Official 2016 Step 1 Experiences and Scores Thread

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Transposony

Transposony

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Disturbingmind21 said:
Ok I took UWSA 2 just now, this test was much harder for me than UWSA 1.

I'm stuck in a loop here

12: 249; 13: 258; 15:249; UWSA1: 258 and now UWSA2: 249 again...

Anyone else think UWSA2 was a much harder test than UWSA1?
Click to expand...

I think the problem with UWSA2 is that it is not representative of the real test. It was disproportionately heavy on Biochem and Cell Bio imho.
 
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This is probably attributed to test day anxiety, but all of a sudden I'm feeling like I've lost some test-taking skills within the last week or so. My last NBME was a little less than two weeks ago and I finished UW Sunday. All I've been doing right now is FA but now I feel like not doing questions or even an NBME recently is going to affect me. My exam is Friday and now I'm debating doing some questions or something to help me get back into it. Idk tho...
 
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JJArms22 said:
This is probably attributed to test day anxiety, but all of a sudden I'm feeling like I've lost some test-taking skills within the last week or so. My last NBME was a little less than two weeks ago and I finished UW Sunday. All I've been doing right now is FA but now I feel like not doing questions or even an NBME recently is going to affect me. My exam is Friday and now I'm debating doing some questions or something to help me get back into it. Idk tho...
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You got this Andhers, I'm in the same boat as you. Last NBME was a while back and I've been reading first aid. Exam tomorrow and just took a few blocks of unused Kaplan and saw my average jump into the 90's. I think the break from Uworld has allowed me to relax and not overthink things.
 
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col.hanslanda said:
You got this Andhers, I'm in the same boat as you. Last NBME was a while back and I've been reading first aid. Exam tomorrow and just took a few blocks of unused Kaplan and saw my average jump into the 90's. I think the break from Uworld has allowed me to relax and not overthink things.
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Wow those are great scores for Kaplan! Good luck tomorrow, I'm sure you're gonna kill it!
 
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Day before test. Had so many ambitious plans for today, all of them flew out the window. Can barely sit still, let alone look at a book. Feels like I forgot everything overnight hahaha
 
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shrey93 said:
Day before test. Had so many ambitious plans for today, all of them flew out the window. Can barely sit still, let alone look at a book. Feels like I forgot everything overnight hahaha
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I feel exactly the same way. I wanted to do so many things this last week and I just wasn't able to. I think you should just relax if your test is tomorrow.
 
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Disturbingmind21 said:
Ok I took UWSA 2 just now, this test was much harder for me than UWSA 1.

I'm stuck in a loop here

12: 249; 13: 258; 15:249; UWSA1: 258 and now UWSA2: 249 again...

Anyone else think UWSA2 was a much harder test than UWSA1?
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I also thought UWSA2 was way harder than the first one. I got 15 points lower on it somehow. But my NBME exams have been much closer to my UWSA1 so I'm kinda choosing to just ignore that second one...
 
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Personally, I saw my UW averages drop after not having done questions for about a week. It takes a certain mindset to do them so I would definitely do a few to get into a groove for exam day.
 
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recycledpaper said:
Personally, I saw my UW averages drop after not having done questions for about a week. It takes a certain mindset to do them so I would definitely do a few to get into a groove for exam day.
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Yeah after taking the test yesterday, I would agree with this. I did a very minimal amount of UW questions the last week, instead focusing on cramming in more studying. I think I still did fine, but I wish I would have gotten myself back into question answering mode before the test.

As far as the test itself, it lives up to everything you've heard. It's a full day slug fest with plenty of ups and downs. I had plenty of time for each block, and I think my technique to ensure this is worth following. You can tell within a couple seconds if a question is going to be one that shouldn't take too long, or if it's going to be one that takes some time. My first pass through a block, I would quickly answer the less time consuming ones but I would mark them so I knew which ones to give another look if I still had time. On most blocks, this allowed me to get through ~25 questions with about 35 minutes left. Then I would go back and do the more time intensive questions, knocking out those ~15 questions in about 20 minutes, giving me 15 minutes to go back and check the ones I answered quickly. What I found on the ones I answered quickly: your gut is almost always right! There were very few of those I answered quickly that I actually ended up changing upon review. However, that doesn't mean you shouldn't still review them sufficiently; there were definitely a couple of stupid mistakes I would have made if I didn't give each of those questions a solid double check.

