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
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Yeah, I think phloston is right when he says that projection is an sdn-common immature defense mechanism!
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Not true, we've been given only 4 weeks to study after 1.5 years of med school basic sciences (most people don't study FA since day 1--another projection you are using and assuming everyone else does, when in reality most people do their core studying in that 4 wk period and are not gunners in the top 5%). But I agree, everyone needs to do their own thing, but just don't do like EagalsAllday over here and start pouting and coming to the defense of FMGs. Good luck to everyone on their step (even if you are taking it in the year 2021)!
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UW must be proud to have you
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Hey everyone,
I have been following this thread for the past couple weeks and this is my first post. I took the exam today and wanted to share a few thoughts.
1. It is a long test. Having some sort of mantra (or song to listen to during breaks) helps keep motivated and focused.
2. The question format is extremely similar to UWORLD.
3. I actually thought the question difficulty was easier than the UWORLD questions.
4. There were two instances where I had the same question twice. (I kept the same answer so I hope I answered right lol).
5. The feeling when you finish the last block and walk out of that room in ineffable.
I wish everyone the best of luck. This is definitely the most important exam we will take in our lifetime. It will come, and it will pass, and we will all be better because of it.
I know this also: having studied like a hardcore monk for the past 2 months straight, I now feel prepared for clinicals and any "pimping" that will come my way. Studying for this test should give us all confidence that we are able and capable of being great doctors.
Again, good luck to those who have yet to tackle this beast, and congratulations to those who already have...
I have been following this thread for the past couple weeks and this is my first post. I took the exam today and wanted to share a few thoughts.
1. It is a long test. Having some sort of mantra (or song to listen to during breaks) helps keep motivated and focused.
2. The question format is extremely similar to UWORLD.
3. I actually thought the question difficulty was easier than the UWORLD questions.
4. There were two instances where I had the same question twice. (I kept the same answer so I hope I answered right lol).
5. The feeling when you finish the last block and walk out of that room in ineffable.
I wish everyone the best of luck. This is definitely the most important exam we will take in our lifetime. It will come, and it will pass, and we will all be better because of it.
I know this also: having studied like a hardcore monk for the past 2 months straight, I now feel prepared for clinicals and any "pimping" that will come my way. Studying for this test should give us all confidence that we are able and capable of being great doctors.
Again, good luck to those who have yet to tackle this beast, and congratulations to those who already have...
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Lol. Yeah...
Hope so. Cheers for the words here. Congrats on finishing. If you get a chance (after you finish your tequila or whatever), let us know your more specific analysis of the exam breakdowns, etc.
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This is probably true. I'm on my peds rotation and all you hear about is how peds is the hardest shelf. But then when talking to 4th years who actually are realistic, they say you should actually do very well if you just took Step 1. A lot of what you learn during your actual rotation doesn't really prepare you for the shelf it seems haha. If you only went off what you actually saw at the hospital, you'd probably only see 1/4th of the material haha.
There's also a few 4th year students who for one reason or another still had to do their peds rotation, so they're with us too. Their clinical skills are better, but the 3rd years are actually better at answering the pimping questions and do better with the shelf practice questions. When it comes to random facts and shelves, we probably have the advantage having just taken Step 1. The 3rd years also seem a lot more overzealous than the 4th years. We're acting more like gunners jumping on taking the new patients, while the 4th years sit back more and don't seem to take any extra work haha. I think they just secretly have a much better idea than us on how what determines your grade, so they don't waste their time lol.
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Wholly agree. Makes me wish I had internal medicine as my first rotation to be done with the shelf while Step 1 stuff is still fresh in my noggin.
I'm tempted to get worked up about it too but I think what it will probably come down to is that they're going to have to account for their time when it comes time to interview and they're going to have to come up with a less embarrassing answer to the question of what it was they did for that year off other than post on SDN and study for Step 1. I'd much rather have less time to study than be put in that situation.
