I take it Friday, here are my numbers:
Did ~60% of USMLERX, I think the % was roughly mid 60s.
UWorld 74% (upper 60's starting, last third of it I averaged ~80%, Finished a few weeks ago)
^Incorrects ~90%
CBSE 250 (1 month out)
NBME 12 247 (5/22)
NBME 13 251 (5/29)
UWSA 1 265 (6/5)
NBME 7 260 (6/9)
NBME 11 251 (6/11)
UWSA 2 265 (6/13)
NBME 15 254 (6/15)
NBME 16 249 (6/17)
I used FA/Uworld/Pathoma for 95% of my prep. Read FA 3x, starting with ~10-20 pages each day back in January, with random Rx questions every other day or so. Last pass did 45 pages a day. Used Pathoma during coursework religiously, probably have gone through each chapter 3-4x, some sections more. Started UWorld in April, annotated everything I thought mattered into FA-->read FA for the 3rd time. I kept a log of my missed questions written as one-liners from each missed UWorld question and each missed NBME question and reviewed these a little each day.
The other 5% was with pharmcards and microcards, which I do think helped if only for the breaking up the monotony of reading FA. I would just grab a random card from a huge mixed pile I had and read about a bug/drug. My scores in these two areas remained high throughout, so I do feel like this has helped my retain the "crammable" info.
My goal is >250, hopefully my test won't by Behavioral heavy 🙂 I will post soon after with my experience.
This thread has been extremely helpful for me while studying. The advice and motivation have been great. I'll do my best to offer up any helpful advice in return. Good luck!
I took the exam yesterday. Yes, the question stems were longer than NBMEs and UWorld. Yes, some questions didn't seem to have the right answer. And yes, I felt a little more pressed for time. However, my form at least was FAIR. ~80% of it came from FA/UWorld/Pathoma. ~50% concepts were questioned in their classical question scenarios with no trickiness. I think it was much more like UWorld in question style.
My exam was a good balance of everything, honestly. Systems were mixed pretty evenly. If anything stood out I would have to say Pulm and Renal were covered more than others but not by much. For subjects: I felt like my exam had more "general principle" type questions than anything else. A lot of stuff from the first 3 Pathoma chapters popped up (praise be to Sattar). As others have said, Immuno was tested in terms of both concepts and diseases. Know your Humoral/Cell-mediated responses and how they interact well. I think a "big picture" understanding of immunology will take you far on a lot of the questions. FYI the new Pathoma material in chapter 2 scored me 2 questions I would not have gotten otherwise. Micro and Pharm were straight forward, either you knew the bug/drug or you didn't. As others have said, FA Pharm is all you need. If you are in a crunch with Pharm-focus on the mechanisms. I had ~30 Pharm questions and >2/3 literally just asked which drug has blah blah mechanism, basically. Know parasites and their treatment! Don't skimp that stuff. Anatomy was well represented, but again, the same concepts in the NBMEs and UW showed up and were VERY familiar. Brachial plexus and Lower limb anatomy=key. The anatomy I had that wasn't in FA/UW just involved spatial awareness of what nerves are where..etc. Like the inferior vesical artery is nowhere near the spleen right? That kind of awareness. Biostats questions were straightforward as well, or just required you to think a step to the left of what you had learned.
In terms of questions people are worried about:
1) "Next best step". These were straight forward for me, and I only had maybe 5-6. The stem seemed like it was leading me to the correct choice and it usually involved the most emergent option for the patient. I think if you focus on what they tell you in the question you don't have to try and remember anything.
2) Ethics. I only had about 5-6 of these and I won't lie a few of them came down to picking between two "correct" choices. I was able to reason through these after I read the stem again most of the time.
3) Anatomy: See above. FA covered ~75% of this, the rest I felt I could reason through based on what they gave me in the image or what I knew about the body region.
Overall, my advice would be to do what others have said: Know FA/UW/Pathoma. Seriously 80% of my exam came from this stuff. Also, for the random questions, don't be intimidated if it wasn't in any of the prep materials. I recognized something I had seen before in all of those WTF questions. The tricky part are the answer choices. I kind of had an idea what they were talking about in these WTF questions, but the answer choices didn't give you any help. I just went with what was the most familiar and didn't think twice. Be confident that you are prepared and have a clear head.
Test day advice: Sleep. Seriously go to bed at 8 the night before and get >8 hrs of sleep. My last few days of prep I was averaging about 6 hours of sleep for 5 days in a row and it showed in my stupid mistakes on NBMEs. I was refreshed and focused during the real thing after getting 2-3 nights of amazing sleep, no matter what. Also, take more food than you need and take a variety. You won't know what you feel like eating that day, or if you'll have time between breaks. I took the test in 2-2-1-1-1 blocks with breaks between, which helped immensely. I had to calm down after the first 5-10 questions because I was spazzing, then I realized it wasn't that bad. I anticipated long stems (and they all were) so I tried to just read faster and move through the blocks without any hiccups. You WILL get screwed on timing if you get hung up on 2-3 questions. For me, going through the questions relatively quickly then going back to my marks was helpful. I marked ~10 questions a block, but reviewed every question. I usually finished each block with about 20 minutes left, which was my goal. It helps to allow enough time. For every block there were 5 that were toss ups where I had to just guess and move on. Be comfortable doing this! I think this mindset really made me more focused and I got a lot of easy questions right by moving on from harder questions and forgetting them as soon as the block was over.
Good luck! If anyone has any questions please ask.
