Official 2012 Step 1 Experiences and Scores Thread

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thinker said:
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.
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Get Road Map Gross Anatomy and Read the clinical correlate boxes. It covered every anatomy question that popped in in UWORLD and my step 1 test
 
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Yes. But I would do this at least 5 days before your test though. Anatomy isn't as high yield as reviewing pharm or any of the other forgettable topics.
 
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Took my test today, it was not as bad as I thought it would be. Lots of conceptual questions. 85% of questions can be answered from first aid, 10% of questions are like "experiments", 5% of questions are WTF - never seen or heard the concepts before (hopefully those are experimental). For me Blocks 1, 6, 7 are hard, I marked 10 questions in each, I didn't have time to review in these blocks; the rest, I finished w/ 7-8 minutes to spare, I marked 4-5 questions in each block. I didn't have a lot of physio questions w/ arrows, even those questions w/ arrows seem straight forward to me. I DID have a lot of ethics questions (like 3-4 per block), some were easy, for others I was able to narrow down to 2 ACs, was not sure so had to make educated guesses. Biostats were not bad at all. Overall I'd say my exam were balanced, w/ every system equally represented.

Advice for those of you who are taking it soon: Goljan 36p HY notes saved me at least 5 questions, there were questions that came straight out of his notes, study it the day before your exam!
 
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thinkenergy said:
Advice for those of you who are taking it soon: Goljan 36p HY notes saved me at least 5 questions, there were questions that came straight out of his notes, study it the day before your exam!
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I've heard from many friends that Goljan 36p HY notes helped them out with several questions. Those notes seem fairly high yield, I am wondering what you mean by "at least 5 questions" ... is it safe to assume that many concepts which were tested on your exam were concepts out of that 36p HY or do you literally mean only 5 concepts out of that HY were tested?
 
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HelpPleaseMD said:
i must have gotten really lucky on my test. The test was >95% covered in FA/UWORLD/Pathoma/School
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Everyone's test is. You just listed every Step 1 study source. The ppl who say otherwise are just freaking out and over-exaggerating, or they didn't pay close attention to those sources and didn't study those sources in depth enough.
 
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thinkenergy said:
On some they were literally asking the exact questions (not exaggerating), but others they were testing the concepts.
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Right...and both types of questions are answerable through stuff found in FA/UW/Pathoma/school. Yes on the conceptual ones you actually need to use your brain instead of only regurgitate facts, but the necessary background info that your brain needs to logically come up with the answer is still almost always found in FA.

Like I said before, for those ppl who claim the vast majority of questions were not answerable with FA/UW/Pathoma, they must not have studied these sources in depth enough.
 
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rocketbooster said:
Right...and both types of questions are answerable through stuff found in FA/UW/Pathoma/school. Yes on the conceptual ones you actually need to use your brain instead of only regurgitate facts, but the necessary background info that your brain needs to logically come up with the answer is still almost always found in FA.

Like I said before, for those ppl who claim the vast majority of questions were not answerable with FA/UW/Pathoma, they must not have studied these sources in depth enough.
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Lol. You guys keep adding school to your list of FA UW Patoma. Tell me, what isn't covered in school?
 
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berry15 said:
I've heard from many friends that Goljan 36p HY notes helped them out with several questions. Those notes seem fairly high yield, I am wondering what you mean by "at least 5 questions" ... is it safe to assume that many concepts which were tested on your exam were concepts out of that 36p HY or do you literally mean only 5 concepts out of that HY were tested?
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I'm guessing he means that there are at least five questions he answered correctly due to the last minute reading of the HY notes... The notes are 36 pages, pretty extensive, so, it's safe to assume that more than five concepts from them were represented on his exam.
 
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That's what I had assumed regarding the 36 p HY, just wanted to confirm. For anyone interested, I was reading over the 36 p HY this afternoon and p.29 (anatomy) # 21 has an error. It states nerve injured in midshaft humerus fracture is median nerve - correct answer is radial nerve.
 
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ijn said:
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.
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I could not have agreed with you more. I have not taking my test yet. But early on, i found myself equal amount of time learning stuff such as Legg–Calvé–Perthes syndrome or stuff that i have not seen in uworld. And it was taking time away from mastering the HY piece of information.
 
