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
- Thread starter amavir281
- Start date
- Joined
- Jun 22, 2009
- Messages
- 2,374
- Reaction score
- 62
Took mine last week but never really posted anything. De-stressifying.
Took a 6 day beach vacation before my dedicated study time (= GOLDEN).
~7 weeks studying
FA 3 times through
UWorld twice: 70% first time, 85% second time
QBank, mainly High Yield mode (total overall=69%)
Pathoma
BRS Phys
High Yield Neuroanatomy
NBME prediction (high 230's/low 240s)
"Questions I Got Wrong/Concepts I Don't Understand Well" Step 1 Journal (review every 2-3 days)
Overall impressions:
-Definitely much harder than the NBMEs. It sort of caught me by surprise.
- Question stems are longer and there's actually a little bit of a time crunch problem that I didn't encounter during NBME practice session.
- Much closer to UWorld style (i.e. multi-step thinking, though maybe more often 2-step than 3-step).
-About 85% of the exam material came from First Aid.
-My exam was heavy on Immunology, Neuro, Molecular Biology, Anatomy, Skin Diseases, Endocrine Physio, and Pregnancy. There was also a heavy emphasis on images (CT scans, blood smears, Brain Imaging, Gross Specimens, Histology, etc.)- most of which were written so you really needed to get the answer solely from your interpretation of the image rather than the clinical vignette.
- They really like graphs, charts, up and down arrows, etc. There were even some questions where I thought it would have made much more sense to include facts as written prose, but they would somehow find a way to transform it into a bar graph or dot plot.
-Physio is HUGE on this exam. I had so many physio questions, and they had a knack for including extra variables to consider that you normally wouldn't (i.e. what do you think is going to happen to this obscure hormone in this condition). I think someone else mentioned this before....but certain things I felt golden on (i.e. PTH/VitD/etc.) came up as much more difficult questions on the actual exam. As part of these questions, there was also a lot of imagining of new diseases (i.e. we've created a new drug that only knocks out this part of a pathway, etc.) that made things much trickier and reliant that you know things REALLY well.
-I'd say the most difficult section was probably Anatomy- virtually none of my anatomy questions came from First Aid and I was pretty stumped on a lot of them. I thought Micro/Pharm were well represented and generally very fair. Micro seemed pretty easy (but, I felt this was my strongpoint), Pharm was a little more difficult (though, this was never my strong point). I had maybe 5-6 Pharm questions that weren't really in First Aid so I had to guess. The rest were pretty simple (most often questions about mechanism of action rather than side effects). Missed a few from simply forgetting a few important facts.
-Overall, I'd say I had about 5 questions (10%) on each section that really required educated or flat-out guessing, mainly because they were non-First Aid material or presentations of First-Aid like material in a new, sometimes strange manner. And another 10 on each section that required narrowing things down to two choices and guessing between them.
- I had about 10 questions that seemed like near repeats from UWorld questions (which made me happy 🙂 )
- There were a fair amount of questions that were made difficult by ambiguous phrasing...it really made it unclear what they were actually asking for.
- Had 3 questions on hearing and ear anatomy. Blah.
- Overall, just hoping I broke 220 at this point.
Definitely 10-15 questions that I definitely should have gotten right but blanked on the exam (these are the ones that are haunting me now). To a certain extent, you should expect that you might forget some very specific facts. I made a running list of maybe 30 or so other ones I'm pretty sure I answered incorrectly- but less unhappy about those because they were admittedly just difficult questions. You'll concentrate on all your hard questions when re-imaging the exam. Just try and remember that there were probably a lot you did know 😉
---------
Generally, I felt my overall study plan was solid. I wouldn't spend more than 6-7 weeks on this (even if you're like me and hadn't really done much preparation beforehand). You'll risk starting to forget things, and to be honest, the exam is at it's core much more conceptually based than fact based. The questions that don't come from First Aid are probably too hard to predict to warrant much outside of First Aid studying.Though, BRS Physio is gold. There's a heavy physio relationship part of the exam and I found it helped my conceptual understanding a lot. In terms of QBank, I'd try to do Kaplan early if you want to get through it. It's helpful for factual learning and I felt the Behavioral Science questions actually really helped improve my understanding on those questions.... but after taking the test....I feel like Kaplan QBank really doesn't prepare you to answer Step 1 questions. UWorld does and I'm glad I concentrated on it.
