Official 2015 Step 1 Experiences and Scores Thread

[KushWeedNuggetsStankyLeg]

M2 here. Starting today, I am just going to be reviewing for Step 1 which I am taking next May, and nothing else. Here is my plan:

Oct 23-Dec 31: Memorize FA2014, Watch all of Pathoma
Jan 1-Jan 31: FA2015, Pathoma (pass 2), Kaplan QBank
Feb 1-Feb 28: FA2015 (pass 2), Pathoma (pass 3), USMLERX
March 1- March 31: FA2015 (pass 3), Pathoma (pass 4): UWorld
April 1- Mid May: FA2015 (pass 4), Pathoma (selective topics), UWorld (pass 2), all practice tests

Goal: High number

---

Members don't see this ad.

 

[srilankangirl89]

my hands are so numb from writing notes from UW questions…omg sometimes the pain is so bad its around my MCP joints i will like to type but i like writing because it helps me remember more….i really can't wait to be done with this exam its sucking the life out of me…some times i want to take a break but then i plan to write my exam july 10 and taking a break might be dangerous at this point because i still have not finished UW still have 25% left, haven't finished my pathoma videos but am on my third pass of FA…. i really envy those who are done with step 1

I know how you feel! Stay strong, you seem to be doing well. You're almost there!

 

[wtr24]

my hands are so numb from writing notes from UW questions…omg sometimes the pain is so bad its around my MCP joints i will like to type but i like writing because it helps me remember more….i really can't wait to be done with this exam its sucking the life out of me…some times i want to take a break but then i plan to write my exam july 10 and taking a break might be dangerous at this point because i still have not finished UW still have 25% left, haven't finished my pathoma videos but am on my third pass of FA…. i really envy those who are done with step 1

You have plenty of time to get through Uworld. Each block is somewhere around ~2% of of the total (or it was when I took it), so you are looking at roughly 12-13 block. Do 2-3/day and you can be done in 4-6 days. Im not saying that you should, simply that you could and it would be doable.

 

[CholoBolo]

Just took it today, first blocks not too bad about the same as nbmes. Last 5 were pretty much impossible. Very long stems, tons of experimentals, vague presentations, similar answer choices, only about 50% I've seen from UFAP. Some difficult questions included multiple in depth pathophys of environmentally caused diseases, including one that was not in RR and I couldn't even google. Anatomy was also not easy, most of which were not in UFAP. Drugs were tough, about half I wasn't sure of. For reference I got a 97 on the nbme pharm shelf and averaged 270 on nbme practice exams. I don't mean to scare anyone, maybe I just got a crazy hard form, but this made uworld seem like a joke. Do we know for sure forms are curved differently? Else I feel pretty screwed.

 

[imk90]

Just took it today, first blocks not too bad about the same as nbmes. Last 5 were pretty much impossible. Very long stems, tons of experimentals, vague presentations, similar answer choices, only about 50% I've seen from UFAP. Some difficult questions included multiple in depth pathophys of environmentally caused diseases, including one that was not in RR and I couldn't even google. Anatomy was also not easy, most of which were not in UFAP. Drugs were tough, about half I wasn't sure of. For reference I got a 97 on the nbme pharm shelf and averaged 270 on nbme practice exams. I don't mean to scare anyone, maybe I just got a crazy hard form, but this made uworld seem like a joke. Do we know for sure forms are curved differently? Else I feel pretty screwed.

Now thats scary!!!!!

 

[pd1112]

@seminoma @sloop @pd1112

Congratulations on being done with exam and sharing your experiences throughout. Now that you guys have taken the test, would you still say UFAP is the best source for it? Would adding Goljan RR path make any difference if I have enough time to read it all? Thanks and good luck!!

I used RR Path nearly as much as I used FA because I love Goljan's style and explanations. I also listened to him almost every day during MS2 and every day during dedicated. I don't want to sound too controversial and I don't know my score yet, so I won't strongly recommend anything one way or another, but I found RR Path very helpful during dedicated.

 

[pd1112]

Just took it today, first blocks not too bad about the same as nbmes. Last 5 were pretty much impossible. Very long stems, tons of experimentals, vague presentations, similar answer choices, only about 50% I've seen from UFAP. Some difficult questions included multiple in depth pathophys of environmentally caused diseases, including one that was not in RR and I couldn't even google. Anatomy was also not easy, most of which were not in UFAP. Drugs were tough, about half I wasn't sure of. For reference I got a 97 on the nbme pharm shelf and averaged 270 on nbme practice exams. I don't mean to scare anyone, maybe I just got a crazy hard form, but this made uworld seem like a joke. Do we know for sure forms are curved differently? Else I feel pretty screwed.

Yeah, this is the prototypical post-exam response of high scorers. No guarantees, but I'd be willing to bet on 260+.

 

[sloop]

@CholoBolo

They equate administrations based on the difficulty of questions they contain. This is pretty much the point of standardized testing. They don't give the exact same test to everyone, so how else do you suppose it is standardized?

 

[pd1112]

Forgot to write this in my original 2 posts, but embryo on my exam was straight forward if you knew the embryo well. I think I had 5 embryo questions, 4 were about branchial pouches/arches/clefts. One was about apoptosis or something obvious. Anyway, all of the questions about pouches/arches/clefts were straight forward (e.g. patient is born without a thymus, what structure failed to develop?), but each time all of the pouches/arches/clefts were answer choices. So that's what... 4 pouches, 5 arches, 4 clefts? Idk, but each one of them was an answer choice so there really was no hope to guess correctly.

Crazy. I can't remember a single embryo question. I had several maternal-fetal health type questions, but no straight-up embryo that I can recall.

 

[pd1112]

Question for you guys about guessing/timing. So often when I'm taking a test, I get hung up on a question without realizing that I've spent 4-5 mins and it puts me real behind. The issue is when I realize it, I've still not arrived at an answer and often then just mark it and come back just to waste more time at the end on it. This is annoying because it's usually a question that I am stuck between 2-3 choices and am agonizing over which one is correct. It's especially bad when its a question that I know I should know and have learned previously, but cannot remember the detail that I had learned (I often waste time hoping that the answer will come back to me).

What do you guys when you approach a question that you don't know? What about when you start trying to answer a question, only to spend more time than you anticipated? I often think to myself I've already invested all this time, do I really want to mark it and come back to it and waste more time having to reread/start from scratch or just spend the last little bit to answer it. I understand a lot of you probably master answering and moving on, but I have trouble even on the questions I have no idea for, bc I think to myself that there's always something I can pick from the stem/choices to try to narrow things down a little or come to an answer.

Lastly, how do you guys approach your guessing when you are between 2 answers that you can think of pros/cons for each choice? I spend waaaay too much time weighing these when I'm stuck and it legit bugs me to pick one choice so I just sit there. It's terrible. Thanks for your help!