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Ok2Panic said:
I'm guessing he means that there are at least five questions he answered correctly due to the last minute reading of the HY notes... The notes are 36 pages, pretty extensive, so, it's safe to assume that more than five concepts from them were represented on his exam.
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I had a least a handful of Qs that were almost exactly the way those notes said they'd be phrased. USMLE taught me to stereotype the hell out of my patients.

Young black male in pain? sickle cell
Asian woman/kid? one of the asian sounding names Takyasu, etc
Black woman? Lupus!
 
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I regret to say this, but I noticed that I made at least a few mistakes that were straight regurgitation fro first aid. (i.e. I narrowed it down to two choices, but the last two choices were confusing). I hate making stupid mistakes, and I thought I wouldn't do this on the real exam, but it seems I did so anyways.
 
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thinker said:
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.
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I remember having encountered those ligament questions in Rx. My impression is that they're actually very high-yield. I've seen a good handful of questions that love to talk about a basketball player plantarflexing and inverting the ankle --> which ligament is torn? --> anterior talofibular.

1st degree ankle sprain --> anterior talofibular only (most commonly injured)
2nd degree --> anterior + posterior talofibular
3rd degree --> 2nd degree + calcaneofibular

Those are all lateral ligaments (together known as the lateral collateral ligament complex), prevent inversion and are weaker than medial ligaments.

Listen, anatomy is practically endless and I agree that this is probably the one topic where the degree of minutiae eclipses any other topic, but I felt Rx hit some of the clinically oriented anatomy really well. Ankle, knee and shoulder ligaments are exceedingly high-yield, as are the nerves/vessels which pass anterior/posterior to the medial/lateral malleolus (e.g. sural nerve runs posterior to the LM; great saphenous vein runs anterior to the MM). The blood supply of the hand is also high-yield, and knowing which vessels can compensate when others are occluded, particularly the palmar arches.


thinkenergy said:
Advice for those of you who are taking it soon: Goljan 36p HY notes saved me at least 5 questions, there were questions that came straight out of his notes, study it the day before your exam!
Click to expand...

I had planned on giving this a read-through one-day-out. I'm glad it worked for you.

RedSoxSuck said:
I could not have agreed with you more. I have not taking my test yet. But early on, i found myself equal amount of time learning stuff such as Legg–Calvé–Perthes syndrome or stuff that i have not seen in uworld. And it was taking time away from mastering the HY piece of information.
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I would actually think avascular necroses are very high-yield. The scaphoid would probably rank the highest, followed by the hip (Gaucher's and LCP both rank up there).
 
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I thought the test was fair. Mostly everything was in first aid/uworld. Although, it just seems frustrating that some of the easier questions that were staright regurg. I got wrong. As the day goes by, I keep on remembering more and more questions that I got wrong....lol
 
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Phloston said:
I remember having encountered those ligament questions in Rx. My impression is that they're actually very high-yield. I've seen a good handful of questions that love to talk about a basketball player plantarflexing and inverting the ankle --> which ligament is torn? --> anterior talofibular.

1st degree ankle sprain --> anterior talofibular only (most commonly injured)
2nd degree --> anterior + posterior talofibular
3rd degree --> 2nd degree + calcaneofibular

Those are all lateral ligaments (together known as the lateral collateral ligament complex), prevent inversion and are weaker than medial ligaments.

Listen, anatomy is practically endless and I agree that this is probably the one topic where the degree of minutiae eclipses any other topic, but I felt Rx hit some of the clinically oriented anatomy really well. Ankle, knee and shoulder ligaments are exceedingly high-yield, as are the nerves/vessels which pass anterior/posterior to the medial/lateral malleolus (e.g. sural nerve runs posterior to the LM; great saphenous vein runs anterior to the MM). The blood supply of the hand is also high-yield, and knowing which vessels can compensate when others are occluded, particularly the palmar arches.

I had planned on giving this a read-through one-day-out. I'm glad it worked for you.

I would actually think avascular necroses are very high-yield. The scaphoid would probably rank the highest, followed by the hip (Gaucher's and LCP both rank up there).
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Sprains are graded according to the extent of ligament damage (stretch, partial tear, complete tear), not which ligaments are injured.

