USMLE Official 2018 Step 1 Experiences and Scores Thread

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What is your thought on whether I should try to finish 3-4 more old NBME on top of the current ones versus doing Kaplan 2-3 weeks before step 1? Thanks🙂
 
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Can anyone please comment on how the real thing was compared to nbme and u world?
I know most posts seems to say it’s a mix but did anyone have a form that was dominated by being “more u world like” or more “nbme like”?
There seems to be a huge discrepancy between the two imo
I just finished up self assessment 2 and it was super full of hypothetical/ basic science questions. Like I'd say 30-40% of it was very involved multiple process thinking and I was pressed for time on a lot of the blocks. I've done all but 1 nbme and there's a few of those, but the majority are path/phys heavy and you either know what they are talking about and the associations for 3rd/4th order questions or you're SOL
 
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Just took NBME 13 today, scored a 228. Started dedicated today, 5 weeks out from the test. I know this was a relatively easy exam but do you guys think I'm in good shape? Would like to score 245+ on the test.
 
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How are you guys going about your second pass of UW? Do you reset the whole bank, or do you just create a test without resetting. I'm also wondering if the stats UW gives after you complete an exam are off of peoples first or second passes. For instance, the one I took today had an average of 66% correct. I didn't reset the bank, though. Not sure if that makes a difference.
 
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Is it general consensus to take NBMEs 13 to 19?

Planning my schedule now and not sure what to do!

Ps. Should I make anki for the questions/concepts I get wrong from the NBMEs?
 
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pbrocks15 said:
Is it general consensus to take NBMEs 13 to 19?

Planning my schedule now and not sure what to do!

Ps. Should I make anki for the questions/concepts I get wrong from the NBMEs?
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I'm also trying to figure out what NBMEs to take, and in what order. It sounds like UWSA2 is one of the better predictors so maybe make time for that?
 
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Yeah started watched the boards video and it gave me a headache and stressed me out cause we haven't done neuroanatomy since last year and all the tracts are a distant memory. I guess I need to just give it another chance.
 
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U-World has officially broken me. I'm doing well, but the inconsistency of when they are trying to trick you and when they are making a freebie question is driving me nuts.

It's ridiculous because you never know if its going to be a 25% correct or an 85% correct answer and you start looking for any excuse to pick an obscure convoluted answer because it can't be this straight forward. Does anyone else feel the same way?

Literally just missed a question with 84% correct response rate and it set me off.
 
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anonymousdoctobe said:
how critical is it to memorize all the brainstem lesions? anyone know of a good resource?
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I got relatively few neuroanatomy questions (maybe 5-10) and they were all VERY detailed. You should be prepared to locate lesions with great accuracy - eg, 10 or so answer choices. I do not remember any particularly challenging neuro-path or pharm questions though.
 
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Dermpire said:
U-World has officially broken me. I'm doing well, but the inconsistency of when they are trying to trick you and when they are making a freebie question is driving me nuts.

It's ridiculous because you never know if its going to be a 25% correct or an 85% correct answer and you start looking for any excuse to pick an obscure convoluted answer because it can't be this straight forward. Does anyone else feel the same way?

Literally just missed a question with 84% correct response rate and it set me off.
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I know the feeling. I just missed a question where 90% got the correct answer and 0% chose my answer LOL.

Anyways, I feel like most of the time, UWorld/NBME questions are not trying to trick you. If they mention that the kid went into a cave the other week, it's probably relevant to the diagnosis and not a distractor. There are obviously some trick questions but I feel like those are few and far between, so it's best to assume that they're not trying to trick you.
 
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Nephronlearner said:
I got relatively few neuroanatomy questions (maybe 5-10) and they were all VERY detailed. You should be prepared to locate lesions with great accuracy - eg, 10 or so answer choices. I do not remember any particularly challenging neuro-path or pharm questions though.
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Does uworld have a good representation of these questions?
 
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Dermpire said:
U-World has officially broken me. I'm doing well, but the inconsistency of when they are trying to trick you and when they are making a freebie question is driving me nuts.

It's ridiculous because you never know if its going to be a 25% correct or an 85% correct answer and you start looking for any excuse to pick an obscure convoluted answer because it can't be this straight forward. Does anyone else feel the same way?

Literally just missed a question with 84% correct response rate and it set me off.
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I picked an answer choice yesterday that 0% of people picked and the correct answer choice was in the 80's. That's how I knew to pack up for the night lol
 
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anonymousdoctobe said:
Does uworld have a good representation of these questions?
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Technically, "it's all there". In reality, I thought the questions on the real test were way trickier simply because you'd literally get A-K answer choices so you have to know the anatomy of both the brain surface and all the cross sections really well in order to be able to differentiate between points extremely close to each other.
 