I did the same thing you are doing and I ran out of time on a few blocks as I mentioned, so don't do that. Just try to be conscious of the clock and move on when you need to.

 

[theacks1]

Took it today, first the good stuff. (Note, I am horrible at remembering questions after short exams, let alone 300 questions, so everything will likely be underestimated.

I want to be as detailed as possible, without overstepping bounds. Sorry if I go too far, and I'll edit as needed.

Anatomy: Definitely an emphasis on my exam. I had several questions per block, probably similar numbers to Seminoma. During the last block, I thought, "I've had a lot of anatomy," and counted seven on that last block. Two you would probably know from path (where is this tumor located), but five were straight up gross anatomy. Not a whole lot of neuro, but many musculoskeletal, several vascular, and at least one lymph node drainage. A fair bit of pelvic, but a good representation from head to toe. A couple of gross brainstem pick the cranial nerve, but no sections that I recall. I'm sure most were in UFAP, but there were several I don't remember seeing.
Embryo: Four that I remember, probably more. Two simple pharyngeal derivatives (what pharyngeal structure is affected? arch 1, arch 2, cleft 3, etc.).
Cardiac: Two twelve lead EKGs. Two auscultations, that I had ideas from the vignette, but needed the audio to get it to one. And figuring out which site the murmur was loudest was not as easy as I'd hoped.
Biochem: A couple questions each block, nothing seemed too tricky.
Micro: Mostly straight forward. Three parasite questions, including a choose the picture of the parasite causing the patient's disease.
Other: Two incontinence, both very straight forward classic presentation what's the diagnosis. One developmental milestone I remember, pretty straight forward.
No videos, no sequential questions.

Now for my personal experiences. First off, some demographics. USIMG, major Caribbean school. Five weeks dedicated study. Near as I can tell, I'm somewhere around the 80th percentile in my class. 35+ MCAT many years ago. Took four NBMEs over the last two weeks, scores floated between 245 and 254, with an average of 250, and got a 93% official prometric FRED150 two weeks before my date.

I agree with the cohort that all but two or three questions were clear in what they were asking. Some were clearly asking for something nobody would know, but they were not trying to trick you. That being said, I remember very few straight gimme questions. Most were either uncommon presentations or multi step reasoning. I typically mark about 10 questions per block of 50 on the NBMEs, and get 5 wrong (including ones that I marked right and got wrong). Today, I managed to mark 11 questions on 6 of the blocks and 10 on the seventh, but I felt a lot less certain about the ones I did not mark. There was always that one piece of information that kept tugging me in another direction. I tried to keep it simple, but did not always succeed. And of course the straight forward questions that I knew I should know, but didn't. Damn you Pharm. Damn you and your classic drug name with classic MOA and classic side effects that after spending the better part of two weeks of my dedicated on, I still don't know.

Strategy wise, I brute forced by way through the first two blocks back to back, then felt fine with simple five minute breaks between two and three and three and four. I thought about doing three and four together, but I could feel that slight tickle of my bladder, so took the break. With a few minutes left after each block, that left me a good thirty minutes for lunch, five minutes for the last two breaks and twenty left over. After being good the first five blocks, I felt dead on block six and was digging my my nails into my fingers to stay focused, but adrenaline at being almost done got me through seven alright. My advice, make sure that you schedule your exam on a day that is sunny. Today was dank and rainy and gray here, and I could feel it.

Overall, I felt like it was like a fairly hard NBME. The questions were difficult, but I didn't really get a UWorld vibe. The harder half were UWorld challenging, but still felt like NBME questions, if that makes sense. Other than that, on my NBMEs I had 15-20 minutes left, today I had 10-15, though I usually ended to block with less than 5 because I was intent on finding all the times I missed the "not" in the question stem, or the questions where I say "obviously B" and proceed to click on C, both of which I seem to love to do. I didn't find any today, but like proofreading your own essay, I'm still paranoid I missed one. Both as a USIMG, and because hitting that standard deviation "feels" better, I'm really hoping I hit that 250, but we'll see after the long but not quite as long as those of us who've taken the test the last few weeks wait.

And my crowning moment of awesome, on the third question of the third block, I wanted to open the calculator, and mindlessly went to the bottom right corner. Next thing I know, "Are you sure you want to end this block?" NO, REMAIN IN BLOCK, REMAIN IN BLOCK! Okay. Breath. I'm okay. Yeah. Let's not do that again.

 

[deleted564496]

Question for you guys about guessing/timing. So often when I'm taking a test, I get hung up on a question without realizing that I've spent 4-5 mins and it puts me real behind. The issue is when I realize it, I've still not arrived at an answer and often then just mark it and come back just to waste more time at the end on it. This is annoying because it's usually a question that I am stuck between 2-3 choices and am agonizing over which one is correct. It's especially bad when its a question that I know I should know and have learned previously, but cannot remember the detail that I had learned (I often waste time hoping that the answer will come back to me).

What do you guys when you approach a question that you don't know? What about when you start trying to answer a question, only to spend more time than you anticipated? I often think to myself I've already invested all this time, do I really want to mark it and come back to it and waste more time having to reread/start from scratch or just spend the last little bit to answer it. I understand a lot of you probably master answering and moving on, but I have trouble even on the questions I have no idea for, bc I think to myself that there's always something I can pick from the stem/choices to try to narrow things down a little or come to an answer.

Lastly, how do you guys approach your guessing when you are between 2 answers that you can think of pros/cons for each choice? I spend waaaay too much time weighing these when I'm stuck and it legit bugs me to pick one choice so I just sit there. It's terrible. Thanks for your help!

You gotta just pick one bro.. This happened to me A LOT. Be confident, pick an answer and move on. There were tons of questions I had narrowed down to two or three choices and I just reread the stem and went with my gut. If I spent 3-5 minutes on each of those I would have not answered at least 5qs per block

 

[DrKhan1]

I took NBMEs 17 and 15 together yesterday and scored 269 in NBME 17 and 254 in 15. I don't know what to make out of this. I thought 15 was much easier but I made too many mistakes especially in the last block. I was pretty exhausted by the end and made many silly mistakes. My exam is in 10 days and I'm concerned about the huge variation. Can some of the recent test takers comment on whether the exam was similar to 17 and approximately where I stand? Also, what do you guys to maintain stamina? By the last block I just wanted to thing to end. I had a headache set in and I couldn't really focus on the questions so I just marked the best initial answer and moved on without coming back to review.

I've run out of money so I can't buy another NBME online but I'm planning on doing 16 offline along with UWSA1 (which I've already bought) to simulate another full length exam after the weekend. Would really appreciate some help.

 

[super_mom]

You have plenty of time to get through Uworld. Each block is somewhere around ~2% of of the total (or it was when I took it), so you are looking at roughly 12-13 block. Do 2-3/day and you can be done in 4-6 days. Im not saying that you should, simply that you could and it would be doable.

thank you….you are right so far i am doing two blocks a day…..will try to see if i can do 3 blocks on one of those days.

