Just got my score! 263! I've been a lurker on these forums for some time now, and I wanted to share my experience as other people's experiences have been helpful to my prep.
I'm at a school that has a condensed preclinical curriculum, and we do a year of clerkships before we take Step 1. I found that my year of clerkships was helpful for a handful of questions on the exam.
Prep during preclinicals: 1. Firecracker (flagged about 70% by the time clinical year came around and couldn't do it anymore as it is a big time sink). I hated firecracker with a passion, and it felt like a huge time sink (at the time I was doing it at least) especially with the long lists of crap they wanted you to be able to regurgitate. But I'm thankful for it, as it got me a handful of questions on my exam that you can't find in UFAP (and I strangely still remembered random things from firecracker on my exam? That was interesting...).
2. First Aid along with systems and during breaks. Mostly just used this to familiarize myself with the material.
3. Pathoma-also along with systems
4. Goljan audio. This guy is amazing. Only got through to like the 30th lecture? But he does an amazing job of integrating random points for you. Wish I did it during dedicated, but I got lazy and didn't feel like studying much haha.
5. One of the biggest things I can say is to learn your material well during the preclinical years. I had a good number of questions on my exam that came from my clinical year and my preclinical years but could not be found in UFAP alone. Even if you're at a school like mine, you'll still magically remember random details from stuff you learned over a year ago on your exam. There were a large number of questions I only got right because of something that was taught in lecture or something one of my attendings told me. It was always a big pet peeve of mine when my classmates would complain that the material they were teaching us was useless and a big waste of time and would go do their own thing... And then they got reamed during Step 1 prep when they realized how much of that "useless" and "a big waste of time" stuff was in UFAP and on their exam.
Prep (5 weeks): I deliberately chose 5 weeks to study because I was tired from clerkships, and all my upperclassmen told me to try to take as little time as possible to study because there are diminishing returns at the first couple weeks. This was definitely true. In actuality, I started getting burnt out by the third week and didn't really want to study anymore. My last two weeks weren't really fruitful for me, and I probably lost a couple points from that because I wasn't studying as hard as I had in the first 3 weeks.
Prep materials: UWorld (1x with incorrects and marked questions done again), Pathoma (1x with the audio and 1x with the book because I got lazy and didn't feel like watching the videos anymore which was a big mistake. Watch the videos people!), First Aid (2x with a rapid review of random things the final week just to jog my memory), Sketchy Micro (2x), NBMEs
Some advice: READ EVERY UWORLD EXPLANATION. Those are gold. I was kind of skeptical in the beginning as I didn't think I was getting much from them but as my prep went on I would randomly remember random details from those explanations and would get me random questions right. Also, Pathoma is gold. Don't skip it. I wish I did a 3rd pass of it because I could literally hear Sattar's voice guiding me to the answer on some of the questions. Also, last thing... I always read on here about people saying they knew "80-90% of FA" by the end of their study period. That's BS. That's not possible. There's a reason why even the people who score 270s say they go through FA after their exam and magically find random factoids from their exam that they didn't think was there. The book, while very bare bones, is also very dense. You read one thing, and the previous thing you just read goes out of your brain. I had a panic attack in the middle of my prep because I didn't feel like I even knew half of FA.
School given CBSE: 232 (4 months out)
NBME 12: 247 (6 weeks out)
UWSA 1: 260 (5 weeks out)
UWSA 2: 260 (4 weeks out)
NBME 15: 264 (3 weeks out)
NBME 16: 260 (2 weeks out)
NBME 17: 271 (1 week out)
Free 132: 93% (3 days before)
Finished UWorld 2.5 weeks before test date at an 81%, did timed, random blocks of 44
Exam Experience: Oh yes, the thing that everyone wants to know. Take this with a grain of salt as everyone has different forms, and you won't get the same form as me (even if it is helpful). The exam was very similar to the NBMEs with a couple UWorld like questions and a handful of WTF questions (about 2-3 per block). The exam I would say was 80-90% UFAP. Don't worry about the random other stuff on the exam. Just go with your gut and move on. Some of the WTF questions could only really be answered with knowledge from my clinical years which I thought was really unfair for people who don't take it after clerkships. My exam was extremely psych, renal, and rheum heavy, and I wanted to bang my head against the wall while taking the exam as these are my 3 WORST areas. The stems were also a little bit longer, and I was definitely had some less time to do my blocks. I normally finished my NBME blocks and UWorld blocks with 25-30 minutes left, but on the real deal, I only had about 10-15 minutes. In terms of systems:
Anatomy: Yes, everyone is scared of this. My form had about 10-15 questions total, and FA was enough for most of them except for 2 questions (both of which only an ortho could answer).
