Official 2019 COMLEX Level 2 CE Experiences and Scores Thread

Your USMLE Scores Increased, Guaranteed!
This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.
PathoTurnUp1865

PathoTurnUp1865

Full Member
7+ Year Member
Joined
Mar 28, 2015
Messages
548
Reaction score
392
Not sure why this hasn’t been started yet, so I thought I’d start it.
Already took step 2 and got a 235, I take level 2 towards the end of July. Yeah I know wtf? But that’s how I live life. Plan is to complete Uworld a third time, complete combank and comquest as well as kaplan if time allows and who knows maybe I’ll just complete Amboss too if I’m feeling frisky. I’m keeping up with all of my anki decks in the mean time.
Anybody have any insight into what the new format is going to be like? Also, wtf happened to combank’s format? The seemed to try to clean it up but it still sucks compared to the others :/
Members don't see this ad.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 user
Sort by date Sort by votes
PossibleEMapplicant said:
Ugh there's like no good resources (first aid etc) any where for the medial legal ****. It makes no sense why its on the exam especially since I doubt many of us ever encountered those latin terms.
Click to expand...

I didn’t have hardly any Latin terms. A lot of starks, anti-kick back type questions, plus malpractice scenarios
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
The ethics resources are out there. If you don’t like anki, there are kids of books on this. Also the AMA ethics bible has everything you’ll encounter on the test minus the Latin terms but those are pretty easy to find. You guys are not giving good advice on the comsaes. Are they bad test? Debatable. However, there’s loads of ethics that were in those that were either directly on my test or had the answer choices represented on my real thing. Do the untimed test...
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
PathoTurnUp1865 said:
The ethics resources are out there. If you don’t like anki, there are kids of books on this. Also the AMA ethics bible has everything you’ll encounter on the test minus the Latin terms but those are pretty easy to find. You guys are not giving good advice on the comsaes. Are they bad test? Debatable. However, there’s loads of ethics that were in those that were either directly on my test or had the answer choices represented on my real thing. Do the untimed test...
Click to expand...

The issue, at least for me, isn’t that the resources aren’t out there. It’s that these are things we’re never formally taught and are only seen for the first time on the COMLEX. Unless my school is the only one that doesn’t teach us every law that’s going to affect our practice, then the relevant laws and ethics the Anki and quizlet decks are made from are all word of mouth from what previous students have seen on the test. None of those are taught as official medical school curriculum.

Sure they’re in COMBANK and maybe the other DO question banks I haven’t used, but those and the Anki decks aren’t officially endorsed by the NBOME as a resource for us to use, so it’s not reasonable for us to be expected to “pick it up along the way”.

Referring to the law questions specifically, not the ethics.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 user
Upvote 0 Downvote
Members don't see this ad :)
scrublyfe21 said:
The issue, at least for me, isn’t that the resources aren’t out there. It’s that these are things we’re never formally taught and are only seen for the first time on the COMLEX. Unless my school is the only one that doesn’t teach us every law that’s going to affect our practice, then the relevant laws and ethics the Anki and quizlet decks are made from are all word of mouth from what previous students have seen on the test. None of those are taught as official medical school curriculum.

Sure they’re in COMBANK and maybe the other DO question banks I haven’t used, but those and the Anki decks aren’t officially endorsed by the NBOME as a resource for us to use, so it’s not reasonable for us to be expected to “pick it up along the way”.

Referring to the law questions specifically, not the ethics.
Click to expand...
My school had ethics classes every once in awhile but they weren’t tested so I never paid attention. Not sure if they covered legal stuff cause again, was focusing on other things.
I think most schools usually cover this stuff as an optional class, developing the physician type class, or as a lunch time speaker.
It definitely should be a required class imo. Stuff is important to know once you get out in the real world. Especially the ethics stuff.
My conspiracy theory on this is they’re pushing it more on comlex after what happened to the doc at MSU but idk.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
PathoTurnUp1865 said:
My school had ethics classes every once in awhile but they weren’t tested so I never paid attention. Not sure if they covered legal stuff cause again, was focusing on other things.
I think most schools usually cover this stuff as an optional class, developing the physician type class, or as a lunch time speaker.
It definitely should be a required class imo. Stuff is important to know once you get out in the real world. Especially the ethics stuff.
My conspiracy theory on this is they’re pushing it more on comlex after what happened to the doc at MSU but idk.
Click to expand...

