Been following this thread for a month or so?
Took Step today and wanted to shed some hope out there. Overall, it was honestly do-able. Hard for sure, but do-able. 90%, maybe more could be found in UFAPS. I also used B&B. When I read some of the experiences people have had on here -- well it lead me to expect the exam was truly unfair/impossible. Not going to post my scores until I get them - but here's my impressions. Also, trying to be general so bear with me.
Took 10 min out of the Tutorial to write down formulas i felt like I needed. Exam Felt like 80% UW questions; 20% NBME (I hated NBMEs; so thank goodness). Decent number of "slam dunk" questions within 5 seconds -- "next question". The spread of contents was pretty even, maybe heavier on endo/GI/repro. I know some people say that going thru and reading FA did not help them for the exam.. Well it helped me A LOT. The pages of FA were fresh as daisys in my head because of it. By block 5,, ehh not so much. Particularly, it helped simply in terms of speed -- I was able to quickly pick the right answer and move on to more difficult questions. Still SO glad I did it. I also looked at dirtyUSMLE videos and boy I wish I had found those things earlier.
In general, I had zero time to go and look back and questions I marked -- honestly thought that was the hardest part of the exam... the sheer amount of questions being blasted at your face within a certain time limit. My head was literally hot after the exam lol.
Not a fan of anatomy ever, but even that was do-able, I didn't get any wacky ones. I did get 5 questions about one general topic -- someone shuffled the deck wrong? Totally fine with it. Also some anatomy stuff - Definitely stuff that was NOT in my resources though but you could sorta figure it out?
Had a few difficult biochem ones that I hope were experimental, and others that were "low yield" --- whatever that means anymore (aka not tested in the Qbanks heavily). Speaking of low-yield, had Qs throughout a few systems that were definitely that LOL. With that being said, it was in my resources, but it'd be like a sentence on a page or a word.
EKGs = 4, basic.
Cardio was surprisingly not bad at all. I struggled with UW cardio but the cardio on my exam was more like NBME. Many times you can answer the question without listening to audio - but audio helped for sure.
5 or so derm questions with the pics. Biostats was basic(and biostats was my worst subject starting UW lol).
. A nice amount of Ethics questions --- many where you could narrow it down to two choices that both sounded okay for real. I didn't feel like I could prepare for that.
I can only recall one crazy 10th order type question LOL that had my head spinning. Majority were either 1st, 2nd, maybe 3rd.
I can also recall one where I've never heard of the bacteria before -- like even eliminating wouldn't have got me anywhere - but that's only one question.
Biggest thing was confidence for me. I'm overall a pretty anxious person but I needed to make sure that anxiety would NOT cost me on test day -- I just thought about how many hours I put in for this that I would NOT let something like that happen. Do what you gotta do, listen to motivational jams, etc, whatever. You will get flustered with questions, but do not let that frustration carry you over to the next question/block. Its so much more of a mental battle than we ever think about.
As far as resources go, UW was #1. Literally felt like 5 questions were straight from there - just worded slightly differently