Biochem: Very straightforward. Not many questions. I was kind of mad about this because I spent so much time with biochem, but not much showed up and most of it was biochem diseases.
Micro: Omg, I had SOOOOOOOO much micro. It was just like wtf the whole time. Thank goodness for Sketchy Micro because it saved my butt on a ton of those questions. A lot of it was straightforward with a couple headscratchers.
Immuno: Not much at all. Maybe 5-10 total. And most of it was straightforward.
Embryo: Not too many questions. Maybe 5 total, but the ones that were on there were actually some of the hardest questions on the exam and were more second to third order and not a regurgitation of branchial pouches etc.
Behavioral/Ethics: Some of this was really, really hard. Very mixed stuff, and you get stuck between 2 answers but you just have to go with your gut and move on. There weren't that many on my exam anyway.
Biostats: Not much. Had one WTF questions here that only someone with a stats degree could answer. Otherwise, FA was enough for my exam.
Pharm: Very straightforward on my exam. FA covered 95% of pharm on my exam. Most questions were more geared toward side effects (which was a strength of mine given I had seen a lot of these during clerkships).
Path: Obviously a big chunk of my exam. Like I said, my exam was very psych, renal, and rheum heavy. (Also pulm heavy). Out of these four, rheum was extremely heavy on my exam (which I was surprised about because rheum is generally low yield). I wanted to break my computer, but thankfully rheum was manageable and relatively straightforward with a couple WTF questions. Psych was the second most heavy next to rheum, and it was also straightforward. Renal and pulm were pretty equal, and these two had the harder questions. There were a bunch of mixed presentations of renal and pulm, and like some people said before, some of the questions would go in one direction and then start going in another direction and then go in a third direction. Clerkships were helpful for this because a lot of Step 2 material forces you to parse out diagnoses and split between hairs. Otherwise, all other systems were low yield (including neuroanatomy which I was surprised about. Neuroanatomy was probably 3 questions on my exam.) There was a handful of basic path questions, some of which was WTF and others were straightforward.
Physio: A ton of physio (endocrine wise). Almost all of it was straightforward with the exception of one WTF question that I just stared at for 5 minutes and gave up because staring at the question wasn't going to do anything.
Other stuff: Not many CT scans/X-rays etc on my exam. One question had an abdominal x-ray but it didn't even show anything and I didn't need it to answer the question (I hope haha). Had 3 EKGs, and it was surprising because people universally say EKGs are very straightforward on their exam, but 1 of mine was WTF and I only knew it because I did a cardio elective. Had two heart sounds, both of which couldn't really be answered with the stem so I had to listen to them. Good quality I have to say. Sounded exactly like a real patient. Had a couple repeats from the NBMEs and from the Free 132 (or were very similar). A couple questions were also very similar to UWorld also. One of my questions was literally sentence for sentence out of FA, and I thought I was reading FA for a couple seconds. Makes you wonder who's writing FA.... UWorld also got me a question wrong haha. But whatever.
Post-Exam Experience: Felt relatively okay coming out. Wasn't as crazy as some people had said on here. But it was bad that night and the following 2 days. I started to look up random questions and found out I had about 4-5 stupid mistakes/overthought some things. In the end, I had a list of 13 wrong with 8 that I was unsure of. I would highly recommend taking a vacation and getting away from social media because it really helped me. I went to South America and did a hiking trip for 2 weeks with very little internet and was able to get away from thinking about step. But this week, I started having flashbacks of questions and would look up random things from my exam again (and I also thought I misread a bunch of questions). Definitely not good. In the end, I would say I got anywhere between 30 and 40 wrong on my exam.
Anyways, this is long enough. Hope this is helpful to everyone else taking this exam soon. Let me know if anyone has any other questions!
