COMLEX Official 2019 Comlex 1 Experiences and Scores Thread

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It's that time of the year. Anyone took new Comsae recently? Hopefully it's more predicitve than old ones that were all over the place - like +/- 100 points.
Also, interesting to hear if this years comlex is indeed changed? If anyone took it recently - please share your experience. Especially if you can compare it to previous year one.
 
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USAFMDO said:
This might be a dumb question. When people are saying MSK, does that mean like MSK Path (osteoporosis, sarcoma, etc.) or gross anatomy type MSK (which I blow at)??
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wonko said:
it means both, but for our specific COMLEX experience mainly bony stuff, tests (neers, addisons, hawkings, spurlings etc), ligaments and all that good stuff that the bone wizards love. From my experience, bone tumors etc were super high yield for NBME practice exams, but nowhere else.
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This ^^^ i had zero bone tumors/pagets/etc on my comlex but had a handful like that on my usmle. Know your special tests and main muscles/actions/innervations and youll be fine
 
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Scrubs101 said:
This ^^^ i had zero bone tumors/pagets/etc on my comlex but had a handful like that on my usmle. Know your special tests and main muscles/actions/innervations and youll be fine
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Thanks. Still have time so I will be sure to stress this. You guys are not the first to say MSK has been important with this blueprint.
 
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Chibucks15 said:
So recap...most high yield systems are micro, MSK, neuro, and ethics (I know everything is high yield I'm just trying to figure out what to cram). Been working through OMM, micro, and ethics for the past day or so. Moving into MSK and neuro tonight then probably just gonna FA rapid review it and hope for the best.

COMSAE 103 had me at 530 so that would be ideal that's for sure
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Wouldn't be surprised if you score well above that on the exam. 530 was like 85th percentile on proctored 103 at my school
 
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I think i felt another hemorrhoid pop out after reading the last 2 pages of this thread... might need some soothing cream and a xanax.

12 more days till death... i mean COMLEX.
 
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Ho0v-man said:
I never thought I’d feel less confident about comlex than step lol
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I flagged 2-3x more on comlex than step, however from talking with friends this seems the norms so im assuming the curve will account for the out if left field qs. Just dont get rattled during the exam when you see stuff you havent heard of, therell be a few. I just became numb to it halfway through tbh
 
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Scrubs101 said:
I flagged 2-3x more on comlex than step, however from talking with friends this seems the norms so im assuming the curve will account for the out if left field qs. Just dont get rattled during the exam when you see stuff you havent heard of, therell be a few. I just became numb to it halfway through tbh
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Or when you put staph 10x already before noon as the answer.
 
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Do you guys encounter a lot of stuff you have never seen before? That sounds very scary and I am a bad guesser. Are you at least able to figure out what’s the answer by eliminating the ones you do know that aren’t the answer?
 
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Are the exams really distributed that poorly?

Everyone that I've talked to has said it's anatomy on there, but it's a good mix

Or is it out of the 400 questions, 60 of those were MSK/biostats/ethics/other subjects people are weak in and that's freaked people out :thinking:
 
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bravenugget21 said:
Do you guys encounter a lot of stuff you have never seen before? That sounds very scary and I am a bad guesser. Are you at least able to figure out what’s the answer by eliminating the ones you do know that aren’t the answer?
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yes. There is stuff I have never heard of before, and most of it I got wrong. Just roll with the punches.
wubalubadubdub said:
Are the exams really distributed that poorly?

Everyone that I've talked to has said it's anatomy on there, but it's a good mix

Or is it out of the 400 questions, 60 of those were MSK/biostats/ethics/other subjects people are weak in and that's freaked people out :thinking:
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We don't know. Perception is certainly skewed in a testing environment. I'd say it was skewed in that regard, but these are also the questions everyone dwells on, so IDK.

Neopolymath said:
Just lit an AT Still candle for my homies taking the test today. Let's get it done.
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May he correct our CRIs, relieve our somatic dysfunction and ascend all of todays testtakers to an eternal still point :angelic:
The dolphins be with them and their energy cysts shall be small
 
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Having taken it today, I can tell you guys I've had HY concepts from heme, cardio, pulm, renal, endo, biostats and the DirtyUSMLE ethics stuff.

