COMLEX Official 2018 Comlex 1 Experiences and Scores Thread

[ThrowAwayStepDO]

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[mrporter11]

I plan to do better than my COMSAE and I think you can too @mrporter11 . I only took one comsae - got a score in 520's. Not worrying about that score. Wasn't in the right mindset. I'm scoring 70's on comquest sets w/ first pass, 60's on uworld w/ first pass, 80's on combank. I'm stressed/worried everyday. Just gotta keep chugging despite being quenched. Friggin sucks. Test is in two wks here.

i agree it sucks, but if you read what COMQUEST promotes, if you're scoring above that 59% mark, 90% of their students score above the national average on comlex. How true that is, I have no clue.

 

[dushash]

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

Interesting. I've read kinda opposite - that Comsae D underestimates by about 50-80 points. it seems logical considering that people usually take Comsae D early.

 

[hpgryffn]

? In what way is this supposed to help me and the above poster who mentioned getting "worked" and "rocked" by the comsaes we took....

You mentioned that you were getting consistently 70% on uworld so that's a good thing compared to what I've heard [that most people doing 65% and above on uworld will be fine for the exam]. Also mentioned it cuz if people are doing well on comsae and not on comlex then comsaes aren't predictive of comlex. from what ive been reading comsaes focus heavily on certain organ systems and that's why people end up doing better or worse. just trying to say don't be bummed with your comsae. additionally an upperclassmen advised me to take the combank 200 q assessment so maybe try looking into that as an additional way to determine where you lie

 

[hpgryffn]

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

thanks for posting! have you done any combank qs? our school only offers a free combank and not comquest so just wondering if combank q are a good representation. good luck with step 1!

 

[MrTaco92]

thanks for posting! have you done any combank qs? our school only offers a free combank and not comquest so just wondering if combank q are a good representation. good luck with step 1!

I saw a few nearly word for word repeats from combank today. I also saw a few uworld repeats in comlex style wording. I've only done comsae E but it basically felt like a fusion of comsae E and combank only with much longer questions stems and less time

 

[hpgryffn]

I saw a few nearly word for word repeats from combank today. I also saw a few uworld repeats in comlex style wording. I've only done comsae E but it basically felt like a fusion of comsae E and combank only with much longer questions stems and less time

dang kinda wished i did more combank throughout the year lol. im def upping my combank q in these last two weeks. thanks for the response!

 

[darknecrosforte]

thanks for posting! have you done any combank qs? our school only offers a free combank and not comquest so just wondering if combank q are a good representation. good luck with step 1!

There were some 1st order, short Qs that were combank "verbatims". Not many. Comquest style and topics were way more prevalent.

 

[sandstorm223]

There were some 1st order, short Qs that were combank "verbatims". Not many. Comquest style and topics were way more prevalent.

Would you say that the difficulty of COMQUEST is about on par with the difficulty of the real thing? As in, if I'm getting above 80% correct on COMQUEST I can feel pretty confident when taking COMLEX? Test in 6 days!

 

[sandstorm223]

@NecFasc92 thank you so much that really makes me feel more confident going in.

 

[darknecrosforte]

Would you say that the difficulty of COMQUEST is about on par with the difficulty of the real thing? As in, if I'm getting above 80% correct on COMQUEST I can feel pretty confident when taking COMLEX? Test in 6 days!

COMQUEST actually explains things better than UWorld in terms of depth and completeness. I wish I studied it earlier than UWorld rather than trying to cram it a week before level 1. I was getting around 75% on COMQUEST (~60% UWorld) and using Anki to review mistakes and the exam was quite reasonable unless you hate any form of obscurity. The difficulty of COMQUEST was equal to or harder than COMLEX imo.

If I had a question narrowed down to 2 answers, I counted the # of stem clues that pointed toward one vs the other and went with the one with more support in the stem. Unless this is wrong, the exam was less WTF than what many students make it out to be.

 

[PathoTurnUp1865]

COMQUEST actually explains things better than UWorld in terms of depth and completeness. I wish I studied it earlier than UWorld rather than trying to cram it a week before level 1. I was getting around 75% on COMQUEST (~60% UWorld) and using Anki to review mistakes and the exam was quite reasonable unless you hate any form of obscurity. The difficulty of COMQUEST was equal to or harder than COMLEX imo.

If I had a question narrowed down to 2 answers, I counted the # of stem clues that pointed toward one vs the other and went with the one with more support in the stem. Unless this is wrong, the exam was less WTF than what many students make it out to be.

Did you do any combank?