 

[deleted604914]

You gotta just pick one bro.. This happened to me A LOT. Be confident, pick an answer and move on. There were tons of questions I had narrowed down to two or three choices and I just reread the stem and went with my gut. If I spent 3-5 minutes on each of those I would have not answered at least 5qs per block

I was hoping for some of that voodoo that you guys use to get high scores!! It's must be much easier to trust a gut that gets in the 250+ range vs my gut sticking me in the 230s . Confidence is hard, man... and these test makers don't make it any easier!

 

[scoKraz4]

I was hoping for some of that voodoo that you guys use to get high scores!! It's must be much easier to trust a gut that gets in the 250+ range vs my gut sticking me in the 230s . Confidence is hard, man... and these test makers don't make it any easier!

Ain't no voodoo man. Just a lot of time and prep. Don't pick answers you never heard before unless you ruled out the others, don't spend more than a minute on a question your first pass through the block, and don't overthink the questions!

 

[scoKraz4]

I took NBMEs 17 and 15 together yesterday and scored 269 in NBME 17 and 254 in 15. I don't know what to make out of this. I thought 15 was much easier but I made too many mistakes especially in the last block. I was pretty exhausted by the end and made many silly mistakes. My exam is in 10 days and I'm concerned about the huge variation. Can some of the recent test takers comment on whether the exam was similar to 17 and approximately where I stand? Also, what do you guys to maintain stamina? By the last block I just wanted to thing to end. I had a headache set in and I couldn't really focus on the questions so I just marked the best initial answer and moved on without coming back to review.

I've run out of money so I can't buy another NBME online but I'm planning on doing 16 offline along with UWSA1 (which I've already bought) to simulate another full length exam after the weekend. Would really appreciate some help.

What kind of help do you need besides ego stroking? I'm sure you know when you enter the 90th+ percentile scores that a couple of questions can vary your score much more than if you had 60th percentile score. There is no real advice on how to ensure you keep a 260+ score by the time your test comes other than keep doing what you are doing.

 

[cs24]

I took NBMEs 17 and 15 together yesterday and scored 269 in NBME 17 and 254 in 15. I don't know what to make out of this. I thought 15 was much easier but I made too many mistakes especially in the last block. I was pretty exhausted by the end and made many silly mistakes. My exam is in 10 days and I'm concerned about the huge variation. Can some of the recent test takers comment on whether the exam was similar to 17 and approximately where I stand? Also, what do you guys to maintain stamina? By the last block I just wanted to thing to end. I had a headache set in and I couldn't really focus on the questions so I just marked the best initial answer and moved on without coming back to review.

I've run out of money so I can't buy another NBME online but I'm planning on doing 16 offline along with UWSA1 (which I've already bought) to simulate another full length exam after the weekend. Would really appreciate some help.

Test taking fatigue is real. However, it was always harder for me to finish an NBME at home than it was to finish the real thing in the test center, due to adrenaline and me actually taking breaks for the real thing. Remember, by your last block of that double nbme you had done 350 questions with 50 to go, while the real thing only has 308 or whatever. You won't hit that same sort of wall on the real thing, I wouldn't worry about this at all. Your real score should be closer to your 17.

 

[EmergDoc2B]

Took my exam this week and it was a beast.
biostats: straight forward, did you memorize the equations or not (set up 2x2 table) about 5-6 questions
Anatomy: pelvic vasculature male and female was a hot topic. no blood supply to the naughty bits and glands ect around them.
Neuro anatomy: well represented onmy exam. I had more than a dozen total. Gross brain pics and arrow pointing to the structure, CT's. MRI's with pathology and a stem describing the patient presentation. There was also neurophysiology but it was fairly basic. Saltatory conduction and the like.
Resp physiology: I thought this stuff was tough on my exam 4-5 questions. This isnt strongest area however.
Pathology/General principes: Know pathoma, Goljan ( got three freebies from his lectures) Its woven throughout the test countless questions.
Physiology: cant recall but Im sure there were a few
Pharm: Some odd drugs and cyp 450 questions with answer choices that were either both inhibs or both inducers. had to revisit the stem and sort out the details. Much tougher that UWorld in that regard. Also had some straight up know the cyp450 enzyme that metabolizes the drug. The answer was not the most common one Ill say that.
Renal: Typical updown arrow stuff. Uworld sets you up nicley.
Endocrine: Same as above
Cardio: was the easiest part of my exam. I kid you not the EKG's were straight forward, the interactive questions were very straight forward.
Micro: not too bad I had one question that is still haunting me because I cant find the answer anywhere.
Biochem: Had a lysosomal storage disease question, also a few year one questions about cycles.

The oddest thing about my test was the fact I only used calculations for biostats. I had memorized a ton of equations and used nada.
My NMBE scores were 228, 234, 237-12,11,15. Im not in the super crazy score category on the NBME's so on SDN that makes me an outlier.

 

[usmleraptor]

Guys how is Haematology and Oncology on the real deal ?
Like the questions are aimed at the bigger picture or we need to know the drugs that cause the specific anaemias and stuff like that ?

 

[EmergDoc2B]

Guys how is Haematology and Oncology on the real deal ?
Like the questions are aimed at the bigger picture or we need to know the drugs that cause the specific anaemias and stuff like that ?

I had one question on leukocystic vasculitis and asked how some made of drug would affect the disease process. That was the toughest heme question I got. The onc stuff was straight forward. Do you know the adenocarcinoma sequence, CD markers, and cancer genes (oncogenes and suppressors)

 

[asdfTT123]

I took this earlier and just wanted to offer my experiences:

Overall the test was tough but fair. It felt like half NBME and half UW. The interface is pretty much identical to UW's so most people will feel at home here.

Personally my test did not have very much biochem - but the ones I had were straightforward (easier than UW). From the style of the biochem questions, it almost made me wish they gave me more biochem because they were definitely some of the most straightforward on my exam. Only 2 heart sounds and 2 EKG's. The quality of the heart sounds were much better than UW's. EKG's were 1 6 lead and 1 single lead. Anatomy was decently represented but I wouldn't say it was more heavily emphasized than what I encountered on NBME. Not all of the anatomy is in UW/FA but for the most part (I'd say 80-90% of it) is straight from those resources. I definitely wouldn't go out of my way to study anatomy from other sources.

Pharm was much harder than on the NBME and I considered it to be one of my strong subjects going into it. I actually think one of the answers to one of my questions was a drug I had never heard of (certainly not in UW/FA) and the only way to arrive at it is by process of elimination of the other ones unless you happened to have learned this particular drug (then again I could be wrong). I had another 2 or so pharm questions that were definitely on the ridiculous side of things.

Micro was definitely tougher than I thought - there were very few classic presentations and some were very vague and required some second order reasoning on vague stems. Surprisingly fungi and parasites (and parasite pharm) were very high yield on my exam. That was definitely unexpected.