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Nephronlearner said:
Technically, "it's all there". In reality, I thought the questions on the real test were way trickier simply because you'd literally get A-K answer choices so you have to know the anatomy of both the brain surface and all the cross sections really well in order to be able to differentiate between points extremely close to each other.
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Do you mean they're so specific where you would have to differentiate the caudal pons from rostral pons?
 
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Need some input here. Just took UWSA1 this morning.
NBME 13: 234
CBSE: 248
UWSA1: 258

At first glance it seems like I'm improving, but I don't think I am. When I look at the step 1 correlations between NBME 13 and UWSA1, my scores seem to correlate with ~250, which would be consistent with my CBSE. Don't get me wrong, I would be absolutely thrilled with a 250, that would far exceed my expectations. But I also took NBME 13 and UWSA1 3 weeks apart, and did half of UWorld in between, so I was kind of expecting to see some improvement. Is this a bad sign?

Edit: for context, dedicated starts tomorrow after my end of block exam.
 
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Lannister said:
Need some input here. Just took UWSA1 this morning.
NBME 13: 234
CBSE: 248
UWSA1: 258

At first glance it seems like I'm improving, but I don't think I am. When I look at the step 1 correlations between NBME 13 and UWSA1, my scores seem to correlate with ~250, which would be consistent with my CBSE. Don't get me wrong, I would be absolutely thrilled with a 250, that would far exceed my expectations. But I also took NBME 13 and UWSA1 3 weeks apart, and did half of UWorld in between, so I was kind of expecting to see some improvement. Is this a bad sign?

Edit: for context, dedicated starts tomorrow after my end of block exam.
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Definitely not a bad thing.... your killing it
 
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Lannister said:
Thanks! I just have such mixed feelings. I can't stop feeling like dedicated is going to hurt me more than help me.
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It’s not, just don’t burn out no pace yourself.

I think you might wanna consider doing heavier content review than most people during dedicated. Like most people will do 75% Qs during dedicated. But since you clearly already have such a grasp on style, nailing the easy gimme Qs, etc... concentrating on the nitty gritty to get the impossible questions right too might be a reasonable thing to do
 
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Krabbeman said:
It’s not, just don’t burn out no pace yourself.

I think you might wanna consider doing heavier content review than most people during dedicated. Like most people will do 75% Qs during dedicated. But since you clearly already have such a grasp on style, nailing the easy gimme Qs, etc... concentrating on the nitty gritty to get the impossible questions right too might be a reasonable thing to do
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I actually agree with you. I'm going to watch Sketchy micro and physeo for the first time, and possibly pathoma for the second time. I wasn't going to do a complete read-through of first aid but I'm starting to feel like that might be helpful.
 
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Nephronlearner said:
Yes and one gyrus from another in a particular lobe and so on and so on. At least those were the few neuroanatomy questions that I got.
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Yes. For example, this wasnt on my exam obviously, but it wouldnt be enough to know “about” where broccas area is. Not enough to know, “frontal lobe, near the temporal lobe junction”. Like, if it gave me a question describing wernickes or broccas aphasia, or a eyes deviating towards the side of lesion (like a Lesion including the FEF).... it would have all specific individual gyrj surrounding the general area marked.

Like take broccas example.... many gyri in the superolateral frontal lobe near the temporal lobe would be marked.

Or if it was wernickes, many temporal lobe gyri would he marked. Like you had to know the exact damn gyri. Not the general location. All the gyri in the general location will be marked, and a few “sucker” answers in an entirely different lobe or something
 
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Krabbeman said:
Yes. For example, this wasnt on my exam obviously, but it wouldnt be enough to know “about” where broccas area is. Not enough to know, “frontal lobe, near the temporal lobe junction”. Like, if it gave me a question describing wernickes or broccas aphasia, or a eyes deviating towards the side of lesion (like a Lesion including the FEF).... it would have all specific individual gyrj surrounding the general area marked.

Like take broccas example.... many gyri in the superolateral frontal lobe near the temporal lobe would be marked.

Or if it was wernickes, many temporal lobe gyri would he marked. Like you had to know the exact damn gyri. Not the general location. All the gyri in the general location will be marked, and a few “sucker” answers in an entirely different lobe or something
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Can I just add in my own answer choice for those questions? "Obtain CT".
 
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NecFasc92 said:
Damn dude! You're rocking 🙂.

Mind if I ask what % you got on uwsa1? Also what % was the avg? Thank you!
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Sure, so a 258 was 81.3% and 87th percentile. Which seems crazy that you can get 30 questions wrong and still score that high.