I'm fine with the ethics, even biostats That's great. But I'm certain my school didn't cover specific laws. They also didn't cover the weird **** I saw on level 2 like the question I got about what medicolegal statement i have to put in my chart every time I give someone a certain vaccine. Or what statistical benefit I'll get out of running a t test vs chi squared analysis vs ANOVA. Or what characteristic of a study precludes me from using one of the above.

/endrant
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 user
Upvote 0 Downvote
PathoTurnUp1865 said:
The ethics resources are out there. If you don’t like anki, there are kids of books on this. Also the AMA ethics bible has everything you’ll encounter on the test minus the Latin terms but those are pretty easy to find. You guys are not giving good advice on the comsaes. Are they bad test? Debatable. However, there’s loads of ethics that were in those that were either directly on my test or had the answer choices represented on my real thing. Do the untimed test...
Click to expand...

I’ll have to disagree about the comsaes. Personally, they are useless without explanations. There were plenty of ethics questions that were gimmes but the rest seemed to be wtf questions with two answers that were reasonable— which is why I think spending hours upon hours taking comsaes and trying to look up answers on the untimed mode when we only have 2 weeks to really study. I despise the esoteric questions that had multiple reasonable answers depending on the context of an individual patient and their particular circumstance/personality. There are two or three questions that come to mind that a PhD could have utilized as the basis for a thesis to explain different answers for particular patients. This is what frustrates me with the few wtf ethic questions that rival the traditional wtf medicine questions the NBOME has been notorious for asking. This is where my Comment of “wouldn’t have been able to completely prepare for” was directed.

The laws were relatively easy and they really did focus on the big things we need to know, so I’m not going to complain too much about those.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
IntheClouds4ever said:
I’ll have to disagree about the comsaes. Personally, they are useless without explanations. There were plenty of ethics questions that were gimmes but the rest seemed to be wtf questions with two answers that were reasonable— which is why I think spending hours upon hours taking comsaes and trying to look up answers on the untimed mode when we only have 2 weeks to really study. I despise the esoteric questions that had multiple reasonable answers depending on the context of an individual patient and their particular circumstance/personality. There are two or three questions that come to mind that a PhD could have utilized as the basis for a thesis to explain different answers for particular patients. This is what frustrates me with the few wtf ethic questions that rival the traditional wtf medicine questions the NBOME has been notorious for asking. This is where my Comment of “wouldn’t have been able to completely prepare for” was directed.

The laws were relatively easy and they really did focus on the big things we need to know, so I’m not going to complain too much about those.
Click to expand...
How many of the 400 were actual wtf questions though? We remember the things we struggle with more than the things we find easy. There were a **** ton of ethics questions, yes. But the majority were very manageable. For me the wtf questions were the micro and biostats. I did not prepare well in these areas and they are the questions I remember most clear. However, the months leading up to the test I focused a lot of time into ethics, IM and omm and I found them to be the easiest. And thanks to that I’d only be thinking I was failing every 10 -20 questions but every time I came across biostats I was like ****, patho you effed up. I’m sure we both did fine if not really well. I mean you scored really well on level 1!

What I can totally agree with everyone on is the test suckssssss. After every comat or comlex I have taken probably 20 minutes just to cuss them out and tell them how ****ty and esoteric their questions are. I could write a book about how bad their questions are.
 
  • Haha
Reactions: 1 user
Upvote 0 Downvote
PathoTurnUp1865 said:
How many of the 400 were actual wtf questions though? We remember the things we struggle with more than the things we find easy. There were a **** ton of ethics questions, yes. But the majority were very manageable. For me the wtf questions were the micro and biostats. I did not prepare well in these areas and they are the questions I remember most clear. However, the months leading up to the test I focused a lot of time into ethics, IM and omm and I found them to be the easiest. And thanks to that I’d only be thinking I was failing every 10 -20 questions but every time I came across biostats I was like ****, patho you effed up. I’m sure we both did fine if not really well. I mean you scored really well on level 1!

What I can totally agree with everyone on is the test suckssssss. After every comat or comlex I have taken probably 20 minutes just to cuss them out and tell them how ****ty and esoteric their questions are. I could write a book about how bad their questions are.
Click to expand...

