USMLE Official 2019 Step 1 Experiences and Scores Thread

This is a very common "side effect" of UW for many. I don't have any personal experience with this yet but the suggested solution to this is to make sure you do at least a few NBMEs after finishing UWorld prior to the exam, in order to calibrate in some sense to what's supposed to be closest to the real deal and not overthink questions.

 

Oh for sure! I don't sit until June I've got some time to work on my trust issues.

 

I prefer the term archer.





Pew pew

 

Hey ya'll. Is putting in ~3-4 hours of work/day of review too much at this point if my test is in middle of June?

I review my masterdeck of Zanki ~ usually about 3-400 cards which takes about 90 minutes
Answer 25 cumulative USMLERx questions and review/make anki cards for misses ~ 90 minutes
In the evening, review the anki cards I made for questions ~15 minutes (will increase once my deck increases)

 

I know this is the step thread and not the comlex thread, but since i dont think that ones started yet ill post here. Just got outta my first full length school mandated kaplan comlex sim. Not sure if anyones taken it yet but ill post my thoughts. Still havent taken our resp course and just started ethics so i wasnt expecting the best.

Heavy on neuroanatomy and extremely heavy on omm ive never heard of before (second largest section behind path).

Decent amount of 1st order qs, stems much shorter than rx/uworld stems. So not sure how representative this exam was.

Ended up getting a 72%, no idea what this correlates to but my school said >70% indicated youd score well. Overall happy considering i just started my review and havent touched omm yet lol. Worst sections were omm and behavioral science.

Also jesus taking a 400q 9hr exam takes a lot outta you.

If anyone else has taken/knows about this exam let me know your thoughts on it. Lets keep this grind going fam


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Firstly, dude props. Idk anything about the Kaplan scoring but I feel like that means you are already at a point where you are going to pass boards and it's only January lol.

Our current 3rd year OMM fellows (n~5 in the group that were talking to us) were telling us the COMLEX question stems were very long & time was a big player in the level of difficulty because of it. They also said what you said about the neuroanatomy; lots of it. And they said COMLEX loves Chapman's/counterstrain setup positions.

 

Thanks man!!!

But damn thats rough regarding the question stems, i was definitely struggling for time the first half of the exam. Once dedicated rolls around will definitely have to work on qbanks in timed mode. Perhaps even do timed mode with slightly less time than we’re given on test day.

Yeah there was tons of chapmans/counterstrain/sacrum on it. I thought i was fine on sacrum but like 90% of them never gave ila/sacral base location, but instead gave sphinx/sacral rock/lumbar dx and then a hand full of other tests ive never heard to describe the dx. There was a couple treatment modalities they were asking about that i dont think ive ever even heard mentioned, but ive never really been the most attentive person in omm so take that for what its worth lol. Definitely gonna have to open that green book earlier than expected haha


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So looking for any advice or just general feedback:

I started usmlerx this week. Besides trying a couple dozen Kaplan questions >1 year ago, these are the first practice questions I’ve done. I’ve been doing 40/day and started with the first system that we did last January. I’ve got 74% so far. Just really trying gauge how I’m doing.

Also, is their score prediction even worth acknowledging? It says I’d hit 240 but the range is 220-260. If so, does the range narrow over time? It would really be sweet if I could hit 230+ but I’m honestly just anxious about passing.

Thanks in advance.

PS: I tried searching this and I can’t find anything from normal people. Just “I got a 270 with a 90% in these banks.”

 

I posted this thread like <1 week ago, but here it is again in case you missed it. The R^2 value is lol but I don't know of anything more recent or better. The lack of correlation might be because people use it so differently... IE for some people maybe it's their first qbank, maybe some do it after they run out of questions once they've done UWorld...

https:// www.reddit.com/r/step1/comments/4uej4b/survey_results_2016_usmle_step_1_correlation/

 

@Ho0v-man I've been kinda eyeing those charts too as I've been working through UWorld. But like @Gurby said, people use Qbanks so differently that idk if I trust those charts at all.

 

Thanks y’all.

Yeah it sucks. There’s just so many ways to go about this. Hoping the average goes up as I get into more recent material I guess. Just annoying that you can work so hard and have no clue if you’re even doing it right. Oh well.

 

@Ho0v-man id probably say >70% is very likely to pass, so i wouldnt worry about that especially this early in the game. But its hard to infer more than that haha. Id definitely take an estimate of 220-260 and run with it though. We wont be able to get a more accurate estimate until later in the game when we start taking nbmes/uswas (uworld data is much better than rx/kaplan tho). The people that respond to these surveys are wild though, no failures that i can see and the specialty chosen chart every specialty besides two is above 240 lol


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@Ho0v-man if it makes you feel any better I did 2 blocks of Metabolism today and realized I remember zero biochemistry. It's as if I never even took the class.

 

Above >70% I’m guessing you’re in very good shape. I’m currently hitting around 50% but hoping to raise it once I actually start reviewing this stuff. Recalling info from 12 months ago is harder than I thought.

 

lol. Ive been trying to go by systems starting with GI but one of them i messed up and did 40 questions on everything and got murdered by biochem!

