Official 2013 Step 1 Experiences and Scores Thread

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Phloston

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I figure now is a good time to jump-start this thread.

Even though some of us who had taken the exam in late-2012 are still awaiting our scores (amid the holiday delays) and could technically still post within last year's thread, it is after all mid-January now, so it's probably apposite that we move forward and hope for a great year.

:luck: Cheers to 2013 :luck:
 
I've got a question for you guys:

My exam is 3 months away. I have finished USMLERx and I'm 68% finished with Kaplan. Should I go ahead and purchase the 3-month subscription to UWorld and get started on it ASAP, or would I be better served to finish up Kaplan and then buy the 2-month UWorld subscription?

I would say the latter. Finish Kaplan. 2 months for UWorld i think will suffice.
Personally, I am 5 months out and i will leave last two months for UWorld. (I am saying this because our atudy plans are in a way the same).
 
I've got a question for you guys:

My exam is 3 months away. I have finished USMLERx and I'm 68% finished with Kaplan. Should I go ahead and purchase the 3-month subscription to UWorld and get started on it ASAP, or would I be better served to finish up Kaplan and then buy the 2-month UWorld subscription?

I still have about 10wks left and I'm trying to finish kaplan now.. finished rx also... and I plan on only getting uworld for the 2months subscription... I figured if you've already knocked out both rx and kaplan and scrubbed through FA at least twice... you should be able to move through uworld quickly at 3 or 4 blocks per day...and be done in 11-16 days...I'll see how that goes...

...that would still give you a full month to do NBMEs and world assessments
 
Well tomorrow is test day. I feel as prepared as I can and I am so happy to get this done with. I will share any experiences I feel might be helpful.
 
How many days/hours do you think USMLERx takes to finish?

Well it depends on how many blocks you do per day. There are exactly 2997 questions.

I started doing them about two blocks a day while going through FA. With that plan, Its about 33 days (so more or less 5 weeks). I still have course work so with my constant breaks, I'm about half way through in a month. Plus, I am reviewing only the wrong answers, because most (not all) of the questions are based off a factoid in FA.
 
I've got a question for you guys:

My exam is 3 months away. I have finished USMLERx and I'm 68% finished with Kaplan. Should I go ahead and purchase the 3-month subscription to UWorld and get started on it ASAP, or would I be better served to finish up Kaplan and then buy the 2-month UWorld subscription?

Get started on UWorld ASAP.

UWorld takes a lot longer than you'd think, especially if you're fully reading the explanations and meticulously combing through the details.

Kaplan is flooded with minutiae. I still do recommend that people do Kaplan QBank, but given your specific question, UWorld takes >> priority over Kaplan.

If I were you, I'd spend the next two months assiduously learning UWorld and then the final month wrecking FA and the NBMEs. Done deal.
 
How many days/hours do you think USMLERx takes to finish?

It took me 8-10 hrs / 48 questions / day for 2 months to get through Rx.

That's also because I did it early in my prep and didn't know anything when I first went through it.

If you're late in your prep, I'd say double that speed is satisfactory.
 
So, my plan is to do only 2 NBME's, one on Friday, and one the Friday before my test (which is Tuesday May 7th) as self-assessment. Should I just do the two newest ones?
 
So how much pure FA reading are you guys doing per day during your dedicated period? I've been fooling around with a couple of daily study schedules in order to get myself organized (and to put off studying for my block exams tomorrow), and on paper it's looking like I could get in ~2 chapters per day on top of 2 UWorld blocks + explanations/annotations/etc. + Pathoma.

Is this reasonable? Too ambitious? Not ambitious enough? Just looking for some feedback here.

Thanks, homies.
 
So how much pure FA reading are you guys doing per day during your dedicated period? I've been fooling around with a couple of daily study schedules in order to get myself organized (and to put off studying for my block exams tomorrow), and on paper it's looking like I could get in ~2 chapters per day on top of 2 UWorld blocks + explanations/annotations/etc. + Pathoma.

Is this reasonable? Too ambitious? Not ambitious enough? Just looking for some feedback here.

Thanks, homies.

its reasonable if your not going through everything for the first time.


Anyone know how much syndromes are tested on Step 1. I remember golijan saying that syndromes are tested on step 2 as opposed to 1. Any detailed minutiae likely to be a syndrome?
 
its reasonable if your not going through everything for the first time.