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Finished my test a few days ago
dedicated study period : 5-6 weeks
NBME 6 (9 weeks, took this while still in school) = 185
Uworld 1 (3 weeks)= 240
Uworld 2 (2 weeks) = 250
NBME7 (1 week) = 248
Resources
Pathology - Pathoma - Excellent! new gold standard! Did NOT read or listen to goljan (except for the 2 nutrition lectures, b/c that is not covered elsewhere)
biochem - kaplan lectures + GT. Biochem was the biggest piece of $%^& waste of my time. I wish I never studied biochem, and instead took my test a week earlier. B/c I got 3 questions on ALL of biochem that took me a full week to memorize. And 2 of those were tay sachs and pompe (2 of the most obvious dzs you will encounter). Only ONE was a biochem pathway. So if you are strapped for time, do NOT memorize pathways. Learn what North vs south vs west blot is, read the storage diseases, and skip biochem! Even if you get one question on it, its not worth a week of cramming!
anatomy/embryo - used kaplan videos to explain things, then just banged out FA/uworld till I memorized everything that was in the qbank.
Neuro - kaplan videos are excellent as well. Then follow up w/ FA and uworld
everyting else - FA/Uworld
The test was mostly pathology, neuro, and immunology. Do lots of qbank questions for those subjects and you will be fine.
Micro was really simple and uworld is enough. (micro is surprisingly simple. like what bug causes watery diarrhea in HIV pts)
Pharm also was also really simple - big time drug MOAs and toxicities (don't waste your time memorizing the side effects/clinical uses of MOST drugs out of FA, alot of it won't show up on your test. Instead use Uworld to see which drug toxicities and clinical uses are high yield. Amiodarone and cisplatin showed up on several uworld questions, and also ended up on my exam)
anatomy/embryo - Uworld topics showed up, although my test had ALOT of anatomy that wasn't in either uworld or FA (questions about ligaments, blood vessels suppling parts of the GI tract, etc...) but most you could still guess on pretty well. Can't really study more than uworld/FA for these 2. Well you could but its a waste of time
Neuro - LOTS of neuro, know it well. uworld/read FA lots of times. only image in neuro was a cross section through the medulla.
Immuno - I did uworld immuno Qs 2-3 times and I felt pretty well prepared. I didn't read FA outside of what was tested in the Qbank.
physio - i didn't really study this outside of uworld (didn't even really read the sections in FA). I feel like i got a pretty good understanding of physio from pathoma + uworld. I also didn't bother memorizing all the damned formulas. The only phyiso formula I got was CO = HR x SV
thats all I can remember at the moment. Again I want to mention that I did NOT read FA cover to cover. INfact there were topics in FA that I never even read. I used pathoma for pathology so all the pathology pages in my FA were not used. I also did NOT read most of physiology in FA, because I encountered it in Uworld. The only physio I looked at in FA were the images.
THe only sections of my FA that I really used/annotated were anatomy, embryo, and neuro. Everything else I just relied on uworld to teach me. I honestly think there is alot of info in FA that is not testable and is a gigantic waste of your time to read, so I don't recommend doing cold reads of FA or even doing the conventional "read it cover to cover 3x before you test". I think doing questions was MUCH more important, because 80% of the questions on my test I actually encountered before in qbanks, so I remembered most of them. For the small 20% of questions that I did not encounter, I really don't think there was any way to prepare for them other than to make educated guesses based on what you do remember.
In my final week before my test, I just brushed up and did questions on my weaker subjects (re-did all of the anatomy, embryo, and immunology questions a few days before). I skimmed through the rapid review (first time reading it) the day before my test, but it didn't really help me on the test.
Again, I want to emphasize, most of step 1 is high yield topics from pathology, so that should be the priority. Pathoma did a pretty good job of replacing FA path, except there were a few topics in repro that were not in pathoma, so look those up in FA.
dedicated study period : 5-6 weeks
NBME 6 (9 weeks, took this while still in school) = 185
Uworld 1 (3 weeks)= 240
Uworld 2 (2 weeks) = 250
NBME7 (1 week) = 248
Resources
Pathology - Pathoma - Excellent! new gold standard! Did NOT read or listen to goljan (except for the 2 nutrition lectures, b/c that is not covered elsewhere)
biochem - kaplan lectures + GT. Biochem was the biggest piece of $%^& waste of my time. I wish I never studied biochem, and instead took my test a week earlier. B/c I got 3 questions on ALL of biochem that took me a full week to memorize. And 2 of those were tay sachs and pompe (2 of the most obvious dzs you will encounter). Only ONE was a biochem pathway. So if you are strapped for time, do NOT memorize pathways. Learn what North vs south vs west blot is, read the storage diseases, and skip biochem! Even if you get one question on it, its not worth a week of cramming!
anatomy/embryo - used kaplan videos to explain things, then just banged out FA/uworld till I memorized everything that was in the qbank.
