I saw that there was a similar thread for 2011 that had plenty of useful info so I figured its best to start one for 2012. 👍
Official 2012 Step 1 Experiences and Scores Thread
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Practically identical to UWorld. Some 1-2 liners, most a few sentences. Some had lots of lab values but usually only a couple were actually important.
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Thanks dude. I love path and pathophys questions... i just hope i don't get too many question stems describing a pathology.. and the answer choices being increase in cAMP, decrease in cGMP etc. Not my strong point so far.
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I finished uworld with 60%, though it's been mid 60's last few tests.. Do you recommend doing uworld again or switching to Kaplan? My test is at the end of the month. Thanks.
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I didn't finish either qbank, but some people have recommended going over missed questions. I imagine it's lower yield than a first time run through, as you might just remember the answer and not necessarily have a deeper understanding of the topic. Kaplan is okay but my actual test was much closer to UW.
If you don't know this already, after taking the UW1 and 2 practice tests you can go through the questions just like the qbank, so that's potentially another 368 questions to do.
In the end, I think I would prioritize new questions over reviewing older questions, besides maybe in sections that you feel particularly weak.
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Cool, thanks. Good luck with your score!
It really depends on how you feel about the material. Like myself, I was loosing most of my points just because I make dumb mistakes on details I already knew, so reinforcing the higher-yield material in UWorld was definitely helpful.
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I'm actually not surprised here. With the ~9000 some-odd questions I've done so far, I would literally say 50 of them have been on HIV drugs and their side-effects, structures or binding-sites, and that's not including questions about HIV in general. Also, quoting Pollux:
Pollux said:
So yeah, HIV drugs are exceedingly high-yield.
That's interesting. The best resource I've come across for this stuff so far is University of Utah Webpath. They have quite a few exam questions about environmental exposures (and their links to oncology as well) and the pneumoconioses. The questions from Robbin's Review of Pathology also hit this stuff really well in the environmental chapter.
Thanks a lot for posting btw and congrats on having finished.
Go through old questions, timed. You will be shocked to learn that you hadn't retained 100% of what you thought you had gained from incorrect Qs. If you go back through incorrect ones, you'll find you'll do blocks anywhere between 85-high-90s %-correct. It doesn't take long to go through those questions. So just do them.
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Yea I am planning on it for next two weeks, doing random timed and leave last week for FA memorization/review. I did some of uworld earlier in the year so its not all that fresh though I did take notes. Besides I think I need to work on my stamina, I usually get tired after two blocks. Will mix in NBME on the weekends.
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you definitely got to work on your stamina. If your taking your test at the prometric center at penn station you need some heavy duty ear phones. they watch you so hard you can't even scratch your nose without them knowing
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oh great, yea I am taking it there. It wasn't my top choice when I registered. I am hoping a center where I previously took mcat has a spot as we move closer to the date, they were really relaxed.
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they will open the door every 3 minutes and stand behind you. its very annoying.
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Will be tempted to punch them if they do that, especially after a tough block
. Any difference between 15th and 17th floor?- Joined
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not sure. i took it on the 17th
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I'm not surprised that there were some things I didn't cover as my sources were rather limited. My goal wasn't to understand everything; I wanted to have an understanding of the basics of many topics and go from there. I do far better with conceptual things than memorization.
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The NBME announced a delay of late may to June score reporting a while back. They said they would be reported July 11th. That will catch them up then we just assume they will stick to their standard 3-4 week reporting.
I am taking my exam in a few days. I feel really burnt out and discouraged. I just took NBME 13 and didnt do as I had hoped for. I definitely know the material to do well, but I just keep making stupid mistakes. Hopefully, the NBMEs are not as accurate as people claim them to be. Here's to getting lucky with a good test! 🙂
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phlame its realeased only on wednesdays. the print permit thing is gone cause you took the test already 🙂
Sorry for the delay guys..had to unwind after taking that beast.
Took mine on july 5th too.
My prep was FA 2x, UW 2x, pathoma and goljan audio.
I did the UWSA#1 and NBME 7,11,12 and 13 and averaged from starting at 215s to ending in the high 230s
behavioral sciences: lots of weird ethics questions. Hoping that some were experimental. Pretty much have to answer these like "what would barney do?"
biostats: straight from FA and UW. I usually do not so hot on this section and I felt half of them were sort of hard for me at least. And the one i marked right first, i changed the answer so that screwed me.
Micro- everything was in FA and pretty straightforward except for one question (cant remember what it was on). They had pictures of lesions and would ask you to identify what was going on.
Biochem- this is the part which i felt like they had a lot of hard questions with graphs and even had a couple of questions with the lineweaver-burk plot and the michaelis menten plots. And i decided to not look at it as well and guess what this showed up!