By the time I begin my dedicated period, I will have made somewhere around two passes, so it's not like it will be my first time digesting the material.

I guess what I'm asking is how are you guys actually reading FA during your dedicated period? I mean, are you just passively re-reading the chapters and all the annotations you've made and trying to just absorb as much as you can?
 
By the time I begin my dedicated period, I will have made somewhere around two passes, so it's not like it will be my first time digesting the material.

I guess what I'm asking is how are you guys actually reading FA during your dedicated period? I mean, are you just passively re-reading the chapters and all the annotations you've made and trying to just absorb as much as you can?

Exactly.Plus trying to memorize some topics.
 
By the time I begin my dedicated period, I will have made somewhere around two passes, so it's not like it will be my first time digesting the material.

I guess what I'm asking is how are you guys actually reading FA during your dedicated period? I mean, are you just passively re-reading the chapters and all the annotations you've made and trying to just absorb as much as you can?

I'm memorizing it word for word, and any charts in there I'm memorizing them cold (basically rewritting them everyday). It takes me about 4-5 hours per day to write out all the charts, but its worth it because my foundation is getting better.
 
By the time I begin my dedicated period, I will have made somewhere around two passes, so it's not like it will be my first time digesting the material.

I guess what I'm asking is how are you guys actually reading FA during your dedicated period? I mean, are you just passively re-reading the chapters and all the annotations you've made and trying to just absorb as much as you can?

Each pass I notice new things...not sure how many times I've read the endocrine section but just really had it sink in for the first time that the adrenal cortex is mesenchymal in origin and not neural crest. Though I never really thought of it, that easily would have been a knee jerk answer to a question I would have answered incorrectly before today.
 
By the time I begin my dedicated period, I will have made somewhere around two passes, so it's not like it will be my first time digesting the material.

I guess what I'm asking is how are you guys actually reading FA during your dedicated period? I mean, are you just passively re-reading the chapters and all the annotations you've made and trying to just absorb as much as you can?

I think active learning is still the way to go. You can passively read material that you know already (just to see it again) but things you find difficult should be focused on as if you will never come across that material again.

Certain charts/concepts it would definitely help to write them out and review them regularly. Someone had mentioned that earlier in this thread as well, and they scored extremely well.
 
I love this thread.

Thank you guys for your input. It's such a huge advantage to be able to bounce ideas off you all and get such different perspectives.

You guys rock.
 
Took the test today and thought it was extremely hard. Not much was directly from first aid. I am a bit discouraged.

Can you elaborate more? What about the test made you think it was not directly from first aid? (not a lot auto recall questions, pictures, was it asking for information one step ahead of what was in FA?). Can you give a break down of the amount of questions you got for each subject plz.

Cheer up by the way because I'm sure you conquered the beast as best as any individual can...with heart.
 
Took the test today and thought it was extremely hard. Not much was directly from first aid. I am a bit discouraged.

Did you take any NBME's/UWorld Self assessment beforehand? Any comparison to them?

Either way don't dwell on it, go out and celebrate for 3 weeks, nothing you can do until then anyway.
 
Can you elaborate more? What about the test made you think it was not directly from first aid? (not a lot auto recall questions, pictures, was it asking for information one step ahead of what was in FA?). Can you give a break down of the amount of questions you got for each subject plz.

Cheer up by the way because I'm sure you conquered the beast as best as any individual can...with heart.

For my prep I did all of uworld plus my missed questions all of Kaplan plus all my missed questions and all of Rx plus my missed questions. I did pathoma and first aid twice. And almost all of DIT plus all of kaplan high Yield videos.

My test was extremely biochem/genetics and neuro heavy. Many of the neuro questions were not discussed in first aid and I only recognized from reading high yield neuro. Also I got at least 15 anatomy questions. Some that really tested your knowledge of exact dermatomes and even muscle attachment sites and tendon attachments. I never run out of time on exams but on one section I had 30 seconds left. I also got several odd research error questions that weren't discussed in first aid. Cancer staging killed me. I had 4 questions on that. Two just by histo. As for my scores before. I had scored 235 on my last 3 NBMEs 15 was the last I took. I took the second Uworld a week before the exam and got 252 and 93% when I went to sit for the practice 6 days ago. I'll be happy if I get 215 on the real deal.
 
