiologysite.com/

This site may help. (auscultation drop down menu).
Most important in recognizing is the character of the sound...how the sound sounds. Helps to listen and run it through your head. The timing (between s1- s2, s2-s1 and whether early or late systole/diastole etc. does not help much...esp. when patients so often have tachycardia, AF etc). My prof told me this and I felt he was absolutely right.

But as said by those who've taken this exam, this is low yield, plus there maybe other giveaways in the question stem so it may not be important for the boards.
Just wanted to share.

thanks a lot!!!

 

[realjara]

Preparation:
Books/Materials – FA, RR, BRS Phys, HY Neuroanatomy, Goljan audio (once)
Other – UW (68% overall on first pass), Kaplan Q Book

Score Progression:
Prestudy (3/16): UW Sim Exam #1 – 204/440
After 1st-pass (4/5): CBSSA through school – 230-235/83
After second pass (5/1): UW Sim Exam #2 – 247/640
After review of weakest area (5/3): Free 150 – 240/85% (according to WikiTest Prep)
After review of high-yield topics (5/6): NBME6 – 240/580

Test Day on 5/13:
Time: On practice blocks/exams, I always had plenty of time (finishing with 10+ minutes left). On the real thing, however, time seemed to fly. Most blocks I finished with less than 5 minutes. On one block, I made the classic mistake of getting hung up on a difficult question instead of just guessing and moving on. The system warned me of 5 minutes left in the block and I had about 8 questions left. Yikes! I finished but with only 30 seconds left. Guess, mark the question, and move on if you don’t know it. You can come back to it if you have time.

General Feeling: I felt terrible after completing the exam. Just like the practice tests… I seemed to guess a lot. And, I marked around 6 per block that I really had absolutely no idea what the answer was. That being said, I did ok on practice exams, so I hope for similar results.

Comments about exam composition:

Anatomy: Know the brachial plexus cold. I had at least 5 questions on it. The rest of the questions were tricky and seemed random. One question described a catheterization procedure to treat fibroids, and wanted you to trace the route of the catheter from femoral artery to uterine artery. Another was a CT image of patient with a mediastinal mass that would be treated with radiation. There was an arrow pointing to a tiny structure in the left anterior chest and asked the most important structure to protect from radiation (some choices were like coronary sinus, LAD, recurrent laryngeal nerve). From the location on CT, I picked LAD. Who knows…

Micro/Immuno: Seemed fairly straightforward. Questions seemed mainly related to bacteria/fungi/HIV. Didn’t really have much on other viruses. I do recommend reading another source for HIV, because FA didn’t seem to be enough. Immuno seemed to focus on IL and CD markers.

Pharm: Mostly neuro, autonomic, and micro drugs. Contrary to many UW questions relating to SE/toxicities, most of the questions were mechanisms and use.

Formulas: probability, Hardy-Weinberg, Vd, sensitivity/specificity, Number needed to treat and that’s it.

Biochem/genetics: seemed straight-forward

Pathology: Neuro/psych > Repro/Endo > Renal > Heme > Cardio > others

Media qs: 3 heart sound questions. That’s it.

Overall impression: The test was hard and I felt drained afterward. Glad that it’s over and really anxious to see my score.

 

[metalrex]

Preparation:
Books/Materials – FA, RR, BRS Phys, HY Neuroanatomy, Goljan audio (once)
Other – UW (68% overall on first pass), Kaplan Q Book

Score Progression:
Prestudy (3/16): UW Sim Exam #1 – 204/440
After 1st-pass (4/5): CBSSA through school – 230-235/83
After second pass (5/1): UW Sim Exam #2 – 247/640
After review of weakest area (5/3): Free 150 – 240/85% (according to WikiTest Prep)
After review of high-yield topics (5/6): NBME6 – 240/580

Test Day on 5/13:
Time: On practice blocks/exams, I always had plenty of time (finishing with 10+ minutes left). On the real thing, however, time seemed to fly. Most blocks I finished with less than 5 minutes. On one block, I made the classic mistake of getting hung up on a difficult question instead of just guessing and moving on. The system warned me of 5 minutes left in the block and I had about 8 questions left. Yikes! I finished but with only 30 seconds left. Guess, mark the question, and move on if you don’t know it. You can come back to it if you have time.