If you've checked over things sufficiently, don't hesitate at all about ending a block early. I had 2 blocks that I submitted with about 15 minutes left; most of these questions you're either going to know or you're not, so there's no point wasting extra break time. This allowed me to have a little over an hour break before my last 2 blocks, which I felt was critical for me. I was really hitting a brick wall in the middle of Block 5. Then I went and chilled in the lobby, chugged a couple Red Bulls and ate leisurely (bring a bunch of food! I brought waaay more than I knew I would eat because you don't have to eat everything you bring, but if you bring too little and you're hungry then you just screwed yourself over in an easily preventable way). This gave me the energy I needed to get through those last 2 blocks.

Don't sleep on the ethics questions. They were significantly tougher than the ones I've seen anywhere else. Between UW, UWSA, and NBMEs, I would imagine I probably got 95% of ethics questions correct during my dedicated period; I'm not sure if I even got 50% of them right yesterday. They all always came down to 2 answers, each of which had their pros but each of which also some stupid cons to them that also made them terrible choices. I'm really hoping some of those were experimental questions because I had a couple that were just absolutely terrible questions. There's a difference between "wow this is a tough question" and "hmmm there's only 2 answer choices that don't clearly suck completely, yet they both still are bad choices"; I felt the test was extremely fair overall but the ethics questions, by and large, were not.

There's going to be about an average of 5 questions per block where you feel absolutely clueless. Sometimes there will be a question about a topic you've studied thoroughly, but then the actual question ends up being over some random trivial aspect that seemed so irrelevant it will take you a minute to recall the answer.

Make sure you know your biostats! The biostat questions are gimmes if you know what you're supposed to do.

It's going to be a brutal battle no matter what, but you'll survive if you've been putting in the work. To those of you yet to take it, I'll see you on the other side; it's a glorious new day over here.
 
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It's crazy how much variation there is with the difficulty of these exams. I know the ones that are more difficult will have a better curve but I would rather have a UW/NBME type exam anyday. Hoping that will be the case for me. Congrats on being done!

SpartanWolverine said:
Took it today. Thought it was a fair exam and representative of everything I saw on UWorld/USMLE-Rx. Very similar to what I would expect from 7 pseudo-random UWorld blocks.

Definitely heard from a few people that yesterday was a doozy, though, @jqueb29.
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Bobcat18 said:
It's crazy how much variation there is with the difficulty of these exams. I know the ones that are more difficult will have a better curve but I would rather have a UW/NBME type exam anyday. Hoping that will be the case for me. Congrats on being done!
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Thanks! Yeah, really... and I know it's not just me, as my other classmates I saw at Prometric today thought it wasn't too bad. So... 3 from yesterday saying it was tough and 4 today saying it was fair. :shrug:

TBV said:
They arent all the same tests on a given day are they?
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Yeah, not sure how that works.
 
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With metrics on each question you would think they would just do it randomly
 
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Hi,

Long time follower. Just took my exam exactly a week ago and figured it would be right to post my thoughts after taking the exam given all the advice I took away from following this. Its been awhile since I thought of the exam but here is my take aways: First the good - There are fair amount of gimme, 1st order or easy 2nd order thinking questions on there. The exam is not made up of entirely impossible critical thinking questions and there are simple questions and I think its nice to know this. Of course, the catch 22 of these question is that you either know them or you don't haha. So what is a gimme to one person is different to the next, but just know that were will be a decent amount of question you just know before finishing or barely reading. On the other extreme, there are some very difficult questions here and there that you have never heard of. These are very few and just a couple each block. The key to these questions if using everything you possibly to eliminate what you know cannot be the right answer. If you can even elimate one take that as a boost of confidence and go with the hunch you have and move on. The bulk of the exam is, as you guessed, 2nd/3rd order thinking questions that cove just about every topic. However, one key take thing I saw was that many of the answer choices where much less than ambigious than that I have seen in some the uworld and harder nbme questions.

