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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I took the free 150 today. I felt like compared to NBME 11, 12, 13, it has no questions that can't be answered from first aid. The practice NBMEs always have like 10 or more questions are just totally off the wall. Stuff you would never learn in medical school. Not sure if the real test has these types of questions.
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The Free 150 was the easiest question set I ever did. NBMEs were generally harder, and UW was generally harder than that. The real thing was somewhere in between the NBMEs and UW.
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What?
I doubt that there are many people here who really care about psyching anybody else out. We're all just looking for others with whom to share a particularly stressful period in our careers.
Yeah, that's true.
If I've ever heard a "gunner trying to psych people out", then this is probably it. Not everybody can score 250 from controlling nerves and following your gut. I understand that you're just trying to help people stay calm, but that claim is a bit ridiculous.
If you think that "all of the information" was "literally" in the stem, you must have been much more well-prepared than the rest of us. There are a lot of things that you have to know in order to get a good score on this test. But almost all of it is in FA.
Sorry if I was a little bit hard on you. We seem to have the same last name, so I felt like I was talking to one of my cousins...
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Any specific areas of BRS Physio you recommend reviewing if time permits? Sounds like that helped some folks in recent weeks.
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That's not a coincidence. The people who write First Aid obviously have looked at those questions.
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Some questions:
1. I've heard the free 150 are super easy... so is there any point to even doing it?
2. If you sign up to take an NBME at the test center, is that the Free 150 (or) a different exam? I have heard mixed things about this. Assuming it's not an NBME you buy.
3. How do you pull up the calculator on the real exam? (or in World... never seen/done this) I'm sure it is in the tutorial which I need to run through.
Thanks!
1. I've heard the free 150 are super easy... so is there any point to even doing it?
2. If you sign up to take an NBME at the test center, is that the Free 150 (or) a different exam? I have heard mixed things about this. Assuming it's not an NBME you buy.
3. How do you pull up the calculator on the real exam? (or in World... never seen/done this) I'm sure it is in the tutorial which I need to run through.
Thanks!
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Does anyone know if we're done with score reporting till July 11th or if there is a chance some scores will be released this Wednesday, I know someone who took the test on May 11th that got their score last Wed but also know someone who took the exam May 14th and didn't get their score yet.
Can any recent test takers comment on how much Neuro was on their test?
I've realized that I've completely forgotten the Neuro pathways and the minutia of eyes/ears etc. I've got 3.5 weeks left and I'm wondering whether Uworld/FA/Pathoma will be enough for Neuro or if I should go ahead and pick up HY Neuro. Thanks in advance.
I've realized that I've completely forgotten the Neuro pathways and the minutia of eyes/ears etc. I've got 3.5 weeks left and I'm wondering whether Uworld/FA/Pathoma will be enough for Neuro or if I should go ahead and pick up HY Neuro. Thanks in advance.
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The only point to doing it is if you want to familiarize yourself with the testing software.
It's the Free 150.
It's exactly like UW. I can't remember off-hand how to do it, but if you can figure it out in UW, you can figure it out on the real thing.
Nobody knows the answer to that question. I took my test on May 17th. If I get my score on Wednesday, I'll post it here. I'm a bit anxious about it, even though I know deep down that it probably won't come in.trueBelief said:
I had a fair bit of neuro on my test, but every single question could have been answered with knowledge from FA and DIT. I remember two particular questions that weren't covered properly in FA (although the book did have enough information to answer the question if I'd memorized everything in the neuro section)... but DIT said that they were both 4-star topics (Gerstmann syndrome and brainstem cross-sections), and sure enough, they showed up.
Anyway, the point is that you probably don't need to spend your time in HY Neuro. FA has everything you need.