 

[MrTaco92]

Did you do comquest at all? Their style is much different from banksuck imo. If so, do you agree with necrobro below?

Love this. I like comquest. Kinda feels like uworld to me at times.

You will do great. No doubt. I may or may not been a crazy and searched all over for comquest to comlex correlation and I found that low to mid 70s on coquetry usually yielded 600-700 scores. You are gonna crush

Oh I never did comquest actually so maybe comquest style questions actually were more prevalent than combank. So yeah I guess I don't have enough credibility to say whether combank/comquest is more like the real deal or not then lol. Overall though I really thought it was a pretty fair exam as far as content went. As opposed to my usmle, the comlex actually made me feel like everything I studied was worth studying and that the high yield stuff was truly high yield. I've never walked out of a standardized test feeling ok like that before, so maybe that's a bad sign or maybe it was just because I was so happy to feel like I finally had my life back.

 

[darknecrosforte]

Did you do any combank?

Did about 100 Qs before abandoning it. I go to WesternU so I expected that having ~double the contact hours meant I could skip basic stuff (combank felt basic af) and I do not regret my decision. Also only did ~800 COMQUEST (all psych, public health, ethics, OMM, biostats, and some randoms) and read "Osteopathic Medicine Recall" sections on cranial, counterstrain's associated muscles (which we were not explicitly taught), sacral, confirmatory ortho tests not mentioned in class (Allen, Yerguson test, etc.), radial and fibular BLT, and cervical HVLA. Was confident on >90% of the aforementioned topics.

 

[PathoTurnUp1865]

Did about 100 Qs before abandoning it. I go to WesternU so I expected that having ~double the contact hours meant I could skip basic stuff (combank felt basic af) and I do not regret my decision. Also only did ~800 COMQUEST (all psych, public health, ethics, OMM, biostats, and some randoms) and read "Osteopathic Medicine Recall" sections on cranial, counterstrain's associated muscles (which we were not explicitly taught), sacral, confirmatory ortho tests not mentioned in class (Allen, Yerguson test, etc.), radial and fibular BLT, and cervical HVLA. Was confident on >90% of the aforementioned topics.

Yeah combank is pretty basic but I’ve done it Uworld, Rx and Kaplan. So hopefully doing those will make up for the suckiness of combank. Combanks feel more like comsae imo

 

[PathoTurnUp1865]

Those of you who are struggling to pass or those of you who just can't get simple concepts; I watched these videos and they helped tremendously to get those little details down. My scores went from ~ 500-550 --> >600, of course prior to watching them I already had a foundation (went through FA 1 x, pathoma 2 x, Rx 1 x, Uworld 1 x, 1/2 Combank, etc.) but they have the videos that covered the things I was struggling with and really helped. Recommend watching them leading up to your test. I think the guy who does OMGOMT does them, or it's someone who sounds exactly like him. Also if you're doing USMLE watch these biostats videos, guy is great.
DirtyUSMLE

 

[Dreamstoo]

Hi guys,

question: how does COMBANK assessments compare to COMSAEs?

Also, are the score ranges that COMBANK provides post assessment somewhat correlated to the COMLEX?

 

[PathoTurnUp1865]

Hi guys,

question: how does COMBANK assessments compare to COMSAEs?

Also, are the score ranges that COMBANK provides post assessment somewhat correlated to the COMLEX?

My combank assessment was 600 and the last comsae I took were ~ 50 points of each other so I’d assume they’re just as reliable as those. It’s just nice that they’re full length

 

[mrporter11]

Hi guys,

question: how does COMBANK assessments compare to COMSAEs?

Also, are the score ranges that COMBANK provides post assessment somewhat correlated to the COMLEX?

polar opposite for me. I score wayyyyy higher on combank / comquest than i do for COMSAE's.

 

[dushash]

polar opposite for me. I score wayyyyy higher on combank / comquest than i do for COMSAE's.

I concur. We had a Dean's talk and were provided with fresh statistics from our school. I can't post ppt, but COMSAE score has a direct correlation with COMLEX step 1. According to that table Comsae under-predicts score by about 40 points. Simply put there was not a single student failing Comlex step 1 who got >370 on Comsae. But that statistics is based only on our school. There's always outliers on both ends, but in general for simplicity purpose I think comsae=comlex (give or take). Schools wanting us to pass comsae above 450 is a good failsafe imho.

 

[Cheyenne62]

Took Comlex on saturday. I thought it was way harder than comsae. I got a 697 on comsae, but I felt much better after that exam.

 

[dushash]

Took Comlex on saturday. I thought it was way harder than comsae. I got a 697 on comsae, but I felt much better after that exam.

