USMLE Official 2017 Step 1 Experiences and Scores Thread

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WeedForLunch

WeedForLunch

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I know this is quite early but most American Students have finished giving the test for this year.
I am an IMG and have been prepping for the steps since quite some time and have seen Phloston, Transposony's and others' threads for their respective years and how helpful they have been.

I intend on giving step in Jan.. let's share timetables, plans and other stuff on how everyone intends on taking on this beast.

P.S. : I think it is not that early.. the 2015/2016 threads were started in September/October.. but in true SDN gunner style..i wanna start it in August.. :)
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sss2g2 said:
I am so baffled by some experiences that were fear mongering a lot of us from people with much higher NBME scores.

Percentage wise I'd say 60% of the exam was doable, 30% you could narrow down to 2 choices and 10% could not be answered due to individual lack of knowledge and/or experimentals. Stats was a joke don't worry too much about it on my exam. But remember these questions are meant to be answered within a minute or so so just know the formulas that are in first aid and you should be good to go.
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As one of the "fear mongering high NBME score people" I think i can speak for all of us when I say:
Your exam could have been significantly easier than ours was.
It bothers me when people suddenly become Step 1 experts after taking just one exam. Every form has a different level of difficulty.

Alternatively, and perhaps more likely, the high NBME averages go into the exam expecting a breeze but get blindsided, while the lower averages expect to get blindsided.

Nobody claimed that there aren't any gimmes on the exam. (And if were being clear here, a gimme is just a question that IF you studied that topic can be easily answered) Every exam, I would assume, has some "gimmes". But when only 20% of your Qs are gimmes vs. 75% gimmes on the NBMEs, you dont come running back to SDN celebrating.
 
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greenpenguin65 said:
Slowly dying and wanted to share my study plan for those in the middle/beginning step studying. 9 days left until the score release and it can't come soon enough.

I started reviewing MS1 material in fall of MS2; I spent 4 hours a week just reading FA from MS1 and then 4 hours a week on the organ block that we were currently doing. With this, I finished reviewing MS1 material by winter break and was a solid way through the organ systems. I started UWorld in January; I spent a week on each chapter, finishing up FA (and redoing what I had reviewed in the fall)/reviewing pathoma/doing ~20 UWorld questions a day.

With that, I had around ~1200 UWorld questions left when I started my 6 weeks of dedicated studying. I wrapped up UWorld first place in my first two weeks of dedicated and also did DIT. During weeks 3/4, I reviewed incorrect and marked questions (at a slower pace) and finished up DIT. During weeks 5/6, I did a 3rd pass of First Aid and Pathoma (and referenced DIT).

Stats:
UWorld %le: 90th
NBME 15 (4 weeks out): 255
UWSA #1 (4 weeks out): 266
NBME 17 (2.5 weeks out): 259
NBME 19 (1.5 weeks out): 261
NBME 18 (3 days out): 263

Walked out of exam: Feeling rough. Still feel rough. Counted approximately ~15 so far I know I got wrong, banking on some more.
Anticipating: really no idea. Gut says 245-255 but that might be optimistic.
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How many questions didu check
 
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I've found discussions on the variability of the exam relative to the NBMEs and UWorld to be pretty pointless for several reasons:

People get different forms + cant discuss exact questions -> cant make objective comparisons post exam
People have different emotional frameworks -> some will feel anxiety easier than others
People have different criteria for assessment -> I might rate a question where I'm >80% certain as a gimme, you might keep the threshold at >95% etc

The objective data we do have available is that most people tend to score in the region of their NBMEs as long as they're <250, although recently it seems like NBMEs have been consistently under-predicting. This is probably because the scoring takes question difficulty into account. For >250 I think the NBME prediction accuracy falls, but if you're in that range there's no need to worry to begin with.
 
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Newyawk said:
As one of the "fear mongering high NBME score people" I think i can speak for all of us when I say:
Your exam could have been significantly easier than ours was.
It bothers me when people suddenly become Step 1 experts after taking just one exam. Every form has a different level of difficulty.

Alternatively, and perhaps more likely, the high NBME averages go into the exam expecting a breeze but get blindsided, while the lower averages expect to get blindsided.