Biostats and ethics were very well represented on my exam (but only one or two calculations). FA is enough though for these IMO. There was also a lot of endocrine on my exam and some stems where they threw in some traps you had to look past.

Stem wise, I felt that they were either short or very long. I had a question stem that spanned almost half of the page, and there were a few other questions with a very long stem and a photo that took up the whole page and you had to literally scroll down to see even the first answer choice. Also note that short question stem does not mean it's easy. Some of those short stems were definitely one of the toughest questions. The tough questions were manageable for the most part...seemed like you just had to make your best guess and not get hung up on it too long to let it drag down your pacing. At least I was able to narrow down the choices for the vast majority of questions - I can't remember too many I was completely clueless on. I would say about 2 extremely strange questions per section...makes you even wonder where they even got the idea for the question.

I usually finish NBME's with around 15 mins left to go and on this I had about 7. I definitely can't say I felt great about it when I left but I didn't feel like it was the end of the world. Have no clue how I might have done so I'm just gonna suppress my feelings and urges to look up questions as best as I can.

One thing I noticed is that for the potentially killer subjects like biochem that people stress out about was toned down a lot on my exam. But subjects like immuno and heme required some very detailed knowledge and understanding of pathophys (know your CD markers and cytokines very well) and were certainly some of the tougher questions.

Very few gimmes but there's definitely a few sprinkled in. I had one question I conciously remember was a repeat from an NBME.

Some other info - NBME average was >260 on the more recents and~96% on the free exam.

 

[seminoma]

I had zero biostats. Lots of ethics and study bias type questions. Zero biostats calculations.. Which was sad because it's one of my stronger topics.

 

[imk90]

Is it possible to revise whole fa in 3 days

 

[sloop]

Is it possible to revise whole fa in 3 days

Depends what you mean by "revise," but if you want a yes/no answer: no.

 

[theacks1]

Is it possible to revise whole fa in 3 days

I was certainly able to *skim* first aid in a day right before my exam. Noticed a few details I missed on my first pass, including at least one that I got me a question on my exam, too. I think that it can be worthwhile to have one final glimpse of everything in its entirety (I spent my last few weeks going over specific weak areas and hadn't seen much of first aid in a while). Of course, perhaps a different approach would have served me even better. Ultimately, I think it would depend on how familiar you are with first aid already.

 

[imk90]

I was certainly able to *skim* first aid in a day right before my exam. Noticed a few details I missed on my first pass, including at least one that I got me a question on my exam, too. I think that it can be worthwhile to have one final glimpse of everything in its entirety (I spent my last few weeks going over specific weak areas and hadn't seen much of first aid in a while). Of course, perhaps a different approach would have served me even better. Ultimately, I think it would depend on how familiar you are with first aid already.

 

[imk90]

Yeah like i would like to go through micro, pharma of all chaps plus the tumors part, i guess these r the most volatile stuff

 

[nwmedapplicant]

Took my exam this week and it was a beast.
biostats: straight forward, did you memorize the equations or not (set up 2x2 table) about 5-6 questions
Anatomy: pelvic vasculature male and female was a hot topic. no blood supply to the naughty bits and glands ect around them.
Neuro anatomy: well represented onmy exam. I had more than a dozen total. Gross brain pics and arrow pointing to the structure, CT's. MRI's with pathology and a stem describing the patient presentation. There was also neurophysiology but it was fairly basic. Saltatory conduction and the like.
Resp physiology: I thought this stuff was tough on my exam 4-5 questions. This isnt strongest area however.
Pathology/General principes: Know pathoma, Goljan ( got three freebies from his lectures) Its woven throughout the test countless questions.
Physiology: cant recall but Im sure there were a few
Pharm: Some odd drugs and cyp 450 questions with answer choices that were either both inhibs or both inducers. had to revisit the stem and sort out the details. Much tougher that UWorld in that regard. Also had some straight up know the cyp450 enzyme that metabolizes the drug. The answer was not the most common one Ill say that.
Renal: Typical updown arrow stuff. Uworld sets you up nicley.
Endocrine: Same as above
Cardio: was the easiest part of my exam. I kid you not the EKG's were straight forward, the interactive questions were very straight forward.
Micro: not too bad I had one question that is still haunting me because I cant find the answer anywhere.
Biochem: Had a lysosomal storage disease question, also a few year one questions about cycles.

The oddest thing about my test was the fact I only used calculations for biostats. I had memorized a ton of equations and used nada.
My NMBE scores were 228, 234, 237-12,11,15. Im not in the super crazy score category on the NBME's so on SDN that makes me an outlier.

Took Step1 last Wednesday, and my exam was like EmergDoc2B wrote: tbh much less painful and brain wrenching than I had anticipated! I had very few vignettes that were over a paragraph - so re-skimming the question for details fast was pretty reasonable for relatively slow readers like myself.

I did find myself running short on timing a couple times due to stewing over a few questions too long to ensure i picked what I deduced was the best choice. There was one question in particular that tbh didn't really read grammatically correct so I'm not sure what they were looking for after reading it several times (it was one of the hypothetical drug X questions and showed several product/reactants in a chain of reactions. The question had some sort of double-negative statement in the question stem that made it impossible to rationalize if they wanted drug X to inhibit or inhibit the inhibitor effect of a intermediate drug X was being related to. Anyhow - it was funky and blew my brain for a little while talking it out over and over

Anatomy: really straight forward, nothing complicated at all. A few CT scans, a few upper limb nerve deficits, lymph node drainage of the sex organs come to mind.
Neuro: Simple. Maybe 4 questions total. One a bleed image, the others were more of 'where is the lesion' with this presentation type. Very straight forward.
Respiratory: Definitely some lung volume type questions and perfusion/shunt/deadspace type questions. Asthma came up quite a bit - and with that there was a lot of immunology correlations.
Renal: Disappointed there wasn't any renal-pathology. Studied that a lot the day before to be sure I could nail down images or descriptions of the pathology. I think the only renal type questions I had were physiology &/or endocrine related.
Endocrine: similar to Renal above - mostly feedback effects and knowing which hormones do what in pregnancy.
HemeOnc: Few bleeding specifics and name the disease scenarios. Nothing from acute or chronic or myelogenous leukemias.
Muscoloskeletal: Quite a few questions here with skin lesions and identifying the disease agent or immunology basis.
Micro: Pretty light on the exam. Maybe 4 questions a block. There was some micro and path correlation questions as well. I was told USMLE was micro and biochem dense - of which that didn't seem to be the case in my testing experience.
Biochem: maybe 2-3 straight forward FA level questions and 1 or 2 kinda multilayered thinking to deduce the answer. I will say - NOTHING like the complexity or splitting hairs on carbons or enzymes like UWORLD. Uworld was much much harder on biochem than my exam (thankfully!).
Physiology: Quite a few questions from all systems; up and down arrows type questions, hypothetical experiments and graph interpretation. What I liked about this is that it wasn't testing you on memorized minutia but more of can you interpret the graph and the biochemical/physiological specific system it's representing and how this change would effect it. So testing general concepts and understanding.
Cardio: I think I had 3 questions with headphones. Pretty basic and could answer all but 1 from the information in the vignette alone. EKGs were real straight forward. There was one that was so basic with the pattern it was showing - that i looked at it like three more times thinking it was too simple and there was a trick somewhere I'm missing! I obviously cannot say what the pattern was - but it was so basic and unmistakable - i bet 100% of the test takers get it right haha.
Pharmacology: some of the questions were difficult in that they were looking for an adverse effect that is somewhat specific to the drug. And these drugs were not necessarily mainstream! wish I had studied the fringes of each class of pharmacology more as these were know it or guess it type questions with no wiggle room to deduce as they basically told you the drug in the vignette. Also, HIV drugs were on there maybe 6 different questions.

