USMLE Official 2017 Step 1 Experiences and Scores Thread

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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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If on real deal you are alowed to make 7 mistakes per block at it is equal to 49 overal and this is 17% of 284 questions, this means that 83% right on real deal is +- 230. but 83% on nbme is only around 220. I hope NBME's nowadays underpredict, or I just want to think so to wane off anxiety
 
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Just took NBME 13 yesterday for a baseline and got 81% which translated to a 215 🙁 test is in 2 months and dedicated study starts in 1 month, hoping for a 250+ not sure if that's realistically possible...
 
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Brorthopedic said:
Just took NBME 13 yesterday for a baseline and got 81% which translated to a 215 🙁 test is in 2 months, hoping for a 250+ not sure if that's realistically possible...
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hmm you and i are in the same boat for test day. we still have time , so dont worry. Ive only taken 12 so far. was yours online or offline
 
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Surgeria said:
Great baseline. How much time you have? And doing ufap solely?
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thank you, its a start but just like everyone else on here im trying to gun for the 250. Which from what ive been told is only 6 wrong a block, so i need to improve. And yes, i finished uworld first pass at 71% and now im almost done with all my incorrects before i start for round two again , ive never really read first aid fully , more of rapid review before my exam type of reading. So after adding stuff in, im gonna try to read first aid within a week and then start uworld again. Ive also been using sketchy non stop since first year, ive probably watched each video at least 3 times. Im gonna try to watch the sketchy path because it has two of my weakest areas renal and cardio, so well see if that helps it. Ive also been using physeo for physiology. The are extremely under rated in my opinion. Their stuff is gold. Helped alot for neuro. And pathoma of course, ive probably watched each video once. Ive never actually read my text, only annotated it. So in that one week of first aid reading im gonna try to read pathoma too
 
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Dr.Jekyll75 said:
thank you, its a start but just like everyone else on here im trying to gun for the 250. Which from what ive been told is only 6 wrong a block, so i need to improve. And yes, i finished uworld first pass at 71% and now im almost done with all my incorrects before i start for round two again , ive never really read first aid fully , more of rapid review before my exam type of reading. So after adding stuff in, im gonna try to read first aid within a week and then start uworld again. Ive also been using sketchy non stop since first year, ive probably watched each video at least 3 times. Im gonna try to watch the sketchy path because it has two of my weakest areas renal and cardio, so well see if that helps it. Ive also been using physeo for physiology. The are extremely under rated in my opinion. Their stuff is gold. Helped alot for neuro. And pathoma of course, ive probably watched each video once. Ive never actually read my text, only annotated it. So in that one week of first aid reading im gonna try to read pathoma too
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Thank you for your reply, i remember that you aim for neuro. How much time do you have?
 
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Surgeria said:
82% right in that chart correlates to 230, but people in nbme 18 thread are keeping saying that 84% was roughly equal to 223. It was posted on 19 march 84% nbme 18 = 223.
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fortunately Nbme 18 has a much nicer curve. I scored 223 with 42 mistakes, so 79%. But unfortunately it's a lot more difficult than NBME 12,13,15, 17, 19 and slightly more difficult than NBME 16. It's a really tough exam, much more comparable to Uworld. While I took it I though that I was on the 60% correct range since in many questions you just have to guess
 
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Griseofulvin93 said:
fortunately Nbme 18 has a much nicer curve. I scored 223 with 42 mistakes, so 79%. But unfortunately it's a lot more difficult than NBME 12,13,15, 17, 19 and slightly more difficult than NBME 16. It's a really tough exam, much more comparable to Uworld. While I took it I though that I was on the 60% correct range since in many questions you just have to guess
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Griseofulvin93 said:
fortunately Nbme 18 has a much nicer curve. I scored 223 with 42 mistakes, so 79%. But unfortunately it's a lot more difficult than NBME 12,13,15, 17, 19 and slightly more difficult than NBME 16. It's a really tough exam, much more comparable to Uworld. While I took it I though that I was on the 60% correct range since in many questions you just have to guess
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all these nbme curves make me wonder how they are so predictive, it seems like you can miss 40 in one and get a 240 and miss 40 in another and drop down to 220s
 
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Dr.Jekyll75 said:
all these nbme curves make me wonder how they are so predictive, it seems like you can miss 40 in one and get a 240 and miss 40 in another and drop down to 220s
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They're usually predictive because that's the thing with statistics and distribution. It's not just you vs the exam. It's technically you vs other examinees.

But another beautiful (or horrifying) thing is that there are outliers.
 
