COMLEX Official 2018 Comlex 1 Experiences and Scores Thread

[ThrowAwayStepDO]

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[sandstorm223]

Can anyone who has taken COMLEX already verify that, aside from the stem lengths, the actual difficulty of the questions is similar to Comquest?

I agree with @IntheClouds4ever but at this point I'm basically done learning material and wanting rather to pound questions that feel most similar to the actual thing so I can get into the right groove.

 

[PathoTurnUp1865]

I want to take another comlex style practice test before my real one next week. So I’m deciding between taking a full length combank (provided with the school and provides score) vs taking another comsae. Finally started hitting 60s-70s on Uworld and scored a 220 on uwsa2 (not stellar but big improvements from where I was three weeks ago).
Thoughts?

 

[HoodBank]

I want to take another comlex style practice test before my real one next week. So I’m deciding between taking a full length combank (provided with the school and provides score) vs taking another comsae. Finally started hitting 60s-70s on Uworld and scored a 220 on uwsa2 (not stellar but big improvements from where I was three weeks ago).
Thoughts?

Id suggest the combank assessment. It gives you a feel of what its like to sit and answer a million (400) questions, and it gives a really detailed score report that is supposedly ~87% accurate according to truelearn.

 

[IntheClouds4ever]

I want to take another comlex style practice test before my real one next week. So I’m deciding between taking a full length combank (provided with the school and provides score) vs taking another comsae. Finally started hitting 60s-70s on Uworld and scored a 220 on uwsa2 (not stellar but big improvements from where I was three weeks ago).
Thoughts?

I vote truelearn assessment. It'll give you a feel for your endurance for the full length. I personally am not a fan of COMSAEs since you can't review anything and their score report is garbage IMO.

 

[PathoTurnUp1865]

I vote truelearn assessment. It'll give you a feel for your endurance for the full length. I personally am not a fan of COMSAEs since you can't review anything and their score report is garbage IMO.

Id suggest the combank assessment. It gives you a feel of what its like to sit and answer a million (400) questions, and it gives a really detailed score report that is supposedly ~87% accurate according to truelearn.

That’s probably what I’ll end up doing. Originally I was going to do a comsae + the free 120 question thing from nbme but the combank would probably be more beneficial

 

[itsallgood123]

I vote truelearn assessment. It'll give you a feel for your endurance for the full length. I personally am not a fan of COMSAEs since you can't review anything and their score report is garbage IMO.

How does one access this truelearn assessment?

 

[PathoTurnUp1865]

Nice job dude! May I ask what % you got for the 220?

66%.
I also feel like a 66% on the real thing would be higher, but idk

 

[PathoTurnUp1865]

How does one access this truelearn assessment?

Our school bought it I guess

 

[PathoTurnUp1865]

Interestingly I don't find them much different in difficulty. In fact some comquest questions are almost identical to uworld .

I’ve heard very similar things but idk. If I do rx or combank I score high 70s-80s. Uworld I score 50-70 usually, occasionally an 80.

Interesting. A 66% on uwsa1 is a 232 lol

I think it’s because it’s more based off a curve of everyone. I’m not sure. I made a 58% on the first one and scored a 208 lol so I’m not sure how the 66 correlated with a 220.

 

[PathoTurnUp1865]

There are people at my school who scored 250+ on their UWSAs who are scared they didn't get above 500 on comlex. Basically the consensus is the stems are too long for the short amount of time you have per question. Timing and fatigue are the hardest parts they said because you dont have time to sit and think during the block. Just go go go or you will run out of time.

Damn bro, hearing stuff like that makes me nervous as hell

 

[PathoTurnUp1865]

Well, I was talking specifically about comquest. Combank is straight up garbage. I stopped using it. Not sure why you snuck in Rx there but ya for sure uworld is harder than it.

Indeed. I suppose I don't get why they split up their exams that way. I guess the same variance could be said for the nbmes but I don't think any of them have a 12 pt swing, but same %.

I’ve just been doing rx on the side for my weaker areas. Just kind of shocked how easy it’s gotten. Before dedicated I thought it was pretty hard but now it’s like day and night lol

 

[MusicDOc124]

combank assessment is full length?

 

[dostudent1234]

Im curious how one class thought this years test was harder than last years when they didn't take it? COMLEX has been known to be difficult in the vague and obscure regard, this year may be on the harder end of the spectrum but I don't think its going to drastically change anyones score (>1SD)

The consensus was that it was significantly more difficult than any of the COMSAEs, and (in my opinion) the USMLE. I obviously can’t judge it based on last years COMLEX... ha

 

[Esskeetit]

The consensus was that it was significantly more difficult than any of the COMSAEs, and (in my opinion) the USMLE. I obviously can’t judge it based on last years COMLEX... ha

What exactly made you think that it was more difficult than USMLE?