Nobody claimed that there aren't any gimmes on the exam. (And if were being clear here, a gimme is just a question that IF you studied that topic can be easily answered) Every exam, I would assume, has some "gimmes". But when only 20% of your Qs are gimmes vs. 75% gimmes on the NBMEs, you dont come running back to SDN celebrating.
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You're right every exam is different. Some will get the short stems luck of the draw and some will have a more negative experience. I'm not saying the exam was easy by any means. The exam was actually very difficult. However, this is a glass half full vs glass half empty situation. I'm trying to inspire people from my post and create a mindset for them before they go into the exam so they can rock it and do even better. Scaring people via fear mongering does nothing except freak them out and will have a negative effect on their performance.
 
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sss2g2 said:
You're right every exam is different. Some will get the short stems luck of the draw and some will have a more negative experience. I'm not saying the exam was easy by any means. The exam was actually very difficult. However, this is a glass half full vs glass half empty situation. I'm trying to inspire people from my post and create a mindset for them before they go into the exam so they can rock it and do even better. Scaring people via fear mongering does nothing except freak them out and will have a negative effect on their performance.
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I could probably argue similarly that you're giving them the false impression that the exam isn't very difficult which could result in unreasonable expectations. In reality, it depends on the person reading the post. Some will be motivated by fear and will walk in thinking the exam will be tough but to try their best anyway. Others will freak out.

Either way, describing people like me as "fear mongerers" implies, i think, that im freaking people out on purpose. That is not at all the case.
 
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Questions, questions, questions!!!! I took my NBME score from 180 to 215 after 1 pass of UW. About to review it and go through all of my weak spots and hopefully pull this above a 230. Thank you all for your encouragement and advice. I'm so happy :)


Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile
 
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Newyawk said:
I could probably argue similarly that you're giving them the false impression that the exam isn't very difficult which could result in unreasonable expectations. In reality, it depends on the person reading the post. Some will be motivated by fear and will walk in thinking the exam will be tough but to try their best anyway. Others will freak out.

Either way, describing people like me as "fear mongerers" implies, i think, that im freaking people out on purpose. That is not at all the case.
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Agreed. Prepare for every type of test.
 
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So, test day experience.

Exams definitely do vary, I got no helminth questions (thankfully) and a friend of mine who took it at the exact same time had to identify a parasite solely based on the a very vague clinical vignette and an actual photo of the thing. I get what the other poster is saying in that the test does throw questions at you where the answer can be found by having a solid physio background, making it an easy question. Example: how will lab values look after certain hormone is administered for x amount of hours, vs control. The test is designed for med students to pass, so there has to be enough of the "gimmes" to get 90%ish students a score above a 193. In general, the test is very fair in that regard. If you passed your classes and studied from the resources adequately, you will pass.

Now, for those who are looking for a 240-250+ this test is another ball-game entirely. Any word in FA, pathoma, or U-world is fair game. That being said 90% of the material on my exam I'm sure could have been found in those 3 resources. Whether or not you could RECOGNIZE what was being asked is something else. The other 10% can not be found in any of the HY resources and you just gotta roll with it. I finished UA SA's and NBME's with 10+ minutes left a block every time and scored 250+ each time. I was RACING against the clock on this exam. Many questions will give you a situation where two answer choices sound like they could be right, but the fact that they are both there means there is something that makes one more right than the other. I had a question where a certain presentation could be caused by both answer choices (and in fact the presentation was hinting more so towards the answer I chose than the other) and I'm pretty sure I got it wrong because in THAT SPECIFIC DEMOGRAPHIC the other answer choice is more common. So in essence it was a question of MCC in demographic vs clinical presentation. UWSA2 and the last 2 NBME's are as close as it gets to this exam, but actually, they aren't even that close. Not to be insulting, but I feel those people that say that this exam was "easy! and just like doing a block of u-world!" just didn't have the knowledge base/reasoning to understand how difficult some of these questions actually where.