Neuro - kaplan videos are excellent as well. Then follow up w/ FA and uworld
everyting else - FA/Uworld
The test was mostly pathology, neuro, and immunology. Do lots of qbank questions for those subjects and you will be fine.
Micro was really simple and uworld is enough. (micro is surprisingly simple. like what bug causes watery diarrhea in HIV pts)
Pharm also was also really simple - big time drug MOAs and toxicities (don't waste your time memorizing the side effects/clinical uses of MOST drugs out of FA, alot of it won't show up on your test. Instead use Uworld to see which drug toxicities and clinical uses are high yield. Amiodarone and cisplatin showed up on several uworld questions, and also ended up on my exam)
anatomy/embryo - Uworld topics showed up, although my test had ALOT of anatomy that wasn't in either uworld or FA (questions about ligaments, blood vessels suppling parts of the GI tract, etc...) but most you could still guess on pretty well. Can't really study more than uworld/FA for these 2. Well you could but its a waste of time
Neuro - LOTS of neuro, know it well. uworld/read FA lots of times. only image in neuro was a cross section through the medulla.
Immuno - I did uworld immuno Qs 2-3 times and I felt pretty well prepared. I didn't read FA outside of what was tested in the Qbank.
physio - i didn't really study this outside of uworld (didn't even really read the sections in FA). I feel like i got a pretty good understanding of physio from pathoma + uworld. I also didn't bother memorizing all the damned formulas. The only phyiso formula I got was CO = HR x SV
thats all I can remember at the moment. Again I want to mention that I did NOT read FA cover to cover. INfact there were topics in FA that I never even read. I used pathoma for pathology so all the pathology pages in my FA were not used. I also did NOT read most of physiology in FA, because I encountered it in Uworld. The only physio I looked at in FA were the images.
THe only sections of my FA that I really used/annotated were anatomy, embryo, and neuro. Everything else I just relied on uworld to teach me. I honestly think there is alot of info in FA that is not testable and is a gigantic waste of your time to read, so I don't recommend doing cold reads of FA or even doing the conventional "read it cover to cover 3x before you test". I think doing questions was MUCH more important, because 80% of the questions on my test I actually encountered before in qbanks, so I remembered most of them. For the small 20% of questions that I did not encounter, I really don't think there was any way to prepare for them other than to make educated guesses based on what you do remember.
In my final week before my test, I just brushed up and did questions on my weaker subjects (re-did all of the anatomy, embryo, and immunology questions a few days before). I skimmed through the rapid review (first time reading it) the day before my test, but it didn't really help me on the test.
Again, I want to emphasize, most of step 1 is high yield topics from pathology, so that should be the priority. Pathoma did a pretty good job of replacing FA path, except there were a few topics in repro that were not in pathoma, so look those up in FA.
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I have to disagree w/ the poster above about their pharm assessment. I had MOA, clinical use, and toxicities. I had a micro, pharm, and immuno exam for the most part. Know every aspect of the drugs as they are presented in FA.
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read my post more carefully. I said know the stuff that shows up in uworld because thats whats important. Knowing every single adverse effect of every single drug will not get you bonus points. Blindly reading FA pharm to memorize everything is NOT a good idea. There are barely any pharm questions on step 1 to begin with, and most of them deal with MOA and big time topics that ALSO show up on uworld. Anything "clinical use or Adverse effect" outside of uworld is a waste of time. Even if you get 1 question on it (out of 300ish?), its not worth memorizing FA word for word.