General Feeling: I felt terrible after completing the exam. Just like the practice tests… I seemed to guess a lot. And, I marked around 6 per block that I really had absolutely no idea what the answer was. That being said, I did ok on practice exams, so I hope for similar results.

Comments about exam composition:

Anatomy: Know the brachial plexus cold. I had at least 5 questions on it. The rest of the questions were tricky and seemed random. One question described a catheterization procedure to treat fibroids, and wanted you to trace the route of the catheter from femoral artery to uterine artery. Another was a CT image of patient with a mediastinal mass that would be treated with radiation. There was an arrow pointing to a tiny structure in the left anterior chest and asked the most important structure to protect from radiation (some choices were like coronary sinus, LAD, recurrent laryngeal nerve). From the location on CT, I picked LAD. Who knows…

Micro/Immuno: Seemed fairly straightforward. Questions seemed mainly related to bacteria/fungi/HIV. Didn’t really have much on other viruses. I do recommend reading another source for HIV, because FA didn’t seem to be enough. Immuno seemed to focus on IL and CD markers.

Pharm: Mostly neuro, autonomic, and micro drugs. Contrary to many UW questions relating to SE/toxicities, most of the questions were mechanisms and use.

Formulas: probability, Hardy-Weinberg, Vd, sensitivity/specificity, Number needed to treat and that’s it.

Biochem/genetics: seemed straight-forward

Pathology: Neuro/psych > Repro/Endo > Renal > Heme > Cardio > others

Media qs: 3 heart sound questions. That’s it.

Overall impression: The test was hard and I felt drained afterward. Glad that it’s over and really anxious to see my score.

Hey congrats to have done it!

I was boggled about anatomy yet again, would reviewing the BRS summaries suffice or you recommend HY ANAT?

when you say more reference for HIV , which book would that be?

Your stats look cool , so would your score

 

[realjara]

Hey congrats to have done it!

I was boggled about anatomy yet again, would reviewing the BRS summaries suffice or you recommend HY ANAT?

when you say more reference for HIV , which book would that be?

Your stats look cool , so would your score

Not sure about another anatomy source, I only used FA.. Probably should have used something else.

For HIV: not sure either... One question said that a patient had stopped taking her antivirals and now presented with confusion, mental status change. CT showed a single lesion in left temporal lobe. Q asked how should she be treated? Answers were like acyclovir + predinisone, restart HAART, gancyclovir, sulfdiazine + pyrimethamine, and something else that I can't remember. Really it was the image that threw me. I first thought toxo, but the lesion didn't look ring-enhancing and was a single lesion.

It just seemed to be focused on the clinical complications and treatment in more detail that was given in FA.

Sorry to not be of more help, but I'm not really sure what to recommend other than I felt unprepared in those areas.

 

[kryptik]

could that be an HSV encephalitis?

 

[realjara]

could that be an HSV encephalitis?

That's what I settled on (acyclovir + prednisone). But afterward I looked back at some images from a class lecture. There was one picture of toxo that had both a ring-enhancing lesion and a hemorrhagic-looking temporal lobe lesion. The image on my test only had the temporal lobe lesion.

 

[kryptik]

That's what I settled on (acyclovir + prednisone). But afterward I looked back at some images from a class lecture. There was one picture of toxo that had both a ring-enhancing lesion and a hemorrhagic-looking temporal lobe lesion. The image on my test only had the temporal lobe lesion.

Just stay away from lecture slides and textbooks for now, it will drive you nuts, relax and chances are you did find from your practice scores.

