Well, here's my scores and i take it tomorrow:
4.5 weeks out nbme (provided by school): 188
uworld 59% first pass
nbme 7 2 weeks out: 232
USMLE practice test 1 10 days out: 242
USMLE practice test 2 10 days out: 236
nbme 15 8 days out: 228
nbme 16 3 days out: 224
free 150 day before: 86.6% (translates to 253 on medfriends.org when rounded to 87%)
real thing: tomorrow, who knows.
goals:
245+=throw a party
240+=high fives all around
235+=fist pump
230+=pat myself on the back
225+=still alright
220+=could have done worse
<220=well, i guess i will have to improve my CV somehow
can I trade my free 150 score?
Well I took the test today (yesterday the 12th)
I crushed the first block. Blocks 5 and 6 were the tough ones for me. By block 7 I was shooting from the hip, but still felt pretty good about most of my answers in block 7... i was probably tired at that point, and just ready to get it over with so I was convincing myself my answers were good. Overall, I feel pretty good about it. I feel without a doubt I passed, which is good because I'm in the bottom 10-15% of my class. I also took a break after every section and used up almost all of my time on every block. I had to scramble at the end at a couple blocks. I always highlight salient info in the questions and read slowly, and try to guess the answer before looking at choices, so using all the time and cutting it close was expected for me. I ate food or drank a portion of a V8 energy drink between blocks. I never take questions hungry, thirsty, or uncaffeinated. I always keep the blood sugar up during testing
🙂 Bring earplugs! we had a cougher in our testing room... literally coughing every 5 to 7 seconds or more the entire time.
There weren't a whole lot of obvious buzzwords. However, there were alot of
disguised buzzwords and
disguised classical scenarios. There were lots of questions where I felt I knew it immediately, almost to the point where I was second guessing myself wondering if I was missing something. There also seemed to be a crapload of increased/decreased/nochange... blah blah blah questions with like 6 or more answer choices and three or four columns of variables. so annoying.
There was a bunch of pharm that I didn't know. Some of the pharm was all about obscure side effects and interactions. I knew pharm was my weakest going in, so this is not a surprise to me. Unfortunately, I didn't get a second chance to review pharm as I had wanted.
Know your biostats formulas. I literally did not study that at all, looked at the formulas in the back of first aid the night before, and morning of and got two or three questions right because of it. That felt awesome (and kind of cheap too, haha).
I don't understand why people get upset when they get really hard questions. The whole thing is graded on a curve, so if you get a hard test, chances are whoever took that same test also thought it was hard and will be curved accordingly. I feel my step 1 was easier than expected so I imagine the curve system will hurt me more than help. I would say that my questions were easier than uworld, slightly more difficult than the free 150, harder than nbme 7, about the same as nbme 15, and easier than nbme 16.
Predictions: anywhere from 210-250. who knows, my prep scores were a little all over the place and I didn't have nearly as much dedicated time as most people take for this exam.