Majority of them, yes. However, I find ethic questions more vague and esoteric which require you to “guess which mindset” they want you to have.. I can think of a few qbank explanations that began with things like, “this answer is good because it does create boundaries but is wrong because the patient needs to be approached in x manner”. It’s not cut and dry which I find particularly annoying when it’s on standardized tests. I don’t mind discussing ethics and going down rabbit hole when discussing them with colleagues and peers, but when it’s a standardized exam, it forces you to not think about it and only answer it from whatever set of rules is in their resource that has to be memorized. I just think it’s ****ty that for whatever WTF IM or micro questions that I remember having, I can easily look them up in 5 seconds to see if I was right or not, but for the few wtf ethics questions, I would need to reread or dive into a book and try to remember the exact wording for each answer and the intended context of the scenario in question so that I can read between the lines to correlate it with the resource. It’s muddy and I hate muddy areas on standardized tests. We shouldn’t need to spend a month solely studying for ethics to be able to decipher what they are really asking on the tougher/more esoteric questions.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
PathoTurnUp1865 said:
I’ve completed both of the new comsaes that are offered on the nbome website and both have landed me ~550 and have had similar distribution breakdowns of the scores. What I’ve noticed is they focused probably 15-25% on basic sciences and everything else has been pretty evenly distributed. However, one pretty concerning thing to me is how short the stems are. I’m curious as to if they’ve shortened them on the real thing too? Or am I about to be blindsided by long stems and not finish with enough time.
Click to expand...
Patho, how did the stem lengths end up being? Similar?
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
The most absolutely ridiculous exam I have ever taken in my educational career.

It all comes down to one thing... and that is MONEY. NBOME are whole bunch of extortionists when they know that a majority of residencies don't care or know how to interpret COMLEX scores.

Ridiculous.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 3 users
Upvote 0 Downvote
PathoTurnUp1865 said:
Yeah they were mostly really short. Sometimes that was a good thing. Sometimes it was really annoying because you didn’t have a lot to go off of.
Click to expand...
And that's the real bother of using UW to prepare because it gets you used to actually having clinical information to answer the question with.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Members don't see this ad :)
hey guys, do you think comsaes are worth taking? I was planning just to take the NBMEs and UWSAs
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
camng11 said:
hey guys, do you think comsaes are worth taking? I was planning just to take the NBMEs and UWSAs
Click to expand...
I am going with nope. I would do the UWSA and maybe the COMQuest one if I really felt the need for another. I did take the one comsae my school bought, but based on classmates experiences the score can vary too much. And no one really knows whether the new ones over or under predict. Just not something I would spend money on right now.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
camng11 said:
hey guys, do you think comsaes are worth taking? I was planning just to take the NBMEs and UWSAs
Click to expand...
I would say yes. At least for me, I had multiple relatively difficult questions on the real thing that were the exact same clinical scenario as on my comsae. I wasn't 100% sure of the answer, but I had a decent guess because I put the same guess as I did on the comsae and I did pretty well on the comsae. I also had at least 1 picture that was an exact copy from the comsae I took. Of course, this is just an n of 1, and I only took the comsae because our school bought us one. Not sure I'd drop a bunch of money on taking multiple comsaes.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Anyone wanna do me a big favor and let me know which one of these COMLEX micro quizlet decks was more representative of what they saw on their recent Level 2 ? Taking the beast on Monday, finally done reviewing OMM...

1. COMLEX: Micro Flashcards | Quizlet
2. Microbiology - COMLEX Flashcards | Quizlet
3. Micro for COMLEX Flashcards | Quizlet
4. COMLEX Obscure Microbiology Flashcards | Quizlet

@IntheClouds4ever @PathoTurnUp1865 @DennisReynolds @scrublyfe21

Law stuff I've been using this one: COMLEX Level 2 CE - Medical Law/Ethics Flashcards | Quizlet -- hope thats enough..?

Also, Biostats? Any advice?

Thank you in advance!!!
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
UnderdogDO7862412 said:
Anyone wanna do me a big favor and let me know which one of these COMLEX micro quizlet decks was more representative of what they saw on their recent Level 2 ? Taking the beast on Monday, finally done reviewing OMM...