 

[hartbot]

Not sure about another anatomy source, I only used FA.. Probably should have used something else.

For HIV: not sure either... One question said that a patient had stopped taking her antivirals and now presented with confusion, mental status change. CT showed a single lesion in left temporal lobe. Q asked how should she be treated? Answers were like acyclovir + predinisone, restart HAART, gancyclovir, sulfdiazine + pyrimethamine, and something else that I can't remember. Really it was the image that threw me. I first thought toxo, but the lesion didn't look ring-enhancing and was a single lesion.

It just seemed to be focused on the clinical complications and treatment in more detail that was given in FA.

Sorry to not be of more help, but I'm not really sure what to recommend other than I felt unprepared in those areas.

For questions like this, it seems like restarting HAART is a good answer too.

But I guess the best choice is to take care of the current problem and then worry about systemic AIDS, right?

 

[onyx667]

Took the exam today. Even though it was after May 15th, my test still had 48 question blocks, so I guess it's gonna take a while for that transition period to occur. That being said, I only had like 2 or 3 questions that weren't in a clinical vignette.

My practice test scores were:
Uworld 1 = 247
Uworld 2 = 252
NBME 6 = 243
NBME 7 = 260
Kaplan score estimator = around 250

Overall, I thought the exam was pretty fair, I marked around 5 per block. Here's what I thought:

Embryo = straight out of FA (i.e. Meckel's diverticulum = vitelline duct, hysterosalpingogram of bicornuate uterus = failed fusion of paramesonephric ducts). Doing anything else is a waste of time, since you will only have like 2-3 embryo questions

Anatomy = like others have said, the questions were either very straightforward (i.e. MCL tear in football player, xray of supracondylar fracture of humerus = median nerve damage) or impossible (i.e. someone had a mediastinal goiter that extended inferior to the sternum and they asked what structures the inferior portion would be between??? I think I put between the esophagus and thoracic aorta but who knows what they were looking for). That being said, just study FA because it's not worth reading all of Gray's to get those 2-3 ******ed trivial pursuit questions. Also, I had like 3 questions on the psoas muscle (e.g. how does TB spread from the vertebrae) - they love that one

Micro/Immuno = straightforward, probably about 30-40 questions. I had like 4 questions on botulism. There were some oddballs though (e.g. T. rubrum on an old lady's butt). Immuno was mostly about TB and eczema (when in doubt on an immuno question, always choose CD4+ cell, it's probably the right answer ). I think that FA was sufficient for both of these subjects (and maybe skimming through the tables in MMRS)

Pharm = mostly autonomic and cardio questions, a few on antimicrobials. Kind of similar to anatomy, there were some pharm questions that I had never ever heard of before, but only a few. One oddball one was the side effect of filagrastim (bone pain since it stimulates M-CSF) - that was the only thing that wasn't in FA

Behavioral = pretty straightforward, know the differences between MDD vs. borderline personality vs. adjustment disorder with depressed mood (length of time is important). And for the ethics questions, don't get frustrated because you ARE going to get some questions that don't have a clear right answer, so just choose the choice that is least likely to get you sued)

Physio = mostly neuro and cardio questions - know the thyroid and cortisol axes cold. Also there were tons of questions on calcium and PTH

Biochem = straightforward, but there were a few questions where I had to deduce the right answer through process of elimination (hopefully those were the experimental questions).

Path = I was very surprised at how straightforward Path was - only 1 or 2 step reasoning required. Maybe it was just my test, but there were really no "underlying mechanism of disease" questions. As much as Goljan preached that Step 1 was all about mechanisms, 90% of the path questions on my test were just like, what is it? I have read RR Path 2 times through, and I really didn't need to have all those little details to answer the questions on my test. But again, maybe it was just my test, so don't take my word for it (RR Path is an awesome book regardless).

Hopefully these thoughts have helped shed some light on this beast of a test. I'm glad it's over, that's for sure. Now the month long wait begins...