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Brorthopedic said:
Just took NBME 13 yesterday for a baseline and got 81% which translated to a 215 🙁 test is in 2 months and dedicated study starts in 1 month, hoping for a 250+ not sure if that's realistically possible...
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Definitely realistic. I'm sitting baseline of 196 and I've been told a 240 is doable. You're almost 20 points higher than me.
 
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For anyone who took the exam, did you get a bunch of biochemistry questions?...were they pretty simple/straightforward for the most part (ex: Lysosomal/Glycogen diseases, mostly diseases, etc...).

My weakest subject is Anatomy - I basically stuck to FA anatomy in the MSK section and made flashcards, but I'm still nervous because I've always been weak in anatomy :/ Really wishing I don't get many questions on it :/ if so I can only hope they're straight-forward ones
 
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LAK84 said:
For anyone who took the exam, did you get a bunch of biochemistry questions?...were they pretty simple/straightforward for the most part (ex: Lysosomal/Glycogen diseases, mostly diseases, etc...).

My weakest subject is Anatomy - I basically stuck to FA anatomy in the MSK section and made flashcards, but I'm still nervous because I've always been weak in anatomy :/ Really wishing I don't get many questions on it :/ if so I can only hope they're straight-forward ones
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Biochem-straight forward and simple
every exam is different but it seems like they enjoy asking stuff about vitamins that you might overlook. They were not easy, so know them well, especially unique things.
anat 90% simple FA stuff, couple things never heard off. Reflexes and dermatomes were a recurring theme. I hate anatomy, I thought i screwed up but somehow it was on the higher performance side. Embryo was super straight forward FA stuff. Unless you know anat/embryo in FA i wouldnt ise another source. apart from questions to practice on of course
 
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Major procrastinator said:
Biochem-straight forward and simple
every exam is different but it seems like they enjoy asking stuff about vitamins that you might overlook. They were not easy, so know them well, especially unique things.
anat 90% simple FA stuff, couple things never heard off. Reflexes and dermatomes were a recurring theme. I hate anatomy, I thought i screwed up but somehow it was on the higher performance side. Embryo was super straight forward FA stuff. Unless you know anat/embryo in FA i wouldnt ise another source. apart from questions to practice on of course
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Refreshing. How about GI anatomy?Just trying to figure out if knowing things like arcades vs vasa recta differences in the ileum and jejunum are important. Like, there are more arcades in the jejunum and whatnot. It's not specifically outlined in FA but I could see it being asked in UW or step :|
 
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chromuffin said:
Refreshing. How about GI anatomy?Just trying to figure out if knowing things like arcades vs vasa recta differences in the ileum and jejunum are important. Like, there are more arcades in the jejunum and whatnot. It's not specifically outlined in FA but I could see it being asked in UW or step :|
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no they dont ask stuff like that, Ive never seen a question like that. FA GI anat is HY
 
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Nbme scores got super steep curves, does this meen that real deal curves also became harder? They cant change anything about the materials, its constant but what about curves? Does this meen that people will get lovet scores? Maybe I am wrong
 
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Surgeria said:
Nbme scores got super steep curves, does this meen that real deal curves also became harder? They cant change anything about the materials, its constant but what about curves? Does this meen that people will get lovet scores? Maybe I am wrong
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I hope not. Just took NBME 11 offline and I made 28 mistakes. According to some older posts on some forum this should roughly correlate with a 235-238. However I don't think that with the new curves this would be anything above 225.

There are 2 options that I thought:

1) Some questions they ask are already heavily tested/explained on the major usmle sources (Uworld, FA), therefore the percentage of people getting them right has consistently increased in the last years
2) They deliberately chose to underpredict by some points

The only way to find out is to take the exam. Have you already taken the exam? what's your average NBME score
 
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Griseofulvin93 said:
I hope not. Just took NBME 11 offline and I made 28 mistakes. According to some older posts on some forum this should roughly correlate with a 235-238. However I don't think that with the new curves this would be anything above 225.

There are 2 options that I thought:

1) Some questions they ask are already heavily tested/explained on the major usmle sources (Uworld, FA), therefore the percentage of people getting them right has consistently increased in the last years
2) They deliberately chose to underpredict by some points

The only way to find out is to take the exam. Have you already taken the exam? what's your average NBME score
Click to expand...

I took offline 11+12 and got 36 wrong in both and 80% right in free 120 2015 year. I hoped that I was at 225-230 level but with new curve its around 215. I will take nbme 13 in 30 days after second run uworld + finished anki cards (rx 2016). Hope I will be at 230 ... new curves made me anxious, i hope they are tricking us. Guys from this thread are overshooting their nbme scores on the real deal
 
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A friend of mine took NBME 13 the other day, missed 46 and got like 203 or 205. I think missing 36 would be around a 220.
Surgeria said:
I took offline 11+12 and got 36 wrong in both and 80% right in free 120 2015 year. I hoped that I was at 225-230 level but with new curve its around 215. I will take nbme 13 in 30 days after second run uworld + finished anki cards (rx 2016). Hope I will be at 230 ... new curves made me anxious, i hope they are tricking us. Guys from this thread are overshooting their nbme scores on the real deal
Click to expand...
 