My single greatest piece of advice for test day is not to doubt yourself go with what you think is the right answer and not look back. ***
If you have studied hard and done a lot of questions more than likely you are at least on the right track an you need to believe in yourself.

My break down:
NBME 15 230 (7 weeks out)
USWA2 240 (4 weeks out)
NBME 16 251 (3 weeks out)
NBME 18 241 (2 weeks out)
NBME 17 260 (1 week out)

With that being said I am nervous about how I did despite everything I said haha. Oh well on to rotations in less than a week!
 
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****. I'm so torn. I took NBME 15 two weeks ago and got a 230.
Took NBME 17 today and got a 220.

Test is on Monday. ****.
 
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Took the test today. Ridiculously hard. I used to read these statements on this thread and I'd say to myself "this must be the fatigue talking". Today I got to experience this myself. My exam puts NBME 18 to shame. A lot less straightforward questions that you'd find in NBMEs. Oh well, the damage has been done, so now I've got nothing but to wait and hope for the best.
 
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LittleFoot said:
Are all exams on a given day really the same?
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My buddy and I took it both yesterday and no they're not the same. Some of the questions were the same between the two tests but for the most part we had different questions. My test was also 8 questions longer than his. We both thought the test was ridiculously hard, though there were vignettes that definitely seemed to mirror questions from the NBMEs and Uworld, so that was always a much needed confidence booster as the day went on.
 
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Ibn Alnafis MD said:
Took the test today. Ridiculously hard. I used to read these statements on this thread and I'd say to myself "this must be the fatigue talking". Today I got to experience this myself. My exam puts NBME 18 to shame. A lot less straightforward questions that you'd find in NBMEs. Oh well, the damage has been done, so now I've got nothing but to wait and hope for the best.
Click to expand...


The test is designed to make us all feel awful walking out. It's impossible to know how many beta questions have been added and how the score distributes over the number of test takers in a given cohort. Trust that you prepped well and here's to 5 more weeks of patience!
 
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ButterButter said:
The test is designed to make us all feel awful walking out. It's impossible to know how many beta questions have been added and how the score distributes over the number of test takers in a given cohort. Trust that you prepped well and here's to 5 more weeks of patience!
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I hope this is the case, man. I feel greatly disappointed. I was doing relatively well on NBMEs. On yesterday's test, I feel I did horrible. I did make few stupid mistakes that I shouldn't have done had I thought about the question a little more, but there were a lot of questions where I felt I was guessing on. I'd say I was only confident about half of the test questions. Most of the other half I educationally guessed on and few I blindly guessed on.

Have you taken the test?
 
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Ibn Alnafis MD said:
I hope this is the case, man. I feel greatly disappointed. I was doing relatively well on NBMEs. On yesterday's test, I feel I did horrible. I did make few stupid mistakes that I shouldn't have done had I thought about the question a little more, but there were a lot of questions where I felt I was guessing on. I'd say I was only confident about half of the test questions. Most of the other half I educationally guessed on and few I blindly guessed on.

Have you taken the test?
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I took it on the 6th (this past Monday). I felt the same way, absolutely terrible. My NBMEs were strong, so I was surprised at how shaky I felt. Like you, I made some really dumb mistakes on very easy, straight-forward questions. That being said, I felt that I correctly and confidently answered an equal number of pretty tough questions. A couple of my friends took it on the same day, and we all felt absolutely horrible. I e-mailed our school's board-prep guru who laid it out like this: there's a 0% correlation between how you feel walking out of the exam and your projected score. 95% of students leave thinking they've got to pack it all up wave their dreams goodbye. This is a totally normal feeling. Most folks will score within 10 pts of their most recent NBME (assuming it wasn't an outlier). It's a lot less likely that you will drop >15 points (although personally, this is what I'm trying to mentally prepare for).