Anyone who thinks memorizing all of FA = good idea, hasn't taken step 1 yet, nuff said. I know your natural tendency is to memorize everything because you are scared ****less that any of it will show up on your exam, but step 1 = high yield topics, not "name all the 5 clinical uses for the chemo drug 5-FU". If you actually sat down and memorized everything these drugs are used for, I feel sorry for you because you have just wasted your time. You will probably get 5-10 questions on pharm, 7-8 of them will be "what is the MOA", and the remaining 2-3 will be "patient is on 10 drugs, and has this MAJOR side effect (mine was pulmonary fibrosis), what drug is it?"
Its quite sad that alot of the information being passed around in this form is from people who have NOT taken step 1 yet and do NOT KNOW what level of detail is required for the exam. Read ALL of the posts above from people who've taken step 1, and really pay attention to what kind of Qs they got, and how they recommend you study.
phloston I can't wait till you actually take your test and see how simple the questions are. they DON'T require alot of detail to answer, and they certainly don't require you to have all of FA memorized. But i guess theres no way I can convince you of that, so shoot me a message when you're done with your exam
iCY you can't just take the test and come on here saying "everything that wasn't on MY test isn't high yield, so you are all wasting your time not studying it my way." For example, you claim that you wasted time studying biochem and only saw 3 biochem questions, therefore biochem is a huge waste of time. Well what if someone takes the test tomorrow and gets 8 biochem questions? Your test (which was low on pharm, etc) is NOT the exact same test everyone else will have. People WILL have tests that stress topic your exact test didn't.
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do all the scores for recent test takers come out 7/11?
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1-2 obscure Qs in each topic = ~20 or 30 "maker or breakers" on the real exam. If someone's not hitting all of the nitty gritty detail, then those questions are as good as lost. Even though I haven't yet taken the exam, I would agree that learning all of the high-yield is obviously foundational/essential, but people should shoot a bit beyond that, and knowing FA cover-to-cover is a basic starting point.
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I don't know what audience you're speaking to, but the vast majority of American MS2s don't know First Aid cover to cover. Those who approach that level of knowledge are getting the 260s-270s. Having extensive knowledge on low yield information that has no history of ever being tested upon is not required to do extremely well on this exam.
knowing FA cover-cover is a BASIC STARTING POINT? are you KIDDING ME? people READ it cover to cover as a basic starting point. Knowing FA cover to cover = 260+, that is NOT a starting point. Most people don't retain most of FA when they go in for their test. I can honestly say that I did not memorize half of FA and I did not have any questions where I thought to myself "**** I wish I memorized more facts because this is a straight factual question". Most of the questions I encountered were conceptual, and memorizing FA would not have helped.
He is a bit naive about how insanely high his own level of expectations is. Not everyone is striving for or capable of achieving a 270+. But hey, I'm not hating (more like jealous lol). More power to him; I bet he'll set a record score
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I suppose the selection bias of SDN contributes to that kind of mind set. He should keep in mind to get a 265 that he has to score 2 standard deviations above the guys who don't really have a solid grasp on First Aid, probably had passes for all of their basic science classes, and finish their first pass of UWorld two weeks before their exam. I'm not saying it's a cake walk to get a 265, but it's not nearly as hard as he's making it out to be.
lol I had close to 1000 questions left in uworld the week before my exam. I was cramming in several hundred a day, didn't even bother doing a full cover-cover read of FA during the last week, and I felt well prepared for the test.
I think alot of people mistake "reading FA cover to cover" to actually "knowing FA cover to Cover". Just because you read a book 3x doesn't mean you know every word in it!
Also to the guy above who said that my exam is my experience only and that other people can get different tests. Its only on SDN where i've heard about the ridiculous questions showing up on exams, and about people having 15 biochemistry questions. Everyone in my school i've talked to has had a similar experience to mine, the exam was well balanced with mostly pathology and very little of the bull**** subjects.
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So! I figure it's time for me to pay my dues, since I've been stalking this thread for the past few weeks as I studied. So I took it on Wednesday, and full disclosure, everything is a bit of a blur.
I'm not sure how I felt about it. My first block was tough, and that definitely shook me up a little bit. But I just want to reiterate what everyone has said, which is that there are a surprising number of questions which were just incredibly straight forward, buzz word type questions.
