Official 2012 Step 1 Experiences and Scores Thread

[amavir281]

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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. 👍

 

[batmania2000]

I took the exam last week. My exam was extremely weird and was not expecting this at all. It was like nothing like the practice exams I had taken. I did well my first years but let's just say this exam was not at all representative of my medical knowledge of the first two years of med, which is unfortunate because they this is suppose to be a LICENSING exam not an aptitude test like the MCAT/SAT (and it should be pass/fail like board certifying exams especially since it can only be taken once if you pass unlike MCAT/SAT..anyways I digress...)

The questions were either easy or extremely hard, nothing really in between. The questions stems were really short (no long worded questions, no unnecessary lab values). The questions were for the most part straight recall questions and I had NO difficult 2nd order/3rd order questions but the questions were straight recall so either you memorized it or you didn't. I finished each section with 15-20 minutes so time was not a factor but I marked quite a few so I would then go back to the marked questions.

Only 2 questions on topics that I had absolutely never heard of and had no idea what they were talking about.

A LOT of microbiology and pharmacology/treatment questions (a couple of the pharm questions were low-yield drugs that asked mechanism of action), majority of these questions were from First Aid

What I was extremely surprised about was that I had almost no pathology/pathophysiology/physiology which were my strength and what I focused most on (I would say only 5 questions per block if that). You needed to know the disease for the clinical scenaiors presented but the questions on my exam did not really test the pathology behind the disease but instead asked a micro question or pharm, it was rarely a pure patho/pathophys question. I had a decent amount of medical management questions, what would you do next, and treatment questions. I knew the diagnosis but not the best management or the best next step (and all the answer choices would be plausible, but needed to find the next best option in the management of the patient). And these were not obvious for step 1 questions (i.e. was not in First Aid Step 1).

it seemed as though my exam didnt focus at all on the underlying pathological mechanism which was what I devoted most of my study time and was my strength..I was very disappointed. I also had only 2 pathology images (one was a trick question..I got it down to the two plausible answers but chose the wrong one).

Anatomy: I had A LOT of ridiculous anatomy questions from every region of the body (5-8 questions per block--people have been getting 5 questions per test so I was really upset after the exam because I was not expecting that much anatomy).But I feel like even if I had studied anatomy in more depth I would not have known the answer because the questions were testing obscure facts. Had no CT images of thorax, abdomen or angiograms or anything like that (this is what I studied). Also, a lot of neuroanatomy and embryology. Had only a few images on the exam but most of the images were part of neuroanatomy questions.
Genetics: A LOT of ridiculous genetic questions and a lot of pedigrees
Biochem: only 4 questions..and 3 were on the same topic..one was a very low yield topic..no obscure metabolism questions..i spent a lot of time studying metabolism
Biostats/Epi/Ethics: quite a few, but were straightforward,
Immunology: ~5 questions on topics from First AID..3 questions also tested the same topic..had 2 questions on CD markers
Pathology: ??????? I had 1 question from general path, a few reproductive questions, 1 renal path question, a few GI path questions, 2 pulm path, no cardio path but a lot of clinical cardio (3 EKGs, 2 audio questions), only 2 hematology questions (no anemia questions), a few endo path, a few rheumatology questions but no MSK, no derm. For the EKG questions you needed to read the EKG to get the diagnosis, you couldn't deduce from the clinical presentation..same with audio questions. No renal LM/EMs.
Physiology = ????????? almost no cardio physiology (1 question total), pulm physiology (1 question total), no GI physiology, 1 renal phys questions, 2 endo physiology questions and no reproductive physiology questions = less than 5 total questions on physiology
Pharmacology = a lot, almost from every system (only 1 neuro and psych drug though but few antimicrobial drugs..two were low yield), a lot of ANS pharm
Microbiology = a lot, mostly viruses and bacteria, a couple of questions on parasites and fungi
Pysch = quite a few, but were straightforward
Clinical Med = quite a few questions, none in First Aid. I remembered some of the stuff from reading Harrison's but definitely did not devote time to study this during my dedicated studying time

I got really screwed because this exam highlighted all my weaknesses (anatomy/clinical medical decisions) and almost none of my strengths (path, physiology, biochem, immunology). I honestly have no idea how I did, but I do know a got quite a few of the anatomy questions wrong which has been stressing me out. Unfortunately, at this point, I hope I passed and would be REALLY relieved with a 220 (was aiming for a 235+).

Note: above number of questions are rough estimates, obviously not exact

 

[RedSoxSuck]

I took the exam last week. My exam was extremely weird and was not expecting this at all. It was like nothing like the practice exams I had taken. I did well my first years but let's just say this exam was not at all representative of my medical knowledge of the first two years of med, which is unfortunate because they this is suppose to be a LICENSING exam (and it should be pass/fail like board certifying exams especially since it can only be taken once if you pass unlike MCAT/SAT..anyways I digress...)

The questions were either easy or extremely hard, nothing really in between. The questions stems were really short (no long worded questions, no unnecessary lab values). The questions were for the most part straight recall questions and I had NO difficult 2nd order/3rd order questions but the questions were straight recall so either you memorized it or you didn't. I finished each section with 15-20 minutes so time was not a factor but I marked quite a few so I would then go back to the marked questions.

Only 2 questions on topics that I had absolutely never heard of and had no idea what they were talking about.

A LOT of microbiology and pharmacology/treatment questions (a couple of the pharm questions were low-yield drugs that asked mechanism of action), majority of these questions were from First Aid

What I was extremely surprised about was that I had almost no pathology/pathophysiology/physiology which were my strength and what I focused most on (I would say only 2-3 questions per block if that). I had a decent amount of medical management questions, what would you do next, and treatment questions. I knew the diagnosis but not the best management or the best next step (and all the answer choices would be plausible, but needed to find the next best option in the management of the patient). And these were not obvious for step 1 questions (i.e. was not in First Aid Step 1).

pathology/pathophysiology was the same situation, I knew the diagnosis of all the clinical cases because of my pathology background but my exam didnt focus at all on the underlying pathological mechanism which was what I devoted most of my study time and was my strength..I was very disappointed. I also had only 2 pathology images (one was a trick question..I got it down to the two plausible answers but chose the wrong one).

Anatomy: I had A LOT of ridiculous anatomy questions from every region of the body (5-8 questions per block--people have been getting 5 questions per test so I was really upset after the exam because I was not expecting that much anatomy).But I feel like even if I had studied anatomy in more depth I would not have known the answer because the questions were testing obscure facts. Had no CT images of thorax, abdomen or angiograms or anything like that (this is what I studied). Also, a lot of neuroanatomy and embryology. Had only a few images on the exam but most of them were neuroanatomy questions.
Genetics: A LOT of ridiculous genetic questions and a lot of pedigrees
Biochem: only 4 questions..and 3 were on the same topic..one was a very low yield topic..no obscure metabolism questions..i spent a lot of time studying metabolism
Biostats/Epi/Ethics: quite a few, but were straightforward,
Immunology: ~5 questions on topics from First AID..3 questions also tested the same topic..had 2 questions on CD markers
Pathology: ??????? I had 1 question from general path, a few reproductive questions, 1 renal path question, a few GI path questions, 2 pulm path, no cardio path but a lot of clinical cardio (3 EKGs, 2 audio questions), only 2 hematology questions (no anemia questions), a few endo path, a few rheumatology questions but no MSK, no derm. For the EKG questions you needed to read the EKG to get the diagnosis, same with audio questions. No renal LM/EMs.
Physiology = ????????? almost no cardio physiology (1 question total), pulm physiology (1 question total), no GI physiology, 1 renal phys questions, 2 endo physiology questions and no reproductive physiology questions = less than 5 total questions on physiology
Pharmacology = a lot, almost from every system (only 1 neuro and psych drug though but few antimicrobial drugs..two were low yield), a lot of ANS pharm
Microbiology = a lot, mostly viruses and bacteria, a couple of questions on parasites and fungi
Pysch = quite a few, but were straightforward
Clinical Med = quite a few questions, none in First Aid. I remembered some of the stuff from reading Harrison's but definitely did not devote time to study this during my dedicated studying time

I got really screwed because this exam highlighted all my weaknesses (anatomy/clinical medical decisions) and almost none of my strengths (path, physiology, biochem, immunology). I honestly have no idea how I did, but I do know a got quite a few of the anatomy questions wrong which has been stressing me out. Unfortunately, at this point, I hope I passed and would be REALLY relieved with a 220 (was aiming for a 235+).