Anatomy- had a lot of neuro anatomy specifically referring to lesions to which specific area would present as what, etc. Also had one brainstem image and asked to identify the lesion pertaining to the patient's presenting symtoms. I had a couple of GI vascular questions like which artery supplies this portion of the pancreas and so on. CTs of the abdomen were there too. Make sure to look at CTs of the head and abdomen and chest X rays. The Chest X rays were fairly simple and usually the CTs of the head just show a bleed of some sort.
Physio- mine was respiratory heavy with spirometry. yuck. I had some cardiovascular and renal phys too. Decent amount of endocrine too. Know arrows for endocrine and cardiac too.
Path- fairly decent. Was well spread out but they had the occassional wth questions which after staring at the question for a while makes it not so wth-ish but then the timer goes out. Make sure to look at SV, EF all that crap with certain cardiac path conditons. That came with arrows. They also had 2 audio questions for cards. moderate amount of repro path too and i think i had one about a mole.
Pharm- everything came from FA except for one but I think i remember that one from reading Lange in class. They had one question with graphs on giving drug x and some other drug and figure out what drug x was. I personally hate those questions with a passion.
Overall I felt like the test was a bit more harder than NBME but better than UW. I am usually good with time but I had like 5 min to spare after each section and i would be left with 10 seconds for my last marked answer. I ended up changing 4 marked answers which were correct the first time so I hope that doesnt end up giving me a 215 instead of a 220 hopeful. It will be awesome if I could pull a 230+ but lets see...those 4 questions continue to haunt me. I know that i didnt make as much silly mistakes on NBME and even with that I would get low 230s to high 230s and now that i screwed up here i have no idea what to expect but lower than what was predicted in NBME.
Good luck everyone!
Took mine on july 5th too.
My prep was FA 2x, UW 2x, pathoma and goljan audio.
I did the UWSA#1 and NBME 7,11,12 and 13 and averaged from starting at 215s to ending in the high 230s
behavioral sciences: lots of weird ethics questions. Hoping that some were experimental. Pretty much have to answer these like "what would barney do?"
biostats: straight from FA and UW. I usually do not so hot on this section and I felt half of them were sort of hard for me at least. And the one i marked right first, i changed the answer so that screwed me.
Micro- everything was in FA and pretty straightforward except for one question (cant remember what it was on). They had pictures of lesions and would ask you to identify what was going on.
Biochem- this is the part which i felt like they had a lot of hard questions with graphs and even had a couple of questions with the lineweaver-burk plot and the michaelis menten plots. And i decided to not look at it as well and guess what this showed up!
Anatomy- had a lot of neuro anatomy specifically referring to lesions to which specific area would present as what, etc. Also had one brainstem image and asked to identify the lesion pertaining to the patient's presenting symtoms. I had a couple of GI vascular questions like which artery supplies this portion of the pancreas and so on. CTs of the abdomen were there too. Make sure to look at CTs of the head and abdomen and chest X rays. The Chest X rays were fairly simple and usually the CTs of the head just show a bleed of some sort.
Physio- mine was respiratory heavy with spirometry. yuck. I had some cardiovascular and renal phys too. Decent amount of endocrine too. Know arrows for endocrine and cardiac too.
Path- fairly decent. Was well spread out but they had the occassional wth questions which after staring at the question for a while makes it not so wth-ish but then the timer goes out. Make sure to look at SV, EF all that crap with certain cardiac path conditons. That came with arrows. They also had 2 audio questions for cards. moderate amount of repro path too and i think i had one about a mole.
Pharm- everything came from FA except for one but I think i remember that one from reading Lange in class. They had one question with graphs on giving drug x and some other drug and figure out what drug x was. I personally hate those questions with a passion.
Overall I felt like the test was a bit more harder than NBME but better than UW. I am usually good with time but I had like 5 min to spare after each section and i would be left with 10 seconds for my last marked answer. I ended up changing 4 marked answers which were correct the first time so I hope that doesnt end up giving me a 215 instead of a 220 hopeful. It will be awesome if I could pull a 230+ but lets see...those 4 questions continue to haunt me. I know that i didnt make as much silly mistakes on NBME and even with that I would get low 230s to high 230s and now that i screwed up here i have no idea what to expect but lower than what was predicted in NBME.
Good luck everyone!
people earlier in the thread were suggesting that the link disappeared within a few days before their wednesday release date (mine just disappeared this week) and maybe it meant you passed? Not sure about the truth to the passing part, but scores are due to be released next week.
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nm my link is still there 🙁 just an error message
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No the link was there yesterday and you could click it and it would say the permit is not available as the test has been taken or cancelled. Now there is no link at all.
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Took the test yesterday. I spent much of the last week freaking out over pharm; put in many hours to memorize all the details. On my actual test, there was very little pharm and what pharm I had was waaaay easy.
The rest was pretty straight forward. Micro in particularly was easy. The trickiest part was pathology because quite a few scenarios weren't clear cut.