It's all good dude. You weren't hard on me. Everyone has their own opinion and that was mine. You wouldn't believe how many people actually try to psych people out on here with some of their scores, you would be surprised. Take everything with a grain of salt. As for the ability, everyone got into medical school because of their brains and whatever else. This represents a small percentage of the population. Everyone DOES have the ability to do that well believe it or not. Some people aren't great test takers, some people freak under pressure, and some people just dont get things under time constraints, but that does NOT take away from their ability. I am all 3 of those kinds of people and what helped me the most was hearing that kind of advice and literally implementing it and it has started working out great for me. Everything you need to know is in fact in the question stem. You are not going to get every question correctly obviously but majority of it you will. FA is a bunch of facts, it is what you can do with it that matters (duh, most obvious statement of the year), but by just taking a moment to think about where you encountered something similar really helps and gives a really good gut feeling about some of the answer choices. Put in the hard work and then you completely rely on your abilities and contain your nerves through either yoga, or prayers, or whatever else you might do, does in fact help. People have gone through before us stressing and through this stage and people after us will go through the same. we are just a blimp in the passage of time. Look at the bigger picture, and have confidence, it all stems from there, and then leave the rest to God.
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I took the exam yesterday and I thought I would share my study plan and experience here since Ive gotten so much help from SDN the past couple of years.
FA
BRS Phys
Uworld 67%, random, timed
USMLE Rx mostly at the beginning during shelf exams to solidify FA and pick up details
School CBSE (5 weeks out) 230
NBME 12 (3 weeks out) 233
NBME 13 (3 days out) 245
I took about 7 weeks including when we had shelf exam finals for the last two weeks of school. I used only FA + BRS Phys for 99% of my prep, which I am so glad of in retrospect. I went over everything by subject first, then again by organ system to see things from a different perspective. It also helped me to type things up in my own words and make my own study guides based on FA, even though it was already right in front of me in FA because I tend to learn more when I have to type the words myself and I am forced to think about them a little more. One random thing I did that I think helped a lot was to keep a running document of things I really wanted to hammer in from Uworld (maybe 10-15 one-liner items per block) and I would go back and study this document every few days until I had seen everything I thought was very important, high yield, or just couldnt remember about a dozen times.
I took two NBMEs, NBME 12 after finishing going over everything the first time by subject and then NBME 13 three days before the test. I thought they were slightly easier than the real thing on average, but much closer to the actual difficulty level than I would have thought based on some of the posts on here. Uworld was also harder than the real thing on average, but I think the medium to hard questions on the real thing were very comparable to Uworld. I think Uworld is the most key thing anyone can do, right up there with FA, because of the way it familiarizes you with the format and style of the test. If someone had told me at the end of my test that I had mistakenly just done 7 blocks of Uworld I would have believed them except for the of the easier 1 step questions you dont often see in Uworld. I would say that the real test seemed exactly like someone mixed Uworld questions and NBME questions together.
As far as the exam experience itself, it was tougher to do 7 blocks, but if you take breaks when you need to and remember that when you do those blocks, youll be done it goes by pretty fast. I did 3 blocks to start, break, 2 blocks, break, then finished up the last 2 blocks. The test was pretty homogenous in that I marked about the same amount of questions per block, didnt feel like I got crazy experimental questions in another language, and didnt seem to have a theme or a bunch of questions from one subject. There were subjects/organ systems that were covered more than others, but you have to expect some variation. I feel like the test would do a pretty good job of showing what I did know and what I didnt. Im shooting for a 240, but I think I will be happy with a 230, guess Ill find out on July 11th! As for now, Im going enjoy my time off before rotations start that same day!
FA
BRS Phys
Uworld 67%, random, timed
USMLE Rx mostly at the beginning during shelf exams to solidify FA and pick up details
School CBSE (5 weeks out) 230
NBME 12 (3 weeks out) 233
NBME 13 (3 days out) 245
I took about 7 weeks including when we had shelf exam finals for the last two weeks of school. I used only FA + BRS Phys for 99% of my prep, which I am so glad of in retrospect. I went over everything by subject first, then again by organ system to see things from a different perspective. It also helped me to type things up in my own words and make my own study guides based on FA, even though it was already right in front of me in FA because I tend to learn more when I have to type the words myself and I am forced to think about them a little more. One random thing I did that I think helped a lot was to keep a running document of things I really wanted to hammer in from Uworld (maybe 10-15 one-liner items per block) and I would go back and study this document every few days until I had seen everything I thought was very important, high yield, or just couldnt remember about a dozen times.