I didn't write anything on mine. Just used it when I needed to write things down to help answer a question.

My prometric center said we aren't allowed to write things during the tutorial. I didn't ask, they just told me when they were telling me the other rules. If you do plan to write some things down before starting I would check with yours just to be safe. It's not like you can say "well, prometric didn't say I couldn't write things down" after the fact.

Highly recommend asking when you are checking in this question! I was sure to ask "when my clock starts after i start the tutorial, am I free to memory dump equations on my laminated sheet?" I was told it was! I then restated something like "ok..just making sure it's ok to write during my tutorial and finish it early if i need to ?" again the proctor replied it was.

good luck!

 

[DrKhan1]

Test taking fatigue is real. However, it was always harder for me to finish an NBME at home than it was to finish the real thing in the test center, due to adrenaline and me actually taking breaks for the real thing. Remember, by your last block of that double nbme you had done 350 questions with 50 to go, while the real thing only has 308 or whatever. You won't hit that same sort of wall on the real thing, I wouldn't worry about this at all. Your real score should be closer to your 17.

Thanks! I really hope so.
How did you schedule your break time?

 

[cs24]

Thanks! I really hope so.
How did you schedule your break time?

I hit the break button after every block to take 30sec to 1 minute to clear my mind and forget the last block, but as far as real breaks go I left the testing room after every two blocks (so after block 2, after block 4, and after block 6). I took a slightly longer break after 4 for lunch. When I finished I still had an hour of break time left, so I don't think breaking that frequently will hurt you time wise. I felt good for all seven blocks on that schedule, with slight fatigue for the last two blocks. I had friends that burned through the test with minimal breaks, and they hit a wall on the last block, so I wouldn't recommend that.

 

[seminoma]

^ I left the test room after every block. Went to the bathroom, got some water, then came back. Had 35-40 minutes of break time left after I finished block 5.

 

[dextor2003]

So I just took NBME 17 and got destroyed–217. My initial goal was 240, but now I feel like I'll be lucky if I can even get 230. Test is scheduled for Thursday. Should I move up my date? Or do you guys have any other suggestions of what I should do at this point?

Current running uworld average: 67
Uworld average for last 10 blocks: 73
NBME 16 last week: 237
NBME 15 2 wks ago: 226
NBME 13 3 wks ago: 228

I still have 5 blocks of uworld left. I feel like I got hit with all my weakest material on 17, and so much of it was stuff I hadn't seen in a long time. But I'm not sure if that was actually the case, or if I'm just trying to make excuses for myself =\ Any input would be really helpful, thanks.

EDIT: number

 

[stepone2015]

So I just took NBME 17 and got destroyed–217. My initial goal was 240, but now I feel like I'll be lucky if I can even get 230. Test is scheduled for Thursday. Should I move up my date? Or do you guys have any other suggestions of what I should do at this point?

Current running uworld average: 67
Uworld average for last 10 blocks: 73
NBME 16 last week: 237
NBME 15 2 wks ago: 226
NBME 13 3 wks ago: 228

I still have 5 blocks of uworld left. I feel like I got hit with all my weakest material on 16, and so much of it was stuff I hadn't seen in a long time. But I'm not sure if that was actually the case, or if I'm just trying to make excuses for myself =\ Any input would be really helpful, thanks.

I dropped about 15 points from previous NBMEs on 17. Then I took 16 a few days later and bounced back to where I was. I searched and found many similar instances of people finding that 17 underpredicts by 5-15 points. Some people also report it being close to exact.

I think you should keep going. You shouldn't let it shake your confidence. I think you're going to do around 230 something at least, maybe 240 if you keep improving.

 

[dextor2003]

I dropped about 15 points from previous NBMEs on 17. Then I took 16 a few days later and bounced back to where I was. I searched and found many similar instances of people finding that 17 underpredicts by 5-15 points. Some people also report it being close to exact.

I think you should keep going. You shouldn't let it shake your confidence. I think you're going to do around 230 something at least, maybe 240 if you keep improving.

Would you suggest I still try to finish uworld? Or should I just make a pass through FA at this point? Not trying to bias your decision, but it does take me like 4 hrs to review uworld blocks, and I felt like most of the stuff on 17 I missed cause I just hadn't been exposed to it for a long time =\

 

[stepone2015]

Would you suggest I still try to finish uworld? Or should I just make a pass through FA at this point? Not trying to bias your decision, but it does take me like 4 hrs to review uworld blocks, and I felt like most of the stuff on 17 I missed cause I just hadn't been exposed to it for a long time =\

I think getting through UW is really important, but I think you should work on getting through the remaining blocks faster (like taking less notes or whatever is taking so much time). Even if that's not possible, that's fine. Just do 2 blocks a day and review FA rapidly in the evening until your test. Focus on the parts of FA you're weakest. Your goal here is to turn the stuff you are worst on into the stuff that is your shining strength.

I used to hate getting those aortic/branchial arch/pouch etc stuff. I got all those questions wrong in UW early on. Then I sat with FA for 2 hours creating my own mental scheme to remember all of it, and now, I love those questions cause I can answer them quickly and easily. That should be your goal with whatever your areas that need work are.

 

[nwmedapplicant]

Would you suggest I still try to finish uworld? Or should I just make a pass through FA at this point? Not trying to bias your decision, but it does take me like 4 hrs to review uworld blocks, and I felt like most of the stuff on 17 I missed cause I just hadn't been exposed to it for a long time =\

Honestly my opinion is to be sure you see FA again recently! I made a couple errors where I gave away two questions (thinking in retrospect) solely because I hadn't reviewed the material in a few weeks! I'd skim it so you are re-familiarized. Especially pharm, immunology so those are easy points to rack up and not be split between two possibilities you cannot quite decide between for answer choices.

Reskim FA relatively fast (day or two) - and then re-hit Uworld the remainder of the week.