Took a 6 day beach vacation before my dedicated study time (= GOLDEN).
~7 weeks studying
FA 3 times through
UWorld twice: 70% first time, 85% second time
QBank, mainly High Yield mode (total overall=69%)
Pathoma
BRS Phys
High Yield Neuroanatomy
NBME prediction (high 230's/low 240s)
"Questions I Got Wrong/Concepts I Don't Understand Well" Step 1 Journal (review every 2-3 days)
Overall impressions:
-Definitely much harder than the NBMEs. It sort of caught me by surprise.
- Question stems are longer and there's actually a little bit of a time crunch problem that I didn't encounter during NBME practice session.
- Much closer to UWorld style (i.e. multi-step thinking, though maybe more often 2-step than 3-step).
-About 85% of the exam material came from First Aid.
-My exam was heavy on Immunology, Neuro, Molecular Biology, Anatomy, Skin Diseases, Endocrine Physio, and Pregnancy. There was also a heavy emphasis on images (CT scans, blood smears, Brain Imaging, Gross Specimens, Histology, etc.)- most of which were written so you really needed to get the answer solely from your interpretation of the image rather than the clinical vignette.
- They really like graphs, charts, up and down arrows, etc. There were even some questions where I thought it would have made much more sense to include facts as written prose, but they would somehow find a way to transform it into a bar graph or dot plot.
-Physio is HUGE on this exam. I had so many physio questions, and they had a knack for including extra variables to consider that you normally wouldn't (i.e. what do you think is going to happen to this obscure hormone in this condition). I think someone else mentioned this before....but certain things I felt golden on (i.e. PTH/VitD/etc.) came up as much more difficult questions on the actual exam. As part of these questions, there was also a lot of imagining of new diseases (i.e. we've created a new drug that only knocks out this part of a pathway, etc.) that made things much trickier and reliant that you know things REALLY well.
-I'd say the most difficult section was probably Anatomy- virtually none of my anatomy questions came from First Aid and I was pretty stumped on a lot of them. I thought Micro/Pharm were well represented and generally very fair. Micro seemed pretty easy (but, I felt this was my strongpoint), Pharm was a little more difficult (though, this was never my strong point). I had maybe 5-6 Pharm questions that weren't really in First Aid so I had to guess. The rest were pretty simple (most often questions about mechanism of action rather than side effects). Missed a few from simply forgetting a few important facts.
-Overall, I'd say I had about 5 questions (10%) on each section that really required educated or flat-out guessing, mainly because they were non-First Aid material or presentations of First-Aid like material in a new, sometimes strange manner. And another 10 on each section that required narrowing things down to two choices and guessing between them.
- I had about 10 questions that seemed like near repeats from UWorld questions (which made me happy 🙂 )
- There were a fair amount of questions that were made difficult by ambiguous phrasing...it really made it unclear what they were actually asking for.
- Had 3 questions on hearing and ear anatomy. Blah.
- Overall, just hoping I broke 220 at this point.
Definitely 10-15 questions that I definitely should have gotten right but blanked on the exam (these are the ones that are haunting me now). To a certain extent, you should expect that you might forget some very specific facts. I made a running list of maybe 30 or so other ones I'm pretty sure I answered incorrectly- but less unhappy about those because they were admittedly just difficult questions. You'll concentrate on all your hard questions when re-imaging the exam. Just try and remember that there were probably a lot you did know 😉
---------
Generally, I felt my overall study plan was solid. I wouldn't spend more than 6-7 weeks on this (even if you're like me and hadn't really done much preparation beforehand). You'll risk starting to forget things, and to be honest, the exam is at it's core much more conceptually based than fact based. The questions that don't come from First Aid are probably too hard to predict to warrant much outside of First Aid studying.Though, BRS Physio is gold. There's a heavy physio relationship part of the exam and I found it helped my conceptual understanding a lot. In terms of QBank, I'd try to do Kaplan early if you want to get through it. It's helpful for factual learning and I felt the Behavioral Science questions actually really helped improve my understanding on those questions.... but after taking the test....I feel like Kaplan QBank really doesn't prepare you to answer Step 1 questions. UWorld does and I'm glad I concentrated on it.