 

I’ve been doing 40q Rx blocks on random of the systems we’ve covered and it’s predicting a 242. My school had us take the CBSE and I scored ~210 without having covered renal and endocrine/reproduction. Admin told us that we usually see a 40-60 point jump from that score, so Rx is pretty spot on if that jump is true

 

Rx is probably the qbank with the worst correlational utility because of how different the questions are from the real test. For me personally, it is also the qbank I am doing the worst on because I hate how the questions are worded. My scores on Kaplan and UWorld are much higher.

 

Weird. Those two are notoriously harder. I’m trying to save Uworld. I tried Kaplan last year and hated it. It just reminded me of their MCAT prep which I also hated. It was either ridiculously tough or crazy easy and nothing in between. I guess my average overall there was about the same at the time.

Maybe i just didn’t do enough of them though, but I got fed up.

My saving grace has been zanki. Still tough though. I’m very surprised how tough micro has been at times, in particular.

 

I actually liked the Kaplan questions better most of the time too. Rx also has terrible question categorization where I inevitably get questions over organ systems I haven’t covered and specifically didn’t select. I’m not sure that invalidates the Rx data showing a stronger correlation than Kaplan.

 

I was so frustrated with the question miscategorization in Rx that I gave negative feedback and sent corrections for every single miscategorized question I encountered. Must be at least 150-200 reports. I hope they got the message by now.

 

Same! It never fails to be the very first question of my blocks too. Nothing like starting out each set saying wtf is this

 

I actually mentioned the same thing earlier in this thread. Glad to see I'm not alone in this.

 

The questions are definitely easier, but that's only if you know exactly what they're trying to pull you towards. The questions are just not that great, but I still do them because of how high yield they are. I prefer Kaplan because it's a lot more critical thinking.

 

Definitely notice quite a bit of issues with the stems not matching up with the answer explanations in rx too, think ive seen it twice now where the stem says “gastric pain worse with feeding” and the answer says “in this patients case of gastric pain better with feeding” and ive seen them say someone with tachy, heat intolerance, weight loss, etc “patient has hypothyroidism”. Usually seems like just simple typos and not super frustrating because theyre obvious but still lol could definitely use a proofreader or two on staff


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I had one today about vanc being the DOC for c. Diff but then the explanation’s last sentence says it isn’t. Gonna be a fun ride, kids!

 

If you do Zanki, I'm not even sure of a real utility to RX to be totally honest.

 

Now that you mentioned antibiotics, the issue with antimicrobials is that they 're categorized as Pharm but there is no specific system that corresponds exclusively to the microbiology section of FA. Basically you 're guaranteed to get questions about HIV medication in any system you can imagine other than Psych.

I cannot understand why would anyone convert a book into a Qbank, but then get out of their way to use a different system to index questions compared to the book they use as reference material.

 

So buy the USMLERx QBank for dedicated - noted.

 

I think do this or just don’t answer the questions that you know you haven’t covered. That’s what I do and then I’ll just include them after I’ve covered the topics.

 

I dont really mind this bc we covered all anti virals, antibiotics, antifungals, etc in first semester so its sort of popping up in the way I’m already used to.

 

I am glad you all have same problem with RX and their categorization.

 

Oral vanc is the DOC now, it is no longer metro

New Treatment Guidelines for Clostridium Difficile

 

Yeah missing it twice in one block of questions really drove it home for me. But good lookin out!

 

According to uworld treatment options for c dif are oral vanco and fidaxomicin which I’ve never even heard of before I missed a question haha

 

Why do you hurt me so bad? Lol.

Finished GI now onto cardio and dreading it. Last year it was a straight dumpster fire at my school. Hopefully this works out.

 

It's in a tiny corner in FA. It's crazy how many times myself I 've read details in FA but didn't realize they were actually there until they pop up in a question.

 

This happened to me today, read antibiotics recently yet seeing linezolid be a cause of serotonin syndrome in a question baffled me lol guess i glazed over that part


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That explains it if it’s not in sketchy I don’t know it haha

 

Looking at the Kaplan QBank options right now for the future 'cause I got merked again by biochemistry (RIP to my self-esteem) & need a little break.

Is the "QBank Integrated Plan" worth it? I'm wondering what those 26 mastery assessments are. I don't care about the videos 'cause I have B&B. I'd rather save the $160 if I can & just buy the QBank for $200

https://ww1.kaptest.com/usmle/pract...71.1397514493.1547667224-324098608.1547667224

 

When you do maintenance on your servers..

 

That's a fake picture lol, I did that question yesterday

 

I dare you to do it again.

The maintenance made like 20% of the questions mixed up like this.

 

Oh noooooo sorry you are totally right. So that’s why some of my questions today have been entirely messed up

 

Yeah I was trying to do a set today and it was infuriating. I'm kinda sick so I was struggling to see the funny in this.

 

Any updates on your practice tests and UW%?. Rooting for you!

 

Did they fix this yet?

 

Not sure, still traumatized from my last test.

 

Seems so.

I feel you man. Btw those are some crazy percentages you got there, are these 1st pass scores?

 

First pass, but only going through organ systems I've covered and mostly on tutor mode. I was also on a hot streak the last few days which is why I was so annoyed with the glitching (which is silly, I know). I'm probably averaging around 85% now, percentages have gone up as I've covered more organ systems so that I can get the miscategorized Rx questions. Started at around 65-70%, currently 83% overall.