Now for the good news. I did U-world once then my marked (I marked roughly half the bank of the ones I thought difficult) so 1.5x, I did 75% of RX (under-rated resource), and did NBME 13-19 and both UW SA2's. This was by far the most helpful thing I could have done. Questions is the name of the game. Many questions that came out where very, very similar to questions I had encountered before. I think I may have gotten 1 or 2 that where carbon copies of questions I had seen before. Questions is the only way to truly test your understanding and getting a question wrong is a great way to see why you went wrong and not only learn that material better, but something about an incorrect question just sticks with you.
 
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heh feels like I just woke up from a bad dream. Honestly, step yesterday felt like my MCAT experience and every standardized exam I've taken. Do really well on practice tests and simulated exams, only to underperform on the actual thing.
But in all fairness, I think the material on the exam is what you would expect; really felt like a random block of Kaplan for the test I took (although Kaplan was by far my worst Qbank performance, and I only managed to make it through half of it lol). Good luck to everyone who has yet to take it! Hopefully I won't have to retake it....
 
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ridethecliche said:
Hah, that's pretty great.

Is the assumption here that the folks after late May will hear back in the normal time frame? They don't mention it at all so...?
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I hope so. I took it during the first week of June, which means a 3-4 week turn around should lie on the week of the 28th. Then again who knows - my whole experience with this test has been anything but predictable.
 
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Hey guys, so my wife took her exam yesterday, and she is freaking out cause she made alot of stupid mistakes. She recalls like 12 marked per section that she marked and she has noted some off the top of her head where she got some wrong. How bad is it if she gets like 84 wrong (12x7)? I really wanna cheer her up guys, I hate seeing her down. What should I tell her? Maybe some experiences of those who thought they did terrible and did well? She got 240's on UW SA1/2 and mid 220's on NBME's...
 
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Nucleus Accumbens said:
Hey guys, so my wife took her exam yesterday, and she is freaking out cause she made alot of stupid mistakes. She recalls like 12 marked per section that she marked and she has noted some off the top of her head where she got some wrong. How bad is it if she gets like 84 wrong (12x7)? I really wanna cheer her up guys, I hate seeing her down. What should I tell her? Maybe some experiences of those who thought they did terrible and did well? She got 240's on UW SA1/2 and mid 220's on NBME's...
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Tell her that we tend to focus on the negatives and forget the positives.
That's what I'm gonna tell myself after my exam in 2 days anyway
 
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Nucleus Accumbens said:
Hey guys, so my wife took her exam yesterday, and she is freaking out cause she made alot of stupid mistakes. She recalls like 12 marked per section that she marked and she has noted some off the top of her head where she got some wrong. How bad is it if she gets like 84 wrong (12x7)? I really wanna cheer her up guys, I hate seeing her down. What should I tell her? Maybe some experiences of those who thought they did terrible and did well? She got 240's on UW SA1/2 and mid 220's on NBME's...
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Very unlikely she got all 12 marked wrong, and also there are experimental questions thrown in. Additionally, she may have had harder questions on her test, and these will be scaled accordingly. Anyways, like FA says (at least my 2015 fill in the blank version does), might as well suppress the negative thoughts since there's nothing we can do to change the outcome at this point. :p
 
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Army guy said:
Very unlikely she got all 12 marked wrong, and also there are experimental questions thrown in. Additionally, she may have had harder questions on her test, and these will be scaled accordingly. Anyways, like FA says (at least my 2015 fill in the blank version does), might as well suppress the negative thoughts since there's nothing we can do to change the outcome at this point. :p
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So, you think she'll get around what she was getting on UWSA2
 
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Gorne said:
Not to be insulting, but I feel those people that say that this exam was "easy! and just like doing a block of u-world!" just didn't have the knowledge base/reasoning to understand how difficult some of these questions actually where.
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Quoted for emphasis. All the NBMEs felt like the same ****, different toilet. Meanwhile, the actual exam felt like I walked into the wrong bathroom that took place in some politically-correct future where I had no idea how to work the damn toilet. All this was happening while someone was banging on the bathroom stall telling me to hurry up because I'm taking too long.
 
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took step 1 yesterday. Not really sure how to feel about it at this point. Honestly going into it I didn't expect to crush it, but definitely felt like I would be a least a little more confident in my performance.

In the week leading up to exam I took NBME 18 and ended up with a 240, and UWSA2 with a 237. Walking out of that test, feels like I'm gonna be lucky to pull off a 220. Woof.

