So as a preface, took step 2 on Monday, and I have 0 advice to give. As to my experience: I am currently in the acceptance phase of grief.
Regrets: 0. There is nothing I would have changed. Reading all of Wikipedia, CDC, FDA, UptoDate, AHA, USPTF, FDKBNDJS, FDHIBDA, JFHDJS would not have further prepared me for this exam. I made up new pathophysiology for **** I've never seen. Reading fantasy books as a kid probably helped me the most on this exam, because it expanded my creativity in making **** up.
Performance: 0. I like to add that I'm historically a pretty good test taker. Aside from Ob, I've been in the 99.9 percentile on all the DO shelves, and mid 90s on the MD psych shelf. I know how to guess and eliminate choices. But holy ****. I literally flipped a coin on 50% of this exam. I don't even know how to look up answers on google. It was that bad for me. I finished each block with 15-20min to spare only because I guessed on so many questions. If this is how NBME and residency programs choose to stratify us, it's a terrible way. Honestly, if I got a 270 on this, I could have just as easily gotten a 190. That's how **** this exam is with a confidence interval of 0-999. I never thought I'd say this, but COMLEX level 2 (aside from OMM and convoluted ethics) was a way better written exam than step 2.
Experience: would not repeat. But I may have no choice if I failed this ****; even then would not repeat. It's as if NBME figured out what we were using to study (Uworld, OME etc), and chose to test us on stuff not on there that are super low yield in clinical practice (from the small 1 yr experience I've had). I'm not sure what the philosophy is behind that, but it seems like crap test writing to me. I've tried every defence mechanism since the exam, from humour, to rationalization, to displacement (srry table). I think its time for suppression. But then again, writing this has made me regressed to the anger stage in grief; after all, who said the stages of grief is linear.