Average was 232, but I don't think it tells me anywhere what % correct that would be.
 
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Would love to hear people’s thoughts about my current plan.

Right now I’m on schedule to finish UW right at the end of dedicated, and finish NBME 16, 17, 18 + UW 1 & 2 over the course of dedicated (I’ve already taken NBME 13 and 15).

I was wondering if people thought it’d be a better use of my time to skip 1-2 of the NBMEs so I would have time to do a few blocks of incorrects from UW.
 
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Question -- I know there's been lots of talk on this thread about permits disappearing/correlation with scores being released.
What website / how / where would I check this?
Thanks!
 
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So if anyone else was curious about the 'registration change trick' for STEP 1 score reports. I took it April 18th and checked my registration ticket this Friday; it still showed the option to schedule/reschedule a test. Checked again today (a Sunday) and those options are no longer there. Will report back if I get my scores this Wed. Screenshot of how my ticket looks now:

upload_2018-5-6_17-0-38.png
 
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akuko2 said:
So if anyone else was curious about the 'registration change trick' for STEP 1 score reports. I took it April 18th and checked my registration ticket this Friday; it still showed the option to schedule/reschedule a test. Checked again today (a Sunday) and those options are no longer there. Will report back if I get my scores this Wed. Screenshot of how my ticket looks now:

View attachment 233427
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Perfect this is exactly what I was asking about. Thank you!
 
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akuko2 said:
So if anyone else was curious about the 'registration change trick' for STEP 1 score reports. I took it April 18th and checked my registration ticket this Friday; it still showed the option to schedule/reschedule a test. Checked again today (a Sunday) and those options are no longer there. Will report back if I get my scores this Wed. Screenshot of how my ticket looks now:

View attachment 233427
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Yup mine looks like that too. Took it the same day
 
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What are you guys doing for studying anatomy?

That and histology (i'll take the L on that one) are my worst performing areas. FA doesn't really cover that much anatomy compared to what i've seen in UW and NBME's. Obviously there is a huge breadth of information but most of the anatomy questions have seemed quite clinically relevant, any recommendations for HY anatomy review?
 
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EGW2018 said:
on the 4th Wednesday
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Damn I just found out they are changing the question pool tomorrow so scores are not coming until July 11th. They announced this months ago and if I had known I would've taken my exam last Friday. =(

I'm speculating that this means that UWORLD will be comparatively lower yield now because the very specific things it includes now might rotate out and new specific things rotate in. RIP me.
 
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Pityriasis Rosea said:
Damn I just found out they are changing the question pool tomorrow so scores are not coming until July 11th. They announced this months ago and if I had known I would've taken my exam last Friday. =(

I'm speculating that this means that UWORLD will be comparatively lower yield now because the very specific things it includes now might rotate out and new specific things rotate in. RIP me.
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Haha cool.
 
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Pityriasis Rosea said:
Damn I just found out they are changing the question pool tomorrow so scores are not coming until July 11th. They announced this months ago and if I had known I would've taken my exam last Friday. =(

I'm speculating that this means that UWORLD will be comparatively lower yield now because the very specific things it includes now might rotate out and new specific things rotate in. RIP me.
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changing the question pool as in creating a whole new test??? As someone who took the new MCAT in one of the first test dates of its existence I don't love this lol
 
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DNC127 said:
changing the question pool as in creating a whole new test??? As someone who took the new MCAT in one of the first test dates of its existence I don't love this lol
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I think they just take some questions out and make a few experimental questions into real ones.

PS. About the MCAT. Remember they sent us that email that for the very few first test dates, they are raising our scores because they assume that people who opt to take the new exam so early do not represent that normal population of test takers? That was nice of them.
 
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Pityriasis Rosea said:
I think they just take some questions out and make a few experimental questions into real ones.

PS. About the MCAT. Remember they sent us that email that for the very few first test dates, they are raising our scores because they assume that people who opt to take the new exam so early do not represent that normal population of test takers? That was nice of them.
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oh good. you had me tripping some balls. and the MCAT will forever be my least favorite experience. Step 1 studying is 100000x better
 
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Pityriasis Rosea said:
Damn I just found out they are changing the question pool tomorrow so scores are not coming until July 11th. They announced this months ago and if I had known I would've taken my exam last Friday. =(

I'm speculating that this means that UWORLD will be comparatively lower yield now because the very specific things it includes now might rotate out and new specific things rotate in. RIP me.
Click to expand...

Eh, I don't really know if these types of assumptions should be made without knowing how specifically they do things.
 
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