When you get to your test - take a deep breath and remember - you studied hard two years! Even if you don't know the answer immediately - it's staring you in the face and you have tools now to deduce down. I really feel the last two days before and during the exam the worse enemy is anxiety. You feel like you can't remember anything etc etc..should i reschedule....what if what if...Own that anxiety with self confidence! You'll do great!

skimming is just re-familiarizing yourself at this point. trust your hard work the last two years - it's time to get paid on exam day!!

 

[Transposony]

@seminoma @sloop @pd1112 and everyone else I might have missed.
Thanks for posting your experiences.
Congratulations on being done with exam and I am sure you will get your desired score.
Party hard!

Few questions:
1. How will you rate the three QBanks based on your experience. If you can only do two of them then which two you will choose in hindsight.
2. How will you prepare for Pharm/Micro in hindsight considering that some people found them hard on their tests.
3. How useful was being on SDN during your prep?
4. It's been proven (yet again!) that DIT is not very useful, what will be your resources for a "dream prep" in hindsight ?

@seminoma since you did Becker eCoach, how helpful was it (in hindsight) ?
Also, if you attended any of the sample Dr Raymon's integrated course lectures, do they test the level of details he teaches in those lectures?
How did you tackle the poop on the test day ?
Wish I can get the anatomy part of your test Form (20-30 Qs).

 

[askamsky51]

@seminoma @sloop @pd1112 and everyone else I might have missed.
Thanks for posting your experiences.
Congratulations on being done with exam and I am sure you will get your desired score.
Party hard!

Few questions:
1. How will you rate the three QBanks based on your experience. If you can only do two of them then which two you will choose in hindsight.
2. How will you prepare for Pharm/Micro in hindsight considering that some people found them hard on their tests.
3. How useful was being on SDN during your prep?
4. It's been proven (yet again!) that DIT is not very useful, what will be your resources for a "dream prep" in hindsight ?

@seminoma since you did Becker eCoach, how helpful was it (in hindsight) ?
Also, if you attended any of the sample Dr Raymon's integrated course lectures, do they test the level of details he teaches in those lectures?
How did you tackle the poop on the test day ?
Wish I can get the anatomy part of your test Form (20-30 Qs).

I just took step 1 last Thursday, so I'll try to answer your questions

1. The only Qbanks I did were USMLE-Rx and Uworld. I really thought I liked Rx at first, but the truth is that Rx is really only good for testing your bare bones knowledge of Step 1 material in FA. Rx is equivalent to the softball questions you get on the actual exam. Uworld was much more like the real deal -- but in my opinion step 1 is it's own beast. There isn't really anything "equivalent." There are a lot more critical thinking questions that are only partially dependent on your medical knowledge. Don't expect too many word associations to save you.

2. Pharm/Micro -- Oh lord I never realized how much I was/am in love with picmonic... What seems like a silly tool ended up being an insane godsend. Picmonic seriously saved my butt on all topics that are heavily memorization based (micro, pharm, vasculitis, congenital deficiencies, immune deficiencies). I'm not a rep or anything for picmonic, but I can't speak highly enough about it after memorizing facts for the past 5 weeks.

3. SDN is horrifying and stay away from it. Seriously. The only reason I came here was because Google redirected me every time I looked for NBME 17 help.

4. I disagree, I did DIT and it was a great way for me to have a first pass through first aid. I read the first aid pages as I was doing the videos. Though I'm the kind of guy who CANNOT sit down and read a dry, bullet point, textbook cover to cover. For those who have that ability I think DIT is a waste of time. Though having a good foundation going into second-ish pass through FA was helpful. I was able to keep my ADD in check more when the information seemed familiar. I think that DIT is not the most efficient use of time, but I was happy to have it. There are also a few things in DIT that were not covered in FA (okay, not a lot but some) which ended up being helpful on test day.

Overall I wanted to just mention that there is really no fantastic way to study for this exam. Without sugar coating it, it was a beast. It was harder than I had anticipated but use that information to prepare yourself. I had a good buddy tell me that who took the exam a few days before I did. Knowing that saved me because there is a great chance I would have panicked 20 minutes into the exam if I hadn't mentally prepared. It's a hard test. Just go through all the resources you find useful, don't overwhelm yourself with too many resources. Finish Uworld for sure. If you can do it again, even better. Use U-world as a teaching tool and do NOT use it as a measurement of where you're at. Just keep an eye on the cumulative stats and make sure you are continuing to improve overall. Like I said though, the exam isn't a great representation of testing what medical facts you know (at least not entirely).

Let someone call me out if they disagree, but this was my experience. I think you could have FA memorized and step 1 would still be challenging.

p.s.

As for getting tired out on test day, it's really just a matter of doing lots and lots of work over your dedicated study period. Do lots of Qbank questions. Do NBME (DO THEM! I wish I did more...). On test day you'll get tired but it won't feel too different than doing a boat load of questions everyday at home.


Hopefully this all made sense. You'll have to excuse me as my brain is still somewhat mush.

 

[cs24]

@seminoma @sloop @pd1112 and everyone else I might have missed.
Thanks for posting your experiences.
Congratulations on being done with exam and I am sure you will get your desired score.
Party hard!

Few questions:
1. How will you rate the three QBanks based on your experience. If you can only do two of them then which two you will choose in hindsight.
2. How will you prepare for Pharm/Micro in hindsight considering that some people found them hard on their tests.
3. How useful was being on SDN during your prep?
4. It's been proven (yet again!) that DIT is not very useful, what will be your resources for a "dream prep" in hindsight ?

@seminoma since you did Becker eCoach, how helpful was it (in hindsight) ?
Also, if you attended any of the sample Dr Raymon's integrated course lectures, do they test the level of details he teaches in those lectures?
How did you tackle the poop on the test day ?
Wish I can get the anatomy part of your test Form (20-30 Qs).

I'm still just hanging around here until july 8, so I'll throw my 2cents in.

1. Only did Uworld, found it sufficient. Wouldn't add another
2. Sketchy micro for micro, first aid (+ wikipedia) for pharm.
3. Useful for motivation and setting a plan at the very beginning. Day to day after that it is probably more anxiety inducing than helpful unless you are absolutely beasting all your prep resources and NBMEs. I made myself stay off SDN for a few days before my exam because of this.
4. No way I would pay for DIT so obviously didn't use. Dream resources would be UFAP + sketchy micro for dedicated/month before dedicated. If I could do it all over again, would have supplemented first and second year classes with goljan's RR path in addition to FA, pathoma, and goljan audio.

 

[faisal 2000]

@seminoma @sloop @pd1112
how was molecular biology in your exam ?
how can i cover all things about molecular biology ?

 

[Transposony]

@askamsky51 and @cs24

Thanks so much for the insights.
Looks like I have to choose between Picmonic or Sketchy Micro now.

 

[seminoma]

@seminoma @sloop @pd1112 and everyone else I might have missed.
Thanks for posting your experiences.
Congratulations on being done with exam and I am sure you will get your desired score.
Party hard!