Edit bc my fat thumbs hit "post" too soon - lots of weird micro and some interesting pharm. way less neuro than I expected and way more biochem than I expected.
 
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I took Step 1 yesterday and I'm really scared I might have failed (or scored below 200). Already recalled 13 wrong answers, most of which would be considered "give me" questions... I felt like I marked 50-70% of my exam and made really dumb mistakes/answer changes. My NBMEs/UWSA2s averaged to around 230+ but there was a lot of fluctuation.. I know a lot of people come out feeling the same way I do and that the test is curved but if I missed so many of the "easy" questions I don't know where that really puts me. Guess I'm just on here to vent, sorry.
 
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Harvey Harvardson said:
I took Step 1 yesterday and I'm really scared I might have failed (or scored below 200). Already recalled 13 wrong answers, most of which would be considered "give me" questions... I felt like I marked 50-70% of my exam and made really dumb mistakes/answer changes. My NBMEs/UWSA2s averaged to around 230+ but there was a lot of fluctuation.. I know a lot of people come out feeling the same way I do and that the test is curved but if I missed so many of the "easy" questions I don't know where that really puts me. Guess I'm just on here to vent, sorry.
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Good luck dude! I think I'll be in a similar position having to pick between a few answer choices and be marking most of the exam. Hope it works out.
 
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Harvey Harvardson said:
I took Step 1 yesterday and I'm really scared I might have failed (or scored below 200). Already recalled 13 wrong answers, most of which would be considered "give me" questions... I felt like I marked 50-70% of my exam and made really dumb mistakes/answer changes. My NBMEs/UWSA2s averaged to around 230+ but there was a lot of fluctuation.. I know a lot of people come out feeling the same way I do and that the test is curved but if I missed so many of the "easy" questions I don't know where that really puts me. Guess I'm just on here to vent, sorry.
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Many of us have been in your shoes (still havent gotten my score). Stay positive at this point and try to relax
 
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mymembernames said:
Did anyones permit disappear?
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Mine has not unfortunately (took it end of May). Unfortunately it looks like that more than likely we'll have to wait for at least another week :(. Also I checked the USMLE announcement page and they updated their announcement page yesterday by re-posting the original message that they posted in February that there would be a delay in scores coming out for those testing from April to the end of May.
 
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Exam in less than 24 hrs. How long before my *** catches fire? It's just not sinking in!! I can't say if I've given up or if I have actually achieved " stay calm before exam" advices.
 
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I did a block of UWorld last night at 1 am..... I took my test June 5. What is my life coming to
 
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yolomcat said:
in terms of type of content how similar was the real step compared to the nbmes?
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I think each test can vary (quite significantly) from one to another. That being said, I felt like the content of the exam I took was fairly similar to that of the NBME's. In other words, my exam had a good spread of different topics overall, but had one that was a bit more heavily tested than the others (heme onc in my case). If your original question was asking more about style of questions asked I would say UW was a bit more representative. If I can recall correctly, I think NBMEs had several one line questions and fairly short vignettes. However, I found the real exam to have pretty long vignettes with maybe like 2/280 being one liners, if that. Hope that helps in some way.
 
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yolomcat said:
in terms of type of content how similar was the real step compared to the nbmes?
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As far as content goes, I suppose the NBMEs are representative.... I mean there is so much material, any 2 exams are unlikely to test the same content lol. But it seems they both pull questions from UFAP material if that is what you are getting at.....

As far as the questions go, the real deal is much more difficult than NBMEs. The stems are much longer. It is more like UWorld, maybe a little harder.
 
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Justanothermedstudent said:
I think each test can vary (quite significantly) from one to another. That being said, I felt like the content of the exam I took was fairly similar to that of the NBME's. In other words, my exam had a good spread of different topics overall, but had one that was a bit more heavily tested than the others (heme onc in my case). If your original question was asking more about style of questions asked I would say UW was a bit more representative. If I can recall correctly, I think NBMEs had several one line questions and fairly short vignettes. However, I found the real exam to have pretty long vignettes with maybe like 2/280 being one liners, if that. Hope that helps in some way.
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I am talking about depth and sometimes the picky detailed questions that require you to know very small differences between pathology.
 