I took two NBMEs, NBME 12 after finishing going over everything the first time by subject and then NBME 13 three days before the test. I thought they were slightly easier than the real thing on average, but much closer to the actual difficulty level than I would have thought based on some of the posts on here. Uworld was also harder than the real thing on average, but I think the medium to hard questions on the real thing were very comparable to Uworld. I think Uworld is the most key thing anyone can do, right up there with FA, because of the way it familiarizes you with the format and style of the test. If someone had told me at the end of my test that I had mistakenly just done 7 blocks of Uworld I would have believed them except for the of the easier 1 step questions you dont often see in Uworld. I would say that the real test seemed exactly like someone mixed Uworld questions and NBME questions together.
As far as the exam experience itself, it was tougher to do 7 blocks, but if you take breaks when you need to and remember that when you do those blocks, youll be done it goes by pretty fast. I did 3 blocks to start, break, 2 blocks, break, then finished up the last 2 blocks. The test was pretty homogenous in that I marked about the same amount of questions per block, didnt feel like I got crazy experimental questions in another language, and didnt seem to have a theme or a bunch of questions from one subject. There were subjects/organ systems that were covered more than others, but you have to expect some variation. I feel like the test would do a pretty good job of showing what I did know and what I didnt. Im shooting for a 240, but I think I will be happy with a 230, guess Ill find out on July 11th! As for now, Im going enjoy my time off before rotations start that same day!
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Everyone who took it from mid-May until three weeks before July 11th gets their scores then.
Had ~15 questions on neuro. most were pretty straightforward. I think I had maybe 2 that were a bit tricksy that weren't covered by FA/pathoma/uworld. But I liked neuro and learned it well, so I was able to dig deep into my brain for the answers.
Would it be worth your time to look outside of those sources to learn some of that extraneous info? No. I literally just got lucky that I remembered that stuff. They definitely weren't things that would be considered HY by any means.
In my opinion: FA/Pathoma/Uworld + webpath images = gold. You can even scratch out the webpath images. But if you need reinforcement on images, that website has got some solid images.
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Did you use Webpath for the radiograph images or just for gross? Do you think RR path images are equally as good?
i ran through all of the webpath images for neuro really quickly two nights before the exam bc I had heard neuro images were so HY. i used the accompanying MRI's but I dont think that this was necessary. I think Uworld did a good enough job w/ all the angios, MRI's, --even with the gross images -- and I'm 100% positive I would've gotten all my answers correct even w/o that quick review of images on webpath. So, if you only studied the images on Uworld, in terms of my exam, you would've been fine. I only had one image on my exam which was not covered in either resource (one of the two more obscure neuro questions I mentioned above).
I dont think I had seen most of the RR path images in months (I only read about 8 chapters in there) so I can't really comment on that. If you have the time, I'm sure being familiar with those can't hurt. But I really liked webpath, because of the way its organized. Its all there and labeled -- you don't have to go flipping through pages to look for a particular image. And their 10 question quizzes w/ images for each system are good practice too. I got 2 images on my exam straight from there (from other systems -- not neuro). I'm glad somebody on student doctor suggested using it. Because I hadn't used it since 1st year and had since then, forgotten about it.
That's just my experience though.
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From the USMLE website.
http://www.usmle.org/announcements/default.aspx?ContentId=92
"Most score reporting of Step 1 results occurs within four weeks of testing. However, because of necessary modifications to the test item pool, there will be a delay in reporting for some examinees testing beginning in mid-May 2012. The target date for reporting Step 1 scores for most examinees testing from mid-May through late June will be Wednesday, July 11, 2012."
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As many have said before, I used this site a lot and feel obligated to share my recent experience.
I took the test today and completely agree with the recent test takers that its was at least 97% found/determined from information in FA/UWorld. The other 3% were clinical methods ("what would you do first to work this patient up?") or just something that I dont think you'll find in many step 1 review books anyways. Out of the 97%, there were definitely a good 10-15% that you would need to really dig deep and not just recall facts from FA/Uworld but could figure it out from the information in there.
I am not gonna go on and on about every subject because it seemed very well rounded and everybody's test will be different anyway. Here are a few things that stood out:
1. Biochem almost non-existent (maybe 6 questions), and those I had were very straightforward, clinical, and not minutae whatsoever
2. No A-ZZ physio arrow questions...just the normal ones you would expect with 2-4 variables (but all permutations as answer choices, nonetheless)
3. MANY questions were very straightforward
4. Pharm was very straightforward: MOA + common adverse effects
5. At least 2 ethics/what do you say to the patient questions PER BLOCK! <--this was the scariest for me
6. If I had to put the test on a continuum between NBME and UWorld:
[[NBME________ACTUAL___________________UWorld]] (hoping for a nice curve though...)
