Official 2012 Step 1 Experiences and Scores Thread

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4 more days until score release...... :O

Is there a "July 11 Countdown Thread"? I couldn't find it but I thought someone made one up a while ago
 
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Well, I took mine June 26th not sure if my score will be released this Wednesday...I'm not sure what "end of June" exactly means. I was hoping to relax one more week...I didn't think my test was too bad but now I have convinced myself that I read thru the questions too quickly
 
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shan564 said:
I got a 227. Quite surprised and disappointed. That's 20 points lower than my recent practice test scores and an even larger margin of difference from my UW performance in the last few days after my last practice test. Don't know how it happened. Good thing I want to be a psychiatrist. I guess it's time to rock Step 2.

And I'll stop giving advice at this point.
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Ummmm, did anyone else that took their exam on May 17th gotten their score yet? Looks like Shan564 is the only lucky one around here. He did not have to wait! I took my exam on the same day and I am still waiting for July 11th!
 
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ja12391 said:
Ummmm, did anyone else that took their exam on May 17th gotten their score yet? Looks like Shan564 is the only lucky one around here. He did not have to wait! I took my exam on the same day and I am still waiting for July 11th!
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I think he is an Aussie student, so maybe there's a different time table for IMGs vs AMGs.
 
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theRainmaker78 said:
everyone's going to have a different opinion on this and I haven't gotten my score yet, so I cannot claim to be a trustworthy source, but I'll still give you my opinion.

I would just go through the Uworld explanations QUICKLY. Not even redo Uworld - just go over the tests you already did and see if you know the concepts being discussed in each explanation and move quickly through them. Also take (maybe most of) your time to re-read important points in books (FA+whatever else you want to review like Pathoma for example).

I wouldn't do a lot of new stuff. Just do the free 150 a day before so that ur still used to doing questions before walking in. I think most people are used to doing questions by the last week but do whatever you feel is right for yourself.
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i really appreciate the advice! thank you! 🙂
 
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red10 said:
people earlier in the thread were suggesting that the link disappeared within a few days before their wednesday release date (mine just disappeared this week) and maybe it meant you passed? Not sure about the truth to the passing part, but scores are due to be released next week.
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Just to add to the sea of info--my permit link disappeared too (I took mine on June 20th), and it must have gone away sometime this week as I remember it being there last week when I checked.

Maybe some of us late June takers will get our scores back Weds? I sure hope so! : )
 
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That's exactly 3 weeks, so it's totally possible. The USMLE's website lists 3-4 weeks as the normal turn around time outside of high volume testing periods (late May to mid June). I presume 4 weeks happens when you take the exam on a Thursday and get tossed into next week's batch.
 
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Who's freaking out about Wednesday with me??! Lol... With third year starting, I completely forgot about this BEAST of an exam.

I feel like it owned me, inspite of the 245 - 250 scores on my practice tests... I think the real thing was much harder than NBME and slightly harder than UWORLD. Hopefully that means my test will be hella curved... what ever. Wednesday is coming! 😱

I'm on surgery now... Will probably forget to check my score due to lack of sleep and getting pimped all day.
 
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HeyThere13 said:
Good luck everyone! I sat for the beast on 6/25 so I may not be included in this go around.
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look and see if your print permit link is gone. If so, you're probably in this wednesday's batch and may proceed to freak out with the rest of us. haha
 
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It seems like every day since my exam I keep on remembering more questions that I got wrong. Does anyone else experience this? lol
 
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usmlesuccess said:
It seems like every day since my exam I keep on remembering more questions that I got wrong. Does anyone else experience this? lol
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I feel like I am steadily forgetting questions from my exam as the days wear on; the only ones that stick out for me anymore are the ones that I know I got wrong that popped into my head in the 1-2 days after the exam. Did you take yours recently?
 
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usmlesuccess said:
It seems like every day since my exam I keep on remembering more questions that I got wrong. Does anyone else experience this? lol
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Took mine the 27th. Every night Ive been having dreams about questions that were on there. I wake up realizing Ive missed another.
 
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usmlesuccess said:
It seems like every day since my exam I keep on remembering more questions that I got wrong. Does anyone else experience this? lol
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Sadly enough to say, I could not remember more than 5 or 6 questions after my exam.... Lol. I am not sure if that's a good or bad thing!
 
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I took mine on the 30th, but I think that I remembered 1 question per day since i took it that I got wrong, so I am guessing around 5 to 8 questions.
 
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may 16th test taker here.... NBME site still doesnt even have a release date set for my score. Starting to get pretty f'ing annoyed here. Anyone else on the 16th at least have a release date?
 