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yolomcat said:
I am talking about depth and sometimes the picky detailed questions that require you to know very small differences between pathology.
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It VASTLY varies between exams. My exam had almost no repro, physio, or biochem, but was full on genetics, molecular, and onc. A friend took it the same day and said his was full of micro, physio, biochem. Do they test on small details? Yeah of course. Some tests more than others.

The only good answer is that you need to know as much as possible about every subject to avoid getting a test that hits on your weaknesses. I actually disagree with there being an even spread, almost everyone I've talked to at my school that has taken it has said their exam has been much more heavy in certain subjects as compared to others.

Just know everything.
 
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yolomcat said:
I am talking about depth and sometimes the picky detailed questions that require you to know very small differences between pathology.
Click to expand...

Well, its difficult to answer your question because its both hard to qualitatively assess something like that and you'll get varying levels of difficulty (in terms of depth, integration of information, and analysis) on both the NBMEs and the real exam. You'll have questions that you'll know immediately and you'll also have questions that you can probably convince yourself of three separate answer choices.
 
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Rekt said:
It VASTLY varies between exams. My exam had almost no repro, physio, or biochem, but was full on genetics, molecular, and onc. A friend took it the same day and said his was full of micro, physio, biochem. Do they test on small details? Yeah of course. Some tests more than others.

The only good answer is that you need to know as much as possible about every subject to avoid getting a test that hits on your weaknesses. I actually disagree with there being an even spread, almost everyone I've talked to at my school that has taken it has said their exam has been much more heavy in certain subjects as compared to others.

Just know everything.
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definitely this. Felt my exam was ridiculously heavy on 4 subjects; came out feeling like a tool for having studied the other subjects in FA. But I guess you never really know what's going to be emphasized on the actual step.
Still feels like an exam that shouldn't be used to stratify candidates for residency; but again, I guess these days everyone has the same blanket resumes with all Dean Letters saying "this is the best student we've ever had". Sucks to live in a generation where everyone's a superstar :'(
 
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Hey guys,

can anyone pretttty please help me? Can people post what their % right was on uworld self-assessment 2 and what 3 digit score that correlated to?

Mine got effed up for some reason and shut off at the 4th block around question 10. Ahhh... I have the percentages for my first 3 blocks, and they were all pretty much the same. I can guesstimate an actual score if I see what other people's % correct correlated to.

My exam is in 4 days so I am kinda freaking out :(. actually majorly panicking.

I'm an avg student, my first block was 70%, 2nd block 80%, 3rd block 70%, 4th block.... I got the 1st ten right and then it shut me out... so who knows, I probably could have gotten anywhere between a 70-75% on that block.

Tried looking at last year's posts, but I know they changed the curve this year to make it more like the real thing.

Thank you!!!
 
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docbsb2015 said:
I did a block of UWorld last night at 1 am..... I took my test June 5. What is my life coming to
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docbsb2015 said:
Oh just because I was bored and thinking about step 1 like the every other hour of the day. Plus I only got thru 80ish% of uworld so I have like 400 or so questions left
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You've officially lost it. Call it.
 
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For whoever may be reading this and might need a pep talk (including myself):

For every practice exam I have ever taken (whether it be an NBME or school issued) I think to myself before I look at my score "this is finally the one where you blew it." Pretty consistently I think that I've finally hit the batch of questions that doesn't match up to what I've prepared for. And every time I check my score I am shocked to see I've done well, even improved in some cases. I know I will absolutely feel this way after Step 1, but that doesn't always give comfort.

But, no matter what score we get, whether we think it is representative of the work we have put in, we should all be extremely proud of ourselves. In a couple years we will graduate and finally be able to call ourselves physicians, and able to look back at this time of our lives and think about how we were able to conquer something the average person could not. So no matter the score, what specialty you choose, how you feel after you walk out of the exam, you should feel extremely proud of yourself.
 
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I have a random question - and I don't mean for it to freak anyone out or add undue stress (because maybe I'm just the last person to hear this):

But has anyone heard about the USMLE changing the test difficulty every 10 years or so to "re-normalize" the score distribution? If so, is it true that the scores this year for us may be lower because of it?
 
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