just took it!
exhausting day. had 1 and half hour break when i left. took it in 3, 2, 1, 1 blocks.
Fred program from the USMLE website is probably the most similar to the actual test in terms of formatting, UI, media, look, etc. Uworld is literaly the same format UI-wise, but #s of answer choices and formatting, is very lacking compared to the real test (ie Uworld only has 5 choices mostly, real test can range; Uworld lists them in 1 column, real test can do horizontal and 2 columns). Def felt like the real thing was a mix of NBME and Uworld, so there's familiarity in that. Questions were definitely NEW though. There were gimmies on the test that were pure regurgitation, did you know the buzzwords. There were tons of think carefully on this, lots of arrows and tables. Maybe 6-8 graphs. Not so many WTFs as I was expecting, but I'm n=1.
honestly forgot so many of the questions already...
definitely had some pelvic anatomy on my test. muscles, lymph nodes, nerves, basically the high yields.
micro was surprisingly light for me. only a couple huh???
ethics was quite numerous, couple of not sure, rest were straight forward
pulm was a bit tricky w/ the histology, couple of fungi and bacterial pulm and viral pulm, but they were not too bad if you knew epidemiology
had 3-4 normal aging type questions
normal anatomy was quite light, 1 brachial plexus and 2 on the legs, maybe a couple more
neuroanatomy was toughest, had a lot of structural type questions on the brain, 1 spinal cord question, couple of embryology
general embryology, you should know the levels of proteins in the uterus, know common embryology defects
cardio was a bit tough for me, a few answers were just worded weirdly or were diagnoses that i had never seen before on FA, so just made the best guess and moved on, couple heart failure, couple antiarrhythmics, lots of antihypertension drugs
rheum was light, scleroderma, couple of the arthrites and musculoskeletal stuff
derm was light, def know your cancers here
heme-onc i had trouble remembering some of the cancer details as well as the labs for different diseases, so keep them fresh in your mind
repro had a few toughies, so know youre pathology from there, 2 breast pathologies, 1-2 from the uterus and ovaries, 2-3 from male pathology, 2-3 from the baby pathology, 2-3 infertility
renal had lots of acid-base and gross images of kidneys, acute renal failure, very few drugs
endocrine had lots of DM, adrenals, pituitaries, the usual stuff, very few drugs
tl;dr, do the Uworld, do the NBMEs, do 7 blocks of Uworld at once. rest 1-2 days before the exam, no active learning, at most do something passive like listen to goljan or pathoma or whomever. it's do-able, you'll rock the exam.
Edit: ended up pushing through 4600 Uworld questions. A bunch were 2x, towards the last week just redid nearly 600 incorrects -> resulting in 45 incorrects the 3rd time around which I redid.