I am by no means a gunner in classes (more than half classes just pass) and I got in the low 240s on NBME 7, 11, 12 and UWSA 1 and 2. These were all spaced out over a few weeks and I almost thought my studying was futile...
Overall, I am so happy to be done and wish everyone the best luck on their test! See you back here on July 11th. 😎
P.S. I am not gonna call anybody a liar and I know that tests can vary with difficulty, but I am just gonna say that I find it VERY hard to believe that people's tests included 30% (~100 questions) that could not be determined from information in FA and Uworld. But I guess everyone should just prepare for the worst to be safe...
I took the test today and completely agree with the recent test takers that its was at least 97% found/determined from information in FA/UWorld. The other 3% were clinical methods ("what would you do first to work this patient up?") or just something that I dont think you'll find in many step 1 review books anyways. Out of the 97%, there were definitely a good 10-15% that you would need to really dig deep and not just recall facts from FA/Uworld but could figure it out from the information in there.
I am not gonna go on and on about every subject because it seemed very well rounded and everybody's test will be different anyway. Here are a few things that stood out:
1. Biochem almost non-existent (maybe 6 questions), and those I had were very straightforward, clinical, and not minutae whatsoever
2. No A-ZZ physio arrow questions...just the normal ones you would expect with 2-4 variables (but all permutations as answer choices, nonetheless)
3. MANY questions were very straightforward
4. Pharm was very straightforward: MOA + common adverse effects
5. At least 2 ethics/what do you say to the patient questions PER BLOCK! <--this was the scariest for me
6. If I had to put the test on a continuum between NBME and UWorld:
[[NBME________ACTUAL___________________UWorld]] (hoping for a nice curve though...)
I am by no means a gunner in classes (more than half classes just pass) and I got in the low 240s on NBME 7, 11, 12 and UWSA 1 and 2. These were all spaced out over a few weeks and I almost thought my studying was futile...
Overall, I am so happy to be done and wish everyone the best luck on their test! See you back here on July 11th. 😎
P.S. I am not gonna call anybody a liar and I know that tests can vary with difficulty, but I am just gonna say that I find it VERY hard to believe that people's tests included 30% (~100 questions) that could not be determined from information in FA and Uworld. But I guess everyone should just prepare for the worst to be safe...
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As many have said before, I used this site a lot and feel obligated to share my recent experience.
I took the test today and completely agree with the recent test takers that its was at least 97% found/determined from information in FA/UWorld. The other 3% were clinical methods ("what would you do first to work this patient up?") or just something that I dont think you'll find in many step 1 review books anyways. Out of the 97%, there were definitely a good 10-15% that you would need to really dig deep and not just recall facts from FA/Uworld but could figure it out from the information in there.
I am not gonna go on and on about every subject because it seemed very well rounded and everybody's test will be different anyway. Here are a few things that stood out:
1. Biochem almost non-existent (maybe 6 questions), and those I had were very straightforward, clinical, and not minutae whatsoever
2. No A-ZZ physio arrow questions...just the normal ones you would expect with 2-4 variables (but all permutations as answer choices, nonetheless)
3. MANY questions were very straightforward (hypercalcemia + BHL + noncaseating granulomas + young african american female = what does she have??)
4. Pharm was very straightforward: MOA + common adverse effects
5. At least 2 ethics/what do you say to the patient questions PER BLOCK! <--this was the scariest for me
6. If I had to put the test on a continuum between NBME and UWorld:
[[NBME________ACTUAL___________________UWorld]] (hoping for a nice curve though...)
I am by no means a gunner in classes (more than half classes just pass) and I got in the low 240s on NBME 7, 11, 12 and UWSA 1 and 2. These were all spaced out over a few weeks and I almost thought my studying was futile...
Overall, I am so happy to be done and wish everyone the best luck on their test! See you back here on July 11th. 😎
P.S. I am not gonna call anybody a liar and I know that tests can vary with difficulty, but I am just gonna say that I find it VERY hard to believe that people's tests included 30% (~100 questions) that could not be determined from information in FA and Uworld. But I guess everyone should just prepare for the worst to be safe...