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red10 said:
look and see if your print permit link is gone. If so, you're probably in this wednesday's batch and may proceed to freak out with the rest of us. haha
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I took mine on June 27, and my permit link says I have sat the exam. What does that mean :scared:
 
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Oh wow, my print permit is gone as well! I feel like throwing up! :scared:
I just hope this wait is worth it! It would be ashame to have made it through this many weeks just to learn I have failed! I really think I pass but I still have that "what if" in the back of my mind since my exam was extremely hard! May 17th exam was no joke...
 
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nevermind guys...i figured out what you guys were all talking about regarding the permit link...but when i clicked mine it said

Application error: Permit is not available. The candidate may have sat for the exam or the registration is no longer active.

does that mean i need to wait another week?
 
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Hey guys! I'm new to the forum, and I just wanted your opinions on a few things! So I took NBME 7 about two weeks ago and got a 219. I took Uworld Sim exam 1 and got a 253, and Uworld Sim 2 and got a 236....It's so strange how nothing correlates! I thought sim 1 was much harder than sim 2, but I still scored lower on the second sim...anywho...what are your thoughts on how I will perform on the real exam or how close to my score the sims are? Just trying to calm my nerves a bit before Friday! Thanks!!!
 
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rpatel6 said:
Hey guys! I'm new to the forum, and I just wanted your opinions on a few things! So I took NBME 7 about two weeks ago and got a 219. I took Uworld Sim exam 1 and got a 253, and Uworld Sim 2 and got a 236....It's so strange how nothing correlates! I thought sim 1 was much harder than sim 2, but I still scored lower on the second sim...anywho...what are your thoughts on how I will perform on the real exam or how close to my score the sims are? Just trying to calm my nerves a bit before Friday! Thanks!!!
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Take a NBME if you want a real assessment. Uworld sim have been known to overestimate your score.
 
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Took the test today. Never expected anything like that. Question stems were way too long. I marked at least 15 questions per block and didn't get a chance to review them at end of block. Most of questions required critical reasoning. On average 30 question per block were very hard, 10 were of average difficulty and 2-3 were p ussy. On positive site, there were no wtf kind questions. Nothing that I never read before. It was just hard to recall and integrate the concept due to time constrain.I feel like if I had a chance to read FA one more time i would have tore that ass apart. My advice is to read each question very carefully. Most obvious answer isnt always correct. I was aiming for >250 but now I hope i pass step1. I studied like a psycho since last few weeks. Now i can listen to real music in car instead of goljan. Time to have bang bang and skeet skeet. Good luck on you exams guys.
 
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slimsol said:
Took the test today. Never expected anything like that. Question stems were way too long. I marked at least 15 questions per block and didn't get a chance to review them at end of block. Most of questions required critical reasoning. On average 30 question per block were very hard, 10 were of average difficulty and 2-3 were p ussy. On positive site, there were no wtf kind questions. Nothing that I never read before. It was just hard to recall and integrate the concept due to time constrain.I feel like if I had a chance to read FA one more time i would have tore that ass apart. My advice is to read each question very carefully. Most obvious answer isnt always correct. I was aiming for >250 but now I hope i pass step1. I studied like a psycho since last few weeks. Now i can listen to real music in car instead of goljan. Time to have bang bang and skeet skeet. Good luck on you exams guys.
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I feel you boss! Congrats on being done. My test was hard as **** too. Sometimes I wonder if it was hard because I am an average student....I wonder if my test would be considered hard to the top of the class types. Guess I will know in a week or two when I get my score back.
 
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HeyThere13 said:
I feel you boss! Congrats on being done. My test was hard as **** too. Sometimes I wonder if it was hard because I am an average student....I wonder if my test would be considered hard to the top of the class types. Guess I will know in a week or two when I get my score back.
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I believe you cant answer those weird questions unless you read them from point of view of writer of that particular question. My problem was not question content. I thought questions were very nicely written but answer choices were full of BS. Some of the answers I just had to make a wild. I took a break after every block which i highly recommended. It freshens up your mind and helps you forget how badly you screwed up previous block :laugh:
 
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Can one of you recent test takers rank the difficulty of step 1 to uw q bank, uw self assessment, and nbmes? hardest--> easiest. thanks!
 
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Does everyone that takes the test on the same day get the same questions (like MCAT)? If not, how is the curve determined?
 