OMM was easy: viscerosomatics and sacral was 80% of it. MSK was just knowing the innervations and the anatomy was just rib muscles.

Micro was all Sketchy.

Of the 400 questions, I'd say 20-30 were ambiguous/multiple answers.

I took USMLE last week and some concepts/questions showed up again.

Overall, if you do UFAPS+watch some YT on viscerosomatics and sacral, you'll be good.

Don't freak out when people say they just had straight up "one system", since 20 of my classmates took it today and said the same thing as me: good distribution of questions.
 
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Chibucks15 said:
^Agree. Felt about 100x better leaving this one. Still some weird questions but most were fine. I left a comment saying “either give more breaks or less questions” so nothing too bad so they don’t come for my head
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One thing I would say is wtf were with those EKGs!!!!

I legit took hits on them lmao
 
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Ho0v-man said:
Maybe in the minority, but I thought this was a pretty good test. Timing was crazy, but I thought mine, minus omm, was more representative of things I would expect a doctor to know when compared to step.

*prepares for backlash*
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This was what I thought after COMSAE 104, but then COMSAE 105 felt like the nonsense you hear about. Hoping my real thing on 7/3 is more like 104/your COMLEX experience.
 
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There is no reason in hell this exam should be 400 questions, but I digress. They could easily cover the same content in 300 questions.

I’m legit worried about timing on this exam. On USMLE I finished each block with only 5 minutes left. I guess here to hoping there’s a lot of quick read and answer questions with minimal thinking involved to pick up time along the way.
 
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Chris07 said:
There is no reason in hell this exam should be 400 questions, but I digress. They could easily cover the same content in 300 questions.

I’m legit worried about timing on this exam. On USMLE I finished each block with only 5 minutes left. I guess here to hoping there’s a lot of quick read and answer questions with minimal thinking involved to pick up time along the way.
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I finished with 10 minutes to spare every section, even checking my flagged answers.

Why? Bc COMLEX will give you buzzwords.

As soon as you see a trigger word, find that answer and move on. If you feel you need to go back to check it bc you answered it too fast, flag it and come back to it.

The name of the game is speed, you just have to have a strategy for the longer passages (read the last sentence, skim the answer options) and keep going even if you feel like one of your answers are wrong. Flag and return to them if you have time.

Don't lose 3 minutes on one question when you could have answered 5 questions in the same amount of time.

You got this. USMLE doesn't give buzzwords but COMLEX does and every way that Pathoma describes a certain pathology take note of it!
 
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Ho0v-man said:
Maybe in the minority, but I thought this was a pretty good test. Timing was crazy, but I thought mine, minus omm, was more representative of things I would expect a doctor to know when compared to step.

*prepares for backlash*
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I agree. Just hate how some of it was more Level 2 stuff/too clinical (diabetes management, advance EKGs)
 
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I guess if I didn’t have issue with the new comsaes I should worry too much.

Bruh, if they’re that blatant with buzzwords we’re set lol.
 
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wubalubadubdub said:
I agree. Just hate how some of it was more Level 2 stuff/too clinical (diabetes management, advance EKGs)
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Agreed about too much clinical on 104 but advanced ekgs? I think there were like 3 questions about ekg. 1 was left vent hypertrophy, 1 you needed to know qrs complex widening with tricyclics, one was St depression with angina. I wouldn't call those very advanced
 
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Took the thing yesterday. All i can say is take STEP haha I thought step was 100x more straightforward ( in terms of you know what it was asking you). Most of my comlex was micro and pharm...barely any path?. 80% sketchy friendly. I had about 12 EKGs and 4 heart sounds. I had a lot of OMM + those videos that accompany them. You have to watch the videos because they diagnose in the video. Ethics was weird, biostats was easy, surprisingly a lot of biochem but mostly first order. Honestly the material on the test is not what makes it hard, its the weird way they ask questions. It seems like they took NBME questions and then asked themselves, "hmm how can I make this more difficult." A lot of people are saying that you can just read the question and not the stem to get the answer. I think this was true for most of the OMM but a lot of my questions had a sentence in the middle that changed the diagnosis. Random Example: "patient comes in with fever, night sweats, etc, and has bone lesions in their vertebrae blah blah" In your mind you would be like okay Pott's disease and move on. Except in the middle of this 6 sentence stem it said " chest radiography normal." So just be careful. Curve's going to be great. Timing is crap cause of all videos and the test is just so long. Good luck fam!!!!!! ( also side note: my class is kinda split on the whole comlex experience, half of us think it was a breeze and the other half want to crawl in a hole. Keep in mind there are different forms, if you are feeling like trash during the exam, remember that half of us are too!) YOU GUYS GOT THIS!
 