Note: above number of questions are rough estimates, obviously not exact

Oh man, this sucks. But i am sure it will be turn out ok.

You mentioned "clinical medical decisions". Were you referring to behavioral science ethic questions?

 

[batmania2000]

Oh man, this sucks. But i am sure it will be turn out ok.

You mentioned "clinical medical decisions". Were you referring to behavioral science ethic questions?

no sorry, I was referring to questions like "what is the next best step in the management of the patient" or "the best treatment" or "the best procedure to order." I also had a few treatment questions which were not in First AID. All the clinical scenarios were classic clinical presentations so the disease will be obvious but the not answer. All the answer options will be things that are appropriate and can be done for the patient--you just need to know what is the best next step or the most accurate procedure. This was more like step 2 material.

 

[med20140]

no sorry, I was referring to questions like "what is the next best step in the management of the patient" or "the best treatment" or "the best procedure to order." I also had a few treatment questions which were not in First AID. All the clinical scenarios were classic clinical presentations so the disease will be obvious but the not answer. All the answer options will be things that are appropriate and can be done for the patient--you just need to know what is the best next step. This was more like step 2 material.

I got a couple of those "what do you do next type questions as well." Threw me off a little bit because I could eliminate it down to 2, but it was tough to choose between.

Behavioral was consistently one of my strongest on NBMEs, but I wasn't too confident on those questions either.

 

[Kaputt]

I've encountered quite a bit of material through practice questions that is beyond the coverage of FA. So when I say I believe FA is ~80% sufficient for pharm, that is with respect to questions across various QBanks. I agree that FA covers ~95% of the drugs that are likely to be seen on the exam (based on having read posts), but only about ~80% of the testable detail about those drugs.

I also don't believe that just because some people have easy pharm on their random allotment of 322 questions on the real USMLE means that FA is enough. Everyone gets a different exam and comes out generally remembering what he or she didn't know.

USMLE World, FA, and the NBMEs should be your measuring stick for content that is appropriate to the exam. They're the best resources, bar none. The Kaplan qbank is way down on the list, especially when it comes to pharm. Save yourself the headache of learning obscure drug facts and stick to World + FA. World has a few things FA doesn't, and vice-versa. Those two sources alone are more than enough for pharm (and most other subjects).

USMLE Step 1 is not an exam written for pharmacologists, anesthesiologists, or any other type of physician. It's an exam for 2nd year med students, who generally don't know crap about drugs. They'd be happy enough to see you pick out malignant hyperthermia from a question stem, or know that you treat giardia with metronidazole. Seriously. It's often that simple.

 

[Kaputt]

I got a couple of those "what do you do next type questions as well." Threw me off a little bit because I could eliminate it down to 2, but it was tough to choose between.

Behavioral was consistently one of my strongest on NBMEs, but I wasn't too confident on those questions either.

Yeah those "what do you do next?" questions are a biotch. I got one as my third question on the exam...my mood was thus slightly deflated during the first block. I don't know why they put those on Step 1...that's such a Step 2 thing to do clinical reasoning like that. Step 1 resources aren't written in a way that is helpful for those questions.

I also got torched on behavioral science and felt I did poorly on it. Turns out I did miraculously well on it. Don't trust your queasy stomach, trust your NBMEs! 👍

 

[da Vincis World]

USMLE World, FA, and the NBMEs should be your measuring stick for content that is appropriate to the exam. They're the best resources, bar none. The Kaplan qbank is way down on the list, especially when it comes to pharm. Save yourself the headache of learning obscure drug facts and stick to World + FA. World has a few things FA doesn't, and vice-versa. Those two sources alone are more than enough for pharm (and most other subjects).

USMLE Step 1 is not an exam written for pharmacologists, anesthesiologists, or any other type of physician. It's an exam for 2nd year med students, who generally don't know crap about drugs. They'd be happy enough to see you pick out malignant hyperthermia from a question stem, or know that you treat giardia with metronidazole. Seriously. It's often that simple.

I completely agree. Scouring resources for esoteric pharm BS that may show up on your test is a HUGE waste of time. The odds of you looking up some obscure pharm fact or drug and then getting a question on that drug is very low. Time that you could be using to do more uWorld questions or making another pass through first aid.

 

[alternatego]

Congrats. Was it similar to uworld or like NBMEs?

Hi! I felt it was more like NBMEs. It felt easier overall than what I had been expecting, so I hope that doesn't mean my score will be decreased because of the statistical adjustment thing they do 🙁 well, I'll just have to wait and see!

 

[Vidared]

Foreign med student and long time-lurker here(watching over for almost 3 years now). I took it a few days back so not all details are fresh in my mind. I took the test after the final year of med school, so I used kaplans lecture notes and goljan RR as my primary resources and Robbins, pubmed search and often wikipedia as references.
I read FA once...didn't like it much.
Special thanks to phloston(found teamrads.com through one of his posts). And also to ljn, thanks to whom I made sure I studied the venous drainage of the adrenal gland(and it actually showed up on my test) 😀

As for Qbanks I only used Uworld. I'm sure test experiences vary and someone else would disagree with me , but I personally am glad I didn't do kaplan Qbank. The few questions on my test I couldn't answer due to lack of knowledge were either 1. Some concept on molecular bio that wasn't in HY molecular bio 2. Something I probably wouldn't have answered unless I'd been reading Robbins pathology.
My scores:
UW subjectwise timed(best way to learn for someone taking the test after year 4): 85%
UW second pass: Waste of time. Don't do it! I should have just done marked and incorrect questions.
NBME 11(4 weeks out): 268
NBME 13(10 days out): 261
NBME 12 (4 days out): 252 ----This was IMO the toughest of the lot. Scared me a bit right before the exam. I gave a last revision at turbo speed the last couple of days, which gave me back a little confidence.

Day before the test: Stopped studying in the afternoon and sat and watched Batman Begins and the weekends episode of Breaking Bad. I've always been a nervous sleeper so I took a 3.75 mg Zopiclone. I didn't wanna take any chances so I tried it before my NBMEs to make sure I didn't have any nasty hangover effect.
Exam day: Got up at 6. Got ready and reached Prometric by 745. I took a couple of peanut butter sandwiches, couple of chocolate bars, some buttermilk and coffee.

Block 1,2,3: Were pretty easy(around the level of NBME 7 and 11). By the time I'd done all the questions, I was quite sure that I'd get one question wrong in each block, at the most. I ended each block with ~8 minutes left and took a 10 minute break.
Block 4: Hello hell! This one was deceptively easy at first and then threw a whole load of molecular bio curveballs at me. I did a bit of "analytical reasoning" on most and managed to get a few right.
This block exhausted me and I used all 60 minutes here. It was good that I had 50 minutes of breaktime to spend for the last 3 breaks. 🙂
Blocks 5,6,7: Moderately difficult, somewhere between NBME 11 and 13.