Last edited:
- Joined
- Jun 24, 2011
- Messages
- 57
- Reaction score
- 1
MDeast, I'm sure you did fantastically and from my personal experiences after MCAT and these past two years, feeling crappy correlates with higher scores. Also, I have yet to see someone who did as much as you did and did not get >240.
- Joined
- Jun 14, 2010
- Messages
- 192
- Reaction score
- 5
A lot of folks have been talking about how the Physio questions are harder than expected due to the extra variables added and way they ask them. Is there any hard source of physio questions out there other than whats in UWORLD?
- Joined
- Jul 22, 2004
- Messages
- 2,714
- Reaction score
- 49
I think I had like 4 total questions on behavioral science. I had one on NNT and a question like " blah blah blah 45 year old man alzheimers sx....dad had onset at 60, grandfather at 75" what would you call this pattern.
It wasnt that bad...nothing about developmental milestones or anything of that nature. Had another question on study design. Cant remember the specifics of the others.
The pharm was insanely easy, it actually caught me off guard because I had been drilling that stuff from day 1...but nothing even remotely rare or weird.
The micro was also pretty easy. I missed a question on t. cruzi because the Sx were totally malaria like and It showed a picture of the organism and I couldnt recall what it was...and I talked myself out of putting T cruzi.
The heme/onc was nothing. The only question that sticks out was a question about a 14 y/o with VERY VERY mono like sx......put EBV....marked it, and literally with 5 seconds to spare I noticed an auer rod in the extremely atypical lymph lookin' myeloblast. Oh well on that one also.
Overall I would say the test was like 50% totally workable questions, about 25% crap where youd be able to narrow it down to 2 possible choices....and another 25% where I had literally never seen/heard of the topic they were discussing. I had a question on some random plant spp. and the consequences of ingesting it for example. I could have memorized FA word for word and still missed these.
Granted I am by no means a gunner and was just realistically shooting for 220s/230s...but FA and UW were just totally inadequate for MY test form. I had read plenty of posts where people say FA and UW were all they used and such...and talked myself out of using any BRS stuff I had. Not to mention I only really had about 4 weeks of diehard study time bc my school has a horrible curriculum.
Oh well, I would say I still got in the 220s somewhere which is fine for what I am planning on going into.
- Joined
- Oct 17, 2011
- Messages
- 895
- Reaction score
- 15
Did you ever look at RR path or use it? Any reason you didn't?
It seems like many are ditching RR path and only using Pathoma + FA + qbank? I'd like to know if that beast is worth tackling.
- Joined
- May 30, 2007
- Messages
- 2,559
- Reaction score
- 465
I don't think there were any path questions on my test that couldn't have been answered based on Pathoma + FA + Qbank. There MIGHT have been one or two that I can't remember, but those were the sorts of questions that you couldn't even answer if you had Internet access during the test.
- Joined
- Jan 18, 2012
- Messages
- 3,880
- Reaction score
- 1,676
I'm just about finished with BRS Behavioral right now. Behavioral was one of my weaker areas in USMLE Rx, so I decided to add this resource to my timeline. I've been going through it a chapter a day before my other prep.
I've actually learned a lot from the book, more than I've realized. I only know the latter to be true because I got a few questions from Kaplan QBook that came straight out of BRS. It also clarifies a lot of the sometimes obscure points that may arise regarding abortion or when to call hospital security vs merely comforting the patient, etc. If you're nine days-out from your exam, it's unfortunately too late to do BRS. It's not that you couldn't read through it, but you need to buckle down with FA alone at this point (and UWorld if you're still tweaking that).
- Joined
- Jan 18, 2012
- Messages
- 3,880
- Reaction score
- 1,676
This is probably a separate discussion that could take light-years to debate to the fullest, but I'd say that with respect to those numerical ranges, the latter is more significant in terms of one student grasping more of the bigger picture than another; Pollux's range was probably much more due to already having learned the bigger picture and then having spent the remaining time garnering the minutiae (and he probably got lucky with strong points on the test, which I would seriously say could have been the difference between 270 and 276, but not much more than that).
Also, although he had a 258 nine months-out, he had also taken the exam at the end of third-year, not second-year, so the reinforcement must have already been down pat. I do agree that we'd all break 260 if we had forever to study.