My biggest suggestion: break after every other section to eat a snack even if you don't feel hungry and use the bathroom even if you don't need to. I got incredibly hungry half way through a section and it definitely impacted my performance. (I think the hunger's sudden onset was related to nerves, because it hit me like a ton of bricks.)
The rest was pretty straight forward. Micro in particularly was easy. The trickiest part was pathology because quite a few scenarios weren't clear cut.
My biggest suggestion: break after every other section to eat a snack even if you don't feel hungry and use the bathroom even if you don't need to. I got incredibly hungry half way through a section and it definitely impacted my performance. (I think the hunger's sudden onset was related to nerves, because it hit me like a ton of bricks.)
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I never tried to relogin into NBME site until now. So the link was under the permit date or something?
If yes, there's no link for me and when I click on the Step 1 button to see details it takes me to a blank page. Anyone else?
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If you select exam status, it would be under the date of the exam.
3-4 weeks for you. Usually you'll get your score within 3-4 weeks of your test date, but for those between mid-may and mid-june, our scores were delayed to july 11 because they were revamping the test bank or something. Late-june testtakers will likely receive scores after july 11
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Yea that seems more likely. I took the test on the 28th as well and my print permit thing is still there. I am pretty sure I did not fail .... so maybe the results will be released the week following the 11th
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Yea that's where I was. Nothin to click for me. Hopefully that means I passed! haha TBH I'm sure I passed but I'm just afraid what my score is gonna be. Had the potential for 240+ but nooo clue...could be anywhere from 200-240. 🙁 More realistically probably in the 220s...far from my original 240 goal ehh
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my stomach is totally going to be in knots the days leading up to my score release date. no way I will be able to concentrate during rotations
Hi guys, did anyone take May 17th exam? It was really hard for me. Does anyone think they will curve it? It's been driving me insane for the last two months... I am so really do get my results.... I have faith that I passed though!
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At least the days seems to fly by now with rotations. Yesterday I literally looked at my watch at 6 am and in a blur of ob/gyn insanity it was 4pm instantaneously.
Hey I'm so sorry, but this is crazy. I took it May 11, but I'm just so ****ing lazy. So, here's my overdue 2 cents about my Step 1 experience.
Total time off for study: 6 weeks
NBME 11 (immediately prior to 6 week study period): 247
NBME 12 (4 weeks before exam): 259
UWSA1 (3 weeks before exam): 265+
UWSA2 (2 weeks before exam): 265+
Prometric Site Practice (weekend before exam): 270 (based on medfriends calculator)
Real USMLE Step 1: 266
Prep leading up to study period: First Aid, Kaplan Videos, Goljan audio
Prep during study period: First Aid, Pathoma, BRS Physio and Path, UWORLD (90% completed with 85% average), Kaplan QBank (45% completed with 84% average)
I know this has been said by many successful test takers in the past, but the MOST valuable resource that you will ever have for this exam is a personalized, well annotated copy of the LATEST version of First Aid. I see dolts skimping on the $30 and using a 1-2 year old copy of FA and I want to vomit. I just can't fathom how you could value $30 over any shred of an edge that the latest info could give you. That said, I had annotated a ton of stuff into my FA 2011 during my M1 and M2 years. Early during my study period, I copied all of those annotations into the 2012 version (effectively refreshing all of that information) and then used the 2012 from that point on.
The next most valuable resource was UWORLD. 90% of the value of UWORLD is in the explanations. Not only should you seek to understand why an answer is correct, but also why all of the other answers are wrong. As a test taking rule of thumb, all of the answer choices could actually be correct given a different question stem (ie. none of the answers are made up things). Thus, if you know how the stems for choices A, B, and C would look and your stem does NOT look like that, you give yourself a whole new way to whittle down the answer choices. I will say that my real exam required a lot less problem solving than UWORLD and a lot more weird recall info.
Also, I wholeheartedly recommend Pathoma. I think it is definitely higher yield than listening to Goljan lectures or reading the way-too-dense Goljan Rapid Review.
Finally, don't freak out after your exam if you feel crappy. I didn't feel as confident after the real thing as I did after any of my practice exams just because there were so many awkwardly worded questions that I couldn't be sure about. I think if you come out of Step 1 feeling like you killed it, you either possess true one in a million talent or (more likely) you are an overconfident tool that is about to get a rude awakening. For the rest of us, knots in your stomach are normal. Just relax and you'll be rewarded soon enough!