Hi all, long time lurker but I took the exam today and this thread was pretty useful for my prep (even if highly stress-inducing with all the 260+ and whatnot...) so I thought I'd share how it went/what I did to prepare.

Prep: Went through Kaplan QBank sort of halfheartedly during coursework (my general thoughts are that it is more random-detail-oriented vs. thinking-oriented, but didn't have enough detail for our block exams so I stopped using it. The questions also always felt like they were trying to trick me, which is a terrible mindset to get into for real board questions). 4 weeks of serious prep after classes ended (2 blocks of UWorld each day, review + 1 FA chapter with at least 2-3 hours a day spent reviewing missed questions/memorization), probably 12-14 hours/day studying.

UWorld was probably my best resource, FA was great for getting facts but very concepts from FA showed up on the exam directly. Also tried to get through 2-3 chapters of Step 1 Secrets each day (which I highly recommend, it's an easy read, helps nail down concepts, and is good about cross-referencing material from different organ systems). Between these three sources I felt pretty well covered and would use WebPath for systems-based path review after doing the relevant chapter in FA.

Practice Scores:
4 weeks out: UWSA1: 222, NBME11:233
3 weeks out: UWSA2: 247
1 week out: NBME15: 257
3 days out: NBME13: 259
2 days out: Free 150: 93%
UWorld percent: last week was 78%, started at 63% and finished with 74% overall. I would NOT recommend using UWorld as anything other than a learning tool, the percentages are very difficult to interpret and most med students are neurotic enough (present company included) to make worrying about yet another number just more anxiety than it's worth.

The actual test was... not so great. Very few questions were directly from First Aid (and I whiffed on 4 of those), but I felt that I had seen questions similar to the material before in UWorld or on the NBMEs. Maybe I got a difficult set of blocks, but most questions required at least 2 steps of reasoning and most required >=3(!) - e.g. ID the organism from an image, recognize the best treatment for the organism, answer with the mechanism for that treatment. Lots of questions that weren't straight recall - graph interpretation, arrows, that sort of thing.

Walked out feeling like it didn't go so well and will be thrilled with anything >230 (stupidly, I looked up the ones I was unsure about in agonizing detail and am pretty confident about missing at least 20... but I'm also not sure that the curve is as strict as SDN lore would have one believe, so idk). The next few weeks I'll just distract myself so I don't have to think about it. 🙂

By subject, I felt that micro, biostat, and pharm were underrepresented (probably only 2-3 each of micro and pharm per block and <1 biostat per block), while neuro was well-represented along with embyro (got some very tough ones that I pretty much had to make an educated guess on). Phys and path (esp. for respiratory and renal) were big time. I only had 1 two-part question and two audio, both of which you didn't really need the audio to figure out. Some blocks definitely felt harder than others, so don't panic if that happens to you.

All in all, I felt that my prep time was adequate (most of the FA whiffs were due to second-guessing myself). Trust your gut! And take breaks, those help tremendously in getting refocused and ready for the next block, even if you just leave the center to walk around for a bit. Take the day before the exam off - if you haven't learned it by then, it's not going to stick, and relaxing will help you more with the test than cramming a few more factoids.

Good luck to everyone who hasn't taken it yet!
 
Took the test today and thought it was extremely hard. Not much was directly from first aid. I am a bit discouraged.

I'd be surprised if you get anything less than a 230. Your prep was way more thorough than mine. You hit all 3 Qbanks! Your starting foundation was stronger as well. You just don't belong in the 210 club, we reject you for being overqualified. ;-)

Most importantly: Congrats on being done!
 
For my prep I did all of uworld plus my missed questions all of Kaplan plus all my missed questions and all of Rx plus my missed questions. I did pathoma and first aid twice. And almost all of DIT plus all of kaplan high Yield videos.

My test was extremely biochem/genetics and neuro heavy. Many of the neuro questions were not discussed in first aid and I only recognized from reading high yield neuro. Also I got at least 15 anatomy questions. Some that really tested your knowledge of exact dermatomes and even muscle attachment sites and tendon attachments. I never run out of time on exams but on one section I had 30 seconds left. I also got several odd research error questions that weren't discussed in first aid. Cancer staging killed me. I had 4 questions on that. Two just by histo. As for my scores before. I had scored 235 on my last 3 NBMEs 15 was the last I took. I took the second Uworld a week before the exam and got 252 and 93% when I went to sit for the practice 6 days ago. I'll be happy if I get 215 on the real deal.