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TheTeacher said:
Took the thing yesterday. All i can say is take STEP haha I thought step was 100x more straightforward ( in terms of you know what it was asking you). Most of my comlex was micro and pharm...barely any path?. 80% sketchy friendly. I had about 12 EKGs and 4 heart sounds. I had a lot of OMM + those videos that accompany them. You have to watch the videos because they diagnose in the video. Ethics was weird, biostats was easy, surprisingly a lot of biochem but mostly first order. Honestly the material on the test is not what makes it hard, its the weird way they ask questions. It seems like they took NBME questions and then asked themselves, "hmm how can I make this more difficult." A lot of people are saying that you can just read the question and not the stem to get the answer. I think this was true for most of the OMM but a lot of my questions had a sentence in the middle that changed the diagnosis. Random Example: "patient comes in with fever, night sweats, etc, and has bone lesions in their vertebrae blah blah" In your mind you would be like okay Pott's disease and move on. Except in the middle of this 6 sentence stem it said " chest radiography normal." So just be careful. Curve's going to be great. Timing is crap cause of all videos and the test is just so long. Good luck fam!!!!!! ( also side note: my class is kinda split on the whole comlex experience, half of us think it was a breeze and the other half want to crawl in a hole. Keep in mind there are different forms, if you are feeling like trash during the exam, remember that half of us are too!) YOU GUYS GOT THIS!
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They diagnose in the video? What the ****?
 
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wonko said:
it means both, but for our specific COMLEX experience mainly bony stuff, tests (neers, addisons, hawkings, spurlings etc), ligaments and all that good stuff that the bone wizards love. From my experience, bone tumors etc were super high yield for NBME practice exams, but nowhere else.
Click to expand...

Yup. No bone tumor questions. They can be tricky and I was prepared for naught.

wonko said:
Or when you put staph 10x already before noon as the answer.
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So many freaking S. aureus choices. I'm right there with you.

Neopolymath said:
This is soooooo dumb.
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I definitely gave them a review of how timing is a major issue and it is a mentally exhausting and unnecessarily long test and made comparisons to USMLE. I doubt sincerely they would ever concern themselves with our commentary. I did, however, take a few moments 4 times to write scathing comments about questions. There were even spelling errors. "Spelling errors? How unprofessional"

wubalubadubdub said:
One thing I would say is wtf were with those EKGs!!!!

I legit took hits on them lmao
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Blurry and I was iffy, too.

Neopolymath said:
This is hilarious to say given my disdain for COMBANK but it was... Just like COMBANK
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COMLEX was almost exactly like COMBANK. Agreed.

Chris07 said:
There is no reason in hell this exam should be 400 questions, but I digress. They could easily cover the same content in 300 questions.

I’m legit worried about timing on this exam. On USMLE I finished each block with only 5 minutes left. I guess here to hoping there’s a lot of quick read and answer questions with minimal thinking involved to pick up time along the way.
Click to expand...
Yup not feeling like I had enough time to go back and at least proof a few questions because of fear of eating into my next block was a constant stress.

wubalubadubdub said:
I finished with 10 minutes to spare every section, even checking my flagged answers.

Why? Bc COMLEX will give you buzzwords.

As soon as you see a trigger word, find that answer and move on. If you feel you need to go back to check it bc you answered it too fast, flag it and come back to it.

The name of the game is speed, you just have to have a strategy for the longer passages (read the last sentence, skim the answer options) and keep going even if you feel like one of your answers are wrong. Flag and return to them if you have time.

Don't lose 3 minutes on one question when you could have answered 5 questions in the same amount of time.

You got this. USMLE doesn't give buzzwords but COMLEX does and every way that Pathoma describes a certain pathology take note of it!
Click to expand...

Be careful to take the above comment to mean you will finish with time to spare. This is not the majority of people's experience, however the comment about buzzwords is fairly true and skipping the majority of the question *most* of the time was A-okay.