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You guys should take more NBMEs before you freak out. Obviously that older NMBEs have stepper curves. They are less likely representing of the real thing anyway.
 
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kenjixshadow said:
You guys should take more NBMEs before you freak out. Obviously that older NMBEs have stepper curves. They are less likely representing of the real thing anyway.
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Naah, I'm 3 days out of my exam, I'm just taking the old nbmes to find some weird questions that might appear on my exam, so I'm not concerned at all if they are representive or not. And yes, NBME 11 and 12 were really a piece of cake in comparison with NBME 18.

Looking around it seems that when they got released they were considered very difficult, and probably this is all because question banks and first aid just copy the NBME questions. Probably in few years NBME 18 will look a piece of cake as well because all the tricky questions will be covered by the main qbanks and all the nitpicky details will be in first aid.

In any case the NBME with the steepest curve is NBME 19, the latest released. I scored 217 with 33 mistakes. The level of difficulty is pretty much the same of NBME 11/12 though
 
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Griseofulvin93 said:
Naah, I'm 3 days out of my exam, I'm just taking the old nbmes to find some weird questions that might appear on my exam, so I'm not concerned at all if they are representive or not. And yes, NBME 11 and 12 were really a piece of cake in comparison with NBME 18.

Looking around it seems that when they got released they were considered very difficult, and probably this is all because question banks and first aid just copy the NBME questions. Probably in few years NBME 18 will look a piece of cake as well because all the tricky questions will be covered by the main qbanks and all the nitpicky details will be in first aid.

In any case the NBME with the steepest curve is NBME 19, the latest released. I scored 217 with 33 mistakes. The level of difficulty is pretty much the same of NBME 11/12 though
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Hmm is it was similar to 11/12 and you said those were easy, how come you didn't score too high. I'm not trying to be condescending I'm honestly curious. Is it because the stuff isn't in first aid or is it one of those where the answer is one random enzyme bottom corner of the page


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Dr.Jekyll75 said:
Hmm is it was similar to 11/12 and you said those were easy, how come you didn't score too high. I'm not trying to be condescending I'm honestly curious. Is it because the stuff isn't in first aid or is it one of those where the answer is one random enzyme bottom corner of the page


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Probably got similar # correct but it was just a matter of score correlating to incorrects..
 
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So perplexed . Took nbme 18 and scored 236 down from 240 on nbme 17 last week. Exam in 10 days. I'm lost. I don't know what to do. Any advice is welcome
 
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Long time reader, infrequent poster. Needing advice for how to structure review for last 10 or so days before step (April 20th). Progress so far:

Baseline: NBME 15 = 207 (400)
2 weeks ago: NBME 16 = 228 (500)
Today: NBME 18 = 232 (520)

I've finished one intensive pass through FA and Pathoma, adding notes from UWorld occasionally. Weak areas I haven't hit in a while: micro, various pharm topics, renal; I think not reviewing these problem areas recently is why 18 didn't improve much. On UWorld (cum. average = 67%) I have about 500 questions left to do for first pass. Any advice on how to structure these last few days? I would really like to hit 240.
 
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Skyrocket254 said:
So perplexed . Took nbme 18 and scored 236 down from 240 on nbme 17 last week. Exam in 10 days. I'm lost. I don't know what to do. Any advice is welcome
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For what it's worth, I've read about NBME 18 underpredicting a bit. It looks like we'll be taking step close to the same day. Best of luck! 🙂

Edit: Don't want to give advice since I'm in same boat lol
 
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pathlologist said:
Long time reader, infrequent poster. Needing advice for how to structure review for last 10 or so days before step (April 20th). Progress so far:

Baseline: NBME 15 = 207 (400)
2 weeks ago: NBME 16 = 228 (500)
Today: NBME 18 = 232 (520)

I've finished one intensive pass through FA and Pathoma, adding notes from UWorld occasionally. Weak areas I haven't hit in a while: micro, various pharm topics, renal; I think not reviewing these problem areas recently is why 18 didn't improve much. On UWorld (cum. average = 67%) I have about 500 questions left to do for first pass. Any advice on how to structure these last few days? I would really like to hit 240.
Click to expand...
pathlologist said:
For what it's worth, I've read about NBME 18 underpredicting a bit. It looks like we'll be taking step close to the same day. Best of luck! 🙂
Click to expand...
pathlologist said:
For what it's worth, I've read about NBME 18 underpredicting a bit. It looks like we'll be taking step close to the same day. Best of luck! 🙂
Click to expand...