Overall impressions:
-Pharma on the test was ridiculously easy. To give an example, one of the questions gave me an aminoglycoside drug(#####mycin) and asked me to name what group of drug it was. In the options was, yeah that's right, aminoglycoside!!! 😀
-My test was heavy on pathophys and basic path concepts. Lots of those up and down arrow questions( thanks NBME). 😍
- One of my regrets is that I couldn't learn molecular biology better. Its a subject I love and much as I wanted to go into more depth, I didn't want to postpone my test a few more weeks just so I could answer the 2-3 questions I missed in molecular bio. There's a lot more time for learning in the future!
-Anatomy---there were a few routine questions and also one asking for the venous drainage of adrenal gland. There were a couple of questions which relied on CT interpretation. There was no history to back it up. So make sure you do those CT scan tutorials on teamrads.com thoroughly. There was one Q asking me to name a muscle which performed a certain action at the shoulder joint, so I'd suggest you all learn them cold. Its all give in a well-organised table in Wikipedia.
-Goljan RR is low yield for the exam BUT it(along with the clinical experience I've had) gave me a framework to build the rest of my knowledge on. I tried and integrated every concept I'd learnt in the other subjects to disease pathology and clinical features. In a way, I made it my FA.
-******ed low yield facts can and will show up on the test. I had a question asking me which subunits of MHC 1 bind to the TCR. I mean, come on!!! You can keep that point NBME, I aint mugging up irrelavant cr*p for you.😡
-Do try and look at what bone tumors look like on histology. Questions might give you no other info except a brief history and a Histopath section.
-Everything on the test except for maybe 10-15 questions was something I'd come across before, directly or while looking up something else.
-Micro, biochem and Immunology- Had some routine regurgitated questions.
-Ethics and Physician patient relationships- My bugbear More than a third of my NBME mistakes were in this section. My test, fortunately, felt less tricky. Still, I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

I've been checking for mistakes and until now, I might have made upto 16 mistakes(definitely incorrect+ maybe incorrect). Does any one have any idea as to how the number of mistakes relates to the score on the test? I understand it varies from test to test but I'd still like to know.

 

[sharklasers]

Previous post might be the first time I have heard someone adamantly recommend people to NOT repeat uworld

 

[Phloston]

Foreign med student and long time-lurker here(watching over for almost 3 years now). I took it a few days back so not all details are fresh in my mind. I took the test after the final year of med school, so I used kaplans lecture notes and goljan RR as my primary resources and Robbins, pubmed search and often wikipedia as references.
I read FA once...didn't like it much.
Special thanks to phloston(found teamrads.com through one of his posts). And also to ljn, thanks to whom I made sure I studied the venous drainage of the adrenal gland(and it actually showed up on my test) 😀

As for Qbanks I only used Uworld. I'm sure test experiences vary and someone else would disagree with me , but I personally am glad I didn't do kaplan Qbank. The few questions on my test I couldn't answer due to lack of knowledge were either 1. Some concept on molecular bio that wasn't in HY molecular bio 2. Something I probably wouldn't have answered unless I'd been reading Robbins pathology.
My scores:
UW subjectwise timed(best way to learn for someone taking the test after year 4): 85%
UW second pass: Waste of time. Don't do it! I should have just done marked and incorrect questions.
NBME 11(4 weeks out): 268
NBME 13(10 days out): 261
NBME 12 (4 days out): 252 ----This was IMO the toughest of the lot. Scared me a bit right before the exam. I gave a last revision at turbo speed the last couple of days, which gave me back a little confidence.

Day before the test: Stopped studying in the afternoon and sat and watched Batman Begins and the weekends episode of Breaking Bad. I've always been a nervous sleeper so I took a 3.75 mg Zopiclone. I didn't wanna take any chances so I tried it before my NBMEs to make sure I didn't have any nasty hangover effect.
Exam day: Got up at 6. Got ready and reached Prometric by 745. I took a couple of peanut butter sandwiches, couple of chocolate bars, some buttermilk and coffee.

Block 1,2,3: Were pretty easy(around the level of NBME 7 and 11). By the time I'd done all the questions, I was quite sure that I'd get one question wrong in each block, at the most. I ended each block with ~8 minutes left and took a 10 minute break.
Block 4: Hello hell! This one was deceptively easy at first and then threw a whole load of molecular bio curveballs at me. I did a bit of "analytical reasoning" on most and managed to get a few right.
This block exhausted me and I used all 60 minutes here. It was good that I had 50 minutes of breaktime to spend for the last 3 breaks. 🙂
Blocks 5,6,7: Moderately difficult, somewhere between NBME 11 and 13.

Overall impressions:
-Pharma on the test was ridiculously easy. To give an example, one of the questions gave me an aminoglycoside drug(#####mycin) and asked me to name what group of drug it was. In the options was, yeah that's right, aminoglycoside!!! 😀
-My test was heavy on pathophys and basic path concepts. Lots of those up and down arrow questions( thanks NBME). 😍
- One of my regrets is that I couldn't learn molecular biology better. Its a subject I love and much as I wanted to go into more depth, I didn't want to postpone my test a few more weeks just so I could answer the 2-3 questions I missed in molecular bio. There's a lot more time for learning in the future!
-Anatomy---there were a few routine questions and also one asking for the venous drainage of adrenal gland. There were a couple of questions which relied on CT interpretation. There was no history to back it up. So make sure you do those CT scan tutorials on teamrads.com thoroughly. There was one Q asking me to name a muscle which performed a certain action at the shoulder joint, so I'd suggest you all learn them cold. Its all give in a well-organised table in Wikipedia.
-Goljan RR is low yield for the exam BUT it(along with the clinical experience I've had) gave me a framework to build the rest of my knowledge on. I tried and integrated every concept I'd learnt in the other subjects to disease pathology and clinical features. In a way, I made it my FA.
-******ed low yield facts can and will show up on the test. I had a question asking me which subunits of MHC 1 bind to the TCR. I mean, come on!!! You can keep that point NBME, I aint mugging up irrelavant cr*p for you.😡
-Do try and look at what bone tumors look like on histology. Questions might give you no other info except a brief history and a Histopath section.
-Everything on the test except for maybe 10-15 questions was something I'd come across before, directly or while looking up something else.
-Micro, biochem and Immunology- Had some routine regurgitated questions.
-Ethics and Physician patient relationships- My bugbear More than a third of my NBME mistakes were in this section. My test, fortunately, felt less tricky. Still, I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

I've been checking for mistakes and until now, I might have made upto 16 mistakes(definitely incorrect+ maybe incorrect). Does any one have any idea as to how the number of mistakes relates to the score on the test? I understand it varies from test to test but I'd still like to know.

I notice you say that you hadn't done Kaplan QBank, but at the same time wish that you'd had had more molecular bio under your belt. I'm not trying to be discouraging here, but that TCR-alpha3-subunit detail is in fact in one of the QBank explanations, as is a lot of other molecular bio info. For anyone who's annotating from the QBanks, this is a lesson that you should always annotate anything you've never seen before, even if you think it's ******edly low-yield.

Anyway, thanks a lot for the post. It's very helpful. Based on your overall impression, it sounds as though you've done extremely well. I would say you'd be in the 260+ range if you were getting 40+ questions correct per block, on average, and possibly 270+ if 42-3+ per block. That estimate is not based on anything other than my own intuition at this point, with respect to having done lots of practice questions / QBank analyses. Everyone's test differs, so there's no way to really know how the curves / relative difficulties match up to actual scoring, but if you feel the first three blocks went as well as you say, you might be in for a huge shocker (positively speaking) when you view your score.

 

[thehundredthone]

Congratulations on being done with it, time to focus elsewhere (like on having fun?) until the result come out.