1. COMLEX: Micro Flashcards | Quizlet
2. Microbiology - COMLEX Flashcards | Quizlet
3. Micro for COMLEX Flashcards | Quizlet
4. COMLEX Obscure Microbiology Flashcards | Quizlet

@IntheClouds4ever @PathoTurnUp1865 @DennisReynolds @scrublyfe21

Law stuff I've been using this one: COMLEX Level 2 CE - Medical Law/Ethics Flashcards | Quizlet -- hope thats enough..?

Also, Biostats? Any advice?

Thank you in advance!!!
Click to expand...

Biostats- Randy Neil videos on YouTube were helpful.

I’d focus more on law, ethics, and biostats rather than obscure micro. If you know your common bugs you are probably fine. I can only remember one or two questions that had specific micro tied into the the answer
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 users
Upvote 0 Downvote
Hey guys. I took my exam on June 18. I went on the NBOME site today. Under exam status, it doesn't say that I took the level 2-CE. Even under the score section, it doesn't come up. I'm super scared, does this mean I didn't pass ??
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
GamerTheRock said:
Hey guys. I took my exam on June 18. I went on the NBOME site today. Under exam status, it doesn't say that I took the level 2-CE. Even under the score section, it doesn't come up. I'm super scared, does this mean I didn't pass ??
Click to expand...

Mine shows the same thing. I think its because they were messing with some of the scheduling stuff today, or because we are about to get our scores back this week (took June 24th). I wouldn't worry about it.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 user
Upvote 0 Downvote
GamerTheRock said:
Hey guys. I took my exam on June 18. I went on the NBOME site today. Under exam status, it doesn't say that I took the level 2-CE. Even under the score section, it doesn't come up. I'm super scared, does this mean I didn't pass ??
Click to expand...
Hey, it doesn’t show while they’re performing maintenance for whatever reason. Mine was showing yesterday by not today. I think we’re all good.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Refreshing pretty often, but I'll echo the sentiment that it was probably the worst exam I've ever taken in my life. It's an exam that is essentially meaningless in our pursuit of residencies and is poorly written. It felt like a test that wasn't designed to test our medical knowledge, rather, it was designed to just BE a test that had to be taken. By the end of the test I really was pretty done with it and didn't even give the ethics/legal questions much thought at all. I had 2 or 3 questions that had every answer as a latin phrase and I just laughed, picked one, and moved on.
 
  • Like
Reactions: 6 users
Upvote 0 Downvote
Just release the damn scores! I have Step 2 on Friday, I just want to know if I passed so I can get back to focusing on an exam that isn't totally ridiculous
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
bshap000 said:
Just release the damn scores! I have Step 2 on Friday, I just want to know if I passed so I can get back to focusing on an exam that isn't totally ridiculous
Click to expand...

Step 2 was more redic
 
  • Like
Reactions: 1 users
Upvote 0 Downvote
On the NBOME Twitter it shows scores have been released around 1:30-2 CT, assuming they tweeted right when scores were released
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
floridagirl3 said:
On the NBOME Twitter it shows scores have been released around 1:30-2 CT, assuming they tweeted right when scores were released
Click to expand...
Some of their Twitter score posts also show them releasing it on the second of the two available days. The most recent Level 2 CE scores were released at 1100 Eastern on the second day.

At this point, just wait for the email, peeps.
 
Upvote 0 Downvote
Don't trip. Either way by tomorrow night you will have the score. Your fate was sealed on test day
 
  • Like
Reactions: 2 users
Upvote 0 Downvote
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

M
Step 2 or Level 2 Practice Test - High Quality but cheap - TruCurio
Replies
0
Views
481
MEDWINNER1
M
AceMedBoards
  • Question
Official 2020 COMLEX Level 2 CE Experiences and Scores Thread
Replies
9
Views
8K
getfat
getfat
P
  • Question
COMLEX Level 2 CE Question
Replies
2
Views
2K
phagocytosis41
P
CrazyHorseLady
  • Question
Step 2 went up, Level 2 went down- will this negatively impact my apps?
Replies
2
Views
1K
CrazyHorseLady
CrazyHorseLady
Schwifty
  • Question
Official 2022 Step 2 CK Experiences With Scores Thread
Replies
47
Views
12K
scorpiondr_intospace
S
Top