This has made me go into panic mode.. I'm sure your focusing more on the questions you felt uneasy about & did fine. A 252 on an NBME is amazing & your real score will reflect that.
 
This has made me go into panic mode.. I'm sure your focusing more on the questions you felt uneasy about & did fine. A 252 on an NBME is amazing & your real score will reflect that.

Wait till her awesome score comes out before you consider going into panic mode. It's an expected day of exam response.
 
Wait till her awesome score comes out before you consider going into panic mode. It's an expected day of exam response.

True but all the neuroanatomy makes me super anxious.. I really feel like this area is being tested so much more then last year (most of my friends who wrote it last year barely had any)
 
Took the test today and thought it was extremely hard. Not much was directly from first aid. I am a bit discouraged.

I took it 3 weeks ago and felt the same way. I went into it with 4 recent NBME's in the 250-260 range. I hope the score comes back this week. :scared:
 
Hi all, long time lurker but I took the exam today and this thread was pretty useful for my prep (even if highly stress-inducing with all the 260+ and whatnot...) so I thought I'd share how it went/what I did to prepare.

Prep: Went through Kaplan QBank sort of halfheartedly during coursework (my general thoughts are that it is more random-detail-oriented vs. thinking-oriented, but didn't have enough detail for our block exams so I stopped using it. The questions also always felt like they were trying to trick me, which is a terrible mindset to get into for real board questions). 4 weeks of serious prep after classes ended (2 blocks of UWorld each day, review + 1 FA chapter with at least 2-3 hours a day spent reviewing missed questions/memorization), probably 12-14 hours/day studying.

UWorld was probably my best resource, FA was great for getting facts but very concepts from FA showed up on the exam directly. Also tried to get through 2-3 chapters of Step 1 Secrets each day (which I highly recommend, it's an easy read, helps nail down concepts, and is good about cross-referencing material from different organ systems). Between these three sources I felt pretty well covered and would use WebPath for systems-based path review after doing the relevant chapter in FA.

Practice Scores:
4 weeks out: UWSA1: 222, NBME11:233
3 weeks out: UWSA2: 247
1 week out: NBME15: 257
3 days out: NBME13: 259
2 days out: Free 150: 93%
UWorld percent: last week was 78%, started at 63% and finished with 74% overall. I would NOT recommend using UWorld as anything other than a learning tool, the percentages are very difficult to interpret and most med students are neurotic enough (present company included) to make worrying about yet another number just more anxiety than it's worth.

The actual test was... not so great. Very few questions were directly from First Aid (and I whiffed on 4 of those), but I felt that I had seen questions similar to the material before in UWorld or on the NBMEs. Maybe I got a difficult set of blocks, but most questions required at least 2 steps of reasoning and most required >=3(!) - e.g. ID the organism from an image, recognize the best treatment for the organism, answer with the mechanism for that treatment. Lots of questions that weren't straight recall - graph interpretation, arrows, that sort of thing.

Walked out feeling like it didn't go so well and will be thrilled with anything >230 (stupidly, I looked up the ones I was unsure about in agonizing detail and am pretty confident about missing at least 20... but I'm also not sure that the curve is as strict as SDN lore would have one believe, so idk). The next few weeks I'll just distract myself so I don't have to think about it. 🙂

By subject, I felt that micro, biostat, and pharm were underrepresented (probably only 2-3 each of micro and pharm per block and <1 biostat per block), while neuro was well-represented along with embyro (got some very tough ones that I pretty much had to make an educated guess on). Phys and path (esp. for respiratory and renal) were big time. I only had 1 two-part question and two audio, both of which you didn't really need the audio to figure out. Some blocks definitely felt harder than others, so don't panic if that happens to you.

All in all, I felt that my prep time was adequate (most of the FA whiffs were due to second-guessing myself). Trust your gut! And take breaks, those help tremendously in getting refocused and ready for the next block, even if you just leave the center to walk around for a bit. Take the day before the exam off - if you haven't learned it by then, it's not going to stick, and relaxing will help you more with the test than cramming a few more factoids.

Good luck to everyone who hasn't taken it yet!

So the exam questions weren't anything on the same level as nbme's in respect to those 2-3 step questions/graphs?
 