- Joined
- Jun 1, 2009
- Messages
- 432
- Reaction score
- 6
.
Last edited:
Took mine a few days ago. My exam had a lot of statistics on it, some things I had never seen before too. The rest of the exam was pretty much as I expected. A few questions on each block that were so out of left field that I guessed. I hate sitting and thinking about the easy questions that I talked myself out of due to the stress/time constraints. Really mad for confusing a picture of HPV with HSV. Oh well! Hoping I scored 215-220.
- Joined
- Nov 23, 2009
- Messages
- 459
- Reaction score
- 23
So with really only about 12 days left, anyone got advice for how to maximize my scores?
I feel like I should be focusing on weak areas and memorizing details. Going to try to do 4 timed blocks of randoms each day with review of errors and confusion in between. Micro and Pharm flashcards morning and night. This is going to be my second run through UWorld though.
Any advice would be very helpful. Kind of concerned at this point becuse I'm only 55% on my first UWorld run. My UWorld assessment last week had me at 228 predicted, however, and that was before I really hammered down on Pharm and Micro this week (my two weakest areas). My personal challenge throughout medical school has been learning how to study efficiently and effectively. I feel like I never get all I can out of book learning no matter the time spent. Good luck to everyone taking the exam this week.
I feel like I should be focusing on weak areas and memorizing details. Going to try to do 4 timed blocks of randoms each day with review of errors and confusion in between. Micro and Pharm flashcards morning and night. This is going to be my second run through UWorld though.
Any advice would be very helpful. Kind of concerned at this point becuse I'm only 55% on my first UWorld run. My UWorld assessment last week had me at 228 predicted, however, and that was before I really hammered down on Pharm and Micro this week (my two weakest areas). My personal challenge throughout medical school has been learning how to study efficiently and effectively. I feel like I never get all I can out of book learning no matter the time spent. Good luck to everyone taking the exam this week.
Last edited:
- Joined
- Jun 22, 2009
- Messages
- 2,374
- Reaction score
- 62
I never used RR. I think I actually own it, but never got into it. So...can't comment. I also own Big Robbins. It's amazing, but way too dense for boards studying. I also have never listened to Gojlian audio.
I liked Pathoma because of the shortness of the book (actually pretty thin, it's High Yield...tons of images) + the corresponding lectures with whiteboard. It's cheap too for what you get (year access to videos, great Path book for $80 discounted). I like the idea of someone teaching things conceptually to me rather than memorization. There was definitely a few concepts (even related terms/definitions) that aren't necessarily spelled out well in things like First Aid but clarified perfectly in Pathoma. I'll try not to explicitly spell out any questions in my personal exam....but I had some concepts related to sickle cell dactylitis and polycythemia vera induced Budd Chiari syndrome that I would have probably glanced over in First Aid (either terminology or associated connection) but was made much clearer by Dr. S. I also could hear Dr. S saying "PGEEEEEEEE2 is related to FEEEEEVER" while taking my exam that probably netted me an extra point in at least helping me to eliminate an answer or two. He has good mnemonics and judging from my exam...when he says things in the lecture along the lines of "they love to test on this"...it actually is true. I'm pretty sure everything he practically guaranteed to be on the exam actually did show up in some form or another on the real deal.
Last edited:
- Joined
- Jun 22, 2009
- Messages
- 2,374
- Reaction score
- 62
BRS Phys has review questions at the end of each chapter. (Maybe 20-30/chapter). Not sure how helpful these were other than to make sure I was understanding what I was reading. I think I did these during the year, so I didn't re-do them for dedicated studying time.
- Joined
- Jun 22, 2009
- Messages
- 2,374
- Reaction score
- 62
I'd say my exam was similar to yours. Though, I still felt as though FA/Pathoma/UWorld prepared me for it as the best as any resource set could. I had a lot of anatomy and images that were difficult. Also a lot of out there molecular biology/genetics/biostats where I understood they were trying to test some conceptual understanding...but just got completely frustrated with how they asked the question and/or was in disagreement with the questions writers answer choices because I felt the correct answer wasn't actually given.