Foreign med student and long time-lurker here(watching over for almost 3 years now).

Where from?

I read FA once...didn't like it much.

What was your go-to reference then? Seeing as 7-8 Kaplan books aren't really hand to flip through. Although you did mention later in your post that Goljan was like FA for you?

My scores:
UW subjectwise timed(best way to learn for someone taking the test after year 4): 85%
UW second pass: Waste of time. Don't do it! I should have just done marked and incorrect questions.
NBME 11(4 weeks out): 268
NBME 13(10 days out): 261
NBME 12 (4 days out): 252

Wow. Did you start off at 85% or did you climb (which would mean you were probably getting 85+ on a lot of blocks towards the end).
What % correct did you have on NBME 11 for that score?

Block 4: Hello hell! This one was deceptively easy at first and then threw a whole load of molecular bio curveballs at me. I did a bit of "analytical reasoning" on most and managed to get a few right.
...
- One of my regrets is that I couldn't learn molecular biology better. Its a subject I love and much as I wanted to go into more depth, I didn't want to postpone my test a few more weeks just so I could answer the 2-3 questions I missed in molecular bio. There's a lot more time for learning in the future!

What kind of mol bio, specifically? Immunology oriented?

Thanks for your time.

 

[Vidared]

I notice you say that you hadn't done Kaplan QBank, but at the same time wish that you'd had had more molecular bio under your belt. I'm not trying to be discouraging here, but that TCR-alpha3-subunit detail is in fact in one of the QBank explanations, as is a lot of other molecular bio info. For anyone who's annotating from the QBanks, this is a lesson that you should always annotate anything you've never seen before, even if you think it's ******edly low-yield.

That's the point isn't it? That topic is covered pretty well in the Kaplan lecture notes I used. I didn't have to use Kaplan Qbank for it. I thought this tiny detail was unlikely to be tested and didn't pay much attention to it. Obviously I wasn't pleased with myself when it showed up lol

hehe...I'd be glad with a 260 now. Quite nervous.

]

Where from?

India

What was your go-to reference then? Seeing as 7-8 Kaplan books aren't really hand to flip through. Although you did mention later in your post that Goljan was like FA for you?

Haha...you're right 7-8 Kaplan books aren't easy to flip through. And that's why I added notes on post-its from one subject to the other as I went through each one. By the end of my prep, most things were covered pretty well. For instance, I had Adrenoleukodystrophy and refsums disease covered in three places(Fat metabolism, Goljan Neuro and in Cell anatomy). I like making notes and making those connections myself. Maybe that's why I didn't find FA that useful.

Wow. Did you start off at 85% or did you climb (which would mean you were probably getting 85+ on a lot of blocks towards the end).
What % correct did you have on NBME 11 for that score?

I was scoring fairly consistently in each subject.Somewhere between 80-82% for all the subjects(as is normal for anyone who does UW subjectwise). I did Pathology at the end and that's when my score went up to 85%.
Made 7 mistakes on form 11, including 2 ethics/Physician patient relationships questions.

What kind of mol bio, specifically? Immunology oriented?

I had immunology covered for the most part(cytokines, their receptors etc.) thanks to wikipedia. I also had growth factors, signal transduction pathways, and transcription factors learnt before I went to the test. It was other aspects of molecular bio, things like LCR of Beta chain hemoglobin and also some question about a mutation in telomeres leading to a replication block(the answer to which I still have no clue of). They might be easy to some of you but I had no proper resource which I could use as a base and build on. I never read HY molecular bio until after the test, but I'd already read everything in that book in one place or the other.
Its possible that most of these were covered somewhere in Robbins, though. That's undoubtedly the best book I've had the pleasure of reading till today.

 

[Vidared]

Previous post might be the first time I have heard someone adamantly recommend people to NOT repeat uworld

I'm not a US med student so I'm probably different. It makes no sense repeating the whole of UW 2-3 weeks after finishing it for the first time, like I did.

If you've been doing UW over a period of months, then by all means do it again in the weeks leading upto the test.

 

[Phloston]

It was other aspects of molecular bio, things like LCR of Beta chain hemoglobin and also some question about a mutation in telomeres leading to a replication block(the answer to which I still have no clue of). They might be easy to some of you but I had no proper resource which I could use as a base and build on. I never read HY molecular bio until after the test, but I'd already read everything in that book in one place or the other.
Its possible that most of these were covered somewhere in Robbins, though. That's undoubtedly the best book I've had the pleasure of reading till today.

As far as I can recall (and I'm only saying this for the sake of people who haven't taken the test yet who would want to know where LCR has shown up):

USMLE Rx had one question regarding which type of test to use to detect sickle cell anaemia, and ligase chain reaction was the answer.

Kaplan QBank, on the other hand, didn't have a question with this as an answer choice, but they did have a question stem that mentioned LCR in a sickle cell pt.

HY C&M has a short section on LCR.

Once again, thanks a lot for posting. Sounds like you did great.

The only "obscure" question I've seen about telomeres was a Kaplan question that wanted you to know that NRTIs, used in HIV, inhibit telomerase bc telomerase itself is an RNA-dependent DNA-polymerase, same as with reverse-transcriptase.

 

[thehundredthone]

India

I suspected as much from the way you wrote and I don't mean that in any derogatory sense at all haha. I'm from India too and I'm scheduled to give the test on 18th Oct and I really doubt an NBME now would score me at 258 let alone 268, so I jumped in to see if I could get advice from someone in a similar situation.

Maybe that's why I didn't find FA that useful.

Well I did that while reading the Kaplan books but when doing question blocks every day I find FA is an easier, more consolidated reference. I've had to add quite a lot to it though, and there's quite a bit still left to add. How long did you spend preparing, in total?

I was scoring fairly consistently in each subject.Somewhere between 80-82% for all the subjects(as is normal for anyone who does UW subjectwise). I did Pathology at the end and that's when my score went up to 85%.

Didn't you do random blocks? I'm doing random blocks, 2 a day right now and 3 a day starting next week and I'm wildly fluctuating from mid 70s to one freak score of 95 (averaging 79% right now). A lot of stupid mistakes, obviously areas I need to be more thorough with.

It was other aspects of molecular bio, things like LCR of Beta chain hemoglobin and also some question about a mutation in telomeres leading to a replication block(the answer to which I still have no clue of).

Sigh. Okay, so not something I can really prepare for.

Thanks for the prompt reply, all the best for your result.

 

[ckintuition]

Hey guys,

I'm just contributing a little advice that some may find helpful here. I know so many people "seem" to be pretty gung-ho and mysteriously do really well on this site. Whether that's true or not, shouldn't matter to you or anyone else.

I studied for this test for 6 months. It was a long frustrating road, but the way I felt after my test, was one of completion. I can't say I aced the test, or even did extremely well, but I did feel the amount of material covered and reinforced over the months was truly helpful to KNOW and not superficially understand.

I used Uworld, FA and practice NBMEs.

I started out patching up my fundamental building blocks. This is important for everyone, regardless of your starting point. Try to figure out your weakest points in your subjects, (maybe all, like myself) and crack those out through good sources, believe it or not, WIKI is great for alot of things. Try not to use FA at this time, it's a review book not a learning tool. You will be shocked at how great WIKI is for something like Pharm, when you need to reference certain agonists, antags, sulfas, etc.

After two months of solid foundation building, I started cracking out Uworld questions. Forget timing, forget your score, but DO NOT FORGET one thing, your here to learn, do it in tutor mode, take your good old time, but read every answer choice, AND every explanation. It doesn't matter if you get through 650 questions per day and did not understand any of the material. You will be impressed at yourself, when you realize through 100 questions, and reading ALL of the info, how much can overlap, and how things start to fit in place. It really takes your preparation to another level.