Also, I think it's hard to say that one source or another hits on most of the clinically oriented anatomy. I had plenty of non-clinical anatomy questions on my test that were just straight up relationships of structures. Your perspective is biased a bit because you've been focusing on Step 1 prep materials that hit on the highest yield questions, but my test demonstrated that you can get anything asked. I think the way you're studying will certainly result in a stellar score, but be prepared to have some minutiae thrown at you that probably wasn't in FA/Rx/UW/Step 1 review books. I also agree that studying anatomy minutiae has the lowest return-for-effort of any subject (except perhaps pharm).
 
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VisionaryTics said:
Sprains are graded according to the extent of ligament damage (stretch, partial tear, complete tear), not which ligaments are injured.
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That's interesting. I wish I could pull up the Rx explanation because I have the latter info annotated into my FA directly from that QBank. Maybe the word "grade" wasn't used or maybe it's a different type of ranking system, but I'm 1000% sure that 1st-, 2nd- and 3rd-"order" injuries of the lateral collateral ligament complex are based on the succession of those ligaments having been injured.
 
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MrBeauregard said:
You just ruined my day. 😱
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Wow man really?😱 Didnt expect it to stress anyone out...Just seeing the recent tension on this thread I thought this would kinda bring us together and create some talk.

Scrap the countdown then and my apologies; I enjoy looking at this thread and dont wanna make it unenjoyable for anyone
 
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The exam definitely hit relational anatomy points I'd considered low yield minutiae, but it's 1 or 2 questions out of 322. For example you might see questions along the lines of what minor artery did this even more minor artery branch from? Granted, it's probably something that you would have known cold during your first semester of first year, but it's not at all clinically relevant. Others were very clinically relevant such has knowing your dermatomes and correlating vertebral level lesions with muscle deficits. As phloston said, they do tend to heavily hit classic hip/knee/shoulder joint pathology and nerve entrapments.
 
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I think the best way to study anatomy is not necessarily the details, but remembering how the general anatomy is oriented, and some landmarks, such as vertebral levels. I barely studied any anatomy, but I think I got most of the questions right just based on the process of elimination. One thing that I noticed while taking the test is that many of the answer choices are clearly wrong, even if you don't know the actual answer at first!
 
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usmlesuccess said:
I think the best way to study anatomy is not necessarily the details, but remembering how the general anatomy is oriented, and some landmarks, such as vertebral levels. I barely studied any anatomy, but I think I got most of the questions right just based on the process of elimination. One thing that I noticed while taking the test is that many of the answer choices are clearly wrong, even if you don't know the actual answer at first!
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I was just going to post a similar thing; I remember both on uWorld and the real thing, you could eliminate at least 2 choices based on prefix/suffix alone. For example, I remember being asked a question which dealt with clitoral area of the vagina and a couple of choices had "sacral" in it - clearly not the answer.
 
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A few remarks relating to the last several posts:

1. It is extremely difficult to stay on one's A-Game for 8 hours straight. We all will have questions that we "should have gotten correct" and recall days after the test, but simply didn't because of the pressures of the exam. This fact is universal and factored into the scoring curve.

2. Don't worry about how other people study. Do what works for you. Personally, I did not even look at First Aid. This may be sacrilege to some of you, but it just wasn't my thing. (I watched Kaplan videos, Pathoma twice, and completed UWorld questions). Bottom line, focus on what works for you. Don't stress on what other people recommend or don't recommend doing.

3. I can't believe we have to wait 3 or 4 weeks to get our scores back. This wait is killer.
 
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I think we get our scores back on the 11th? The anatomy on my exam were really straight forward. They even showed an xray showing the dislocation. I was thinking to myself lol the nbme thinks we are ******ed
 
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AngryBird69 said:
Wow man really?😱 Didnt expect it to stress anyone out...Just seeing the recent tension on this thread I thought this would kinda bring us together and create some talk.

Scrap the countdown then and my apologies; I enjoy looking at this thread and dont wanna make it unenjoyable for anyone
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Haha no, man, I'm just messing with you. I mean I'm nervous to get my score, but you didn't ruin my day. It's all good.
 