I will note that the actual exam is much more conceptual than it is necessarily rote memorization. Though, it's not as if that isn't a huge part too 😉
- Joined
- Jun 18, 2009
- Messages
- 28
- Reaction score
- 0
I have a question about UWORLD for those of you have taken their step already. Is it really necessary to do uworld 2X even if I go through it very thoroughly the 1st time? (I'm not really sure why people go through it 2-3X, unless you don't read the explanations and go through it carefully the first time). Since I will have gone through uworld in its completeness, do you recommend just re-doing SOME uworld questions days before my exam only for the purpose of getting used to the style of questions?
- Joined
- Jun 7, 2011
- Messages
- 928
- Reaction score
- 877
No, only do World again if it gives you peace of mind. The moment you break the seal on a World question, it no longer tests your understanding of the concept. So many questions in World are tricky and require you to think outside of the box, so if you do the question again, you shouldn't be patting yourself on the back for getting it right.
The real thing was more like the NBMEs for me. A lot more of the "you either know this or don't" questions, which are not as common in World (where complex reasoning can maybe take you there) but show up often in the NBMEs. Do another NBME in the time leading up to your exam if you want to simulate exam conditions.
I'm starting to panic. My test is in 8 days and I am about done with my 2nd pass of UW. I've done all the NBMEs (except 13) and UWSAs. I finished Kaplan and RX earlier in my studying. I feel good but I am still not where I want to be. My last NBME I took was #11 and I got a 250 on it. I would really like to be in the 260 range though. According to the last test my only weak areas were anatomy and repro. Everything else was maxed out. I got a 260 on the school CBSE in March, but these NBMEs have harder curves and have a couple questions per exam that are esoteric. Any advice on what else I can do?
- Joined
- Jan 14, 2009
- Messages
- 1,974
- Reaction score
- 2,682
Repetition is the mother of learning. UWorld is not an assessment; it's a learning tool.
D
deleted103644
Get a massage, see a movie. Ideally get laid. Stop stressing.
You've prepped about as much as you can. Run through First Aid one more time and maybe double check wrong answers in USMLEWorld.
Make sure you get enough sleep and maybe exercise a bit so you don't freak out on test day.
- Joined
- Jan 14, 2009
- Messages
- 1,974
- Reaction score
- 2,682
I'd push your test back a month or two.
- Joined
- Dec 23, 2011
- Messages
- 134
- Reaction score
- 3
-___-
- Joined
- Jan 14, 2009
- Messages
- 1,974
- Reaction score
- 2,682
- Joined
- Jun 7, 2011
- Messages
- 928
- Reaction score
- 877
Different strokes for different folks. I disagree that such a method works for everyone. It certainly did nothing for me to repeat questions in World (I only re-did 15% before nearly losing my mind).
- Joined
- Jun 7, 2011
- Messages
- 928
- Reaction score
- 877
You know what you have to do -- study anatomy and repro. You're blessed to have specific weak areas. Work on them!
I found that I kept remembering the answers to the questions, not necessarily the fact that allowed me to get the question right. Re-doing a question spoiled the surprise of figuring out the answer. New questions > old questions. Do as many questions as you need, but doing the same questions over and over may not help that much.
The real exam throws you into novel situations...memorizing the specific situations the World authors came up with doesn't guarantee getting questions right.
- Joined
- Aug 9, 2008
- Messages
- 2,326
- Reaction score
- 10
Congrats on being done with this thing! I can't wait to be in your shoes...
It's nice to hear this about the "experimental" or "impossible" questions that people keep referring too. Would you say that they try to bog you down with super specific details on these types of questions to freak us out and distract us from the "bigger picture" concepts they're really testing?
- Joined
- Jan 30, 2009
- Messages
- 4,218
- Reaction score
- 14
Obviously I'm only speaking from the logic of a testmaking perspective and not experience, but I don't think experimental questions are anything more than new questions they're trying to add to their qbank that they need a "test run" of performance on to determine how successfully they differentiate high scorers from low scorers, ensure they have no flaws, etc. They may attempt to test something in a weird way, probably at a slightly higher rate than nonexperimental questions, but I would think there would be plenty of just normal-seeming questions that are experimental as well
- Joined
- Jul 26, 2007
- Messages
- 12,747
- Reaction score
- 2,481
How do y'all get increased recall and absorb more from going over FA multiple times? I just finished my second run through it (I need to see things multiple times to absorb them) and can't seem to start again. I almost feel like I got less out of the second run than the first one and felt like I was getting nothing out of trying to read Respiratory for the third time.