During the last 30 days. Plan to take an NBME exam. Some can do this as a guideline before, but I think 30 days out, is fair enough. For all you know, if I am going to score a 150 3 months out, I would rather not know. Take a higher NBME and amuse yourself, get a low score, and do not ever associate NBME tests with anything more than that 3 digit score, review ALL your wrong responses. Sometimes questions are re-used, and the biggest mistake people make is to not review what you don't know, making it a total time waster.

15 days in, try to have had First Aid read Front to Back 2-3times. Some people like to tatt it up quite a bit with information, but I always found that quite sloppy. There may be a few things you should add, (higher level Immuno, etc), but sometimes I see 4 different highlighters, 3 different pen marks, this makes it very hard to reference and briskly skim towards the end of your study. Know this book well. Its hard, its not easy to cover many pages in one day, but try to get yourself to be able to cover 1/3 of the book in a day, by the 7th day.

Review all of Uworld, quickly skim through your old tests. This is assuming you have spent the last 20-30 days knowing how to pace yourself as well. Review your old tests, not too far out from your test day, but also not 2 days before. 5-7 days, try to get through 700-800 questions, just skim, read all charts, grab the objective at the bottom and move on. No tests, no tests, no tests, just review.

Days 3-4, get your hands on all the NBME tests you can, either find old questions/exams online, pay for them, whatever, view all the questions, just review the question and the answer. Will give you a great idea how the test will be, and also give you a great idea if the question does show up 🙂

Last week before your test, FA, fast review, cover parts that are soft in your knowledge, avoid stressful areas. Know ALL NBME tests, don't memorize, UNDERSTAND. (Oh they asked a drug comparision between A1 and B1 on contractility, not Albuterol does B2 in Rats.....). Also skim through Uworld. If you do all these, I promise you, you will have the depth needed for this test.


As for the real deal. I don't know my score. I can say one thing, the breadth of knowledge required is intense. That doesn't mean you can't do it in 30 days, but it requires constant attentiveness during your first two years, and quite intense studying. I would personally spread it out, its an important exam, and no one cares how long you took, they care what you got.

Behavioral: FA has the facts laid out, but practice questions are VERY VERY important. By the time I did UW and NBME questions, with the FA behav material, there was not a single Behav question I hadn't been exposed to, methodology wise, not content wise.

Micro: Intense, but FA has all the info, UW has all the tools to apply. Memorize, learn, use UW to solidify. Plenty enough for this test, don't want to sound arrogant, Micro seemed like gimme's on this test, with this method.

Immuno: Not very long in FA. Uworld helped quite a bit to solidify the iffyness I had about many things. Some Wiki, some FA, some UW, and reviewing it with NBME tests after, made the real deal Immuno seem fair, not easy, but not hard either.

Phys: A hard subject in general. It was never a memorization subject. They can and will throw anything at you here. This will probably be the hardest to study for. For ex, even though all of FA has all the formulas and methods laid out, UW helps to integrate them, but it's still not enough. Frankly, I don't think anyone will ever be READY for phys, its not a memorization type of subject. For example they can throw in any variable into an up down arrow, and say does this hormone increase or decrease, with A-G as choices. Its hard to be SURE you got it right, especially in the time allotted.

Path: HUGE. Pathoma is great. FA has all the info, but its condensed, you need to think stuff through, do LOTS of UW questions, review pathoma, great book, great resource, and Path is generally all facts. Either this causes ERB gene problems or not, either this causes apoptosis, or it doesn't. This section felt fairly easy after the three sources are reviewed.

Biochem: Another tough subject, but UW was money here. FA is good, but how much good can you get out of pages that just have cycles on them. You needed to know in depth FADH oxidation sites in some highly detailed questions, and had to be sure not to mix it up with cycles that happen in the MIT and Cytoplasm, like urea, and those minute details. Not HARD, but lots of work. Best advice, read FA, do ALL of UW reading all explanations, thats it.



Cardio/Resp/Renal and others: FA was good, but reinforcement through UW was money. Review your knowledge with NBME questions.


Overall, I just want to say this, organization, deep breadth of knowledge is all attainable through FA, UW and NBME as a review source.

What I don't know: How I did.

What I do know: There are 322 questions. 300 or so count, the rest are experimental. They say a 60-70% is passing. Assuming 65%, thats about 190/300 needed correct.

With NBME possibly reusing or similarily using questions, with thoroughly knowing your information, and having about 20-30% of your block with easy questions. Lets do some math to feel better. 30% of 46 questions are GIMMES, trust me, they are. Beta napthy causes what type of carcinoma? Yes. Pic of granuloma in a caseating formation, what type of granuloma is this? Those types, get excited.

30% of 46, about 14 questions. I would say another 15 questions are very plausible to get correct in that block without more than 2 steps, if not detailed one steps.

Thats 29 plus lets say 2 per block from NBMEs, knowledge, etc. If we avg 30 correct per block, 16 wrong. Thats 210. 210 out of 322, however, 22 dont count. 210 out of 300, thats 70% and that is easily passing.

Guys this test isn't hard. You need discipline and need to work like you run a 14 hour surgery table. Its very do-able. Don't waste time with multiple books, etc. Do the above. 230+ guarnateed.

GOOD LUCK, I hope this helps some people out there who are silently lurking!!

 

[Singingpremed]

My permit link disappeared yesterday. Anyone else expecting or already gotten their scores today? Good luck to all!

 

[Butterfly101]

wow, about ten minutes later got the score, so I guess it can be any time. Does anyone understand the 2 digit score? I got a 266/90, which is weird to me...isn't anything over like a 230 a 99?

Congratulations on the amazing result! Well earned..umm, about the 2 digit distribution, although it doesn't reli matter anymore, I found this list which may clear things out..thanks 4 ur input btw 🙂

 

[whatdidigetinto]

Hi everybody, I am a long time viewer of SDN forums and now it's my time to contribute.
My Step 1 was on August 2. Result : 269 / 91

I am just starting my fourth year so I didn't have any rotations. So no need to feel disadvantaged if you're in a similar situation. The exam has absolutely nothing to do with rotations.

6 months of serious preperation, beginning with 3-4 hours a day, 5-6 hours a day in may and 7-8 hours in june and july.

Here are my scores in QBanks and NBME

Kaplan: 83%
Usmle World %86 Self-assesments: both +265 ( but I took both of them in the last week)

Form 6: 530 (4/22)
11: 620 (5/23)
7: 650 (6/19)
12: 670 (7/17)
13: 640 (7/28)

Free 150 taken two days before actual step 1: got 10 questions wrong

Actually I want to write a rather detailed post to explain how I prepared to help everyone I can but I'm not sure this is the right thread. Admin help me out🙂

As for the actual exam:
Behavioral Sciences:
As an IMG, behavioral science always scared me like hell. BUT I was very lucky that my exam was heavy on doctor-patient relationship questions which I felt very comfortable with thanks to Kaplan videos, and had no legal issues and ethics questions whatsoever.

Microbiology, Biochem, Pharmacology: I weep for the money I spent on RR Biochem and Microbiology. Honestly, I think there wasn't a single question from these areas in my exam that didn't have an answer in FA.

Physiology: very similar to NBMEs.

Pathology: When I started preparing for Step 1, I was impressed by Goljan's RR Patho so I recommended it to everybody. Today, I think it's an unnecessarily detailed and complicated book. Pathoma+FA+questions is enough for pathology IMO.

Nutrition, Genetics, Cell bio: FA + UW is enough.

Anatomy: I would suggest getting yourself familiar with CTs. They're explained great in Kaplan videos.