Few questions:
1. How will you rate the three QBanks based on your experience. If you can only do two of them then which two you will choose in hindsight.
2. How will you prepare for Pharm/Micro in hindsight considering that some people found them hard on their tests.
3. How useful was being on SDN during your prep?
4. It's been proven (yet again!) that DIT is not very useful, what will be your resources for a "dream prep" in hindsight ?

@seminoma since you did Becker eCoach, how helpful was it (in hindsight) ?
Also, if you attended any of the sample Dr Raymon's integrated course lectures, do they test the level of details he teaches in those lectures?
How did you tackle the poop on the test day ?
Wish I can get the anatomy part of your test Form (20-30 Qs).

1. I would pick Kaplan and Rx. UW is great, but I don't think it helped me get any questions right on its own.
2. Same as I did before. Learn micro well during MS1 and focus on KLN/Becker pharm during MS2.
3. Time will tell, but I think SDN was very helpful. Lots of smart people on here.. much smarter than me and that helps motivate me to work harder. None of my friends were getting NBME scores anywhere near 260s and if it weren't for SDN I probably would've gotten complacent early on.
4. Really can't argue with UFAP (despite what I said in #1). Even though I would go Kaplan + Rx instead of some combo with UW, there's comfort in knowing that you're doing the "best" qbank (i.e. UW). I still recommend UW rather than Kaplan or Rx, but after seeing my real test I think I would've been better off doing a quick pass of both Kaplan and Rx than a slow pass of UW.

Lionel Raymon is my second favorite teacher after Sattar. I feel like pharm is one of my strongest subjects because I understand how to approach pharmacologic treatment rather than just memorizing drug names and mechanisms. All thanks to Lionel Raymon. Becker or KLN pharm is on the same level as Pathoma for MS2 resources. It would take too long to go through it during dedicated, though.

I did attend two of the online integrated things and there was not that level of detail on my exam. Pharm was really straight forward. Hardest part was making the right diagnosis and then choosing the drug. In a way it was a disadvantage for me because I'm confident that the more "difficult" pharmacology questions were things I would get right while others might miss or struggle to answer. I mentioned this in my experience post, but the pharm on my exam was "high yield" drug classes with "low yield" drug names.

 

[pd1112]

@seminoma @sloop @pd1112 and everyone else I might have missed.
Thanks for posting your experiences.
Congratulations on being done with exam and I am sure you will get your desired score.
Party hard!

Few questions:
1. How will you rate the three QBanks based on your experience. If you can only do two of them then which two you will choose in hindsight.
2. How will you prepare for Pharm/Micro in hindsight considering that some people found them hard on their tests.
3. How useful was being on SDN during your prep?
4. It's been proven (yet again!) that DIT is not very useful, what will be your resources for a "dream prep" in hindsight ?

@seminoma since you did Becker eCoach, how helpful was it (in hindsight) ?
Also, if you attended any of the sample Dr Raymon's integrated course lectures, do they test the level of details he teaches in those lectures?
How did you tackle the poop on the test day ?
Wish I can get the anatomy part of your test Form (20-30 Qs).

1. I really wasn't a fan of Rx at all, from the setup to the content. I thought Kaplan was really good & I wish I would've completed it. I mainly used it along with MS2 micro & immuno courses. I didn't get through much of it during dedicated, but I wish I would have. I found UW to be very frustrating to work through & it ended up being much more detailed than what was necessary for my exam. From my experience, you could basically swap the usual sentiments towards Kaplan vs. UW. I didn't finish any of the 3. My advice to anyone in the future would be to start Kaplan with MS2 & start UW before dedicated. I tried to save UW for dedicated only but it ended up taking me too long to get through it.
2. FA & UW were plenty for pharm, but I also added Lange pharm cards because it was one of my weaker subjects throughout MS2. The combination of those 3 made pharm pretty straightforward on my exam. The micro course at my school is very good, so this was one of my strongest subjects all along. I reviewed ~1/5 of the micro cards deck which I had from the beginning of MS2 & selected sections of ~10-15 pages of FA micro during dedicated, but otherwise did not touch this subject. Micro was one of the 2-3 most heavily tested subjects on my exam & was very straightforward given my background.
3. I enjoyed it. It's motivating to be in touch with some of the best & brightest, especially when >75% of users on here were outscoring me. Unlike what many people say, it actually made me less anxious to read some of the fear-mongering, because for the most part I would just laugh & think "well, at least I'm not THAT guy/girl." lol If anyone takes that the wrong way, sorry, but you probably need more chill in your life.
4. Aim for 90+% in all MS1-MS2 classes. This is still the best prep & yet it still needs repeated annually because a certain amount of people every year think it doesn't pertain to them. If you are already achieving this, start to add the following as you see fit: FA with classes from the beginning of MS1 - nothing intense, just glance at for 1-2 hours per week so you have an idea of the HY topics & take the chance to reinforce them now. RR Path, Pathoma & Kaplan Qbank throughout MS2. UW 10-20 Qs/day during MS2 beginning in January. Listen to Goljan with workouts, transportation, etc every day starting at the beginning of MS2 - I love Papi & his lectures for the most part still hold true. During dedicated, UFAP & RR Path if you have time, which you should if you followed the above. Do all of the NBMEs & UWSAs. Don't fear monger on SDN. Chill often.

@seminoma @sloop @pd1112
how was molecular biology in your exam ?
how can i cover all things about molecular biology ?

FA & UW are more than enough if you have a solid foundation. Not sure how to advise if not.

 

[sloop]

@seminoma @sloop @pd1112 and everyone else I might have missed.
Thanks for posting your experiences.
Congratulations on being done with exam and I am sure you will get your desired score.
Party hard!

Few questions:
1. How will you rate the three QBanks based on your experience. If you can only do two of them then which two you will choose in hindsight.
2. How will you prepare for Pharm/Micro in hindsight considering that some people found them hard on their tests.
3. How useful was being on SDN during your prep?
4. It's been proven (yet again!) that DIT is not very useful, what will be your resources for a "dream prep" in hindsight ?

@seminoma since you did Becker eCoach, how helpful was it (in hindsight) ?
Also, if you attended any of the sample Dr Raymon's integrated course lectures, do they test the level of details he teaches in those lectures?
How did you tackle the poop on the test day ?
Wish I can get the anatomy part of your test Form (20-30 Qs).

Thanks man. Hope so.

As for your questions:

1. I only used UWorld so I can't comment on the others. I tend to get overwhelmed with too many resources and I also didn't want to spend too much money on studying for this thing so I stuck to UFAP. UWorld was a great learning tool and I would use it again. That said, the questions were way more confusing and complicated than my particular test. Obviously others may have had different questions on their tests. I also think some of the questions are just not the best written in the sense that they seem designed to trick you based on how you interpret the grammar of the question. I did not feel this way even on the wtf questions on my real exam. Again, though, great learning resource. I would just, if I was doing it over, take everyone's advice on here and not worry too much about the percentages since I was doing well on NBMEs.