Should I give it a rest for a couple of days and then start again? Should I focus on finishing Uworld (300 questions left) and annotating to give myself a FA holiday then start over? Should I use other resources for my weak parts then start again? I really want to make one more run (hopefully two but that might be too much) through it - my exam is in 13 days.
Thanks in advance.
Should I give it a rest for a couple of days and then start again? Should I focus on finishing Uworld (300 questions left) and annotating to give myself a FA holiday then start over? Should I use other resources for my weak parts then start again? I really want to make one more run (hopefully two but that might be too much) through it - my exam is in 13 days.
Thanks in advance.
ha, nice to see a procrastinator on here for once, someone who doesn't say you need to read FA 300x or go through UW till your eyes bleed. So it sounds like NBME 13 is a must before taking this exam. good to know
- Joined
- May 27, 2009
- Messages
- 85
- Reaction score
- 0
I'd say so. A lot of them (once you read through all the crap and decipher what they're trying to say) are really just testing simple concepts like signaling cascades, the effect of different receptors in specific hormonal interactions, enzyme deficiencies, or even drugs (I had one that was like this). I.e. what would happen in a mouse if you knock out the gene for X versus the control. What would happen to the level of a hormone, or what receptor would be inactivated/activated, or was inactivated (based on bargraphs/charts), or what would happen w/ metabolism of a certain substrate, etc. I had a lot of questions like these.
Maybe this is just my experience, but even if I didn't understand the ins and outs of the experiment or procedure they were referencing, they gave me enough information in the end to figure out what they wanted. Once I discovered this, I was able to get through the rest of them relatively quickly. I basically skipped past the poo poo (the random YHGOSID038 gene knock-out and hydroionicphosphoectoplasmic analysis), and picked out things I recognized and pieced together what they were REALLY trying to ask. And it definitely helped to breeze through the answer choices first for a lot of the longer questions so you had an idea prior to reading the 300 page question stem what it was that they were ultimately looking for.
But in the end, if you can, save them for last, granted you dont have 15 of them in one block (like I did on one of my blocks - I ended up having to read my last 2 paragraph question w/ 2 charts in about a minute and answer accordingly). But definitely don't think they're impossible bc that will burst your morale. On the same note: try not to think negatively on this exam or you will find yourself questioning your every answer choice. Be confident in your answers, and that you've done what you could do to prepare, and the rest is up to the big man upstairs or juju beads or whatever else it is that you believe in. Know that you will have ~5 questions/block that will have 2 choices that both look delicious. Go with first instinct on this exam always unless you remember for a fact later on that another answer choice is 100% right. Definitely don't waste time second guessing yourself unless you have time to waste. I messed up 3 questions by changing my original answer choice. I only found 1 question that I went from incorrect to correct. I taught classes on SAT prep for years and I should've known better, haha.
Loveoforganic - you're right. I believe that the experimentals are a mix of both easy, medium and hard questions and that they are just testing to see which ones can be used for the following year. I'm just saying, for the sake of your own morale, if you can't answer a question properly, write it off as an experimental. LIke for instance, the one I had on the esoteric protein analysis procedure. I just looked it up this morning and there's nothing on it in wiki even (WIKI HAS EVERYTHING!!!), but i did find reference to it in some science article from 2004. In any case, I had no clue what to do w/ that. So in my mind, I wrote it off as an experimental, guessed based on the wording of the question, and just moved on. It kept me sane and focused. Whether it was truly experimental or not, I'll leave that fate up to the juju beads.
Honestly though, some of the experimental ones are easy to pick out because they are so poorly written. I had one question stem that described one particular dz process (classic presentation) and the corresponding histologic slide was for something completely different which was not represented by any of the answer choices (I knew that subject extremely well). Chances are, that's an experimental.
Anyway, hopefully that helps.
Just in my experience: I'd say 10% could not be found in FA/uworld (I had questions on metabolism, certain diseases that, believe it or not, I learned about while studying for my personal training cert from the American College of Sports Medicine; which stresses more of the clinical based personal training - back in the day). Also if your background of phys is bad, i'd read BRS phys for endo, repro, respiratory, and cardio. Honestly everything if you can. I got lucky and didn't get any cell phys, but that might not be you and whats in BRS phys is gold. Another good Q-bank for phys is the Guyton & Hall phys review book. The questions are slightly more difficult than BRS - but they are good. At the end of the day though, the phys questions on my exam were closest to that of uworld.