 

[Domenech]

Took the exam today. Even though it was after May 15th, my test still had 48 question blocks, so I guess it's gonna take a while for that transition period to occur. That being said, I only had like 2 or 3 questions that weren't in a clinical vignette.

Thanks onyx for your insight. I probably think you're gonna overshoot the 255+ so good luck on your result!

By the way how many media questions did you get?

 

[free_radical]

Took the exam today. 2PM-10PM. They allow you to start early; I arrived at one and began at one. Media was only heart sounds, very straightforward. I used modified Taus; did 90% of the UWorld questions in the last 3 weeks; I can't emphasize enough how much that helped me.

Good luck to you all. Push off the "whatever" moment for as long as you can; it's the only variable left once you walk into the building.

 

[canmeds]

What comes under physiology for Neuro? Is RR path and FA enough for this?

 

[metalrex]

Meaning you gave a re-run of UW alone in last 3 weeks? How much time did FA account for in those last few days?

I am closer to exam day and trying to figure out what should my schedule be like in those final days, wanna keep it simple yet highly effective- that kinda dictates I steer clear of RR and BRS or whatever else in those days and just do UW and FA.

Would you agree?

Thanks and congrats on having it done

 

[MDpride]

Hii

is it worth doing NBME or UWSA?

I plan to do atleast 100 UW Qs each day in Random i.e. select ALL from both sides.

 

[wcarson]

Thanks onyx for your insight. I probably think you're gonna overshoot the 255+ so good luck on your result!

By the way how many media questions did you get?

I had 3 media questions, all were heart sounds. Two were aortic stenosis (old ppl with exertional dyspnea) and one was a Marfan's kid with aortic insufficiency

 

[metalrex]

Guess no more scores comin out until July 14th ....

 

[pedsmedstudent]

July 14th is going to be one big day...

 

[MilkmanAl]

I'm glad that's around when my scores would've been released anyway.

 

[JabsterL]

Guess no more scores comin out until July 14th ....

wait, i took my exam monday, may 3 and was expecting my score next wednesday, may 26...why are u saying no more scores coming out until july 14? Isn't that just for people takin the exam after mid-may (from now on) with the next 46 questions/block format?

Thank you!

 

[metalrex]

Isn't that just for people takin the exam after mid-may (from now on) with the next 46 questions/block format?

Yeah , that's what I meant-people who are taking the exam now on ( that's most of current active members),you have no reason to worry about delay in your score reporting.

Sorry if I gave you tachycardia.

and hey oodles of luck for your results! Share some insight when you have em.

 

[johnwall11]

Goljan Audio...

I've found where I can download it, but it seems to be a 2005 version? Is the "Goljan Audio" that everyone talks about this version or is there something newer that I should pay for?

Thanks!

 

[metalrex]

Goljan Audio...

I've found where I can download it, but it seems to be a 2005 version? Is the "Goljan Audio" that everyone talks about this version or is there something newer that I should pay for?

Thanks!

There's no goljan audio that you PAY for ,even if it did, the person selling em is making up some cheap money.

That's cuz goljan audio is a bootleg recorded by some very brilliant student at Falcon ( i think) who had this very brilliant idea.

From what I believe, yes that's the only version there is to it.

Long live that dude who had the wisdom to record and pass it around to enlighten us.Step 1 study took a new meaning after that.

 

[johnwall11]

Thanks for the quick reply!

For those of you that used the audio lectures for your Step 1 prep, did you have the "HY Notes" and "Path Slides" that I've seen some people post about?

I bought the RR Path book, should that be enough?

 

[kryptik]

There's no goljan audio that you PAY for ,even if it did, the person selling em is making up some cheap money.

That's cuz goljan audio is a bootleg recorded by some very brilliant student at Falcon ( i think) who had this very brilliant idea.

From what I believe, yes that's the only version there is to it.