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red10 said:
I had a least a handful of Qs that were almost exactly the way those notes said they'd be phrased. USMLE taught me to stereotype the hell out of my patients.
...
Black woman? Lupus!
Click to expand...

I'm sorry, we were looking for sarcoid.
 
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Siggy said:
I'm sorry, we were looking for sarcoid.
Click to expand...

neverlupus_2.gif
 
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This forum helped me so much so I decided that I would provide a little summary of what worked for me and my experience

Stats
-Nbme 11: 235, 5 weeks out
-Nbme 7: 240, 3 weeks out
-Nbme 12: 245, 1 week out
-Uworld : 76 percent timed mixed overall

Its such a surreal feeling to finally be done with this. I studied for 2 months starting at the end April. I used primarily First Aid, Brs physio, Uworld, High-yield neuro, Pathoma, Rapid review, Goljan Audio.

-First of the test is extremely doable, and do not let anyone tell you differently. Also, I don't know why people talk about how the vignettes of the test are so long, mine was def. shorter than uworld, and barely longer than NBME.

Micro
-def. everything was in first aid, except for a couple of obscure pictures

Stats and Psychiatry
-all was pretty much covered in first aid

Pharm
-everything was in first aid

Path
-Goljan audio, pathoma, uworld, and first aid had it all

Biochemistry
-95 percent of it was in first aid

Anatomy
-by far the only subject where first aid is lacking, don't really know how to tell people to study for this except to look at CTs and maybe brush up on your anatomy class notes

Neuroscience
-most was in first aid, a couple of questions I got right from High-yield neuro
-know different sections of the brain, CTs, try to focus on the major locations

Embryo
-I had maybe 3 questions on it, to be honest I don't even remember what those were, haha

Physio
-brs physio is highly recommended for this part, questions were not hard just required some thought

Path
-I know people have fallen in love with Pathoma, but word of advice is to not forget about Goljan. The man still gives great concepts and advice on how questions are phrased and how to think critically.

All in all the exam was very doable, I can't think of anything else, but if anyone has any questions I would be happy to answer them!
 
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AngryBird69 said:
Wow I have yet to see anyone else on this thread that had a tough micro like I did.
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I had some weirdo ones show up. One was a vignette with extremely vague sx, followed by a picture of a microscopic cyst.. They asked for the treatment. They also seemed to throw every possible distractor known to man out there... "A sexually active gardener with an abscess who also abused drugs... What's the likely dx?" you really had to focus on each question.. Knee jerk reactions bit me a couple times. Didn't seem hard afterwards, but I think it's different when you're actually taking the test.


On an unrelated note, I took my test the 27th of June... On the USMLE website it says all tests from mid May to late June will be released July 11th. Would this include mine? Seems like a quick turn around...
 
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I think you guys will be on the 18th or 25th since the normal minimum turn around is 3-4 weeks. The guys who took late May-early June have a longer wait than normal due to the high volume of exams.
 
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that really sucks. If I hadn't taken the exam yet, reading your post would scare the **** out of me. the NBME must have some way of standardizing the questions...otherwise this is one big game of luck.
 
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this is what I don't understand, a hard test to one person might be an easy test to someone else...does anyone know if the scores are standardized or based on a set given curve?
 
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Ali no one can know for sure considering the mystery that surrounds the NBME but it makes sense that it is curved in a way reminescent of uworld where your % correct is compared to others' for a given set of questions with a score distribution drawn based on these %ages.
 
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thanks, this whole scoring process is so confusing, thank god I'm finally finished with the step and can try to relax while waiting for the scores :laugh:
 
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Anonymous99 said:
CBSSE (zero studying while in school) 205
UWSA 1 (5 weeks out) 240
NBME Free 150 (4 weeks out) 245 (85%)
NBME 11 (3 weeks out) 247
UWSA 2 (2 Weeks Out) 252
UW First Pass Random Timed 69% (249)
NBME 12 (1.5 Weeks Out) 247
NBME 13 (5 Days Out) 254
______
I was extremely uncomfortable throughout my test as I kept getting a ton of obscure questions that FA + U World did not prepare me for. It felt like I had double the number of difficult questions compared to the NBMEs I took. I marked double the amount of questions. Timing was okay.

