I totaly agreee with you. Let's say you got 5 questions on cyp (which is not going to happen, you can't get 5 question on that much low yield stuff, which maybe even became high yield) so if you missed even that 5, it is not going to ruin our scores. I meen that if person is prepared and is scoring let's say 230 +- constantly on every nbme, even getting that cyp questions or strange question about breech delivery, or questions from wierd anatomy and fractures which are onlt known to pgy5 ortho chief residents, this all I think will not have big influence on our curve, because most of all is going to miss this questions simply because most of us does ufap + kaplan + maybe goljan audio +- B&B. How much % of examinees is going to remember some minutae from ms1 1st month lecture from anatomy? - Probably no one. What minutae will be with you on exam day? - ufap. Maybe someone can remember all the lectures + all the ufap = and they may score 270, but I speak about the average people, average people that treats us everyday at the hospital, not that 1-2% of graduates that invent new cancer drugs, those are outliers, which I am not. As long as I know questions are graded depending on how much % of examinees gave right or wrong answer. So it means that if person fails usmle, or gets low score, it meens that his/her core basic concepts are not doing well, it's like you don't know that acetozolamide is sulfa drug and can rape you kidneys ... or chloroquine is toxic to your eyes, all this is in FA. how much people that cloroquine is toxic to eyes? I know because I have done around 15 000 Anki cards and finaly i know most of the FA. Hard work, nothing special. Tallent? well, some is more talented to remember fastly, but in the end there is say 3000 concepts, and if you master them all - you become a master. I was thinking a lot about this stuff, why do people fail? Is it because wierd usmle exam form? - no no and no! It is because people are not ready to put they buts for a 10 hours a day, nothing more, anyone can get 220 on this exam, anyone! Just a question of time and energy input. Someone needs 2 month, someone needs 10 month, I know people from harvard which I meet on surgical congress, those some of them take year off for research after ms2 to take step 1 exam because they have not managed if earlier, if you are not ready don't that tham damn exam, better to have several red flags than to fail. This life is about what is better? - better to fail or to be questioned "why you don't sat the exam in the end of ms2?" my 0.5 cents, just my opinion