2. Honestly wasn't bad on my exam, but if others are finding it difficult maybe you might want to read something more. Not sure, I still think UFAP is the way to go. I also did review some charts of organisms I had made during my micro course a few days before my exam. That said, I don't think this helped me answer a single question. Maybe it would have helped if I had more micro on my exam.

3. I think I got a lot of advice telling me to keep UFAP as the core of my studying and not spend too much time outside of it. This was good advice for me, but I also had a good background going into dedicated (honored all my second year courses and most first year ones, etc.) I can see someone who struggled through school possibly needing books with more explanation in them, but I can't be sure. I also think this site gave me something to do during shorter breaks instead of twittling my thumbs and getting frustrated that I've watched everything in my YouTube subscriptions.

4. UFAP. Of these I especially loved Pathoma and found it actually enjoyable to watch his videos and even read the book. FA is a chore but a necessary evil because there are lots of things Pathoma just doesn't cover. Of all these resources UWorld is probably the most dispensable even though I would never tell anyone to do this—it's super helpful and pretty critical for learning how to do questions well. I just don't think it has a vast amount of likely-to-be-tested material beyond the other resources, but I don't think that's its real purpose.

@seminoma @sloop @pd1112
how was molecular biology in your exam ?
how can i cover all things about molecular biology ?

I thought molecular bio stuff was pretty reasonable on my exam, but this is also the subject I had the most exposure to throughout my life. I also worked in a genetics/molecular bio lab in undergrad so I had most of the lab techniques drilled into my head before med school.

If by molecular biology you mean the lab techniques, if you know gels, different types of blotting, Sanger sequencing, PCR, cloning, etc. you should be pretty covered. Just my experience though, ymmv

 

[sloop]

4. Aim for 90+% in all MS1-MS2 classes. This is still the best prep & yet it still needs repeated annually because a certain amount of people every year think it doesn't pertain to them.

[. . .]



FA & UW are more than enough if you have a solid foundation. Not sure how to advise if not.

I forgot to say this but it is so true. I met so many people who were convinced that despite the fact they were mediocre students or even nearly failing classes, they could get it together for dedicated and manage some crazy score. I never understood this thinking at all (other than as a defense mechanism). I'm sure every year there are a couple of people who manage this, but it has to be totally anomalous. It makes no sense that you can spend two years okay with being average or below average and then blow everyone out of the water on step 1. If you are an average student, when you start doing nbmes don't be surprised when you are scoring average . . .

Studying can do a lot, but there's a limit to what it can do for most people if they didn't lay a very solid foundation to begin with.

 

[sliceofbread136]

Test is tomorrow! I'm a little nervous but hoping for a 250+.

NBME 17: taken over spring break, 220
NBME 11: 2 weeks into dedicated study time, 247
NBME 15: 4 weeks into dedicated study time, 262
uworld=85%

Good luck for everyone taking it tomorrow!

 

[imk90]

Good luck

 

[stepone2015]

NMBE 5, 12 weeks out: 211
NBME 1(6.5 weeks out): 243 (http://i.imgur.com/H8jCBXO.jpg)
NBME 13 (5.5 weeks out): 258 (http://i.imgur.com/zRpO5yt.jpg)
UWSA 1 (4 weeks out): 258
UWSA 2 (3 weeks out): 256
NBME 15:
NBME 16:
NBME 17:
Real deal (late June):

Has anyone done relatively worse on UWSAs compared to NBMEs? I think I've just gotten really tired of UW's BS trick questions. I find them exhausting. NBMEs are far more straight forward.

Despite the negative trend, I'm getting that 'don't give a ****' feeling. I don't know anymore.

MOTHER****ING DONE.

Okay.

NMBE 5 (12 weeks out): 211
NBME 12 (6.5 weeks out): 243
NBME 13 (5.5 weeks out): 258
UWSA 1 (4 weeks out): 258
UWSA 2 (3 weeks out): 256
NBME 15 (2 weeks out): 251
NBME 17 (1.1 weeks out): 243 (commence freakout)
Free 150 at Prometric: 95% (dunno what that correlates to)
NBME 16 (1 week out): 256 (phew)

UW 1st pass: 80% (http://i.imgur.com/HlJvMZA.jpg)

Feels so damn good to be done.

1) UW: UW is obviously the best qbank for this ****. I had 2-3 questions on the real deal that were almost verbatim from UW. It trains you to get really good at picking out and piecing together pertinent information as well as teaching you complex concepts. Cardio was very high yield on my exam - like 5 auscultation questions and many more cardio diseases in general. They weren't bad just because UW was so cardio heavy.

However, UW also trains you to assume every question if trying to **** you, which as you can see from NBMEs is not the way the real deal is like. Just remember to avoid overthinking things on the real deal.

2) Pathoma: **** yes, it's awesome. Do it. I don't think I had any of Sattar's "this is high yield" questions, but the conceptual framework gained from Sattar is worth it. I did Pathoma twice and don't regret a second.

3) Picmonic/Sketchy Micro: this makes microbiology a joke. It was consistently my strongest subject in both NBMEs and UW. Seriously. Do microbiology cards, the disease cards (ie Hunter's, Tay Sach's, etc), antibiotics, and some pharm cards that you feel weak on. Don't waste your time with anatomy, 'clinical' cards like ACL tears and ****. Those Picmonic cards are a massive waste of time. I also made my own cards for obscure diseases, bugs, and drugs that weren't in any resources. I drew them out and went through them multiple times. I also made notes on additions I made to Picmonic cards. I had some of those obscure diseases on my exam, so it was worth it. Made learning that **** way easier.

4) Phloston micro notes: I went through these roughly twice. There were many factoids in there I did not see in FA or UW, but I don't think any of them showed up on my exam.

5) FA: of course. Doing a rapid pass in the final week is great. I picked up a bunch of random factoids I'd forgotten that showed up on the exam.

Finally, **** NBME 17.

That is all, good luck to everyone taking it in the coming weeks.

 

[blueshockey]

Wow, haven't really popped on on this thread for a while. Congratulations to everyone that has taken it recently and is finally done!! I'm a week into my peds rotation and I can confidently say it is infinitely more rewarding than studying for Step 1 for 6 months To those of you who are staring the beast down: you've got this! I'm going to attempt to not come on here until after my score gets back (I can't deal with people talking about boards when my own score is still so up in the air), but I may pop in from time to time. You all are going to do great!

 

[dartmed]

Question: I seem to be struggling with the questions that have two answers, and it essentially comes down to what's more common type of thing. If it's atypical pneumonia, is Mycoplasma more common than legionella types of questions. Talking to a few friends, they said they definitely had questions where two answers are right on the test, but how do you know which one is more common?