I'd bet curve is different too, so results should be within 50 points of your comsae. Let's wait and see lol.

P.S. It would be great if they gave us at least a range score right after exam. Even if it's like 100 points range - it would still take a lot of stress away for many.

 

[hpgryffn]

I concur. We had a Dean's talk and were provided with fresh statistics from our school. I can't post ppt, but COMSAE score has a direct correlation with COMLEX step 1. According to that table Comsae under-predicts score by about 40 points. Simply put there was not a single student failing Comlex step 1 who got >370 on Comsae. But that statistics is based only on our school. There's always outliers on both ends, but in general for simplicity purpose I think comsae=comlex (give or take). Schools wanting us to pass comsae above 450 is a good failsafe imho.

Which comsae form does your school require you guys to take? I feel like theres a difference in b/w each form. also when do you guys take comsae? my school mad eus take it in march and april. maybe time and form have a factor to play lol i find it interesting!

 

[dushash]

Which comsae form does your school require you guys to take? I feel like theres a difference in b/w each form. also when do you guys take comsae? my school mad eus take it in march and april. maybe time and form have a factor to play lol i find it interesting!

Comsae D (but I've heard that last years E is now D, due to a new version of E available this year). We took it in April. As I understand D and E are a bit harder than older ones (A. B and C). I consider it kinda as a free 120 test for usmle. Correlation is about 0.7, but that's as good as it gets I suppose.

 

[Cheyenne62]

I'd bet curve is different too, so results should be within 50 points of your comsae. Let's wait and see lol.

P.S. It would be great if they gave us at least a range score right after exam. Even if it's like 100 points range - it would still take a lot of stress away for many.

Yes the stress of waiting is awful! We'll see where I end up. Lots of guessing on the exam.

 

[Cheyenne62]

Which comsae form does your school require you guys to take? I feel like theres a difference in b/w each form. also when do you guys take comsae? my school mad eus take it in march and april. maybe time and form have a factor to play lol i find it interesting!

Took comsae d in early may.

 

[PathoTurnUp1865]

Comsae D (but I've heard that last years E is now D, due to a new version of E available this year). We took it in April. As I understand D and E are a bit harder than older ones (A. B and C). I consider it kinda as a free 120 test for usmle. Correlation is about 0.7, but that's as good as it gets I suppose.

Combank claims their assessment has a correlation of .8. I’m really hoping that’s the case but we will see

 

[drkube]

What is everyone using to study for COMLEX? I'm taking it this thursday and I was thinking just going over savarese. Is that enough or should I add some COMBANK/QUEST questions?

 

[PathoTurnUp1865]

What is everyone using to study for COMLEX? I'm taking it this thursday and I was thinking just going over savarese. Is that enough or should I add some COMBANK/QUEST questions?

I only did omgomt and about half of combank. Flipped through our schools handout and made anki cards over counterstrain and the annoying innervations of upper and lower extremities they like to test

 

[hpgryffn]

Combank claims their assessment has a correlation of .8. I’m really hoping that’s the case but we will see

combank has two assesment exams, do you know which that correlation is about?

 

[hpgryffn]

What is everyone using to study for COMLEX? I'm taking it this thursday and I was thinking just going over savarese. Is that enough or should I add some COMBANK/QUEST questions?

our school made us take an omm comat shelf exam for the final and i only used savarese [read through all, did end of ch questions but didnt do that huge test q bank in the back] and i sprinkled in about 100~ omm questions from combank. i got above average performance on the shelf and that's my plan of attack for omm on the comlex. so i think def do the savarese and maybe sprinkle in some combank/comquest -i guess 50/50 from each? it should help.

 

[PathoTurnUp1865]

Post test thoughts:
Could’ve failed, could’ve gotten >700, literally have no idea how I did. Test felt in between Uworld and truelearn in difficulty. Detailed breakdown below:
-omm: made up ~8-10% of my test. Omgomt was more than enough, savarese is overkill imo. Felt like a good chunk of my test was cranial and viscerosomatics.
-bugs and drugs: made up ~50% of my test. Sketchy + Peppers deck= Gucci. Easy points.
-Biochem: al first order
-almost 0 biostats
-everything else was systems. My test was cardio, repro and pulm heavy. Everything else was pretty even. Only had like 3 heme.
Overall a very doable test. Only reason some parts were tricky was because I was strong in that area. Questions weren’t as tricky as I thought they’d be but just like others have said, you’ve got to fly. I barely finished in time. On all of my practice tests I had ten minutes between each block. Was not the case for the real thing. Good luck

 

[PathoTurnUp1865]

Congrats on being done! Were the questions as nonsensical as the comsaes? I'm doing well in combank/ comquest (>70% for both) but my comsaes are crap.