Someone else also said expect to make a bunch of stupid mistakes, and honestly, knowing that probably helped me out a lot. Because I definitely know I did some stupid things (Mixed up right and left on a CT...sigh..), but, you know, what can you do.
So I had quite a bit of anatomy on my exam, which was definitely by far my weakest area, so in retrospect I feel like there was tons of it, but maybe it's just because every time an anatomy question came up, I panicked a little.
For the most part, the VAST majority of my exam was Uworld + FA doable. Having said that, there were a few questions where I was like "What the hell are oyu asking me?", and a couple where I was like "I didn't know that was a thing" (wtf is a TH17 cell, and why am I discovering it for the first time on step 1).
Only had one of the two-part question thingies, a few heart sounds, a few pictures, but very classic. I think I only had one or two pictures without enough information in the vignette for you to make a diagnosis.
Biochem wasn't bad at all, and it was also one of my weaker subjects. I can only remember like, a handful of embryo questions. Definitely nothing bad.
A few arrow questions, but nothing too bad.
I don't think this post is very helpful, and I'm rambling. I had lots of Immuno, endocrine, repro.
So the only calculations/formulas I had were biostats, which were all pretty fine. A few ethics questions were tricky.
Anyway, I'm probably two standard deviations below the SDN mean, I'm just hoping for a lowly 240. So, keep your fingers crossed for me guys! And good luck to everyone still studying!
I'm not sure how I felt about it. My first block was tough, and that definitely shook me up a little bit. But I just want to reiterate what everyone has said, which is that there are a surprising number of questions which were just incredibly straight forward, buzz word type questions.
Someone else also said expect to make a bunch of stupid mistakes, and honestly, knowing that probably helped me out a lot. Because I definitely know I did some stupid things (Mixed up right and left on a CT...sigh..), but, you know, what can you do.
So I had quite a bit of anatomy on my exam, which was definitely by far my weakest area, so in retrospect I feel like there was tons of it, but maybe it's just because every time an anatomy question came up, I panicked a little.
For the most part, the VAST majority of my exam was Uworld + FA doable. Having said that, there were a few questions where I was like "What the hell are oyu asking me?", and a couple where I was like "I didn't know that was a thing" (wtf is a TH17 cell, and why am I discovering it for the first time on step 1).
Only had one of the two-part question thingies, a few heart sounds, a few pictures, but very classic. I think I only had one or two pictures without enough information in the vignette for you to make a diagnosis.
Biochem wasn't bad at all, and it was also one of my weaker subjects. I can only remember like, a handful of embryo questions. Definitely nothing bad.
A few arrow questions, but nothing too bad.
I don't think this post is very helpful, and I'm rambling. I had lots of Immuno, endocrine, repro.
So the only calculations/formulas I had were biostats, which were all pretty fine. A few ethics questions were tricky.
Anyway, I'm probably two standard deviations below the SDN mean, I'm just hoping for a lowly 240. So, keep your fingers crossed for me guys! And good luck to everyone still studying!
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Yeah b/c I had at least 40 pharm questions. No lie! So it may be a bit misguided to say NOT to learn the drugs in FA. But for the most part I see where ICY is coming from.
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I think you're used to doing USMLERx questions and Kaplan questions, which definitely ask for a single detail found in FA. If you read the question and get it wrong, you can easily flip to a page in FA that the question was based upon and look at the detail they wanted you to know. You can't do this with UWorld. You can't do this with NBMEs. You definitely can't do this with the USMLE. The questions are conceptual; they aren't simply fact-based. Well, that's not entirely true, because there are some purely fact-based questions on USMLE and the NBMEs; however, I think you're under the impression that if you know FA and other resources "cold" you'll be able to answer every question. I just think it's important that you realize that just because you have the ability to memorize massive amounts of small details you'll be able to answer any question that comes your way. This simply isn't so. If you can't conceptualize, it doesn't matter how many tiny little details you remember or how well you know FA ("cover-to-cover") those questions will still be as good as lost.