You studied hard and you put in the time. Rest easy knowing that the vast majority of test takers feel exactly like you do right now.
 
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ButterButter said:
I took it on the 6th (this past Monday). I felt the same way, absolutely terrible. My NBMEs were strong, so I was surprised at how shaky I felt. Like you, I made some really dumb mistakes on very easy, straight-forward questions. That being said, I felt that I correctly and confidently answered an equal number of pretty tough questions. A couple of my friends took it on the same day, and we all felt absolutely horrible. I e-mailed our school's board-prep guru who laid it out like this: there's a 0% correlation between how you feel walking out of the exam and your projected score. 95% of students leave thinking they've got to pack it all up wave their dreams goodbye. This is a totally normal feeling. Most folks will score within 10 pts of their most recent NBME (assuming it wasn't an outlier). It's a lot less likely that you will drop >15 points (although personally, this is what I'm trying to mentally prepare for).

You studied hard and you put in the time. Rest easy knowing that the vast majority of test takers feel exactly like you do right now.
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Thank you for this response. I realize that people usually come out feeling like crap because they think they did much worse than their usual performance on NBMEs. The thing is, I KNOW I did bad. I keep remembering questions I got wrong. Perhaps it's because we tend to remember the ones that gave us a hard time and forget about the ones we easily answered. Anyways, it's not going to do us any good dwelling over the test. It's in the past now. All we can do is hope and pray that our the test reflects our NBME scores.

Now I need to do my best to forget about this test, at least temporarily, until I take the COMEX on Monday. Having to endure two more days of studying is unbearable.
 
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Ibn Alnafis MD said:
Now I need to do my best to forget about this test, at least temporarily, until I take the COMEX on Monday. Having to endure two more days of studying is unbearable.
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I'm in the same boat. I take COMLEX on Monday, and it's like pulling teeth trying to stay focused. It's true, your brain only retains the tough questions, the ones you spent a few minutes answering and the rest of the block doubting. That's why it's easy to feel bad about the entire exam. But that's the medical student's plight. We only dwell on the negatives, especially when taking such a massive exam with so much stress and emotion wrapped up in it. If it makes you feel any better, anytime you feel that sense of impending doom, just know I'm over here feeling the same..
 
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Took it today- honestly q stems (for my exam at least) were very UW style not very NBME style at all. I felt like there were some incredibly straight forward/almost "easy" gimme qs and then others were wtf. I think they sort of balanced out though. I will say the auscultation questions on actual exam are much better quality than any q bank I've done them in so that was a pleasant surprise. Not to say the content was a walk in the park but as far as what to expect if you can sit down and do 7 blocks in UW timed that's basically what to expect for this exam. Timing was zero issue (contrary to COMLEX for most). Other than that biggest advice for those headed into it is seriously relax lol (I was wayyyy too nervous my first few blocks I'm sure it affected my performance)


Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile
 
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I took the exam yesterday as well and felt good after some blocks and awful after others. My fourth block I marked about half of the questions (and I'm a conservative marker). No idea how I did but was getting consistently 245 on my last few NBME's. I would feel lucky to get anything above 240 at this point. I know they say everyone feels that way but I feel like an "exception." I can already name about pretty easy 10 questions I missed due to silly mistakes or bad guesses in a 50/50 situation. I guess that's just part of the game. But honestly the worst thought is having to still study for COMLEX on Monday. :/
 
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Just popping to congratulate everyone on getting through step one. Just took it today myself and totally agree that some of those tough questions make us completely doubt ourselves. (Don't feel particularly awesome myself right now lol). But it really is crazy how much work we put into this exam..I feel like trusting your NBME/UW scores is the way to go. Good luck to everyone still taking it!
 
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Sorry to post this, because maybe my test was unique, but seriously don't overthink this. If I knew the actual test was anything like what I just took this week I would have studied differently. Again, use the sources that work best for you. And this may be my luck so take it with a grain of salt.