Oh, and I definitely got at least 10 questions right because of what was in Goljan / Pathoma - i.e. things that were not in FA.
The other 20% that everybody says can't be found in uworld/FA is somewhat true (at least from my experience - and I felt like my exam was more difficult at times than the NBMEs). They're testing your understanding of whats in FA/uworld on a different level using experiments, etc. But again, at the end of the day, they're still testing your knowledge of a specific hormone, etc. that you wouldve seen in FA/uworld. Others, where the right answer might not have been specifically delineated in uworld / FA, you could r/o the other answer choices to get to the right answer based on what you had learned in FA/uworld. For instance, like a definitive diagnosis for a certain disease. I had one for disease X lets say, and I knew that there were 2 different analyses/test that were used to dx disease X, but didnt know which one was the gold standard - i.e. the definitive dx - bc it was never specified as such in FA/uworld. But the other answer choices did not make any sense (including a variation of the other diagnostic test that they put in there to trick me), so I was able to rule them out to get to the answer. And when I went to the bathroom during my break, I looked on my phone, and sure enough, it was the right answer.
Some guy who smashed the exam posted back a few months ago about how this was a thinking test. That's extremely true. The more you get used to thinking through disease processes rather than just looking at diseases as a list of facts, the better you'll be able to answer the harder questions. Thats why uworld is so good. Bc it makes you think. And at the end of the day, that's what medicine's about.
But obviously, don't neglect the facts bc they'll get you the 60-70% of give mes that there are on the exam.
Hope that helps.
Do questions if you can. Especially for pathophys/phys. Know biochem well. Cause that's all minutia. At least for me it was. I never had a formal biochem course.
Then, if you can, go back through First AID and instead of just reading, write down anything that you aren't 100% on and review it that night and the next morning. The last few days, hit biochem, any weak areas, immuno, CA markers, and all the drugs if you can. My immuno was a breeze. But I had just seen it again this past sunday. My biochem was easy, even the hard questions, because I had worekd through most of it again this past week. Most of my pharm and micro were cake bc I had flipped through all of it again this past week. You see the pattern?
But certain minutia that they tested that I ahdn't seen in a while, I stalled on and questioned myself. Maybe I wouldn't have if it wasn't the damn USMLE I was taking and it was just another NBME, haha. But I had 3 questions which tested things that I thoguht I knew cold and they were still able to trip me up with the other answer choices (I went back and changed my answer to the wrong answer). You don't want that. It doesn't feel good.
Otherwise, if you feel like you know everything right now, move your test up and get it over with, haha.
- Joined
- Mar 15, 2010
- Messages
- 189
- Reaction score
- 61
delete
Last edited:
- Joined
- Jan 30, 2009
- Messages
- 4,218
- Reaction score
- 14
👍 I agree. However you can manage to write a question off so it stops eating your time up if it isn't coming to you and so that it doesn't impact your confidence is beneficial to performance on any test. I think a lot of people will dig too long at a question when it just isn't going to happen (e.g. your protein analysis q) or let the q distract them after they've moved on
haha yeah man. don't get me wrong, I'm no genius, i'd got this far on sheer luck it seemed, so I knew I had to start hitting it hard in January if I was going to do well on this thing. I remember looking at FA and being able to pick out maybe 20% of what was in there. Was not a good feeling.
I averaged about 8-9 hours / day of studying, crammed for exams, until about mid april and in this past month probably put in close to 14 hours/day for straight boards. w/ maybe 4-5 days off total here and there.
hopefully it was not all for naught. but yeah nbme 13 was closest to my exam. and i spoke to two buddies that took it the day before me, and it seems like they both had similar experiences in terms of the length and types of questions.