I am having a test day panic but if nothing else I recommend reading some type of high yield neuro anatomy. I got so many neuro questions that I could not answer from first aid.

I have been looking up questions I missed and am at about 20-22 right now. So fingers crossed I feel worse than I did. I really studied like mad and was pretty disappointed in myself but I have to move on and hope for the best.
 
So the exam questions weren't anything on the same level as nbme's in respect to those 2-3 step questions/graphs?

I'd say that some of the questions were on the same level as the harder NBME ones, but at least on my form there were less gimmes and some of the 2-3 step questions would have a harder starting point. There were definitely questions that went beyond the level of the ones on the NBME's I took, but I'm willing to bet that those were experimental. It's hard to judge in retrospect and very easy to second guess yourself (and of course you only remember the hard ones...).
 
Yeah, I've always heard FA neuro doesn't cut it. But in reality, FA is solid for most of the exam.

People scoring 250+ on practice exams probably did fine and are suffering from too much sdn.
 
I'd say that some of the questions were on the same level as the harder NBME ones, but at least on my form there were less gimmes and some of the 2-3 step questions would have a harder starting point. There were definitely questions that went beyond the level of the ones on the NBME's I took, but I'm willing to bet that those were experimental. It's hard to judge in retrospect and very easy to second guess yourself (and of course you only remember the hard ones...).

I agree with the multi steps and also almost complete absence of buzz words as I expected so reading the high yield section of first aid made little difference. I felt like they were testing on core concept knowledge. If you have an excellent foundation you can reason out the multi steps. If you just rely on first aid you have a broad understanding and will be able to get the easier questions.
 
I agree with the multi steps and also almost complete absence of buzz words as I expected so reading the high yield section of first aid made little difference. I felt like they were testing on core concept knowledge. If you have an excellent foundation you can reason out the multi steps. If you just rely on first aid you have a broad understanding and will be able to get the easier questions.

Im sure you guys did well, the nbme's are very predictive. And for only missing ~25 out of 325+ questions that is really good!
 
Oh and I also did Firecracker throughout the year. That actually helped me the most with the weird questions.
Took it in the first week of April. Felt nauseated after I was done and the last block surely didn't help the feeling as I was manhandled and owned completely. My last three NBME were 11 12 and 13 and my scores were 228 228 and 226. I have frequent nightmares about my test and at times I think what if I don make it, if i don't pass the test. Initially I was going for 230+ but I would be content with a 220.
Is this feeling normal?
I am scared how the score would turn out. I tried my best and having this feeling is so discouraging.
 
For my prep I did all of uworld plus my missed questions all of Kaplan plus all my missed questions and all of Rx plus my missed questions. I did pathoma and first aid twice. And almost all of DIT plus all of kaplan high Yield videos.

My test was extremely biochem/genetics and neuro heavy. Many of the neuro questions were not discussed in first aid and I only recognized from reading high yield neuro. Also I got at least 15 anatomy questions. Some that really tested your knowledge of exact dermatomes and even muscle attachment sites and tendon attachments. I never run out of time on exams but on one section I had 30 seconds left. I also got several odd research error questions that weren't discussed in first aid. Cancer staging killed me. I had 4 questions on that. Two just by histo. As for my scores before. I had scored 235 on my last 3 NBMEs 15 was the last I took. I took the second Uworld a week before the exam and got 252 and 93% when I went to sit for the practice 6 days ago. I'll be happy if I get 215 on the real deal.


That is insane... damn... tumor staging from histo... :scared:
 
Guys which one of the above is true? I mean we all start hearing about tests that FA was of little help.. But there are still some people stating FA + UW is the way to go.
Is anything changing that we should be aware of?
 
Guys which one of the above is true? I mean we all start hearing about tests that FA was of little help.. But there are still some people stating FA + UW is the way to go.
Is anything changing that we should be aware of?

FA and uworld are good for review but you MUST know your foundation. If you did well the first 2 years of medical school and things are still fresh than that type of review is probably all you need. I was in a different situation because I had taken 2 years off between first and second year so I had to rebuild my foundation. I wish I spent more time doing some of the book reviews that they mention in the back of first aid like BRS and high yield. Especially biochem. I started reading rapid review but got bored.
Plus it seems everybody's test is a little different. I happened to get a test heavy on 2 areas I don't feel as strong in. And as for histo Staging I am praying it was a test question and not the real deal.
 
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