 

[PathoTurnUp1865]

Can anyone comment how the pharm has been? It's probably my weakest area, and I'm going to be tightening it up over the next week. Just wanted to get an opinion on how it matched up to Uworld/combank?

 

[itsallgood123]

Hey can anyone explain what this actually means...did they change the comlex this year? Based on what I'm hearing that seems to be the case?

"The passing standard for COMLEX-USA Level 1 will be reviewed and a new passing standard may be implemented for the 2018-2019 COMLEX-USA Level 1 testing cycle effective May 21, 2018. The score release dates for candidates taking COMLEX-USA Level 1 from May 21 to June 15, 2018 are anticipated to be longer than the usual time to release scores to allow sufficient time for the standard setting process to set a minimum passing score and statistically validate candidate performance for the new Level 1 testing cycle."

Score Release Dates — NBOME

Forgive me if discussed already.

 

[PathoTurnUp1865]

Hey can anyone explain what this actually means...did they change the comlex this year? Based on what I'm hearing that seems to be the case?

"The passing standard for COMLEX-USA Level 1 will be reviewed and a new passing standard may be implemented for the 2018-2019 COMLEX-USA Level 1 testing cycle effective May 21, 2018. The score release dates for candidates taking COMLEX-USA Level 1 from May 21 to June 15, 2018 are anticipated to be longer than the usual time to release scores to allow sufficient time for the standard setting process to set a minimum passing score and statistically validate candidate performance for the new Level 1 testing cycle."

Score Release Dates — NBOME

Forgive me if discussed already.

I wonder what the odds are they’ll try to make the scores on the same scale as usmle. Like a 230 is the median vs 500 or whatever. Does that sound dumb?

 

[dostudent1234]

How did you do on your self assessment tests prior to taking the COMLEX and USMLE? Can you post for us please. Thanks!

650-700 range on COMSAEs
240-250 range on CBSSAs

What exactly made you think that it was more difficult than USMLE?

The question stems were paragraphs long, and I thought that the questions asked were very convoluted. Some questions asked weirdly specific details and the pharm included side effects that were not covered by Sketchy. The length of the test also contributed to the difficulty. Also, there were things that I had never even heard of before- I was scoring in the 240-250 range on CBSSAs and 650-700 range on COMSAEs- so I don't think it was a knowledge issue. I'm hoping that my score is better than what I expect, but that test was weird.

 

[mrmaestro]

Hey can anyone explain what this actually means...did they change the comlex this year? Based on what I'm hearing that seems to be the case?

"The passing standard for COMLEX-USA Level 1 will be reviewed and a new passing standard may be implemented for the 2018-2019 COMLEX-USA Level 1 testing cycle effective May 21, 2018. The score release dates for candidates taking COMLEX-USA Level 1 from May 21 to June 15, 2018 are anticipated to be longer than the usual time to release scores to allow sufficient time for the standard setting process to set a minimum passing score and statistically validate candidate performance for the new Level 1 testing cycle."

Forgive me if discussed already.

I think there are three likely outcomes, though no one I've talked to knows for sure where this is ultimately headed.

First possibility: NBOME decides that higher score is required to pass COMLEX. Like 410 or something.

Second possibility: NBOME does not increase the minimum passing score, but restandardizes everyone's score to make the mean and median score lower and closer to 500. This may hurt.

Third possibility: NBOME completely scraps their current scoring method and institutes a new one, maybe mimicking the USMLE's scoring system to make COMLEX scores easier for programs to interpret. This seems the least likely to me.

Like I've said, no one I've talked to knows for sure. If I were a betting man, I wouldn't be surprised if a new passing score is implemented this year. What does this mean for all of us? I guess we'll find out. I can't see NBOME deciding to fail many more people each year moving forward. I think our consolation is that programs will still be able to see our score's percentile, so it shouldn't hurt anyone, even if it means everyone has a score that is 10 or 20 points lower than it would have been if they took COMLEX 2017. Good luck studying!

 

[itsallgood123]

I think there are three likely outcomes, though no one I've talked to knows for sure where this is ultimately headed.

First possibility: NBOME decides that higher score is required to pass COMLEX. Like 410 or something.

Second possibility: NBOME does not increase the minimum passing score, but restandardizes everyone's score to make the mean and median score lower and closer to 500. This may hurt.