My exam required almost no critical thinking, whatsoever. It was ridiculously easy. Sure, I assume I missed my fair share because timing is an issue and when you are crunched for time, you draw a blank, but if I would have just had read First Aid all day, every day I probably could have like a 260+ easy haha (maybe I did get that but doubtful). I think I could have got lucky, but wow were there a ton of short, easy questions. Its kind of sad, but skimming through First Aid and reading all of the tables (arrow up, arrow down, etc.) is useful, especially the day before. Sure, you can go ahead and relax the day before or whatever people here suggest but I just did not think it was that draining of a test. I knocked out several sections before my first break (which was like 45 min and awesome).

Maybe everyone's experience is different, and Uworld and Pathoma definitely helped me understand the underlying meaning behind some things we take for granted, but NBMEs 16-18 were way harder for me than my actual test. I don't know what this means for my score and how this voodoo is graded, but I really am shocked at how point blank most of this was.

TLDR; Stop obsessing about every word in Uworld's explanations. What random drug treats random parasite? Learn it and know it. I wish I had taken many deep breaths the day before while skimming through every page in First Aid, stress free, just reading quickly and moving on. But then again, I am just an N=1.
 
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How do I sign up to take your version?

Ibn Alnafis MD said:
Thank you. I'm hoping that's the case. I can remember ~20qs I missed up on and that's scaring the hell out of me. What hurts more is that some of these qs that I got wrong weren't the ones I marked.

Anyways, as you said, it's time to forget about this crap and get started on COMLEX prep.
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FranzLO said:
Sorry to post this, because maybe my test was unique, but seriously don't overthink this. If I knew the actual test was anything like what I just took this week I would have studied differently. Again, use the sources that work best for you. And this may be my luck so take it with a grain of salt.

My exam required almost no critical thinking, whatsoever. It was ridiculously easy. Sure, I assume I missed my fair share because timing is an issue and when you are crunched for time, you draw a blank, but if I would have just had read First Aid all day, every day I probably could have like a 260+ easy haha (maybe I did get that but doubtful). I think I could have got lucky, but wow were there a ton of short, easy questions. Its kind of sad, but skimming through First Aid and reading all of the tables (arrow up, arrow down, etc.) is useful, especially the day before. Sure, you can go ahead and relax the day before or whatever people here suggest but I just did not think it was that draining of a test. I knocked out several sections before my first break (which was like 45 min and awesome).

Maybe everyone's experience is different, and Uworld and Pathoma definitely helped me understand the underlying meaning behind some things we take for granted, but NBMEs 16-18 were way harder for me than my actual test. I don't know what this means for my score and how this voodoo is graded, but I really am shocked at how point blank most of this was.

TLDR; Stop obsessing about every word in Uworld's explanations. What random drug treats random parasite? Learn it and know it. I wish I had taken many deep breaths the day before while skimming through every page in First Aid, stress free, just reading quickly and moving on. But then again, I am just an N=1.
Click to expand...
 
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Took the exam today. First of all, I will say it was not as schockingly hard as I thought it'd be. It felt just like uworld but I think that's mostly because the software is essentially the same. Like others have said, I had some very easy questions and a lot of questions that were just very nit picky or had convoluted answer questions that basically all sounded reasonable. Time wasn't much of an issue except for maybe two blocks in which I flagged like 20 questions... Two blocks I basically had like 15 minutes left, so there was a lot of variability between the difficulty of the blocks. I didn't feel horrible like a lot of people after the exam, but that might just be attributed to the relief of being done. I honestly have no idea how I did. For some blocks I felt confident, and others I was just making tons of educated guesses. Seems to me if you think you did horribly, you end up scoring really well, and if you're like me and didn't think it was excruciatingly hard, you probably do average unfortunately. I'll be ecstatic if I score any of my nbme exam scores. I wouldn't look up questions you remember either, I did that with one and I got it wrong and now that just adds agony to the waiting process, but that's just my opinion. Good luck to everyone taking the test, and best wishes to those who are awaiting their scores.
 
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Hi guys, IMG student here, plan on taking this in early October.
Can I get any feedback / suggestions regarding this plan?