Last edited:
thanks, i hope so. but if my score comes back a 175 i'll just lie and say its a 275, then leave the country.
for brs phys: only if you feel like you need it. some of the charts in there are real good (e.g. the CO/venous return graph, or the PTH tables). i hadn't seen a lot of the phys since the fall, so I chose to go back through brs phys. read a section carefully in about 2-3 hours as I went through the corresponding section in FA and just made a note of things that were new to me. i memorized the crap out of guyton in the fall, and I found stuff I still didnt know. Honestly in two weeks, if you don't have any other subjects that desperately need to be hit hard, you can fit that reading in.
one thing that esp helped was to map out on my whiteboard the different parameters that change w/ each of the diseases. like for instance all of the sex hormone disorders (LH, FSH, testosterone, estrogen, inhibin - if it was a male obv- etc.) or the conditions that affect the bone (i.e. ca levels, phosphate, alk phos, vitamin D, urine levels of substances, basically any parameter or condition I felt they could test me on - I even put Albright's hereditary osteodystrophy in there - which is actually laid out in BRS pretty well) as well as the anemias (i.e. ferritin, TIBC, % sat, etc. -- RR path has a good chart). for the last few days just erase and redo, erase and redo like 3-4 times. FA has decent charts, but they're not complete. For instance, in the repro section, the chart with the LH/testosterone levels, I made a chart w/ all the aforementioned parameters and listed any condition I could think of within which those parameters would change (i.e. including PCOS, menopause, 5-a reductase deficiency, Turner's, etc.) I even wrote out a chart for GFR, RPF, and FF w/ all the different parameters that could be changed and worked through that several times. Oh, and even all the hormones of metabolism too (insulin, glucagon, cortisol, GH, thyroid -- and their effects on glucose levels, lipid metbaolism, protein).
Having all that info consolidated into one chart for each of those topics was super helpful. drilling it several times gave me confidence in my knowledge of how things change in different situations. Helped me to truly understand the relationships between the different parameters. And being able to work through them all those charts on a whim, almost instinctively, helped me for my exam. Because as I said before, they won't always present the parameters and their respective arrows the way you're used to seeing them. But if you really understand the dynamics of the disease process and how each parameter relates to one another, you can at least pick out the best of the bad answer choices, haha.
Maybe it'll help you.
Dman, been on here for like an horu and a half. I've paid my dues. Haha.
- Joined
- Jul 26, 2007
- Messages
- 12,747
- Reaction score
- 2,481
Thanks.
...and no, I don't feel like I know everything right now so I will not be moving it up.
It seems like my studying after each NBME gets worse and I know less and less. I think I just need to change my schedule up a little and see what happens. I feel like I will definitely be finishing up Uworld ahead of schedule and taking some of the UWSAs to get some more questions.
- Joined
- Jan 30, 2009
- Messages
- 755
- Reaction score
- 6
I know how you feel because i feel the same way. Best thing is to just keep your head down and keep studying.
- Joined
- Jun 19, 2009
- Messages
- 254
- Reaction score
- 0
Last edited:
This post actually made me feel much better. I took mine yesterday and had a similar experience. 3 blocks of pure difficulty and 4 blocks of what I expected. I left the testing center feeling pretty discouraged. In truth I really don't remember most of the test, just the feelings I had during it. For the most part the questions felt too easy or too hard, not really much in between. Like others have mentioned lots of physiology up and down arrows that were for the most part pretty easy. I had more anatomy than I expected, nothing out of first aid. I had almost no embryo and biochem was almost non-existent. Unfortunately, I had several difficult to impossible micro questions as this was one of my stronger subjects. The rest of the system based questions were fair. I really struggled with some of the behavioral science questions, but I expected that since that is one of my weaker areas. Also there is lots of graph/chart interpretation.
Practice tests:
Uworld: 79% first pass timed random
cbssa: 255, 5 weeks out
NBME 7: 254, 3.5 weeks out
UWSA1: 264, 2.5 weeks out
NBME 12 259, 1.5 weeks out
I started with a goal of 240+, however, after leaving the testing center I think I would be happy with anything of 235. I used FA, Uworld and pathoma. I had an hour commute to and from school so I listened to Goljian audio probably about 7 times completely through. It is going to be a long month and a half.
- Joined
- Mar 15, 2010
- Messages
- 189
- Reaction score
- 61
delete
Last edited:
- Joined
- Jan 18, 2012
- Messages
- 3,880
- Reaction score
- 1,676
Do you have a camera / scanner? Could you upload the chart you came up with (unless it was originally on a whiteboard, then obviously that wouldn't be possible)?