Third possibility: NBOME completely scraps their current scoring method and institutes a new one, maybe mimicking the USMLE's scoring system to make COMLEX scores easier for programs to interpret. This seems the least likely to me.

Like I've said, no one I've talked to knows for sure. If I were a betting man, I wouldn't be surprised if a new passing score is implemented this year. What does this mean for all of us? I guess we'll find out. I can't see NBOME deciding to fail many more people each year moving forward. I think our consolation is that programs will still be able to see our score's percentile, so it shouldn't hurt anyone, even if it means everyone has a score that is 10 or 20 points lower than it would have been if they took COMLEX 2017. Good luck studying!

I wonder what the odds are they’ll try to make the scores on the same scale as usmle. Like a 230 is the median vs 500 or whatever. Does that sound dumb?

Dang I can def see that redefinition of the median happen. That would...really suck haha I'd be mad as hell

 

[IntheClouds4ever]

Dang I can def see that redefinition of the median happen. That would...really suck haha I'd be mad as hell

its not a big deal. It sucks since we have been looking at a certain "score", but it still wouldn't change your percentile. It just sounds bad that instead of a 600 its a 575 this year, but in the grand scheme you're still at the ~80th percentile.

 

[PathoTurnUp1865]

Been facing major burnout these last couple of days. Week out from step,6 days out from comlex. What are some things you all have done to power through this?

 

[brogrammingdoc]

Looking for opinions... is it worth it to try to memorize all the counterstrain points for comlex?

 

[MrTaco92]

Looking for opinions... is it worth it to try to memorize all the counterstrain points for comlex?

Unless if youre shooting for a 98th percentile score I'd guess your time is better spent on other aspects of the test.

 

[IntheClouds4ever]

Been facing major burnout these last couple of days. Week out from step,6 days out from comlex. What are some things you all have done to power through this?

Take a full day off and fill it with things you enjoy. I routine took days off here and there because I always felt better coming back to it. Plus it felt good when I remembered stuff I felt like I wasn’t quite grasping.

 

[PathoTurnUp1865]

Take a full day off and fill it with things you enjoy. I routine took days off here and there because I always felt better coming back to it. Plus it felt good when I remembered stuff I felt like I wasn’t quite grasping.

That’s so hard to do when my tests are next week and I feel like I have so much to do. Gotta go through omm, gotta go over my weak areas, gotta somehow get pharm down lol can’t wait to be done with this

 

[sandstorm223]

I just took COMSAE form A and got a 617. Test is in 1 week. Any idea what this score means? I'm rapid-fire clicking through old SDN threads to try to find an accurate correlation between COMSAE scores and COMLEX performance.

 

[DNC127]

I just took COMSAE form A and got a 617. Test is in 1 week. Any idea what this score means? I'm rapid-fire clicking through old SDN threads to try to find an accurate correlation between COMSAE scores and COMLEX performance.

It means you are in a good spot! Keep grinding. Some peoples COMSAEs predict right on the money, and others dont. No way to say for sure

 

[sandstorm223]

Been facing major burnout these last couple of days. Week out from step,6 days out from comlex. What are some things you all have done to power through this?

I'm taking COMLEX in a week as well. A couple of days ago I was really burned out so I just watched sketchy all morning and afternoon. By evening I was energized again, and actually ended up having one of my most productive study sessions this month.

 

[DOorDIE77]

took it today and here is what i will say.. The more stuff you know cold the better. The exam really is not as hard as people are making it out to be.. The exam is just long as hell with long ass questions. With the occasional vaguely irritating uworld style answer choices. You really don't have much time to think. If you have to read the whole question and then look at the labs you better already know the answer by that point because you just spent about 30-60s reading and then maybe another 5-10s on the labs maybe 30 if its really drawing a blank and then you have another one just like that coming up behind it. So the more stuff you know cold the better. Seriously. Don't use comsaes and averages of q banks to gauge your score. Use them to highlight and develop your weaknesses. Also as far as OMM goes.. Combank is good. OMG OMT is also good but only if you really lack a base knowledge deficit on a topic and need a good visual guide (like I did for some stuff). The comlex omm though was very akin to what I would get asked on combank.

 

[dushash]

took it today and here is what i will say.. The more stuff you know cold the better. The exam really is not as hard as people are making it out to be.. The exam is just long as hell with long ass questions. With the occasional vaguely irritating uworld style answer choices. You really don't have much time to think. If you have to read the whole question and then look at the labs you better already know the answer by that point because you just spent about 30-60s reading and then maybe another 5-10s on the labs maybe 30 if its really drawing a blank and then you have another one just like that coming up behind it. So the more stuff you know cold the better. Seriously. Don't use comsaes and averages of q banks to gauge your score. Use them to highlight and develop your weaknesses. Also as far as OMM goes.. Combank is good. OMG OMT is also good but only if you really lack a base knowledge deficit on a topic and need a good visual guide (like I did for some stuff). The comlex omm though was very akin to what I would get asked on combank.