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slimsol said:
Took the test today. Never expected anything like that. Question stems were way too long. I marked at least 15 questions per block and didn't get a chance to review them at end of block. Most of questions required critical reasoning. On average 30 question per block were very hard, 10 were of average difficulty and 2-3 were p ussy. On positive site, there were no wtf kind questions. Nothing that I never read before. It was just hard to recall and integrate the concept due to time constrain.I feel like if I had a chance to read FA one more time i would have tore that ass apart. My advice is to read each question very carefully. Most obvious answer isnt always correct. I was aiming for >250 but now I hope i pass step1. I studied like a psycho since last few weeks. Now i can listen to real music in car instead of goljan. Time to have bang bang and skeet skeet. Good luck on you exams guys.
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what do people mean when they say "critical reasoning" -- do you need to do more critical reasoning on the actual exam compared to the NBMEs or Uworld?
 
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xenophila said:
Can one of you recent test takers rank the difficulty of step 1 to uw q bank, uw self assessment, and nbmes? hardest--> easiest. thanks!
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In my experience: Real test>Uw qbank> NBME.

Difference between real test and UW/NBME is that real test had lot of distractions( Useless Lab values, Useless symptoms). Question in real test required multi step reasoning. You have to read question slowly in order to make a diagnosis orelse you will miss one word that gives away diagnosis in question stem. Now if you real question very carefully then you will run out of time.
 
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On my exam I felt there was just as much straight fact recall on STEP 1 as the NBMEs. I think when people get into stuff that is unfamiliar they are more likely to label it "critical reasoning" or "experimental." There was plenty of **** I didn't know or was unsure of, but it's not like it was some profoundly insightful question that required you to have extreme mastery of a topic. It was more along the lines of the question requiring memorization of ******edly low yield **** or pathology you wouldn't see unless you opened up First Aid for USMLE STEP 2 CK.
 
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dendrites said:
Does everyone that takes the test on the same day get the same questions (like MCAT)? If not, how is the curve determined?
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Everyone has a unique test. Let's say there's a question bank of 15,000 questions ( no one knows the true amount), then you get 322 of them. The distribution of general subjects is relatively similar throughout exams, but the exact content is different. Two people can get the same question on any given random set of 322, but it's nearly impossible for two exams to share every question.
 
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janehartley said:
what do people mean when they say "critical reasoning" -- do you need to do more critical reasoning on the actual exam compared to the NBMEs or Uworld?
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Ok. In nbme and uw, you know the right answer and you know why it's right. In nbme and UW its easy to identify right answer because rest answer choices are ******ed. While in real exam more than 1 answer choices seems correct.
 
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ijn said:
On my exam I felt there was just as much straight fact recall on STEP 1 as the NBMEs. I think when people get into stuff that is unfamiliar they are more likely to label it "critical reasoning" or "experimental." There was plenty of **** I didn't know or was unsure of, but it's not like it was some profoundly insightful question that required you to have extreme mastery of a topic. It was more along the lines of the question requiring memorization of ******edly low yield **** or pathology you wouldn't see unless you opened up First Aid for USMLE STEP 2 CK.
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Definitely, like what you said! It is funny because I use the Step Up to Medicine series to read during my primary care rotation, and I feel reading the text gives me a different perspective on SOME of the step 1 material. But on another note the text is not dense enough or too much for step 1.
 
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ijn said:
On my exam I felt there was just as much straight fact recall on STEP 1 as the NBMEs. I think when people get into stuff that is unfamiliar they are more likely to label it "critical reasoning" or "experimental." There was plenty of **** I didn't know or was unsure of, but it's not like it was some profoundly insightful question that required you to have extreme mastery of a topic. It was more along the lines of the question requiring memorization of ******edly low yield **** or pathology you wouldn't see unless you opened up First Aid for USMLE STEP 2 CK.
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My test wasn't like that at all. But then again, I think I must have had a relatively easy test overall (or else I bombed it and don't know it...will know on Wednesday). There was nothing, not a single question as far as I can recall, that was something ridiculously low yield. It was all pretty straightforward. But there was definitely a lot more reasoning involved on mine than there was on the NBMEs.

In the end, I think it's hard to make any generalizations about this test. The questions vary widely. I don't think you can dismiss the people who found their tests to have more reasoning as people who actually came across unfamiliar concepts or facts.
 
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tigress said:
In the end, I think it's hard to make any generalizations about this test. The questions vary widely. I don't think you can dismiss the people who found their tests to have more reasoning as people who actually came across unfamiliar concepts or facts.
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Sure you can. As the guy above you said, I think most ppl who say something was impossible was just a weak topic of theirs and are exaggerating. It was more than likely in FA but for whatever reason didn't stick in that person's head as well as other topics. Perhaps they didn't actually understand the conceptual mechanism...since often you needed Pathoma or Goljan audio to explain the connections b/w some things. Just sayin...

Most of the stuff I didn't know on my test I at least recognized but couldn't remember the details.
 
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