Organ-system wise:
Banks: Becker Qbank, USMLE Rx Qbank
Books: CRUSH, Pathoma, Goljan, First Aid 2014+2016.
----------------------------
✔ GASTROINTESTINAL (6/1 - 6/9)
❒ CARDIOLOGY (6/10 -
❒ NEUROLOGY
❒ HEMATOLOGY
❒ RENAL
❒ MUSCULOSKELETAL / CT
❒ ENDOCRINE
❒ PULMONOLOGY
❒ REPRODUCTIVE
❒ ONCOLOGY
❒ PSYCHIATRY
❒ BIOSTATISTICS
❒ MULTI-SYSTEM
----------------------------
❒ Blocks of all “incorrects” from both Rx and Becker, in Random
❒ NBME 1st



Random:
----------------------------
❒ UWorld Pass 1, random
❒ UWSA 1st
❒ UWorld Pass 2, random (if there’s time, if not, just the incorrects)
❒ NBME 2nd
❒ Uworld blocks of “incorrects”
❒ UWSA 2nd
----------------------------
❒ Consolidated notes review
❒ NBME 3rd
❒ Weak areas review, incorrects
❒ NBME 4th
❒ PPT of NBME incorrects + consolidated notes review
❒ NBME 5th-- [while tired / sleep deprived]
❒ NBME 6th
----------------------------
❒ USMLE Step 1 exam: ( ___ )
 
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SOML said:
Hi guys, IMG student here, plan on taking this in early October.
Can I get any feedback / suggestions regarding this plan?

Organ-system wise:
Banks: Becker Qbank, USMLE Rx Qbank
Books: CRUSH, Pathoma, Goljan, First Aid 2014+2016.
----------------------------
✔ GASTROINTESTINAL (6/1 - 6/9)
❒ CARDIOLOGY (6/10 -
❒ NEUROLOGY
❒ HEMATOLOGY
❒ RENAL
❒ MUSCULOSKELETAL / CT
❒ ENDOCRINE
❒ PULMONOLOGY
❒ REPRODUCTIVE
❒ ONCOLOGY
❒ PSYCHIATRY
❒ BIOSTATISTICS
❒ MULTI-SYSTEM
----------------------------
❒ Blocks of all “incorrects” from both Rx and Becker, in Random
❒ NBME 1st



Random:
----------------------------
❒ UWorld Pass 1, random
❒ UWSA 1st
❒ UWorld Pass 2, random (if there’s time, if not, just the incorrects)
❒ NBME 2nd
❒ Uworld blocks of “incorrects”
❒ UWSA 2nd
----------------------------
❒ Consolidated notes review
❒ NBME 3rd
❒ Weak areas review, incorrects
❒ NBME 4th
❒ PPT of NBME incorrects + consolidated notes review
❒ NBME 5th-- [while tired / sleep deprived]
❒ NBME 6th
----------------------------
❒ USMLE Step 1 exam: ( ___ )
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Are you going to study full time until October? I don't get it. Your schedule is hard to follow and therefore hard to critique. As for your resources I would ditch Becker (whatever that is) and go for Kaplan qbank instead. Instead of both goljan and pathoma, just pick one. Also, doing qbanks subject specific may be advisable in the beginning if your knowledge base is poor in the specific area, but otherwise I think you are just putting yourself at a disadvantage. You must learn to think in terms of differential diagnoses which may not be organ specific (eg. kartageners syndrome vs cystic fibrosis).
 
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Apart from a few chapters from General Path ( Environmental, Electrolyte disorders, Nutritional ), I've never really used Goljan RR. Used Pathoma throughout the year. But now when I'm flipping through the book I'm seeing a few topics from each organ system I've never seen before, and its freaking me out.
Im doing pretty good in UWorld ( 78 % right now, not even half way through ), and way back in April , NBME 13 was 224.
Test in august, so do i start doing Goljan, even a few chapters, or will Pathoma be enough? Want to give it my best to get 260+.
Input appreciated!
 