Overall the exam was slightly harder than NBMEs but had much longer questions. I had maybe 3 WTF questions. The rest of the *hard* questions could be deduced with some logic and knowledge.


Finally, for each subject getting every A+ reviewed book in FA may seem like a good idea (it did to me in the beginning) but I think it is not. The thing is, yes there may be a question on the exam one day that cannot be done with FA but done with Goljan or BRS physio. But we all have limited time and limited intelligence. FA has *by far* the highest ratio of getting questions/time dedicated.
Don't tell me you read first aid cover to cover 5 times in the month before the exam and there were so many questions on the exam that wasn't in FA. I read it every single day for 6 months but as I was reviewing in the last few days, I still spotted some little details that I skipped before.
I honestly believe that solely a good knowledge of FA will get anyone to 230-240.

Good luck with your exam!

''Anatomy: I would suggest getting yourself familiar with CTs. They're explained great in Kaplan videos.''

What's CTs?

Edit: lol i thought there were kaplan videos which taught anatomy and were known as CT's. That was silly of me.

 

[UABC]

I hope the test makers haven't gotten their hands on pathoma!!!

What is panthoma?

 

[Chirurg]

What is panthoma?

it's a fictional character created by two french writers...but read for yourself.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fantômas

 

[docemre]

Hey everybody,
I posted my step 1 experience and score a while ago. Today I finally have the time to write a detailed account of my study. I was following SDN and similar forums while I was studying for step 1 and it helped me to motivate and orient myself so I hope this post will help all of you who are still studying.
By the way, i am a 4th year international med student who just finished basic sciences.

I studied for 6 months starting from Jan 20 to the end of July. I think the last month was unnecessary and I felt so burned out. It is so hard to sustain your work when you reach peak.
In the beginning, I started by taking the free 150. Just to see where I stand. (Glad i didn't spend hours trying to find explanations because when you buy kaplan qbank there is a pdf link something like "step 1 released content solutions"). The result was about 210. I want to start off by pointing to the fact that it took me 3 months (on April 22) just to top the US average in an NBME (224vs228). I tell you this because it seems like this shouldn't have happened. I am in top 10 in my class and got through 3 years of medical school by reading Robbins, katzung, junquerra etc. I started my studies with well known kaplan lecture notes and videos. So why only a 228 after 3 months?
In retrospect, i know the reason now. After that 228, i started doing qbanks. One per month. Started with usmlerx, then kaplan and then uw. At the end of usmlerx my score jumped to 250 in the next Nbme. Three months to get from 210 to 228 and only one month to get from 228 to 250. This may be partly explained by the fact that form 11 is easier than 6 but still, it should have been the other way around( timewise). (The next month though I only increased my score by 7 and after that by 4, which is totally expected.)
My point is: Start doing qbanks early!!!!! I can not stress this enough guys. Questions banks tell you what you know, what you don't, what you need to and need not know. And also they are excellent for memorizing the content in FA cold. I didn't learn how to differentiate between transduction and transformation until I answered such questions wrong multiple times. Save UW for the last moment, pick a qbank and get started. I know that there are other qbanks in the market but here are the ones i used:
Usmlerx: Definitely my least favourite. I generally don't like the way they ask questions, the way they prepare the answers. It's like "We want to make a hard question. Let's ask about a disease that only a handful of people had in the history of universe" or "Let's take a sentence from first aid and put the verb in the beginning of the sentence so we have a question" But helps you learn FA. Do it if you have the time.
Kaplan Qbank: solid but hard. It has some really good, twisted questions. Def recommended.
UW: needs no explanation🙂
After a while you understand a pattern: same questions are asked over and over. And IMO, the earlier you have this understanding, the better for you.

Step 1 is not about obscure details. The last 2 months I only used pathoma, FA, Kaplan qbank and UW. And getting a 269 in step 1 is not about knowing those extra tough questions that they will throw at you. I didn't know that then, and in final two months focusing only on these resources, not Goljan or HY-neuroanatomy etc, I thought that I would get something in the range of 245-255. But now i can confidently say that it is about solidifying basic concepts. In the real exam, in fact, the more "low-yield" the question is, easier the answer choices are. If they are asking about berylliosis, you will get it. Believe me. You don't need goljan for that. If they are describing bone subluxation in a kid, 3 of the 5 answers will be osteosarcoma, ewing and osteomyelitis
What matters so much more is that do you know how to DIFFERENTIATE disorders. It only gets better by actually solving questions.
(Robbins qbook, by the way, i started but after finishing half of the chapters i stopped because it felt too hard. But still recommend it if you have the patience mostly because the explanations are great. )That's why just memorizing FA doesn't work. Man, in my exam so many times, a kid has a problem with an organ. And they had more than 10 answers choices all with pathologies specific to that organ. They were really easy questions, but if you had any gaps that basic knowledge of different pathologies, the sheer amount of choices would leave you in serious doubt.
Many people said it in the past. I will say it again: Read all the explanations for even the ones you get right. It might be single best advice to anyone preparing for step 1. This way it will take maybe 3 hours to get through 2 blocks, but it will be worth it.
Finally, my motto was "if it is in FA or UW, know it cold!" That's it. Don't waste your time on obscure stuff.
And Phloston, I have great respect for your passion to do the best, but I think you will feel like you wasted months after you leave the test center. I sincerely hope that you get a 280 will all that effort.
I am happy to answer any further questions, but please ask it here so that everybody can see.
Good luck!

 

[gravitywave]

Congratulations on the amazing result! Well earned..umm, about the 2 digit distribution, although it doesn't reli matter anymore, I found this list which may clear things out..thanks 4 ur input btw 🙂

that list you posted isn't accurate, if my score report has anything to say about it. then again, the two-digit score is now wholly irrelevant - so who cares.

 

[GADoctor]

I have to mirror what everyone here has said about waiting for your score......relax. I was scared to death and was reading all the forums I could find about score experiences etc. Coming out of the exam, I could only think the worst. I was exhausted, drained, and felt cheated. I felt like I had literally guessed my way through it. Obviously there were some really easy questions, but I felt like there were a significant amount of really hard ones.

Compared to the NBMEs where I had almost 5 minutes to review at the end of a block, I had almost no time on any block always timing out after answering the last one. I am lucky I have good time awareness, as I was always monitoring the time to make sure I at least answered every question. But, on some questions I felt as if I stared blankly at the screen forever thinking it was the most bonkers question. Some of them were just really hard, some obscure, and some bonkers. I am just not sure that UWorld is as hard as the actual exam. NBME is closer, but even that does not feel as hard as the real deal did.

In the end, I feel like the USMLE is an exam about educated answering. That is taking your knowledge, applying it, and going with your gut. I think if your practice exams and questions have shown good results that correlate with the score you want, and you use that method on the exam, then you have no reason to worry, no matter how you feel coming out of the exam.

I had no idea whether I would receive a 260 or 160, that is how unsure I was about the whole exam. But maybe this is because I set the bar high and never seem to reach it. Anyway here is my experience:

I spent what amounts to 2 months of study time studying everyday 8-5. I did the kaplan videos along with the end of chapter questions to ensure I understood the material. I did not like the Kaplan Qbank. I could never succeed with their questions. They were the most convoluted, obscure questions on earth. For that reason, I stuck to UWorld and NBME practice exams. The last 10-15 days were spent on First Aid.

I started with an initial NBME before studying that showed USMLE prediction of 208.
Halfway through....new NBME showed 216.
At the end, 3 new NBMEs showed around 226-238
(I did the NBMEs increasing order starting with 6 and ending with 12 I think)

Both Uworld assessments showed around 250.
Uworld question bank random first time was 78% done each day after studying.