What you were scoring before the test? Just trying to gauge

 

[AFishAnt]

Took it today and thought it wasn't super bad except for the really long questions. A lot of blocks I didn't have time to check any of my answers but I'm also a slow reader so that might be why. You can answer many of the questions based on the last few lines, but I agree with what the guy said above about knowing stuff cold since you don't have much time to think. I also had trouble with low-yield bugs and management style questions. OMM was pretty simple, nothing I hadn't seen before. I only took comsae E that our school gave but thought it was nothing like this test in terms of length or difficulty. Comsae was very straight forward and 1st order heavy while comlex had vague presentations with many 2nd and 3rd order questions. But I still think that ~80-90% of the test was relatively straight forward. For reference, I got a 609 on comsae and 240 on nbme 19 recently.

 

[PathoTurnUp1865]

Does anyone know of any ankis for counterstrain?

 

[PathoTurnUp1865]

MEGA
Just found this one. Don’t know anything about it though

 

[Jakeman3597]

Took it today and thought it wasn't super bad except for the really long questions. A lot of blocks I didn't have time to check any of my answers but I'm also a slow reader so that might be why. You can answer many of the questions based on the last few lines, but I agree with what the guy said above about knowing stuff cold since you don't have much time to think. I also had trouble with low-yield bugs and management style questions. OMM was pretty simple, nothing I hadn't seen before. I only took comsae E that our school gave but thought it was nothing like this test in terms of length or difficulty. Comsae was very straight forward and 1st order heavy while comlex had vague presentations with many 2nd and 3rd order questions. But I still think that ~80-90% of the test was relatively straight forward. For reference, I got a 609 on comsae and 240 on nbme 19 recently.

Do you have any more input on the management style questions? Im not great at them either. Have been working on lower yield bugs cuz based on previous years threads I guess they love a good random rare parasite ova question.

 

[DOorDIE77]

What you were scoring before the test? Just trying to gauge

On the combank 400 assessment I made a 607 and in the comsaes I averaged 560. So 70-80th percentile was what I aimed for. So if it wasn’t bad to me then most people in here should be fine. Timing is huge though if my score goes down it’s because part 4 was a very stressful 20 minutes having about 33 questions left at about 15 minutes... So just keep that in mind the less you have to think the better off you will be. I composed myself and stopped thinking too much on the second part and actually felt more confident about it in the end.

 

[Leydiggy]

Quick question about test day. Do the breaks you take between blocks 2/3 and 5/6 count against your total time? I have been looking this question up everywhere and cannot find it. Thanks!

 

[mrmaestro]

Quick question about test day. Do the breaks you take between blocks 2/3 and 5/6 count against your total time? I have been looking this question up everywhere and cannot find it. Thanks!

They do NOT count against your testing time. They made this change last year. They are optional, however, so you can keep cruising if you don't want the break. And if you take longer than 10 minutes, then the overtime will count against your time remaining.

 

[Leydiggy]

They do NOT count against your testing time. They made this change last year. They are optional, however, so you can keep cruising if you don't want the break. And if you take longer than 10 minutes, then the overtime will count against your time remaining.

Thank you so much!

 

[mrmaestro]

Same for the 40 minute lunch break after block 4 I'm assuming?

Right-o.
If you google "comlex level 1 test day tips" and click on the top hit (a PDF from NBOME) it has some other useful info, too. I'd post the link here, but sdn won't let me. I'm too new.

 

[AFishAnt]

Do you have any more input on the management style questions? Im not great at them either. Have been working on lower yield bugs cuz based on previous years threads I guess they love a good random rare parasite ova question.

Honestly there were only ~5 max on the whole test so I wouldn't go out of your way to study them. I looked up a few after my test and I'm still not sure what the answers are. They usually ask management about really common and high yield diseases so if you really want to you could look at onlinemeded for those. The majority of micro on the test were from sketchy with maybe 2-3 questions on bugs I had never heard of before.

 

[HoodBank]

My COMLEX experience. I dont know what the fuss was about it being so long... I finished every block with around 10 minutes to spare. To me it felt exactly like comquest and nothing like combank. I feel like combank misses the mark completely whereas the whole time i felt like i had the exact questions in comquest. Sketchy is pure gold for micro. OMGOMT for omm. Lots of vague questions. be ready to embrace the feeling of uncertainty that comes with guessing on literally like 1/3rd of the test.