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Ibn Alnafis MD said:
Took the test today. Ridiculously hard. I used to read these statements on this thread and I'd say to myself "this must be the fatigue talking". Today I got to experience this myself. My exam puts NBME 18 to shame. A lot less straightforward questions that you'd find in NBMEs. Oh well, the damage has been done, so now I've got nothing but to wait and hope for the best.
Click to expand...
At least it's over!
 
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MudPhud20XX said:
So how do I know when my score will be released? I wrote the exam on 5/16 so will it take 3-4 wks? Or longer than that?

I just checked my nbme website and under score report date, it's just blank. Does anyone have the same?

Any idea?
Click to expand...
How did u do?
 
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JJArms22 said:
Took the exam today. First of all, I will say it was not as schockingly hard as I thought it'd be. It felt just like uworld but I think that's mostly because the software is essentially the same. Like others have said, I had some very easy questions and a lot of questions that were just very nit picky or had convoluted answer questions that basically all sounded reasonable. Time wasn't much of an issue except for maybe two blocks in which I flagged like 20 questions... Two blocks I basically had like 15 minutes left, so there was a lot of variability between the difficulty of the blocks. I didn't feel horrible like a lot of people after the exam, but that might just be attributed to the relief of being done. I honestly have no idea how I did. For some blocks I felt confident, and others I was just making tons of educated guesses. Seems to me if you think you did horribly, you end up scoring really well, and if you're like me and didn't think it was excruciatingly hard, you probably do average unfortunately. I'll be ecstatic if I score any of my nbme exam scores. I wouldn't look up questions you remember either, I did that with one and I got it wrong and now that just adds agony to the waiting process, but that's just my opinion. Good luck to everyone taking the test, and best wishes to those who are awaiting their scores.
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Congrats on being done!

How were your practice exams, and did you feel like it was a comparable experience?

My exam is monday and I'm sh*****ng bricks.

Progress so far:
12:249
13:258
15:249
UWSA1:258
UWSA2:249
16:258
17:258
Free 120: 88% at prometric center

these scores have been amazingly consistent. Taking 18 tomorrow....and that's pretty much it.

I really hope the beast on monday lives up to this track record...
 
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I think you'll be fine. The exam wasn't that bad, and I had similar stats to you near the end (NBME in the 250s and 89% on free 120).
 
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Disturbingmind21 said:
Congrats on being done!

How were your practice exams, and did you feel like it was a comparable experience?

My exam is monday and I'm sh*****ng bricks.

Progress so far:
12:249
13:258
15:249
UWSA1:258
UWSA2:249
16:258
17:258
Free 120: 88% at prometric center

these scores have been amazingly consistent. Taking 18 tomorrow....and that's pretty much it.

I really hope the beast on monday lives up to this track record...
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You have amazing scores, so I think you're gonna be just fine. I scored in the 240s on 12-15 and broke into the 250s on 16 & 18. I think the exam was honestly more similar to UW than the nbmes, but with more random questions that honestly I wouldn't even have known where to look for the answers. All in all you have scores that are higher than most people, so I think you should really relax. You're set to do awesome. Taking the day off before the test really helped me be calm for my exam. I don't think I did great to be honest, but I'm sure I did decently. Scoring a 240 was my goal so for me that would be very satisfying. For you though, I guarantee you'll get a 250 with your scores. Just breathe and be confident.
 
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AnalisCanalis said:
Are you going to study full time until October? I don't get it. Your schedule is hard to follow and therefore hard to critique. As for your resources I would ditch Becker (whatever that is) and go for Kaplan qbank instead. Instead of both goljan and pathoma, just pick one. Also, doing qbanks subject specific may be advisable in the beginning if your knowledge base is poor in the specific area, but otherwise I think you are just putting yourself at a disadvantage. You must learn to think in terms of differential diagnoses which may not be organ specific (eg. kartageners syndrome vs cystic fibrosis).
Click to expand...