Real Deal: 232

I wanted closer to a 250, but 232 is fine by me and I was running out of permit time, so I just went for it. Besides, I am not sure how much more I could have improved on that exam personally. Sure there were questions that I just had not studied enough. But mostly the ones I struggled on were the ones where the person has literally the possibility of having anything......imagine a pulmonary question where guy has general pulmonary complaints, then they go on to say he is a 20 pack year smoker, works in a coal mine, just got back from TB ridden Haiti, has a history of some sort of cancer, and lives in an old house (hahaha...these types I definitely stared at for awhile, prob my mouth had dropped to the table).

My absolute advice is this, make sure you can answer ALL the easy ones, because the tough ones will test you. Do not spend a lot of time on these, but a short amount of time on high yield topics in these subjects went realllllly far for me. For example, behavioral is easy on the exam, so make sure you can ace a behavioral question, especially questions where they ask you what to say next. I had a bunch of them that lifted my score very nicely. Pharm is easy on the exam so learn it and take special time to understand everything about cancer drugs. Epi, Biochem and Genetics are also easy, so I suggest you make sure you know these. Epi, you could stick to FA. Biochem and Genetics I would consider doing through Kaplan. Obviously, these are not the highest yield subjects, but I made sure that when one of these questions came along, I aced it as my score report shows, so that for every hard question I could afford to lose some points. I say this because no matter how well you know the subject on pathology and clinical questions, they can still present it in a tough way where it is almost ridiculous that you cannot answer it correctly.

Good luck to everybody and remember not to stress out. There is no way to predict what the future will hold, but stay positive. I made the mistake of worrying when I shouldn't have. Trust in your abilities to problem solve and make educated choices, and you will do great.

 

[Vidared]

Foreign med student and long time-lurker here(watching over for almost 3 years now). I took it a few days back so not all details are fresh in my mind. I took the test after the final year of med school, so I used kaplans lecture notes and goljan RR as my primary resources and Robbins, pubmed search and often wikipedia as references.
I read FA once...didn't like it much.
Special thanks to phloston(found teamrads.com through one of his posts). And also to ljn, thanks to whom I made sure I studied the venous drainage of the adrenal gland(and it actually showed up on my test) 😀

As for Qbanks I only used Uworld. I'm sure test experiences vary and someone else would disagree with me , but I personally am glad I didn't do kaplan Qbank. The few questions on my test I couldn't answer due to lack of knowledge were either 1. Some concept on molecular bio that wasn't in HY molecular bio 2. Something I probably wouldn't have answered unless I'd been reading Robbins pathology.
My scores:
UW subjectwise timed(best way to learn for someone taking the test after year 4): 85%
UW second pass: Waste of time. Don't do it! I should have just done marked and incorrect questions.
NBME 11(4 weeks out): 268
NBME 13(10 days out): 261
NBME 12 (4 days out): 252 ----This was IMO the toughest of the lot. Scared me a bit right before the exam. I gave a last revision at turbo speed the last couple of days, which gave me back a little confidence.

Day before the test: Stopped studying in the afternoon and sat and watched Batman Begins and the weekends episode of Breaking Bad. I've always been a nervous sleeper so I took a 3.75 mg Zopiclone. I didn't wanna take any chances so I tried it before my NBMEs to make sure I didn't have any nasty hangover effect.
Exam day: Got up at 6. Got ready and reached Prometric by 745. I took a couple of peanut butter sandwiches, couple of chocolate bars, some buttermilk and coffee.

Block 1,2,3: Were pretty easy(around the level of NBME 7 and 11). By the time I'd done all the questions, I was quite sure that I'd get one question wrong in each block, at the most. I ended each block with ~8 minutes left and took a 10 minute break.
Block 4: Hello hell! This one was deceptively easy at first and then threw a whole load of molecular bio curveballs at me. I did a bit of "analytical reasoning" on most and managed to get a few right.
This block exhausted me and I used all 60 minutes here. It was good that I had 50 minutes of breaktime to spend for the last 3 breaks. 🙂
Blocks 5,6,7: Moderately difficult, somewhere between NBME 11 and 13.

Overall impressions:
-Pharma on the test was ridiculously easy. To give an example, one of the questions gave me an aminoglycoside drug(#####mycin) and asked me to name what group of drug it was. In the options was, yeah that's right, aminoglycoside!!! 😀
-My test was heavy on pathophys and basic path concepts. Lots of those up and down arrow questions( thanks NBME). 😍
- One of my regrets is that I couldn't learn molecular biology better. Its a subject I love and much as I wanted to go into more depth, I didn't want to postpone my test a few more weeks just so I could answer the 2-3 questions I missed in molecular bio. There's a lot more time for learning in the future!
-Anatomy---there were a few routine questions and also one asking for the venous drainage of adrenal gland. There were a couple of questions which relied on CT interpretation. There was no history to back it up. So make sure you do those CT scan tutorials on teamrads.com thoroughly. There was one Q asking me to name a muscle which performed a certain action at the shoulder joint, so I'd suggest you all learn them cold. Its all give in a well-organised table in Wikipedia.
-Goljan RR is low yield for the exam BUT it(along with the clinical experience I've had) gave me a framework to build the rest of my knowledge on. I tried and integrated every concept I'd learnt in the other subjects to disease pathology and clinical features. In a way, I made it my FA.
-******ed low yield facts can and will show up on the test. I had a question asking me which subunits of MHC 1 bind to the TCR. I mean, come on!!! You can keep that point NBME, I aint mugging up irrelavant cr*p for you.😡
-Do try and look at what bone tumors look like on histology. Questions might give you no other info except a brief history and a Histopath section.
-Everything on the test except for maybe 10-15 questions was something I'd come across before, directly or while looking up something else.
-Micro, biochem and Immunology- Had some routine regurgitated questions.
-Ethics and Physician patient relationships- My bugbear More than a third of my NBME mistakes were in this section. My test, fortunately, felt less tricky. Still, I'm keeping my fingers crossed.

I've been checking for mistakes and until now, I might have made upto 16 mistakes(definitely incorrect+ maybe incorrect). Does any one have any idea as to how the number of mistakes relates to the score on the test? I understand it varies from test to test but I'd still like to know.

260/89.
Effed up on behavioural sciences again. 🙁 My performance profile showed I had one x in the "Low Performance" zone.
Somewhat disappointed, to be honest. But I'm sure I'll be feeling happier after a few days, once it sinks in that this isn't exactly a "bad" score. 🙂
Unbelievable as it may seem to some, I thoroughly enjoyed relearning all the basic sciences from a different perspective(2 years of clinical rotations do make a difference). To step 2 CK now!

 

[thehundredthone]

260/89.
Effed up on behavioural sciences again. 🙁 My performance profile showed I had one x in the "Low Performance" zone.
Somewhat disappointed, to be honest. But I'm sure I'll be feeling happier after a few days, once it sinks in that this isn't exactly a "bad" score. 🙂
Unbelievable as it may seem to some, I thoroughly enjoyed relearning all the basic sciences from a different perspective(2 years of clinical rotations do make a difference). To step 2 CK now!

Congratulations! That's a great score, and very respectable even by SDN standards lol. What residency are you working towards, IM? All the best for your CK prep. Hopefully I'll be doing the same 2 months from now (told myself I won't bother with Step 2CK if I don't crack 245 at least haha)

 

[Phloston]

NBME 11(4 weeks out): 268
NBME 13(10 days out): 261
NBME 12 (4 days out): 252

260/89.

Effed up on behavioural sciences again. 🙁 My performance profile showed I had one x in the "Low Performance" zone.
Somewhat disappointed, to be honest.