Don't you think it depends on what kind of test form someone gets...for example, it seems like people who test in july and august (or even in may) get 60-70% of FA-based questions (more frequently) versus >90% for testers like yourselves during the month of june. And for the people who say their test had only 60%-70% of material based off of FA, it's not an isolated test-taker (usually everyone who tested in that time period agrees).
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Yes absolutely, and I explicitly stated this. I dont think USMLE fluctuates between 3% and 30% is all I'm saying.
I dont want to give future test takers a false sense of security, but being someone who has read this thread a lot, I also dont think people should be overly worried about it.
I really dont mean to start some big argument because this specific thread is not about that...I just want others to know that I agree with recent test takers, and those who are testing soon should take a deep breath and not freak out about FA/Uworld being woefully insufficient, as others have stated.
But ANY opinion, including my own, should be taken with a grain of salt, Im just putting mine out there.
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michfiji09, congrats on being done. Of the NBMEs you took, which one did you think was best representative of the exam?
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I took step 1 May 14th... hopefully I made it in under the cutoff. I know in previous years the cut off date was May 17th, but the lack of a firm cutoff date this year scares me.
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I couldn't associate the real test with any specific NBME, just them in general. I wouldn't worry too much about which one you do, I found them to be pretty similar in difficulty with variation in topics tested that can change your score if you happen to be weak in a certain area.
Same here, took it on the 14th. FWIW, my "print permit" link is gone (it was visible up until yesterday), but dont know if that has any significance haha. Anyways, I had no idea how to feel after the exam so It could turn out really good or really bad lol. Will try to write up my detailed plan when the scores come out.
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Didn't know where exactly to post this but FA (2012) updated their Errata on 5/30 (3rd update so far)
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I really don't feel like dealing with this again. Should I take the risk of not doing it?
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This means that you will very likely get your score tomorrow, same thing happens to me the day before my scores came out and they always come on Wednesdays.
I also did not mean to start a huge thing or scare the sh$t out of people but I swear to god so much of the stuff on my test was so out there... maybe I did just get a strange form but I talked to other people in my class and at least one very good friend who is extremely smart, like the smartest person I know, had a similar experience saying that like 25% of his test was things he had never seen before - granted this does not mean that all of these questions are thrown down the drain because obviously with the amount of knowledge that we have going to the boards we are equipped to answer many these questions in some capacity but the degree of difficulty and convolutnedness just threw me and I had no idea what the answers were to of a lot of them. Like I said before-only the first three blocks were very strange and I would say on par with the hardest Uworld questions in terms of difficulty but with a ton of experiments and graphs- then the last four blocks were very similar to the nbme questions that I had done in the past... so it was a mix...I don't know what was up with those first three blocks but it wasn't my entire test and I didn't hallucinate it. My point was more to say to people that if you get in there and there is a bunch of really strange sh&t you've never seen before not to panic and just go with it because others have had a similar experience. if I hadn't heard from some friends that they had had parts their exams that were very hard I would have completely freaked out while I was taking mine so again, just trying to share my experience. I knew first aid well and I'm telling you - a Lot of that **** was not in there. I'm just saying prepare for the worst and hope for the best. It's really funny that people think I'm a gunner because I am the most anti-gunner person that you'll ever meet but it's all good 🙂
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I think it's fine to ignore it - but then again my opinion is not very popular around here these days : P
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I appreciated your post. lol. Made me study a lot harder the last couple of days
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Took my test today. Boy howdy, that was somethin else. I would say that it was very much like the NBME exams. Lots of gimmes thrown out there, i would say about 50 percent were pretty easy, about 30 percent were UWORLD type 2 or 3 steppers, and the rest were either "wtflol" or "man this is just a really hard question" types. It probably isn't worth anything to anyone to describe what all was on my test due to the differences in everyones exams, but I would say the micro was way easier than I expected. everything was pretty textbook. lots of gram stain pictures and a few blood smears. whipples diseases with the pas thing was on there. pharm was pretty easy for the most part, nothing from too far out in left field. they threw in a couple questions about some of the weirder "lower yield" drugs in first aid, but everything they asked was there.
path wasnt too bad, a few pictures here and there. nothing that wasnt in first aid. know this stuff cold. like, really really cold. frozen, even.