I'm not trying to knock you down. I would love to see you get a ridiculously high score. I just have noticed, through reading many of your posts, that you find it difficult to accept the advice of those who have actually sat for the exam. Instead, you offer a rebuttal to their advice based upon your own assumptions of what the exam will be like, or what should be done. The advice on here is invaluable, and I would take it to heart if I were you. But either way, good luck, man!
Honestly I think it's just going to vary person-to-person. The NBME has so many questions in play at any given time. Depending on your luck, you may get a lot of hard pharm or you may get a little.
I took step 1 this past week, but I'm currently road tripping so I'll come back and post my full experience later.
The short version: like most people I found the difficulty to be between NBME and Uworld, but probably much closer to NBME. I had several questions that seemed to come straight from UWorld, though. Timing-wise, I had 5-10 minutes left over at the end of each section and 5-6 questions marked per section. Pharm wasn't too heavy on mine, but immuno was. Knowing every possible function of TNF-alpha was key in answering several questions. Some of the anatomy questions were worded strangely, but nothing ridiculous. Biochem was fairly simple, mostly vitamin deficiencies and several genetics questions. Pathoma was beyond clutch for the path questions. There were a couple weird questions, but I thought the test was reasonable overall. I really couldn't tell which questions might be experimental..not sure if that's good or bad.
Surprises: The amount of time I had leftover at the end of each section. I never ended a section early, though. I used that time to check over my marked questions. I ended up keeping most of my original answers, which I think is good.
Advice: You'll make stupid mistakes. Expect it. I got this advice from everyone and thought, "No way, I'll be in the zone..." But at this point I've counted at least 10 questions I got wrong that I should have been able to answer correctly (I have a terrible gift of remembering almost every question after a test). I was scoring in the low 260s on UWorldSA and NBME's prior to the exam, but wouldn't be surprised if the stupid mistakes knocked me down some. We'll see.... I'll report back with my score/full study plan/additional thoughts later... Best of luck to everyone 👍
????? so you would rather trust the opinions of strangers on the internet who more often than not post about getting ridiculous exams, instead of trusting the opinions of people you know IRL who say their exams were all well balanced? I have yet to meet someone IRL who says their exam was full of ridiculous questions, however I can read pages and pages about it here.
Again Heythere13, I'm not saying DON'T LEARN PHARM. What i'm saying is that you should not try to learn pharm cover to cover. There is high yield info in pharm, and there is also low yield info. You mentioned that you have 40 pharm questions, how many of those pharm questions were about high yield info (like MOA or major side effects)? and how many were about something low yield (like which cancers individual chemo drugs are used for).
Telling people to memorize FA cover to cover is bad advice. The "highest yield" resouce that represented most of the information I saw on the exam was uworld, NOT FA. This is also the reason why the DIT guy gives topics a "1 star" topic vs a "4 star" topic. Not everything in FA is HY/equally important.
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ICY is right. The points you need to focus on are the points covered in UWORLD. A large portion of the facts in FA are untestable. I read the book cover to cover a few times but I am not sure if it had helped me on the test
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What Philiston is doing is great and all but its not feasible for any normal US med student. I wouldn't want to do it either cause I know I don't have that sort of will power. Studying 6 weeks has literally drained me dry.
lol? phloston you forgot one final step in your calculation. Lets assume your calculation is correct and there are 20 or 30 total "maker or breakers" in the exam. Do you really think you're going to get all 30?
If this test can make 300 or so questions WITHOUT successfully repeating the same exact question word for word, then can you figure out how many questions are available in their test bank? Lets say they have close to 2k available questions like other qbanks do, then 20 maker/breakers = only .01 of your exam
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lol? phloston you forgot one final step in your calculation. Lets assume your calculation is correct and there are 20 or 30 total "maker or breakers" in the exam. Do you really think you're going to get all 30?
If this test can make 300 or so questions WITHOUT successfully repeating the same exact question word for word, then can you figure out how many questions are available in their test bank? Lets say they have close to 2k available questions like other qbanks do, then 20 maker/breakers = only .01 of your exam
And the bank is probably more like 10,000+ questions.
Sorry, de-lurking briefly because this? Is unacceptably misogynistic.
