Prep:
- My school gave us 5.5 weeks to study. I only actually studied full-time for about 4 weeks though. I took some days off to see my family and chill out, which was good.
- First Aid: I went through this twice, once during M2 spring semester and once during dedicated.
- Pathoma: used this all through M2, re-did it again during dedicated. I'd seen most of the videos at least 3x before the exam. Like everyone says, this is clutch. Great stuff and I definitely got a fair number of questions straight out of here.
- Goljan Audio: listened to each chapter anywhere between 1-3x during M2 and dedicated, whenever I was in the gym or driving. This is an underrated resource for a lot of people, I really liked it. Got a couple of questions right from this.
- USMLERx: I finished 70% of the bank with a 72% overall. I did the first 50% on tutor by subject during my M2 classes. I did the last 20% on timed random during my dedicated period.
- UWorld: finished 100% of the bank with a 74% overall. Did the first half tutor by subject, last half was timed random. All of it was during my dedicated period. I did not re-do any of my questions.
- NBME 12 (40 days out/beginning of dedicated) - 230
- NBME 11 (23 days out) - 239
- UWSA 1 (7 days out) - 257
- UWSA 2 (6 days out) - 260
- NBME 7 (5 days out) - 249
- NBME 13 (4 days out) - 258
- Practice Test at Prometric (3 days out)- 133/138 (96%) - this is the same as the Free 150
The Test:
I felt pretty good going in to the test. I am hoping for a 240+ and would be really happy with that. My reach is a 250+. If I hit that I'll be ecstatic.
I took the exam on June 16th. Honestly I felt like it was easier than UWorld and about on par with the NBMEs I took (12, 11, 7, 13). The topics were random (obviously) but I felt like a lot of the answer choices were easier to rule out than UWorld…i.e. the wrong answers were easier to identify as being wrong.
I felt like the exam was very fair. Like hiya20 said, if you are a good test taker you will do well. I felt like 85% of the exam material was covered in First Aid, UWorld, and Pathoma. The other 15% you get from prior clinical experience, your M1/M2 years, and just being able to reason through things logically and cross-off incorrect answers.
Timing was much more of an issue than on my practice tests. I usually finished my NBMEs and UWSAs with at least 10 minutes left in a block, I basically used up all of my time on the real thing reviewing my marked questions.
One thing that threw me for a loop were a couple of safety questions. I had two questions about sterilizing equipment and 3-4 about infection control stuff. We didn’t learn that in school and I only knew the answers because of my prior work experience. I mean…c’mon. No doctor is going to be sterilizing a metal bedpan. I seriously had a question about that.
My test was heavy on musculoskeletal, anatomy, cardio, resp, micro, and pharm.
Anatomy: had a good amount of this on there. Questions about what bone is fractured, which nerve is affected, what muscle is affected, multiple chest and abdominal CTs. Most of it you’re able to reason through if you paid attention in anatomy. Most of it (I’d say 70%) was from First Aid, the rest you just had to reason through (like the CTs).
Biochem: surprisingly light…I only had maybe 5 questions.
Neuro: no brainstem slices, lucky me. One picture of a brain with “where is the lesion” stroke type question. Had a fair number of pathophys questions
Psych: couple questions to diagnose what the pt. has, couple of pharm questions
Behavioral: calculations were simple. Had three different child development questions over the exact same stuff.
I think I had one repeat from the Free 150/Prometric Practice Exam, but that was it. A lot of stuff wasn’t the exact same but it was re-hashed.
Had a couple of WTF questions asking about stuff I’d never heard of, I just tried to reason my way through those. I think I had less than 5 of those. Hopefully they’re experimental.
Honestly trust your gut. They give you things in patterns, and I know that a lot of you won’t believe this but they aren’t trying to trick you. Like Goljan says, “they give you the answer in the stem”. You’ve seen this stuff before. I know that UWorld can be like an abusive spouse and they try to trick you a lot just to proverbially beat you down but I didn’t feel like that was the case on the NBMEs or the real exam.
Like Delacoix22 said earlier you know most of the answers but sometimes they will try to get you to second guess yourself, so honestly trust your gut and if you’re not sure what the answer is just pick the one that your instinct tells you is right. Come back at the end of the block and re-read your marked questions you weren’t sure about. See if there was a word you missed or something important that would make you change your answer. If you don’t see anything that you missed, then stick with your original answer.
The day seemed to drag on, it's an exercise of mental stamina. I'm glad I brought plenty of snacks, caffeine, and some NSAIDs. I skipped the tutorial and ended up using all of my break time chilling out and talking to my classmates, we had basically taken over the Prometric center that day.
Glad it's done.