most of my really weird questions came from behavioral, like the ethics questions. oh and i had a super weird question asking about what settings i would put on a respiratory for a patient in the icu.
neuro, gotta know that brainstem anatomy. lots of questions from here. and arterial occlusions. circle of willis. this stuff was really high yield.
really having trouble remembering stuff right now, my brain is fried. if anyone has any questions id be more than happy to help. fwiw, nbme 7 245, nbme 11 245, uwsa 1 262, uwsa 2 263, free 150 91%.
gotta go, my whiskey bottle is calling!
path wasnt too bad, a few pictures here and there. nothing that wasnt in first aid. know this stuff cold. like, really really cold. frozen, even.
most of my really weird questions came from behavioral, like the ethics questions. oh and i had a super weird question asking about what settings i would put on a respiratory for a patient in the icu.
neuro, gotta know that brainstem anatomy. lots of questions from here. and arterial occlusions. circle of willis. this stuff was really high yield.
really having trouble remembering stuff right now, my brain is fried. if anyone has any questions id be more than happy to help. fwiw, nbme 7 245, nbme 11 245, uwsa 1 262, uwsa 2 263, free 150 91%.
gotta go, my whiskey bottle is calling!
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Can we bring our own headphone to the site?
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Just make sure they have some solid bass, so you can hear those S3/S4's...maybe just bring a subwoofer? Can we bring a sub to the exam? I honestly would do best with 7.2 surround sound if that can be arranged...
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swear to god someones headphones were so damn loud today.... i could pick out an s4 from across the room on one dudes test. and i suck at auscultating. it might as well have had a sub.
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Could any of the recent test-takers comment on gross anatomy on their test, as in types of questions that were asked and difficulty level, I really appreciate the help 🙂
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so for you guys that cranked out 270s on your NBMEs like it was nothing, what would you say the highest yield studying might be? is it better to focus on straight physio or should you get into the nitty details of pathophys, drugs and micro?
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from what i remember, lots of extremity anatomy. median nerve popped up a lot, popliteal fossa stuff, PED/TIP or whatever that mnemonic is... some GI anatomy, ligaments and whatnot. places for fistulas to form. inguinal hernias direct v indirect. i didnt have anything too weird.
oh, parts of a vertebra. lamina, pedicle, that stuff.
neuroanatomy is high yield.
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Some of them I just had no idea, others seemed very scary at first and then it was easy to eliminate at least 3 or 4 off the bat. I almost felt like they weren't trying to be TOO mean but they didn't just give it away obviously.
And a couple specific embryo ones from the chart of branchial arch derivatives. I had to know that tensor veli palatini was the 1st arch...which wouldn't be a big deal if you had this chart really down well, but its not the one they ask for a lot so I pretty much got it off of process of elimination.
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POE is my hope for gross. Just doing uW gross 2x and a quick look over dudek for images and throwing up a prayer. Thanks for sharing mich and meerkat
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Hey Friends,
Lets remember to not talk about specific questions. It's a cardinal no-no. You can go back and delete it, or one of our friendly mods will.
Sent from my DROID BIONIC using SDN Mobile
Lets remember to not talk about specific questions. It's a cardinal no-no. You can go back and delete it, or one of our friendly mods will.
Sent from my DROID BIONIC using SDN Mobile
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Unfortunately not...some were, but the WORST wtf questions were 3 or 4 that presented a patient with maybe an image or something and said "What is the first thing you would do when evaluating this patient?" I mean, these things everyone is pretty much guessing, for the majority of us that dont have extensive clinical experience, but we clearly have the education to make a decent educated guess...its just not something you can really prepare for. I had maybe 3 of them.
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Ok sorry i deleted stuff because I got paranoid that it was too detailed about a specific question...
Ok sorry i deleted stuff because I got paranoid that it was too detailed about a specific question...
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SORRY! Ok I've just been a little amped up after the day...I didn't realize how detailed I was getting...
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Thanks for your post.. that was helpful. And I figured out the calculator today, saw it in UW - not sure how I missed it all this time! Will probably skip Free 150 due to time limitations.
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Is free 150 that PDF someone posted from the USMLE with descriptions of all the content? Or is it the Free 150 thing on the NBME website?