I realize you were responding to a post that was also completely inappropriate, but that's no excuse to make such comments yourself.
Okay, back to lurking. Enjoy your (typically misogyny-free) Step 1 discussion. Best of luck to everyone who will be finding out their scores on the 11th.
I realize you were responding to a post that was also completely inappropriate, but that's no excuse to make such comments yourself.
Okay, back to lurking. Enjoy your (typically misogyny-free) Step 1 discussion. Best of luck to everyone who will be finding out their scores on the 11th.
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True, just didn't expect a dude to jump all over me when all I did was make a counterpoint to a point.
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Why are y'all so concerned with how other people are studying? No need to rag on other people for making different decisions.
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dude Philostons from australia and im assuming the dudes gunning for a top specialty hence the more emphasis on him peforming incredibly well on an american scale hence killing the step 1 and standing out...more power to him!
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WELL YOU NEVER KNOW THE SCORE MIGHT BE ON THE WEBSITE BEFORE WE GET AN EMAIL!!!!!!11
True. I am lazy to check though so I will wait for the email first 😀
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I'm definitely in the 'who gives a crap about anyone else' camp. However, one thing I do kind of agree with Icy about is the idea that perpetuating all this fear-mongering and paranoia about First aid must be known back to front, inside and out, in three different languages and braille, is I think both unhelpful and somewhat disingenuous.
Anyway, my n=1, only took my particular Step 1 exam, of course. So who knows. In any case, I think this thread needs a little bit more temperance. For god sakes people, this isn't Pre-allo!
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Not true in the slightest. Took the exam today. MANY detailed questions where you just had to know it or you won't get it. There were quite a few where I felt proud I was able to reason out the answer, but upon looking them up during my break, I gotten them flat out wrong.
If you want to perform really well, you need both the intelligence - and the knowledge. The best way to do this is to not skimp out on the details during M1 and M2. Retain your notes and study them well. First Aid and Uworld is not enough to prepare for many straight fact questions in a few weeks.
Granted, my test may have been an outlier compared to everybody else's here, but I could count up to 10 questions on average per block where it was not in FA or UWorld and were not reasoning based questions.
I wont give out specifics, but for example I had questions asking the most COMMON source of a specific bacteria - yes the sources were listed in FA, but it didn't rank them for which source was the most common (nor were they in UWorld).
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Interesting, shows how much variability there is depending on the form you get.
Also just to clarify, I did not mean there were "no detailed questions" on my exam -- just that (1) most of the detailed questions were things that I had encountered in UW or FA or seen before in classes and (2) of the challenging questions and questions I was unsure about, more of them were conceptually obscure rather than "detailed" -- again at least on my form.
There were probably ~8-10 questions per block on mine that were not in FA/UW, but for me these questions I would not have been able to find in any resource (even ones I used during MS2). They were either conceptual or critical thinking/application across systems or with new variables.
I understand every test is different but how much Anatomy will we get?
I have been doing Rx anatomy questions on Hard and some of those are incredibly annoying.. sure eventually you learn the rotator cuff and the knee questions, and all the Brachial plexus which are essential.. but how much can we expect on foot ligaments for example? some Rx question required knowing not only that Lateral ligaments are more prone to injury than medial ligaments.. but also which ones are which and among the list of obscure names which one was the one most likely involved.. I say obscure because I really haven't looked at foot anatomy since 2 years.
I'm almost done with Rx and already began World.. and in comparison I really find the Hard question in Rx frustrating sometimes.
I have been doing Rx anatomy questions on Hard and some of those are incredibly annoying.. sure eventually you learn the rotator cuff and the knee questions, and all the Brachial plexus which are essential.. but how much can we expect on foot ligaments for example? some Rx question required knowing not only that Lateral ligaments are more prone to injury than medial ligaments.. but also which ones are which and among the list of obscure names which one was the one most likely involved.. I say obscure because I really haven't looked at foot anatomy since 2 years.
I'm almost done with Rx and already began World.. and in comparison I really find the Hard question in Rx frustrating sometimes.
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i must have gotten really lucky on my test. The test was >95% covered in FA/UWORLD/Pathoma/School