Maybe like 5% of my questions I didn’t know what they were asking. Overall I didn’t think it was terribly worded but then again I really can’t gauge how I did. All the questions they asked more than once I got right so that makes me feel a little better. So that’s another thing they let you on your phone on your breaks so if you start noticing a pattern of oh s*** they keep asking stuff about warfarin or something be sure to double check in FA or something. Definitely something I didn’t like about the test

 

[hpgryffn]

Post test thoughts:
Could’ve failed, could’ve gotten >700, literally have no idea how I did. Test felt in between Uworld and truelearn in difficulty. Detailed breakdown below:
-omm: made up ~8-10% of my test. Omgomt was more than enough, savarese is overkill imo. Felt like a good chunk of my test was cranial and viscerosomatics.
-bugs and drugs: made up ~50% of my test. Sketchy + Peppers deck= Gucci. Easy points.
-Biochem: al first order
-almost 0 biostats
-everything else was systems. My test was cardio, repro and pulm heavy. Everything else was pretty even. Only had like 3 heme.
Overall a very doable test. Only reason some parts were tricky was because I was strong in that area. Questions weren’t as tricky as I thought they’d be but just like others have said, you’ve got to fly. I barely finished in time. On all of my practice tests I had ten minutes between each block. Was not the case for the real thing. Good luck

thanks for posting! did you feel questions were "know the facts" as someone had previously mentioned? I was planning on doing the rapid review section of FA as anki but idk if it's worth it

Edit: also did you feel as if comquest was a good representation of the exam? i see u mentioned combank up there. not sure if i should jsut focus on finishing up uworld solely or add comquest to the mix

 

[PathoTurnUp1865]

thanks for posting! did you feel questions were "know the facts" as someone had previously mentioned? I was planning on doing the rapid review section of FA as anki but idk if it's worth it

Edit: also did you feel as if comquest was a good representation of the exam? i see u mentioned combank up there. not sure if i should jsut focus on finishing up uworld solely or add comquest to the mix

I never did comquest. I kind wish I had but I feel like doing combank, Uworld and rx was definitely good enough.
It was a mixture of know the fact and 2nd-3rd order. Probably 50-50. Almost all of my micro was this way. Pretty much name this bug. Most of my bugs were parasites with a couple random ones

 

[PathoTurnUp1865]

One of the bigger wtf moments for me were the videos because like others said they’d have them playing and pretty much ask “wtf is going on here, you don’t know do you? Us either” for instance one was a Chapman’s point. The doc touches the guy and pt say ouch, question was what is this? Had ICS all around it 2, 3, 4, etc. so you had to pretty much pick based off of landmarks that you could see. That was kind of dumb, but kind of funny at the same time.

 

[Dr. Death]

One of the bigger wtf moments for me were the videos because like others said they’d have them playing and pretty much ask “wtf is going on here, you don’t know do you? Us either” for instance one was a Chapman’s point. The doc touches the guy and pt say ouch, question was what is this? Had ICS all around it 2, 3, 4, etc. so you had to pretty much pick based off of landmarks that you could see. That was kind of dumb, but kind of funny at the same time.

I actually laughed out loud in my test when I watched that video

 

[darknecrosforte]

I actually laughed out loud in my test when I watched that video

"Ooh that's tender!" *flamey voice

 

[PathoTurnUp1865]

"Ooh that's tender!" *flamey voice

Didn’t want to be the one to say that haha but so true

 

[MusicDOc124]

@TTPpentad

I only know 1 person (personally) who took the combank assessment (2 years ago) and her score was about 100 higher than than (scoring about the same as you on that - again, 2 years ago, and the exam apparently changed for this year/longer questions - not sure what else). Her COMSAE D, and C were about 650, 660 respectively - about 1 month out and 1 week out. She scored in the 670s or 680s. Not sure when combank assessment was taken relative to the COMSAE's. n=1, take it for what it's worth. I take mine on Wed!

 

[TTPpentad]

@TTPpentad

I only know 1 person (personally) who took the combank assessment (2 years ago) and her score was about 100 higher than than (scoring about the same as you on that - again, 2 years ago, and the exam apparently changed for this year/longer questions - not sure what else). Her COMSAE D, and C were about 650, 660 respectively - about 1 month out and 1 week out. She scored in the 670s or 680s. Not sure when combank assessment was taken relative to the COMSAE's. n=1, take it for what it's worth. I take mine on Wed!