Thanks for the feedback!
Just to expound a little more on my plans, I've been at it for almost a year now (no qbanks), I've scoured through FA2014 at least 3x, and practically rewrote the whole book (selected parts of course) on long bond paper leaving a lot of space for annotations. As far as analytic thinking, I've just started with Qbanks to build onto my base FA stuff. Now I have a copy of FA2016, and I didn't bother to write the new 2016 info into my notes, I chose to just keep the hard copy and annotate into the new info in the book as the need arises (and I'll review both my notes and quick read FA2016 - redundancy of info might breed familiarity).

I chose to do Becker and Rx, alternating organ blocks, doing a block of GIT in Rx, reviewing it, then doing a block from Becker and reviewing that. Ultimately, GIT info. from each Qbank overlap, and reinforce each other as I progressively complete all GIT questions from both banks. This moves quickly as the info overlaps, so I'm able to get through and review/annotate into my notes- about 4 blocks a day (2 from each bank). My %'s started in the 40%s then ended up to ~70% towards the 8-10th blocks. I'm done GIT, now onto cardio. I decided that doing organs first was okay since I roughly estimated (conservatively, ample time for each organ), that I could complete this process and have at least ~2 months left for UWorld. This would let me sit the exam by Oct.

As for Becker- They have a complete review course (pretty pricey) and I have a friend that proceeded to take it in Texas starting May. I was supposed to join him, but opted out d/t funds, so to prevent my FOMO, I signed up for their Qbank instead. It has mixed reviews here on SDN, but I wanted something regarding Qbanks to discuss/review with my friend.

I'm well aware about the value that going through Kaplan Qbank has- you have a valid point on that. I'm now considering a switch from Becker to Kaplan, starting with Cardio (might also be able to quickly knock out all the GIT Q's in a day, since info is still fresh in my mind). Thanks a lot!

- Pathoma and Goljan:
Since I'm going by organ, the concept of redundancy plays a role here. Going by organ allows me to review Pathoma (shorter) and build upon it with corresponding organ chapter(s) in Goljan (longer) = relatively quick review time considering it's 2 resources. Add in my condensed notes from FA and the 2 Qbanks, I feel even more confident with the info. Imagine seeing the comparison of [Crohn's VS Ulcerative Colitis] over and over from FA, Qbank Q's/explanations, Pathoma then Goljan. It's basically overkill, but a good kind I'd say. Goljan gets into a lot of minutiae, but when my intuition (from doing Q's) kicks in and says it ain't important, I just skip over it. But I really appreciate the tables in Goljan, they are great.

- I know that doing Q's in random is best, but I don't think my med school and going through FAx3 have left me with a strong foundation, so I opted to do Organs first. Can anyone comment on Organ-based review VS Subject-based review (i.e. Biochem, Immuno etc.)?
 
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recycledpaper said:
I think you'll be fine. The exam wasn't that bad, and I had similar stats to you near the end (NBME in the 250s and 89% on free 120).
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JJArms22 said:
You have amazing scores, so I think you're gonna be just fine. I scored in the 240s on 12-15 and broke into the 250s on 16 & 18. I think the exam was honestly more similar to UW than the nbmes, but with more random questions that honestly I wouldn't even have known where to look for the answers. All in all you have scores that are higher than most people, so I think you should really relax. You're set to do awesome. Taking the day off before the test really helped me be calm for my exam. I don't think I did great to be honest, but I'm sure I did decently. Scoring a 240 was my goal so for me that would be very satisfying. For you though, I guarantee you'll get a 250 with your scores. Just breathe and be confident.
Click to expand...

Thanks folks for the supporting statements. I'll be be sure to reflect on the experience for those taking it after me.
 
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Ibn Alnafis MD said:
I hope this is the case, man. I feel greatly disappointed. I was doing relatively well on NBMEs. On yesterday's test, I feel I did horrible. I did make few stupid mistakes that I shouldn't have done had I thought about the question a little more, but there were a lot of questions where I felt I was guessing on. I'd say I was only confident about half of the test questions. Most of the other half I educationally guessed on and few I blindly guessed on.

Have you taken the test?
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I'm in the same boat. I went in hoping for a 220-230ish and now I'm praying I passed.
 
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