Total time off for study: 6 weeks
NBME 11 (immediately prior to 6 week study period): 247
NBME 12 (4 weeks before exam): 259
UWSA1 (3 weeks before exam): 265+
UWSA2 (2 weeks before exam): 265+
Prometric Site Practice (weekend before exam): 270 (based on medfriends calculator)
Real USMLE Step 1: 266
Prep leading up to study period: First Aid, Kaplan Videos, Goljan audio
Prep during study period: First Aid, Pathoma, BRS Physio and Path, UWORLD (90% completed with 85% average), Kaplan QBank (45% completed with 84% average)
I know this has been said by many successful test takers in the past, but the MOST valuable resource that you will ever have for this exam is a personalized, well annotated copy of the LATEST version of First Aid. I see dolts skimping on the $30 and using a 1-2 year old copy of FA and I want to vomit. I just can't fathom how you could value $30 over any shred of an edge that the latest info could give you. That said, I had annotated a ton of stuff into my FA 2011 during my M1 and M2 years. Early during my study period, I copied all of those annotations into the 2012 version (effectively refreshing all of that information) and then used the 2012 from that point on.
The next most valuable resource was UWORLD. 90% of the value of UWORLD is in the explanations. Not only should you seek to understand why an answer is correct, but also why all of the other answers are wrong. As a test taking rule of thumb, all of the answer choices could actually be correct given a different question stem (ie. none of the answers are made up things). Thus, if you know how the stems for choices A, B, and C would look and your stem does NOT look like that, you give yourself a whole new way to whittle down the answer choices. I will say that my real exam required a lot less problem solving than UWORLD and a lot more weird recall info.
Also, I wholeheartedly recommend Pathoma. I think it is definitely higher yield than listening to Goljan lectures or reading the way-too-dense Goljan Rapid Review.
Finally, don't freak out after your exam if you feel crappy. I didn't feel as confident after the real thing as I did after any of my practice exams just because there were so many awkwardly worded questions that I couldn't be sure about. I think if you come out of Step 1 feeling like you killed it, you either possess true one in a million talent or (more likely) you are an overconfident tool that is about to get a rude awakening. For the rest of us, knots in your stomach are normal. Just relax and you'll be rewarded soon enough!
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When did you get your score in?
I guess the announcement says a delay for mid-May through late June tests, so maybe you just scraped by and are not considered mid-May?
Thanks Ipizzy! I really hope so... Felt like the entire exam was pretty rough. I did not have 1 or 2 blocks hard and the rest easy... The entire exam seem pretty difficult for the most part! Of course, I had a few easy ones though... I have been in a nervous wreck!
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so if you finish uWorld, and you have a week left, do you do uworld again or do you now start on USMLErx? (and you've already bought rx)
rephrased: is going through uworld for the 2nd time more high yield than going through rx for the first time?
rephrased: is going through uworld for the 2nd time more high yield than going through rx for the first time?
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that's the thing - I didn't even look at the questions I got right. I figured that if you know how to get it right, then just move on, and you are bound to get another question wrong if there's something you're actually deficient in. I didn't think I'd actually finish the questions to be honest.
After I read your post on the previous page about how you think we should go through the right answers though, I started rethinking my strategy. So you think for the last week, I should not even look at rx and instead focus on uworld?
thanks for your help! 🙂
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Hey guys, My exam is in 5 days (Thursday).
I've been thru First Aid extensively of course I don't know everything (ony 6 six weeks to study) but I have a good grasp. Have utilized Pathoma and Goljan. Will be done with UWorld tonight. Do you think it would be wise to spend a whole day just going through my marked questions (inlcudes incorrect questions) which totals to about 375? I am weak still a bit weak on pharm but I will keep going over that up until the day before the exam.
Am also a bit weak on biochem (the pathways basically but should take me a few hours to go over again, although I've heard that they aren't super high yield)
Thanks.
I've been thru First Aid extensively of course I don't know everything (ony 6 six weeks to study) but I have a good grasp. Have utilized Pathoma and Goljan. Will be done with UWorld tonight. Do you think it would be wise to spend a whole day just going through my marked questions (inlcudes incorrect questions) which totals to about 375? I am weak still a bit weak on pharm but I will keep going over that up until the day before the exam.
Am also a bit weak on biochem (the pathways basically but should take me a few hours to go over again, although I've heard that they aren't super high yield)
Thanks.
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i straight up reread firstaid in the last 3 days
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I stopped marking about a week and a half ago because I figured I would not be able to go over those questions again. These 375 are questions prior. My overall percent is a 78%.
I'm not an SDN all star and am 'only' aiming for a 240+
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everyone's going to have a different opinion on this and I haven't gotten my score yet, so I cannot claim to be a trustworthy source, but I'll still give you my opinion.
I would just go through the Uworld explanations QUICKLY. Not even redo Uworld - just go over the tests you already did and see if you know the concepts being discussed in each explanation and move quickly through them. Also take (maybe most of) your time to re-read important points in books (FA+whatever else you want to review like Pathoma for example).
I wouldn't do a lot of new stuff. Just do the free 150 a day before so that ur still used to doing questions before walking in. I think most people are used to doing questions by the last week but do whatever you feel is right for yourself.