Thanks! I'm hoping I can sneak into the 600's, rather than 500's on the real thing.

Good luck!

 

[IntheClouds4ever]

Thanks! I'm hoping I can sneak into the 600's, rather than 500's on the real thing.

Good luck!

General trend from previous years is to add a few points to comsaes. It’s definitely within your reach to break 600, good luck!

 

[ankiii]

Tips on few days between usmle and comlex?

planning on omg omt/comquest omm questions. Maybe some micro from a complex qBank also.

 

[winston_smith]

What everyone else on here has said re comlex can't be stressed enough.. **** gets weird.. I had 656 on comsae d at the beginning of dedicated and 762 on comsae e 2 weeks out. Took the real thing today and felt like ~30% of it was written by a drunken monkey at a typewriter. I left with no idea what my score is going to be. The test emphasized very specific aspects so take advantage of noticing a trend during your break and maybe look into the motif du jour. Also, some of the stems are incredibly long so be prepared to spend some time reading. As other people have said on here micro is huge, omt isn't particularly challenging so if know your VS cold go through the Savarese addition to Zanki you should be all good.

 

[Leydiggy]

Post test thoughts:
Could’ve failed, could’ve gotten >700, literally have no idea how I did. Test felt in between Uworld and truelearn in difficulty. Detailed breakdown below:
-omm: made up ~8-10% of my test. Omgomt was more than enough, savarese is overkill imo. Felt like a good chunk of my test was cranial and viscerosomatics.
-bugs and drugs: made up ~50% of my test. Sketchy + Peppers deck= Gucci. Easy points.
-Biochem: al first order
-almost 0 biostats
-everything else was systems. My test was cardio, repro and pulm heavy. Everything else was pretty even. Only had like 3 heme.
Overall a very doable test. Only reason some parts were tricky was because I was strong in that area. Questions weren’t as tricky as I thought they’d be but just like others have said, you’ve got to fly. I barely finished in time. On all of my practice tests I had ten minutes between each block. Was not the case for the real thing. Good luck

Hey! Congrats on being done. How was the pharm on your test? Pretty heavy? Is Sketchy Pharm enough?

 

[PathoTurnUp1865]

Hey! Congrats on being done. How was the pharm on your test? Pretty heavy? Is Sketchy Pharm enough?

One of the things I regret is not doing sketchy for pharm. instead I ended up doing all of the flash cards on rx 2x and then did all the pharm from rx, Kaplan, Uworld and truelearn. Only did that because it was my weakest area. That said the real thing was not as bad as I thought it would be. More first order questions. Not as many side effects. From what I hear sketchy is more than enough though

 

[yellowbluegreen]

Anyone have any idea as how predictive is the COMBANK self assessment. My exam is on the 29th and I got 650 on the Combank self assessment. But I didn't find it any different than any other Comsae. Are there any other practice exams that are better predicator of COMLEX?

Thank you

 

[PathoTurnUp1865]

Anyone have any idea as how predictive is the COMBANK self assessment. My exam is on the 29th and I got 650 on the Combank self assessment. But I didn't find it any different than any other Comsae. Are there any other practice exams that are better predicator of COMLEX?

Thank you

No but comlex is somewhat similar to the assessment. Definitely harder but not completely off base

 

[Oreo#1]

Anyone have any idea as how predictive is the COMBANK self assessment. My exam is on the 29th and I got 650 on the Combank self assessment. But I didn't find it any different than any other Comsae. Are there any other practice exams that are better predicator of COMLEX?

Thank you

Got the same score as you. From what i've gathered if we have scored that at this point... and you add int the usual 110 + - from scores... you'll still be above average from the rest of your peers. That should give you enough comfort going into the exam. Good luck! You know your ****.

 

[yellowbluegreen]

Got the same score as you. From what i've gathered if we have scored that at this point... and you add int the usual 110 + - from scores... you'll still be above average from the rest of your peers. That should give you enough comfort going into the exam. Good luck! You know your ****.

Thank you! Did you already take your comlex? I keep hearing how the question stems are so long and it wasnt the case for the self assessment.

 

[Louismaid]

Thank you! Did you already take your comlex? I keep hearing how the question stems are so long and it wasnt the case for the self assessment.

I just took my COMLEX this past week and the question stems were about the same length that I experienced with combank. With that said, I did have to reread few of them multiple times just to figure out what I was actually being asked. I'm not too sure if it was fatigue or poor wording that caused this to happen, lol.