I really hope so. Was this close to shedding tears when I saw my nbme score. Felt it was so vague and difficult. good luck too. Hope you break 240
 
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Dr.Jekyll75 said:
Hmm is it was similar to 11/12 and you said those were easy, how come you didn't score too high. I'm not trying to be condescending I'm honestly curious. Is it because the stuff isn't in first aid or is it one of those where the answer is one random enzyme bottom corner of the page


Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile
Click to expand...

Well, I've said that it was easy because there were a lot of straightforward questions that I guess everybody knows (like for example which enzyme is inhibited by aspirin). I took it 10 days ago and I hadn't finished reviewing yet so if I took it right now I would have probably avoided 5-6 mistakes and I would have scored (hopefully) in the 225 range
 
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IMG here, took step 1 on march 28, and even though i was pretty consistent with my grades on NBMEs i feel horrified since i've already discovered at least 9 mistakes i made on the test (268 questions total!!)
NBME 15 252 (3 week out)
NBME 13 240 ( 4 weeks out)
NBME 16 250 (4 weeks out)
NBME 17 255 (2 weeks out)
NBME 18 252 (7 days out)
NBME 19 252 (3 days out)
i ve always aimed at a possible 250+ score and i must admit i feel like that boat has sailed...🙁
i m being pretty pessimistic because most of the questions that turned out to be wrong for me, were ones that at the moment i felt sure about nailing them... really makes me wonder how much i messed the ones i was dubious about...
now i know it's only natural to be stressed out when the results are pending, but based on your experiences , is there a true correlation of the NBMEs with the result? did you also feel pretty uncertain and negative about everything, only to finally find out that you got a good score in the end?
i m not seeking for consolation, just for a grasp of the reality
 
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anthonymmd said:
IMG here, took step 1 on march 28, and even though i was pretty consistent with my grades on NBMEs i feel horrified since i've already discovered at least 9 mistakes i made on the test (268 questions total!!)
NBME 15 252 (3 week out)
NBME 13 240 ( 4 weeks out)
NBME 16 250 (4 weeks out)
NBME 17 255 (2 weeks out)
NBME 18 250 (7 days out)
NBME 19 252 (3 days out)
i ve always aimed at a possible 250+ score and i must admit i feel like that boat has sailed...🙁
i m being pretty pessimistic because most of the questions that turned out to be wrong for me, were ones that at the moment i felt sure about nailing them... really makes me wonder how much i messed the ones i was dubious about...
now i know it's only natural to be stressed out when the results are pending, but based on your experiences , is there a true correlation of the NBMEs with the result? did you also feel pretty uncertain and negative about everything, only to finally find out that you got a good score in the end?
i m not seeking for consolation, just for a grasp of the reality
Click to expand...

Dude, yes. You're fine man! Congrats on the awesome exam scores and being done!!! Now, go get drunk 🙂


Sent from my iPhone using SDN mobile
 
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I have a big score discrepancy. I scored a 258 on the first UW practice, but a 238 on NBME 15, even though I did much better %-wise on the NBME. I was wondering if anyone else has taken it lately and if there is a drop off in score between the two. I got 24 wrong (88% correct). Thought I was on track to score where I want to, but now I'm not so sure.

Thanks
 
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steponecloser said:
I have a big score discrepancy. I scored a 258 on the first UW practice, but a 238 on NBME 15, even though I did much better %-wise on the NBME. I was wondering if anyone else has taken it lately and if there is a drop off in score between the two. I got 24 wrong (88% correct). Thought I was on track to score where I want to, but now I'm not so sure.

Thanks
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That's sort of what we've been discussing on this thread for the past week or so. The general consensus is that UWSA exams will overshoot and NBME exams will fairly accurate on the real deal. Even tho the % correct is higher your score is scaled based on the performance of others. The curve on some of the NBME exams has been recently modified to reflect the performance of the cohort sitting for step 1 now. That means if your score is 88% = 230 (average), then the average current medical student sitting for step 1 is scoring 88% correct. It's insane but you're dealing with the top 1% in academia taking a standardized exam haha!


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I started my dedicated period today and I found out the results from my most recent CBSE to be a 180. I'm taking that as good news as it's a big jump from the 150 I had in January. I bought UWorld this morning and I'm rolling through DIT to help me make a pass of FA. I'm hoping I can see some real improvement from 180 over the next 4 weeks working in Pathoma and Sketchy!
 
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