Anatomy: This is probably where I lost most of my points. Lots of brachial plexus lesions (easy) but all of the CTs and Ultrasounds were very difficult and had a ton of answer choices. I had to guess on a lot of them and each time a new one popped up on the screen I died a little inside.

Behavioural: I am usually good at the "What would you do questions" (got them all right on all the NBMEs) but I was between 2 answers on multiple questions on the real deal -_-

Biochem: Hardly any metabolism (0 or 1). Got a stupid special diet one wrong. No lysosomal. 1 glycogen storage. Some vitamins but they were easy for me as I expected them. Know them. Lots of genetics and mitochondrial diseases. Know what Tuberous Sclerosis looks like in the brain.

Biostats: Actually easy. I hate math and usually get stumped but I was able to work them through (I think). I may have gotten a bias question wrong.

Embryo: Everything was in FA. Think I was okay here. Only a couple Qs.

Micro: Major WTF section for me. Micro was (I thought) my strongest subject. Did very well on every practice exam. Every organism was a weird non-run-of-the-mill bug. I had hardly anything about the typical big ones (Neisseria, Strept, Staph, etc) and had a lot about anaplasma (had to know about it's transmission), leishmania, and the worms. Seriously? -_- Some fungi and lots of Hepatitis.

Immuno: Either super easy or super difficult. Questions on Toll-Like Receptor 7...? Probably lost quite a few points here. FA covered the easy Qs and I probably would have to be a Immunology PhD student to get the others.

Path: Mostly okay. Stuff about hypertrophy and hyperplasia, apoptosis, etc. FA covered it all I think. Some annoying ones where someone had a disease and a bazillion RFs for it but you had to pick the most contributory.

Pharm: Hard for me! I thought I was okay on pharm but they asked obscure side effects (aplasia cutis congenita - got it wrong.) and lots of poisonings. Seemed like they offered up a history consistent with one poisoning but all of the symptoms did not match the history. Also make sure to know the differences of drugs WITHIN classes. I got a Q wrong because I wasn't able to differentiate all of the H2 blockers (-idines) and their specific metabolisms.

CV: Actually had a lot of ECGs. Probably got some arrow questions wrong here. Know Post-MI path. Know Digoxin. Know Amiodarone.

Endo: Heavy on my exam. Lots of thyroid stuff. Lots of hirsutism.

GI: Got some stupid GI phys/pharm Qs wrong that I shouldn't have. Very heavy on Liver path.

Heme Onc: Lots of cancers. vWD showed up a couple times (at least I hope that was the answer). Had to ID specific blood cells based on the smear (Eosinophils, monocytes ,etc).

MSK/CT/Derm: Fractures and brachial plexus Qs. Old ladies with bone problems. Some difficult derm. They asked about Eczema and PV but all of the answer choices used very advanced technical terminology which made them difficult.

Neuro: Neuro path was okay but Neuro anatomy was difficult. Had some spinal cords and brain MRIs. A difficult seizure question.

Psych: Easy. Know diagnostic criteria and timing cut offs.

Renal: Lots of ADH/Aldo/Renin stuff. Arrows. Light on path.

Repro: Very heavy on my exam. Prolapses. Ultrasounds which I couldn't read and had to randomly guess. STDs.

Resp: Don't remember much respiratory. Some pneumoconiosis and Tb. I think I had a Pott's disease Q.
____

Overall I felt like complete **** leaving. I spent 7 weeks 12-14 a day and I feel like I got 215-230. I guessed on way more than I usually had to. I felt like I had double the amount of hard questions and way less easy gimme questions.

Others have said that the test was very similar to the NBMEs but I felt completely opposite. I think it's very test-dependent but I am extremely worried that I royally f***ed up here. Nothing seemed to go my way on the exam and I got some stupid ones wrong that I shouldn't have on top of the ones I had to guess at. Not good. It kills me that this was my only shot and my exam was very odd/did not seem similar to the NBMEs at all.

Not trying to scare anyone as other people have said the complete opposite. I just feel as though I got dealt a very unlucky set of Qs :/
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jesus christ dude... this is nuts
 
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