Do a quick calculation of your NBME average above and then look at your actual score. That is a quite beautiful prediction, really.

NBME average = 260.33... Actual score = 260.

Think of it this way: how many times have we had those occasional UWorld blocks where we get 91% (or even higher), and then we get all excited? Then of course we have those occasional ones at 72% that we try to suppress the thought of as much as possible. It's the same exact thing with the NBMEs. I would say they are strong incremental predictors when spaced months apart, but you had sat them all fairly close to the exam. My point is: realize that you are lucky to have gotten your average. It very easily could have been a 259. Be happy that you're in the 260 club.

 

[rocketbooster]

Do a quick calculation of your NBME average above and then look at your actual score. That is a quite beautiful prediction, really.

NBME average = 260.33... Actual score = 260.
.

I think this depends on when you actually take your NBMEs during your studying. If you take them spread out through your studying, I don't think an NBME average is accurate. If you're one of the normal ppl that only study 4-6 weeks, your NBMEs increase significantly each week. Your real Step 1 is most similar to your last NBME. If your last NBME was 2 days before, your score will probably be only slightly higher. If your last NBME was 1 week before, you could possibly go up 10-15 pts. My friends and I were in the last category and we all went up 10-15 pts from our last NBME (#3) 1 week earlier.

Now if you're someone who is studying 6 months+ for it and don't take your NBMEs till towards the end, then you probably peaked months ago and your average NBME is probably pretty accurate to your real score expectation.

Glad to see you're still here, Pholston! Only 2 months left now? Lol, Step 1 seems so long ago and it was only in early June for me. Rotations will wear you out. Way worse than the 1st 2 years of school. Having a solid base on Step 1 material will definitely help you out a lot, though. All the pathophys, phys, anatomy, pharm, etc. is the base you build on in clinicals. The shelf exams are more like Step 1 questions but with more a clinical twist than what you actually see in the hospital. You don't have time to relearn the basics during rotations...only time to briefly review and then add the clinical knowledge to it. So knowing Step 1 knowledge goes far beyond just getting a good score for residency. It helps you a lot on your clinical reasoning, shelf exams, and Step 2. And everyone tells me Step 2 is way easier than Step 1, so if you can knock Step 1 out of the park then you'll be good for Step 2. Also, many residencies don't care about Step 2 and the ones that do still put more emphasis on Step 1. Good luck!

 

[Phloston]

I think this depends on when you actually take your NBMEs during your studying. If you take them spread out through your studying, I don't think an NBME average is accurate. If you're one of the normal ppl that only study 4-6 weeks, your NBMEs increase significantly each week. Your real Step 1 is most similar to your last NBME. If your last NBME was 2 days before, your score will probably be only slightly higher. If your last NBME was 1 week before, you could possibly go up 10-15 pts. My friends and I were in the last category and we all went up 10-15 pts from our last NBME (#3) 1 week earlier.

Now if you're someone who is studying 6 months+ for it and don't take your NBMEs till towards the end, then you probably peaked months ago and your average NBME is probably pretty accurate to your real score expectation.

Glad to see you're still here, Pholston! Only 2 months left now? Lol, Step 1 seems so long ago and it was only in early June for me. Rotations will wear you out. Way worse than the 1st 2 years of school. Having a solid base on Step 1 material will definitely help you out a lot, though. All the pathophys, phys, anatomy, pharm, etc. is the base you build on in clinicals. The shelf exams are more like Step 1 questions but with more a clinical twist than what you actually see in the hospital. You don't have time to relearn the basics during rotations...only time to briefly review and then add the clinical knowledge to it. So knowing Step 1 knowledge goes far beyond just getting a good score for residency. It helps you a lot on your clinical reasoning, shelf exams, and Step 2. And everyone tells me Step 2 is way easier than Step 1, so if you can knock Step 1 out of the park then you'll be good for Step 2. Also, many residencies don't care about Step 2 and the ones that do still put more emphasis on Step 1. Good luck!

I probably won't even remember Step1 material by the time I get to MS3. I have two years of PhD work after my Step1 before starting MS3, and I can tell you that I'll be more than ready to move on from this stuff after I take the exam and never want to see it again. That being said, I won't take 2CK until late-2015 or early-2016 anyway, so I'll probably spend these next couple years doing light readings (e.g. 2CK SECRETS, First Aid CASES, etc.) while busting through the rest of my research, so that I won't be a deadhead come the clerkships.

As an IMG, however, the 2CK score is critically important at top residencies, so unfortunately I'll be roaming that forum a few years from now the same way I am on this one currently.

 

[med20140]

260/89.
Effed up on behavioural sciences again. 🙁 My performance profile showed I had one x in the "Low Performance" zone.
Somewhat disappointed, to be honest. But I'm sure I'll be feeling happier after a few days, once it sinks in that this isn't exactly a "bad" score. 🙂
Unbelievable as it may seem to some, I thoroughly enjoyed relearning all the basic sciences from a different perspective(2 years of clinical rotations do make a difference). To step 2 CK now!

Congrats on your score! I was wondering what day you took it & when did you receive your score report? I took it on 8/28 and I'm hoping I will get it on 9/19 (next Wednesday)

 

[exudate]

Can someone that used DIT 2012 and took the exam recently comment on whether all the extra information added in DIT 2012 (as opposed to DIT 2011) was actually helpful in the exam?

Thanks!

 

[Vidared]

Congrats on your score! I was wondering what day you took it & when did you receive your score report? I took it on 8/28 and I'm hoping I will get it on 9/19 (next Wednesday)

You'll get your score this Wednesday.

 

[med20140]

I took it on the 23rd. You'll get your score this Wednesday.

Great, thank you!

 

[med20140]

My scheduling link permit is still there, but when I click on it I get:

"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 get my results on Wednesday for sure? Also people were saying if your link disappears it means you passed? Is there any truth to this?

 

[alternatego]

My scheduling link permit is still there, but when I click on it I get:

"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 get my results on Wednesday for sure? Also people were saying if your link disappears it means you passed? Is there any truth to this?

I get the same message. We'll have to wait and see.

 

[med20140]

I get the same message. We'll have to wait and see.

What day did you take it? I took it on the 28th.

 

[alternatego]

on the 31st

 

[med20140]

Permit link is gone, looks like I'll be getting my score this week

 

[alternatego]

Permit link is gone, looks like I'll be getting my score this week

Gone for me too, pretty cool isn't it?

 

[med20140]

Gone for me too, pretty cool isn't it?

The wait is killer! Don't think I'll be sleeping much the next 2 days. 😱

 

[exudate]

You guys are going to be finneee!! you waited alll this long, 2 days will go by in no time!! hope you get the score that you want!

 

[Hussam Ezzat]

Edited

 

[alternatego]

246/86

 

[MoistHands]

246/86

Congrats...

Since I have been reading your posts for quite some time and am an img too I would like to ask you... if you would have done anything differently?

 

[med20140]

242/85 thank god!

 

[RedSoxSuck]

246/86

Congrats!

 

[skyeen]

246/86

Congrats on your score! I'm a newbie around here, and an IMG myself. I've been following your posts for some time. Could you please share your study tactics and any insight you might have on preparing for test day? If you've already shared them elsewhere, I'm sorry for re-posting here. Thank you! 🙂

 

[RedSoxSuck]

Can someone that used DIT 2012 and took the exam recently comment on whether all the extra information added in DIT 2012 (as opposed to DIT 2011) was actually helpful in the exam?

Thanks!

I honestly don't think you need DIT. I used 2010 DIT and i took my exam on friday (sept 14th). I am in the process of writing something up. But i am so lethargic right now that its not even funny.

 

[WonderBoy]

246/86

Congrats! Been following yours posts, glad things went well for you.