 

[Pickle808]

Do you think different days have different tests?? (like everyone on Mondays takes the same test, etc..) I've heard its really long by some, and others say it's not that bad..

 

[PathoTurnUp1865]

Take test in four days. Ready to be done but at the same time really nervous.
Uworld: 58%
Comsae E 442
Uwsa1 205
Comsae A >500
Comsae C >550
Uwsa2 220
Combank assessment 600
Scores are a little bit all over the place but that’s the order in which I took them. Started Uworld 30s-40s, ended high 60s-70s, few 80s sprinkled in.

 

[IntheClouds4ever]

Take test in four days. Ready to be done but at the same time really nervous.
Uworld: 58%
Comsae E 442
Uwsa1 205
Comsae A >500
Comsae C >550
Uwsa2 220
Combank assessment 600
Scores are a little bit all over the place but that’s the order in which I took them. Started Uworld 30s-40s, ended high 60s-70s, few 80s sprinkled in.

solid progression, man. You shouldn't be worried.

 

[tunicaexterna]

Take test in four days. Ready to be done but at the same time really nervous.
Uworld: 58%
Comsae E 442
Uwsa1 205
Comsae A >500
Comsae C >550
Uwsa2 220
Combank assessment 600
Scores are a little bit all over the place but that’s the order in which I took them. Started Uworld 30s-40s, ended high 60s-70s, few 80s sprinkled in.

You’re gonna do great dude

 

[hpgryffn]

been dwelling here a bit just wanted to say hi! taking comlex in about 2 weeks [mainly cuz i pushed it back after spazzing out the other day about not having enough time left -hate it when i see the countdown of "15 days left" lol. I'm making my second pass through first aid now [first pass was watching usmle-rx vids and reading through them]. Read through all the cardio in fa along with rewatching pathoma and doing the appropriate sketchypharm. still working through a final pass of sketchy micro here an there. working on resp today. I've also sprinkled inat least 10 combank omm q a day and some micro combank q and i now understand what everyones talking about with it being worded weirdly. on uworld every bug follows the characteristics of sketchy but in combank its just "this guy went to africa and took a swim now he itches, what's the tx?" lol. whereas uworld throws in that keyword of "terminal spines" or "this guy presents years later with bladder cancer". lol combank cracks me up [or im officially going mad] anyways i'm just trying to write up on a word document any interesting micro bugs that aren't really emphasized in fa or uworld or sketchy and i think this is helping!
for those still grindin, wer all in this together and best of luck!

 

[mrporter11]

so i joined to get some feedback. I'm about a week out from my exam, and i've been getting worked by the comsaes, but I'm averaging around 75% on uworld second pass and roughly the same for comquest first pass. I've heard COMSAE's aren't really indicative of your actual score, but it is still worrisome. Any feedback would be appreciated.

 

[hpgryffn]

so i joined to get some feedback. I'm about a week out from my exam, and i've been getting worked by the comsaes, but I'm averaging around 75% on uworld second pass and roughly the same for comquest first pass. I've heard COMSAE's aren't really indicative of your actual score, but it is still worrisome. Any feedback would be appreciated.

Nothing to add but to say I share in your misery. I finished my world fist pass consistently getting about 70% on my last 1/3 or so and took a comsae a week and half ago and got rocked. I literally didn't even know what they were asking for about 1/4 of the time.

Similar comquest avg too, fyi.

Many of my classmates said that Comsae isn't a great indicator for comlex. One even linked me to several reddit threads in which people got above average on comsae and ended up barely passing comlex. Most of the upperclassmen told me that is NBMEs are going well and uworld assessments are above that 65% mark then you'll be fine for comlex

 

[darknecrosforte]

Just took it today. Felt like 50% gimmes, 40% HMMM, and 10% WTF. ~30% was biostats/psych/public health/ethics. About 30% micro/pharm/OMM. The rest random. DirtyUSMLE has an ethics video that covered nearly every major scenario I saw. Only felt my stamina decrease during the 8th block. The non-WTF questions were very similar to COMQUEST. Knowing obscure orthopedic exams and specific muscles involved in CS helped. Viscerosomatics were braindead easy with light study. Just wanted to get this out of the way so I could do Step 1 next week. I'll post result when I get it.

NBME 13 (3/26/18): 184 LOL
NBME 15 (6/01/18): 219
NBME 16 (6/03/18): 211
NBME 18 (6/04/18): 211

COMSAE (school edition) 5/22/18: 550