Overall, it sucked but it wasn't as hard as I had expected, in all honesty. I took COMSAE 103 and it suggested I'd do 554 and the level of difficulty was mixed: more hard ones and more easy ones. My suggestions:
  • Take your breaks!@!@!!@!!!!@!!!!!@!!!! You need snacks and to stretch your legs. Go outside during your lunch break and stand/walk and enjoy the breeze for a few. Remember that you can look at notes. I bought a high yield of OMM for 15 minutes and it definitely got me a few points.
  • Don't listen to people who say "there were only a few OMM questions" there were 40-60 but a lot of them were repeated. I had some that were seriously 3-4 for whatever given level of X.
    • OMM was not that bad. If you know your SNS/PNS viscerosomatic reflexes you should be good on 70+% of them.
  • Eat a large breakfast of eggs with and a healthy dose of carbs and yogurt as these will help refuel you and last a good while.
  • Make sure you know pretty much all the micro in First Aid. I'm surprised by how much micro is on this test. I was well prepared for it but I am still surprised.
  • I had literally ZERO up down arrow questions. I was certain I'd have a few difficult endocrine questions but somehow, I didn't.
  • Renal was pretty much non-existent on my test. Why is this? I'm sort of frustrated by that as I was well prepared for that as well.
  • The Damned STATS. Boy, there were a ton of stats but they were mostly easy.
  • Ethics questions. I don't know how people prepared for them, but I just read first aid and did UW questions and it covered ~50% the other was really dumb. So dumb I wrote comments to the test makers explaining that there is simply no way to prepare for a question like this. I won't give an example. You'll see. They're freaking dumb.
  • Get there early. Parking and finding my building wasn't easy because they didn't have any signs on the campus telling me where to go. I had to ask some security guard then more people when I found the building.
  • Don't eat too too much on your lunch break.
    • Bring protein cliff bars for your first break as your breakfast will be gone by ~10.
    • I brought a sweet potato and strawberries and a cup of coffee to prevent the alkaline tide depression.
 
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I took the comquest practice full length exam last week. My exam is on Monday... wondering if anyone else has taken comquest full length and if they thought it was similar to the real one. I know it is new this year so I am not sure how true the score curve is.
 
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What to use after UWORLD (85% done)? COMBANK or COMQUEST?
I have only covered cardio, renal and resp for context review.

still MSS Nuero to go this week. ARRGGGH GUYS , *Scream*
 
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kitkatblue said:
What to use after UWORLD (85% done)? COMBANK or COMQUEST?
I have only covered cardio, renal and resp for context review.

still MSS Nuero to go this week. ARRGGGH GUYS , *Scream*
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According to this thread COMBANK is surprisingly similar to the real thing now since they updated. If you have it why not try it out

But if you got a 315 recently I'm sure most people will say postpone it until you work on your content deficits. What did your school say? I'd ask them for advixe
 
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pseud0 said:
According to this thread COMBANK is surprisingly similar to the real thing now since they updated. If you have it why not try it out

But if you got a 315 recently I'm sure most people will say postpone it until you work on your content deficits. What did your school say? I'd ask them for advixe
Click to expand...

My school is terrible AND don't care. I got a 300 something before working on content deficient. Gotta take it by late July

I think I can get it up as much as possible by then. But it all starts with staying on pace and doing THE DEED every day.

Please guys encourage me. I can't delay this any much longer b.c then I will start to forget things (normal). Already been dedicated for 5-6 weeks now and can't do much more than.
Appreciate your encouragements as we pull those long days and 12-14 hour days
 
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kitkatblue said:
My school is terrible AND don't care. I got a 300 something before working on content deficient. Gotta take it by late July

I think I can get it up as much as possible by then. But it all starts with staying on pace and doing THE DEED every day.

Please guys encourage me. I can't delay this any much longer b.c then I will start to forget things (normal). Already been dedicated for 5-6 weeks now and can't do much more than.
Appreciate your encouragements as we pull those long days and 12-14 hour days
Click to expand...

Sorry for a bit off-topic, but was 300 on a new comsae and when was it taken roughly? Thank you. I'm really bad at encouragement, but I can say that I was in your shoes - my first comsae was 280. I am working on covering content deficits too and I can say that it's definitely doable even for a weak student like me to get from 280 to 450.
 
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