Long live that dude who had the wisdom to record and pass it around to enlighten us.Step 1 study took a new meaning after that.

i have heard of 2008 version for sale around campus, apparently it was recorded at falcon where he teaches now

 

[lildave2586]

i have heard of 2008 version for sale around campus, apparently it was recorded at falcon where he teaches now

This is interesting, but I find it hard to believe they would allow someone to record him after what happened with Kaplan. I bet they've got all kinds of security making sure people don't record.

 

[McGillGrad]

This is interesting, but I find it hard to believe they would allow someone to record him after what happened with Kaplan. I bet they've got all kinds of security making sure people don't record.

People that I knew that took Falcon with him said there was a full patdown with all kinds of crazy security and no laptops every day.

Seems unlikely that there is a Falcon Goljan audio.

The only two that exist are from his Kaplan days and they are back from the early 2000s.

 

[kryptik]

This is interesting, but I find it hard to believe they would allow someone to record him after what happened with Kaplan. I bet they've got all kinds of security making sure people don't record.

well believe it or not there is

 

[username456789]

when you say more reference for HIV , which book would that be?

Your stats look cool , so would your score

as far as treatment regimens, Lange immuno is pretty good.

 

[match2011]

very helpful

Thanks

Preparation:
Books/Materials – FA, RR, BRS Phys, HY Neuroanatomy, Goljan audio (once)
Other – UW (68% overall on first pass), Kaplan Q Book

Score Progression:
Prestudy (3/16): UW Sim Exam #1 – 204/440
After 1st-pass (4/5): CBSSA through school – 230-235/83
After second pass (5/1): UW Sim Exam #2 – 247/640
After review of weakest area (5/3): Free 150 – 240/85% (according to WikiTest Prep)
After review of high-yield topics (5/6): NBME6 – 240/580

Test Day on 5/13:
Time: On practice blocks/exams, I always had plenty of time (finishing with 10+ minutes left). On the real thing, however, time seemed to fly. Most blocks I finished with less than 5 minutes. On one block, I made the classic mistake of getting hung up on a difficult question instead of just guessing and moving on. The system warned me of 5 minutes left in the block and I had about 8 questions left. Yikes! I finished but with only 30 seconds left. Guess, mark the question, and move on if you don’t know it. You can come back to it if you have time.

General Feeling: I felt terrible after completing the exam. Just like the practice tests… I seemed to guess a lot. And, I marked around 6 per block that I really had absolutely no idea what the answer was. That being said, I did ok on practice exams, so I hope for similar results.

Comments about exam composition:

Anatomy: Know the brachial plexus cold. I had at least 5 questions on it. The rest of the questions were tricky and seemed random. One question described a catheterization procedure to treat fibroids, and wanted you to trace the route of the catheter from femoral artery to uterine artery. Another was a CT image of patient with a mediastinal mass that would be treated with radiation. There was an arrow pointing to a tiny structure in the left anterior chest and asked the most important structure to protect from radiation (some choices were like coronary sinus, LAD, recurrent laryngeal nerve). From the location on CT, I picked LAD. Who knows…

Micro/Immuno: Seemed fairly straightforward. Questions seemed mainly related to bacteria/fungi/HIV. Didn’t really have much on other viruses. I do recommend reading another source for HIV, because FA didn’t seem to be enough. Immuno seemed to focus on IL and CD markers.

Pharm: Mostly neuro, autonomic, and micro drugs. Contrary to many UW questions relating to SE/toxicities, most of the questions were mechanisms and use.

Formulas: probability, Hardy-Weinberg, Vd, sensitivity/specificity, Number needed to treat and that’s it.

Biochem/genetics: seemed straight-forward

Pathology: Neuro/psych > Repro/Endo > Renal > Heme > Cardio > others

Media qs: 3 heart sound questions. That’s it.

Overall impression: The test was hard and I felt drained afterward. Glad that it’s over and really anxious to see my score.