Hey everyone, I lurked a fair amount and read all of your strategies and results while I was studying, so I figured I should share what I did. Took it about a month ago.
Schedule:
I gave myself approximately six weeks of dedicated study time. The first two weeks I did a chapter of FA each day, then did review questions related to the section I studied as well as random review blocks. I was using Rx during this time for questions.
School-administered NBME (4 weeks out): 202
I was not happy with that score - I felt that after spending two weeks studying FA, on top of my entire year of using FA while learning systems, I should do better than barely passing. I spent the third week finishing Rx and starting Kaplan’s Qbank. I spent most of my time doing questions.
NBME 7 (3 weeks out): 217
This was obviously better than a 202, but not where I wanted to be. For the next two weeks, I finished Kaplan and did UWorld. I spent almost my entire day doing questions as quickly as I could. When I say that, I mean I skimmed for buzzwords and picked the answer based on those, if possible. If I got a question right, I didn’t review it afterwards, unless I was unsure while choosing. If it was wrong, I looked it up in FA, unless it wasn’t there, in which case I annotated the fact in. I also spent a couple hours each night learning topics I didn’t master the first time around, like Biochem, Physiology, Micro, Behavioral Sciences, Pharmacology…honestly, pretty much anything that wasn’t Path.
For my last week I had the same schedule each day. UWSA or NBME in the morning, then study the previously mentioned topics / redo questions specifically on those topics in the afternoon.
UWSA 1: 256
UWSA 2: 256
NBME 11: 239
NBME 12: 247
NBME 13: 251
NBME 15: 249
NBME 16: 247
Free 150: 93%
Step 1: 247
I was fairly happy with that score. Going off my NBME scores, I wanted to break 250, but I honestly can’t complain about what I got.
Some general thoughts:
To those of you in your first year reading ahead about all this, please do yourselves a favor and learn everything well the first time around. I didn’t know much about biochemistry, very little about physiology, had ignored microbiology when we first learned it…you get the picture. Like I said above, I knew pathology well, but that was it. Sure I knew some things about the other subjects, but not enough. And I had to spend more time than I would have liked learning all that during my dedicated study period. But, perhaps this can inspire some of you that are too late to make that change. I usually scored just below average on our school exams, and although I had to spend time learning things too late, my Step 1 score was above average.
I used Pathoma and Goljan throughout the year and annotated them into FA as I went along. Pathoma was good. Goljan’s audio was great, but the book was iffy. He was definitely useful for relating physiology to certain diseases, but he also includes a lot of extra diseases that aren’t in FA. I had annotated them in, but I can’t remember them appearing anywhere except as wrong answers. Overall, judging by the NBMEs and my actual test, I’d say it’s much better to know everything in FA and know it very well, especially in regards to the biochemistry and physiological changes in disease states, than to spend your time trying to memorize obscure diseases.
I feel like the majority opinion on UWSAs was that they overpredicted (although I did read posts that said otherwise), and they overpredicted by 9 points on my score. My last week of NBMEs averaged out to 246.6, which compares very well to my actual score of 247.
How I felt about the test:
Didn’t feel like I did as well as I scored. The ethics questions had very ambiguous answers, the anatomy questions were too obscure, and there were several “follow-up test” questions on vague patient presentations. Add that in to a decent amount of “wtf” questions, and I could see why many people say that no one feels good after they finish.
It didn’t feel like UWorld to me. It felt like an NBME where the test makers decided to turn the difficulty up a notch or two. I can remember one question that was straight from UWorld, but that’s it. I’m sure there were other questions from UWorld, the NBMEs, or the free 150, but the fact that they didn’t stand out means they were easier questions that I had seen many times from multiple sources. They’re the gimme questions, like what nerve is injured in a mastectomy (not an actual question on my test).
While doing several NBMEs, I found I was good at very accurately estimating how many questions I got wrong on each test. Assuming that radar was still intact, I got twice as many wrong on the actual Step and received approximately the same score. Is the curve on the real test more lenient? Perhaps this is evidence to that, but who knows - it may have just been due to my specific set of questions. Take some NBMEs and trust your average score on those, as it seems to have worked out for many others as well as myself. For what it’s worth, although I scored about the same as the NBMEs I took, my score profile looked different. When getting upper 240s on an NBME, almost all of the bars in the performance profile were on the right side with asterisks. When getting in the upper 240s on the Step, they were still on the right, but only a few had asterisks, and most were more middly-located.
Wow, sorry for the giant wall of text, guys. I hope this helped some people. I feel like I covered everything pretty well, but I’m happy to answer any questions. Also, don't forget to call your moms today!
